How to Manage Election Disaster Risk (Video and Podcast)
You can protect your work and life from the significant possibility of an election disaster by treating preparation for this likelihood as insurance. That’s the key take-away message of this episode of the Wise Decision Maker Show, which describes how to manage election disaster risk.
Video: “How to Manage Election Disaster Risk”
Podcast: “How to Manage Election Disaster Risk”
Links Mentioned in Videocast and Podcast
- Here’s the article on How to Manage Election Disaster Risk
- The book Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters is available here
- You are welcome to register for the free Wise Decision Maker Course
Transcript
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the wise decision maker show where we help you make the wisest and most profitable decisions.
Today, I want to talk about a pretty stressful topic, how to manage the risk of an election disaster, specifically, the election of the US presidential election on November 3 2020, this is going to be a pretty serious big problem, but you can apply it to any election risk situation where you’re facing and realizing that, hey, this situation might be much more stressful, tense, full of conflict and controversy than you might realize. But specifically, we’ll be talking about this upcoming election, the November 3 election 2020 of the US president. Now something might not be realizing is that there is a real serious risk of this election turning into a major disaster, for a couple of reasons.
One is that huge, huge numbers of on large quantities, quantity of mailing ballots weigh more than in previous elections, perhaps three to four times as many, maybe even more, because we’re voting in the middle of a pandemic. And very many people wisely, I would say, don’t want to take the risk of going to the polls, especially given that in many polling locations, people are not obliged to wear a mask, unfortunately, and follow social distancing protocols, and so on. So this is going to be something that especially older folks don’t want to do. But I don’t want to do either. I mean, you know, I am in my 40s, but I don’t want to catch COVID. And then they lay up in hospital for a very long time and even possibly die. I mean, people my age definitely die.
People who are younger, definitely die without any underlying conditions. So I don’t want that many other people don’t want that. So they’re voting by mail, I’m voting by mail. However, the result of this is that there’s going to be a huge wave of mailing ballots. And there have been a lot of complaints raised about the possibility of fraud in these mailing ballots, which the FBI has indicated that there is no widespread evidence of widespread fraud, for mailing balance, but there are complaints and there are concerns. And so this will result in a lot of challenges and a lot of problems. There are large legal teams gathered on both sides of the fence to actually examine these ballots and see pretty thoroughly what kind of if there are any mistakes made. And unfortunately, it’s way, way, way easier to make a mistake and a mailing ballot than it is on a voting ballot when you’re actually voting in person, because the poll worker can help you if you make mistake, and they can guide you for the process. Whereas in the mainland ballot, they can’t.
So historically, many, many more mail in ballots have been rejected, then in person votes. So we will have people from lawyers from the campaign’s who will be looking very closely at mail and ballots, especially mailing ballots that are coming from the other side, from people who are opposed, the republicans will be looking at the democratic ones and vice versa. And they will be trying to get them rejected. And unfortunately, another big problem is that there’s a lot of budget cuts right now due to the pandemic. And so governments have much less money to spend on hiring poll workers and managing poll places. And they have many less volunteers, because those usually come from seniors and seniors are much more vulnerable to covid, than the ordinary person out there. So mimulus seniors are volunteering at the poll to be poll workers and even for getting paid. So some co workers are volunteers, some get paid. A lot of seniors who previously were experienced co workers and got paid for that one day out of the year, are no longer interested in the quite small amounts of payment for the quite large risks. So we’re seeing a lot of inexperienced poll workers combined with a lot of challenges, combined with a lot of big legitimization of mainland balance. And that combination that delegitimization in particular, would lead to a lot of controversy. A lot of people who would be very concerned around mailing ballots, especially political leaders, start saying that, hey, we need to stop the count. It’s very, very unlikely that mailing ballots will be counted on November 3, itself or November 4, because many swing states including many swing states don’t allow Malan ballots to be counted until Election Day. So until Election Day, with the huge huge amount of ballots mail in ballots that are expected of all of these challenges, the legal challenges, the lawyers challenging the ballots, that’s going to be a big issue that will slow down counting. And of course, the people who are concerned about the legitimacy of the mail and ballots very well might turn up at the polls and try to prevent counting. And that has happened before. So we know in Florida in the 2000 election, the Bush versus Gore election, there were protesters who were coming to the polls, and who actually prevented the accurate counting of the finalizing of the count of Miami Dade County.
