Most business leaders do not think about crisis response until they are in the middle of one. That is not a criticism. It is just the reality of how most organizations operate. Crisis planning sits on a to-do list until something happens, and then suddenly everyone is scrambling to figure out who is in charge, what the plan is, and why no one practiced it before today. I spent years in law enforcement responding to critical incidents, training supervisors, and studying what separates...

On the morning of September 28, 2025, a Sunday service at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, turned into one of the most layered critical incidents I have studied in recent memory. Around 10:25 a.m., 40-year-old Thomas Sanford drove a pickup truck through the front doors of the church while hundreds of parishioners were inside. He exited the vehicle, opened fire with an assault rifle, and deliberately set the building on fire using gasoline....

When I was an officer, I struggled deeply with failure. Not just the act of making mistakes, but the way a mistake would cause me to see myself as fundamentally flawed. Perfectionism had followed me my entire life, showing up in the way I approached my work, my goals, and my own self-worth. When I became a leader responsible for ten new officers, I assumed that drive for perfection would serve me well. Instead, it got worse. I started projecting my perfectionism onto my team. Every small...