The military provides its followers with a lot of training in unconventional thinking, but the latter is not (or rarely) translated into realities of civilian life to the degree required in the most complex environment of a catastrophe or even a mjor disaster. To make things worse, we lost the sense of proportion in our statements: we inflate the meaning of our words, then delude ourselves by what we say, incuring the sense of false safety where there should be none. Example: the ditching of US Air in the Hudson River. The pilot (althought, in reality, one ought to praise the entire flight crew) has been universally decried a hero/
In truth, all that can be said is that Captain “Sully” showed an exemplary professionalism whose character ought to be emulated by all, independently of profession we are in. And this is what is so admirable in the man: his profound mastery of trade, impeccable professionalism, and a magnificent sense of duty supported by the ability to deal with the unexpected and unoredictable. On a micro-scale he and all who participated in the effort showed the spirit that needs to be developed on the macro-level.

We have all tools that are required for such development (primparily technology-based training platforms), we have the people who already spent a considerable amount of time developing practical aspects of such preparation, we also have theories which facilitate the required preparation (Boyd, net-centricity, ToL – in sequence from personal to multi-organizational level). We have all that, and yet all exists in separate pools of knwledge, disunited, and with no apparent intent to fuse the required elements into the badly required whole.

Somehow, we have continuoulsy self-reinforcing tendency of not seeing cross-domain applicability of concepts, the need to adapt AND adopt, and the requirement to abandon the literal on behalf of the conceptually essential: ToL really can be applied to the preparation of Thanksgiving Day turkey, and Boyd’s thoughts to the pprocess of crossing a busy street. In either case, the outcome will be far better than without (and you may consider a practical experiment applying either concept to the suggested situations).

Ultimately, Discussions are important to clarify where we want to go, but discussions alone will not do much unless a practical effort is initiated. And the practical effort concentrates on “moving brains” rather than developing professional knowledge. We have attained the latter probably to the highest possible level, now we must concentrate on the former.