So we know it has happened before where the counting has been stopped by protesters. And that is a very serious issue that might happen in very many swing states, because in the 2000 election, there were no political leaders who were particularly legitimizing the election account on either side. Now we’re already seeing political leaders, the legitimizing Malan balance legitimising the election claiming fraud. So what will happen? Well, we also know, another thing that you will need to keep in mind is that there’s surveys that are showing that Americans are increasingly increasingly likely to engage in violence to pursue their political goals. I mean, the summer of protests, whether a protest against police brutality, or protests against shutdowns, that has really shown us that Americans are quite a bit more likely than in the past to engage in violence to pursue their political goals, and that whether that’s trying to kidnap a governor or burning down the police station, those are clearly instances where people are not behaving very rationally, very wisely, very helpfully. So it’s very likely if political leaders are delegitimizing the election origin before the election takes place. And if the results are not announced on November 3, itself, which is almost on very, very, very unlikely, what will happen in November for November 5, November 6, as the voting stretches on political leaders will say, We’re already legitimizing the results, we’ll say, Hey, stop the count, you know, this additional counting is fraudulent. And they have been indicating that that’s exactly what they will say. So this is a major issue that will lead to civil disturbances very likely to lead to civil disturbances, just like in Florida in 2000. Without delegitimization, it’s kind of this that leads to civil disturbances will likely, much more civil disturbances considering the growing willingness of Americans to engage in violence in this willingness has been shown to increase in polling very seriously. It went up from June 20. In June of 2020, it went up from the low 30s for both Democrats and Republicans to the low 40s. So they’ve increased by a third, this willingness, and of course, by the time of the election itself, it will increase further. And so with a summer of protests, having that willingness and further increase in this willingness, it’s very likely we’ll see mass civil disturbances, I would not be at all surprised if there are civil disturbances that where people come to polling places, and not polling places, but counting election counting officers county board of elections, and then seize it and maybe try to burn the ballots and quite possibly succeed, given that there was some success in burning beliefs, buildings, and so on Portland, for example, this is something that might very well happen. And they would certainly stop the account or slow it down. And they might even destroy the balance to prevent them from being counted. This is a huge concern, and this very well might happen. So we need to take this very seriously. Top political leaders are taking this very seriously on both sides of the aisle.
They’re preparing for various scenarios, which would come from the count not being finalized. And then the votes for the actual Electoral College not being accurate, not being conclusive, and so on. So we need to understand that this will also result in economic turmoil. So civil disturbances, huge economic turmoil, stock market will take a nosedive, if that indeed happens, which there’s a substantial possibility that it will, and of course, lots of businesses will suffer. If that happens. We already saw a number of businesses suffer. I mean, the retail businesses from looting also a lot of businesses, that there’s a lot of uncertainty, they don’t want to invest, they will they’re going to cut down contract supplies. And of course, employees will be very concerned. So their employees will not be nearly as productive.
There’ll be a lot of problems, a lot of tensions, and it might actually end up in the constitutional crisis. So he Here’s what might happen. So if the electoral college vote is not decisive, that might very well happen. And if that’s not decisive, then it will go to the house. Now the house, the US House of Representatives, the way the voting would take place there is that it’s one state gets a vote, depending on its delegation. Right now we have republicans controlling the majority of delegations, 26 delegations, and we might, they might or might not still control them after the vote after the November election, but we don’t know whether they will or not. And if there is controversy, and burning of ballots around the presidential election, of course, it’s the same balance. So we might not know the makeup of the houses, because there’s a lot of controversy around voting. Now, in any case, even if the republicans do control the majority of the state delegations, the democrats will very likely control the majority of members in the house itself. And the majority of members gets to make the rules about who is allowed to be a member of the House or not. And they can prevent certain members like republicans from being seated for various causes having to do with elections, various claims that the elections weren’t fair or something like that. In that case, while the Republicans, if the voters held would win the presidency in the house, the democrats might prevent this vote from being held by refusing to see if the Republican members and even hold the wrong vote indicating that the democrats win. So that’s the situation that might very well result in a serious constitutional crisis. Because obviously, there’s going to be pretty low legitimacy. If that eventuality happens to the democrats prevent some Republicans from being seated and then hold their own votes showing that they’re candidate one, that’s going to be a very serious issue. So this is something that might result in a constitutional crisis with no clear way out with no legitimate way out. This might happen, and we have to realize that this is a real possibility. And when we try to prepare for this possibility, we don’t feel it, you know, you might feel that, gosh, this is just, you know, not three, or this, you know, maybe this guy is making sense of what he’s saying. But it just doesn’t feel real to me, my gut is telling me that that’s not going to happen. It’s never happened before. I mean, whatever the bush versus gore thing happened. Sure. And yes, there were some protests and some serious violence, whether attempts to kidnap the governor of Michigan, or the attempts to burn down the Portland Police Station. Sure that happened, but this would be on a much larger scale. Would this really happen? This is too bizarre. It’s too unusual. Now, that’s not going to happen. It won’t impact me, I don’t need to worry about this. That’s probably what many of you are thinking. And that’s what your gut is telling you. Unfortunately, our gut gets many of these decisions, right? No, not right. This is something that you might remember from when you started reading articles and hearing news reports about the possibility of COVID 19, turning into a pandemic. What did that voice in your gut tell you? They’re telling you that this is not a big deal? You know, we had people talking about the possibility of pandemics before nothing turned out. I don’t need to worry about this, despite people who are experts saying that, hey, this is much more serious than previous threats of pandemic, this is something that might very likely lead into a pandemic, although even they did not estimate how bad it would be. So your voice in your gut did not tell you that I think about the pandemic. This is not something that you should trust that voice in your gut that tells you it’s unreal, it’s unless it’s so unlikely, that I don’t need to worry about it won’t hurt me. Won’t impact me. Just as the pandemic is incredibly impactful, damaging. Already over 220,000 people lost their lives, 8 million cases of COVID-19 and unfortunately, many more likely to come. So given that we tend to underestimate the pandemic, we tend to underestimate the election disaster risk, what’s going on?
Well, we tend to greatly underestimate events that are called Black Swan events, low probability, high impact events, events that are very unlikely to happen, but if they do happen, they’re very high impact. That’s something we very much tend to underestimate. We don’t feel it’s real. We don’t feel it’s going to happen to us. That’s something that’s called the Black Swan. Well, unfortunately, Black Swan events do occur sometime. I mean, think about the 2008 2009 fiscal crisis. Everybody was saying the housing crisis will go up and will go up. Everything will be fine. Don’t need to worry about it having liquid. What happened? huge impact, very negative very fast. harmful. And so many leaders are saying that the pandemic that the COVID-19 will not be a pandemic is just like the flu is nothing to worry about. Look what happened. Look at this huge, huge pandemic, what kind of damage it’s doing to us. Same thing, we tend to really underestimate the risks of Black Swan low impact type, high probability, low impact events, due to dangerous judgment errors.
Due to dangerous judgment errors around that voice in our gut, that tells us that we don’t need to pay attention to it, that it’s not going to happen. These dangerous or judgment errors, these mental blind spots are called cognitive biases, and that are specifically free cognitive biases that I want to highlight around this thread of an election disaster. One is called the normalcy bias. Now, the normalcy bias comes from our mind forecasting the future, and seeing it as being informed by the past. So that’s basically how we feel we feel that the future will be much like the past. So in the past, elections have gone without a disaster. So we don’t feel that future elections will be a disaster, despite so many indicators. But this one election might well turn out to be a disaster, just like that there were so many indicators that COVID-19 would turn out to be a pandemic. So this is a bad judgment or that our mind makes that causes us to really make bad decisions around Black Swan type of events. low probability, high impact events. That’s one the second one, confirmation bias. Confirmation bias refers to us looking for information that supports our beliefs confirms our beliefs. That’s why it’s the confirmation bias. So we tend to look for information that makes us feel good, but makes a voice in our gut. agree with it. So information that agrees with that voice is in our gut, the one that represents our current beliefs, our current feelings, our current intuitions, and our current desires. Now, it’s not a bad thing to have hope. But hope is not a strategy. You want to hope for the best, but you plan for the worst. But what happened with the pandemic was that a large majority of people hoped for the best, and then they planned for the best. And that turned out to be very bad for them and their families, their households, their work, their business, political system, or government. So many, so many bad results from the confirmation bias you might be the confirmation bias might be right now telling you to ignore what you’re hearing, and that this information from this guy is not credible. That’s the confirmation bias talking to you telling you that, hey, this feels uncomfortable, it feels not true. Therefore it can be true. That’s how the confirmation bias feels tells you something is uncomfortable. And then because it’s uncomfortable, it tells you that it’s untrue. And therefore you believe it’s not true, regardless of whether it’s factually accurate or not. That’s how it works. And that’s something we really need to avoid. So again, hope for the best but plan for the worst. And then that comes to the third cognitive bias planning fallacy, the way we make our plans about the future, around the election disasters, around pandemics, any sort of plans, we don’t plan for problems nearly well enough, you might have heard the phrase, failing to plan is planning to fail, failing to plan is planning to fail. Unfortunately, that’s a very misleading phrase, because what tends to happen is that we make a plan and that we think everything will go according to plan, not the way reality works, that we have many more problems and risks and threats than we planned for. So what I tell my clients to do is coaching consulting clients is failing to plan for problems is planning to fail. Again, failing to plan for problems is planning to fail. That’s a much better phrase to use, because we don’t tend to plan for problems nearly well enough, and they cause us to fail. So people who don’t plan for the reality of an election disaster will be much more likely to fail. So well, how do we actually approach this question? How do we make a good decision around an election disaster possibility? What you want to do is instead of that gut reaction says no, it’s not going to happen, or the immediate opposite wishes. Yes, panic. It’s going to happen. Ah, what do I do? You know, many people are panicking, who have that response, or maybe people are fatalistic, they think they don’t, they can’t do anything. They’re just like, whatever it will happen, they’ll happen. That’s not the right response.
First, you want to estimate the probabilities using probabilistic thinking. Probabilistic thinking is a science based approach, where you assign probabilities to various possibilities of the future, based on what you read, what you evaluate, what you estimate, correcting for the normality bias, the confirmation bias. The planning fallacy as you do so. And there are other cognitive biases that you can learn about my book called never go with your gut, how pioneering leaders make the best decisions and avoid business disasters, talks about many more cognitive biases. For example, I’m very vulnerable myself to what’s called the optimism bias, where I tend to see the world as mostly a friendly place and glass is half full, rather than half empty. And it might be surprising for you to hear this from someone who’s talking about an election disaster, and who himself isn’t, is a disaster avoidance expert. But I have to constantly fight that optimism bias. One of the reasons that I became a disaster avoidance expert is that I learned how to fight this optimism bias and how to evaluate risks more accurately in the process. And that helped me in my practice in my work, and I hope it helps you if you tend to be overly optimistic, which many people are. So you want to assign probabilities to various scenarios of the future. What’s the probability that Malan ballots won’t get processed, won’t get counted before the electoral college vote on December 14? Well, there are a number of states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, which are major, major major swing states, and which very likely will determine the presidency, those three states, who wins those three states, those three states are not allowed by law to begin counting, mailing ballots before election. And of course, your election day, there’ll be very busy in person balancing. And lawyers will definitely be there looking very closely at each ballot as it’s being counted, trying to slow down the process trying to challenge the ballots, and none, they will not get counted. On November 3, they will not get counted on November 4. And once that happens, it’s very likely that the candidate who is ahead on November 3 may well say hey, I’m ahead. Now the all the other ballots are fraudulent mail in ballots and fraudulent stop account. And we’ve heard candidates say these sorts of things before in the 2018 election, so you want to be prepared, very prepared for that to happen. And then well, what happens then then civil disturbances, people go out in the streets, you know, one party goes out the party who whose candidate said, you know, mailers fraudulent stop account, then the other party goes out the counter protest, the civil disturbance in city centers, major city centers, around the election offices in those swing states, and Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are just three of these swing states. There’s a high there’s Florida, there’s even potentially Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and so on. Lots and lots of states, where some of the states By the way, Florida and Ohio do allow counting before start before election day. But it will still be challenged by lawyers who will be looking at every one of these ballots and trying to get them rejected, especially if it’s from the other party. So that will probably extend the counting till quite a bit longer, especially for the count as needed, which very well might in states that look, according to polls, like they’re pretty close, like Florida and Ohio, which those two states might well be the linchpins that swung the election. I mean, Florida swung the election in 2000, which is why it was the scene of riots and conflicts and where the counting wasn’t finished by the Electoral College. So given that Florida wasn’t finished with that one issue, and we didn’t have people who are trying to deliver the Mize vote already in head of the vote, we didn’t have nearly so many mail in ballots, which are much easier to get wrong, and much easier for lawyers to argue against. There’s a very, very high likelihood comparatively speaking that the male unbalance won’t be processed before the electoral college vote on December 14, I would say that it’s at least 30% conservatively speaking, more realistically, it’s closer to 4050, maybe even 60. But being super conservative, you know, just kind of the lower bound would be 30%. So lower bound 30%. That’s the electoral college vote and the ballots won’t be processed by that time. And what happens, then? Well, then it doesn’t then the power to decide what electors get appointed to the Electoral College, goes to the state governments. The government of each state gets to decide that and then depends on how the law is written which states in some states, the secretaries of state have to be the ones who certify the election. In other states, it’s the other bodies, but the governor has a lot of power in certifying the board of electors in each state and the legislature has a lot of power in appointing the Board of electors in each state. So that’s what will happen. And then a number of these swing states well, their swing states because they tend to be more moderate, not left not right, more moderate, more centrist. A number of these swing states, the Secretary of State, the governor and the control of legislators are held by different parties. So what might end up happening I mean, if they’re held by the same party, as happens to be here, the case in Ohio, so I, I’m here in Columbus, Ohio, so go Bucs, the Buckeye football team. It’s the big football team here, and lots of people who root for it. So what might well happen is that if there’s one party in control as there is here in Ohio, it’s likely that what will happen is that this party will appoint its elector.
So the republican control party controls the governorship, the Secretary of State the how the legislature’s so it’s likely that the republican electors will be appointed by a high if the vote doesn’t finish counting by December 14 in Ohio, but in a number of other states, there’s their split governments, where there’s Democrats and Republicans who occupy some of those positions. So what might happen in those states is that either there are no electors appointed in those states, because they, each of them, you know, if the legislature appoints some, some electors, the government, the governor, whose role is to certify them might not certify them. And so that will be not really a legitimate slate of electors, or they might appoint conflicting slates of electors. Pennsylvania has split government. So the government, one slit one part of a government, the legislature might appoint electors that sell republican legislation, they might appoint republican electors to the Electoral College, that does the Democratic governor, the Democratic governor might appoint democratic electors. So there may be two slates of electors from Pennsylvania, which would essentially not be perceived as legitimate either, right? So what’s the probability then, given all of these possibilities, tensions and conflicts, that there won’t be a decisive vote in the Electoral College, there won’t be enough to have 270. For either candidate, I’d say at least 50% of 30. So half of 30%, half of that possibility, it’s going to be 15%. So if we get there with the electorate with the balance not processed, we’ll have 30% on December 14, then the chance of the split vote, the chance that there won’t be enough for either candidate to win would be 30 15% of the total. So 50% of 30%, go raise right now. 15%. Now, what happens is that Congress is not going to be on January 6, when the house decides who is going to be the president, the house might very well stalemate against each other based on what I was talking about before, I’d say the probability for that is quite high if it gets to that. So because both parties have means of still meeting the vote, and throwing it into a constitutional crisis? And I’d say that’s going to be a two thirds possibility. So two thirds of the previous possibility, two thirds of 15 is 10%. So where 10% probability of a constitutional crisis Now, unfortunately, based on the current estimates, and these are my estimates, of course, based on my readings and evaluation of the situation, you can take a look and apply your own estimates to each of these situations, what would you say is the possibility of mailing ballots not being counted by the electoral college vote? What would you say is the possibility of the electoral college vote then not being decisive? And those are again, separate estimates? And then what would you say is the possibility if it’s not decisive of the house, not being able to choose a candidate and stalemates against each other? So what are these numbers that you can put on yourself? All right, then what you want to do, having these numbers having these probabilities I said, 3015, and 10, you can put in your own numbers, you want to now prepare yourself, given these numbers given these estimates for the possibility of an election disaster. Think about how it would impact your life and your work. How would it actually impact your life and your work? And what resources would you require to address the situation? For example, if you are working in your office right now, rather than the home office, you might consider transitioning back to working in the home office and not in your home and not in your workplace. And if you work in a workplace, if your workplaces downtown, you might consider locking it up well against looting these sorts of possibilities. There’s pretty serious possibilities of this going on. If it’s really impossible. a three year manufacturing plant or if you really need to have clients have meet clients or something like that in person, I would strongly suggest getting some security, some additional security for the, wherever you happen to be working for your personal life, you want to stock up on various supplies, medications, various things that you might need, and prepare for various policing measures to deal with the civil disturbances like curfews and so on. And prepare to defend your home in case of looters, all of those sorts of things. You want to prepare psychologically, for the trauma of the situation, I can’t emphasize that enough. The situation will be truly traumatic, it means you know it. It’s a fundamental pillar of American democracy, that there’s a peaceful transition of power where everyone follows laws. I mean, let’s think about what are the fundamentals of democracy, there are really three fundamentals, three fundamentals, peaceful transition of power, everyone following the law, everyone, no one is above the law. And then finally, freedom of speech, those are really the three fundamental pillars of democracy and freedom of speech will still remain. Now, people following the law will be definitely shaken by this situation with lots of civil disturbances, lots of conflicts. And what will really be undermined is a peaceful transition of power, peaceful transition of power fundamentally undermined peaceful transition of power based on election. So orderly elections, peaceful transition of power, fundamentally undermined, and your identity as someone who lives in a truly fully democratic society will be really shaken, I know I dissipate, mine will be in this sort of situation will be really fundamentally challenging for me to experience this as someone who is proud of living in a democratic country. And this so this will be, I think, really stressful for me. And I guess for you, too, you also want to be thinking about how you will deal with that. So that’s an identity issue. But seeing people seeing the political system, be so so undermine seeing all these conflicts will be very stressful, very harmful, psychologically for you, I’m guessing, and seeing people fighting in the streets, violence, bloodshed, it’s, you know, this is the summer of protests will seem like a pleasant summer rain before a category five hurricane of the kind of protests we will face, if indeed, this will be a such a contested election. So this is something that you need to really get psychologically psychologically prepared for. And you need to prepare those you care about psychologically fought as well and get them to prepare their households for it. So I suggest you spread the word, spread the word to those people you care about, help them, prepare for it, help them prepare for it, for your people in your personal life, and your professional colleagues help them prepare for it. Spread the word, let them know about the situation potentially coming up, and the proud probabilities for it. Now if you are an employer, we talked about personal life and personal professional activities. If you’re an employer you want I strongly, strongly urge you to look at your business continuity plan. A lot of people were very seriously underprepared. For the pandemic, they had a basic business continuity plan, which just accounted for one week to week interruption for a hurricane, a flood, and earthquake fire or something like that, not for a pandemic, which is not the sprint of one to two week interruption, but a real marathon. So this is coming remember on top of a pandemic, so we’re having this possibility of an election disaster coming on top of a pandemic, you want to revisit your business continuity plan, and see how it needs to be adjusted, then you want to prepare your employees for the situation, give them the information about, Hey, this is something that might be coming up, you might want to take the steps outlined that I outlined earlier, to prepare yourself and your household and your colleagues and your professional network in your personal network for these things, and prepare yourself psychologically, remind your employees of various ways that you can support their mental well being. So if you’re having an employee assistance provider EAP, hopefully you have that. So you’re providing some wellness counseling, therapy for your employees, and reminding them of these resources to encourage them to take advantage of these resources. If you and also what I mentioned before about getting extra security for your office, if you can’t have people work at home, I strongly encourage you to prepare to have people work at home for this period. If you have people working in the office, if you can. So for example, if you’re a manufacturing plant or prod saying something you need to do in person, get extra security, this is a time to definitely do get extra security for yourself. This is a wise idea. If you are a manufacturer, order extra supplies have them on hand because your supply chains might be disrupted, various services might be disrupted, various government services might be disrupted. So think about these various service disruption service interruptions. If you have an electric generator for your business, that would be good for your home. By the way, that would be good too. So think about various service interruptions that might occur in this scenario. So make sure to address these possibilities. As you’re going forward. If you are a service provider of various services, reassure your clients about the steps that you are taking to prepare yourself for the election disaster, and that your services to your clients will continue uninterrupted. And also think about if you are some organization that provides necessary services that will be benefited by an election disaster such as insurance, security, risk management expert, something, all of these sorts of things, policing, all of these sorts of things. If you provide private private policing, I mean, if data security all think about what kind of businesses might benefit financially from an election disaster, and prepare some marketing and selling materials, in order to take advantage of this potential situation of the curse, because you don’t want to only guard against problems, but you also want to seize opportunities as you see them. And these might be nice opportunities to seize. So think about that. Now think about what resources, how many resources would you require for all of these sorts of things for your personal life or your professional life? If you’re an employer, what kind of resources would you require, and of time, money, social capital, information, strategic capital, then add them up, add up all of these resources, in case the disaster happens, add up all the time, all the money, all the other information, social capital, all the other resources, add them up, think about it, and then multiply them by the probability, but multiply them by each probability. So multiply them by 30% probability, if you’re just using my estimates, this is what I’m doing with my business, and my personal and professional life and activities. So that’s what I’m looking at, I’m looking at 30%, and adding up all the resources that I would need if the election disaster does occur, then multiplying them by 30%. So it will be point three of all of the resources that I estimated, and that’s going to be for the first period from November 3 to December 14. So for that period, how many resources would I require to address all of these sorts of potential election disaster risk, multiplying them by 30%, and then using those resources to prepare for an election disaster. So all of the steps to prepare us up 30% of those re use up all the resources that I planned for to prepare for an election disaster. So that’s the first step, then looking at the time period from December 14 to January 6, I estimated 15% probability of a continual situation of chaos, uncertainty, civil disturbances, lots of conflicts. So then you want to look at the resources that would be required for you for that time period, and then multiply that by 15%. Or, again, put in your own numbers. And then finally, what happens then? Well, if we have continued uncertainty after January 6, if the house is not able to resolve a situation that has a constitutional crisis, you probably think that that’s going to continue for at least a month, if not longer. So estimating that it will continue for at least a month is a constitutional crisis, while various things are being figured out. And it might continue longer, but just let’s kind of give a baseline of a month, then estimate what you would require for that additional month from January 6 to February 6, and multiply that by 10%. And use up all of those resources, invest them into preparing for the selection disaster. This is a research based approach. It’s based on extensive evidence of how you have the best practice of addressing various risks. Now think about the various risks that you’re already addressing with what’s called insurance. This is essentially your buying election, disaster insurance through figuring out these resources, preparing yourself for the situation, evaluating the probabilities and multiplying them and then using these resources to prepare for the situation. Now, you might think they’ll, well, you know, 30% 15% 10%, maybe these aren’t super high estimates, you know, should I really even be worrying about them? Well, think about it this way. What’s the likelihood that your house will burn down any given year? Not very high, right? Not very high. It’s not likely to happen. Your business will burn down? Not very likely, but will you give up your fire insurance? Because it’s not very likely, no, of course not. Because if you do burn down, that will be a very serious problem for you. Well, that we are fire insurance is essentially a black swan event that we automatically are protected from
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Bio: An internationally-recognized thought leader known as the Disaster Avoidance Expert, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is on a mission to protect leaders from dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases by developing the most effective decision-making strategies. A best-selling author, he is best known for Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Career Press, 2019), The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships (New Harbinger, 2020), and Resilience: Adapt and Plan for the New Abnormal of the COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic (Changemakers Books, 2020). He published over 550 articles and gave more than 450 interviews to prominent venues such as Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur, CBS News, Time, Business Insider, Government Executive, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Fast Company, and elsewhere. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training as the CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts. It also stems from over 15 years in academia as a behavioral economist and cognitive neuroscientist. Contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, Twitter @gleb_tsipursky, Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky, LinkedIn, and register for his free Wise Decision Maker Course.
