Macon

New Orleans is surrounded by water-Lake Pontchartrain, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico. The city sits an average of six feet below sea level and the city's safety has always depended on one of the world's most complex levee systems.

On August 29, 2005 at 11:00 a.m., the destructive force of Hurricane Katrina came ashore near the Louisiana-Mississippi border. The storm's strongest winds were about 125 miles an hour. Katrina's front-right quadrant, which contained its strongest gales and peak storm surge, slammed the coast line causing a vital levee in New Orleans to fail and water to spill into the 17th Street Canal and the city to swamp.

When questioned after Katrina hit New Orleans, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the Army Corps answered, "It was fully recognized by officials that we had Category Three [hurricane] level of protection. As projections of Category Four and Five were made (for Katrina), officials began plans to evacuate the city. We were just caught by a storm whose intensity exceeded the protection that we had in place."

Was there an opportunity for the City of New Orleans, the State of Louisiana, and for the federal government to have avoided this situation? Had anyone of these groups taken the time to strategically consider the possibilities if a hurricane greater than a category three made landfall and what might happen with the current levee system? If none of these groups were thinking about it, strategic thinker Joel Bourne was. In October 2004, National Geographic published an article titled Gone with the Water by Joel K. Bourne, Jr. This article was published almost a year before Katrina hit, which brought reality to Bourne's insightful doomsday hurricane scenario for New Orleans. This is a textbook example of being ahead of the curve.

When questioned after Katrina about the state of Louisiana's attempts to modernize the levee system, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock brushed off ideas that recent federal funding decreases or delayed contracts for levee upgrades made any difference on levee performance when hammered by Katrina's overwhelming power. Instead he identified a danger that many public officials had been worrying about for years, which was that the levee system had not been designed to survive a hurricane of Katrina's power.

Through in-depth research and analysis of Strategic Thinking, it is possible to go beyond the normal broad organizational, government or corporate strategy and bring Strategic Thinking to the individual level. Strategic Thinking involves the capability to portray scenarios that project a picture of what lies ahead. It involves constant attention and observation to the trends, patterns, and cycles that are going on around us continually and allow us to gather information. Being attentive, someone is is able to make educated and reasonable predictions about the future. With this understanding the individual can be ahead of the curve and chart a course to advance, improve, prepare or protect the individual or organization for future events. Once a course has been outlined, the goal is to then mobilize and sustain an effort to reach your target objective. Hurricane Katrina illustrated for us all a vivid lesson of how important it is to become more strategic and pro-active.

As seen by the Hurricane Katrina disaster, if you want to be a strategic thinker, you can not always hop on the bandwagon and do what everybody else is doing. It means being ready to take smart risks, even when it means foregoing instant payoffs for the long term benefits of a predicted event. If anyone had been willing to risk breaking from the popular opinion and calling for improved levees in New Orleans, billions of dollars would have been saved and thousands of people would still have homes.

While many people can be blamed for the failure of the levee system, the key now is to take a more pro-active and strategic approach to other obvious problems that exist.

With regards to the future of Hurricanes, there are already many predictions. Forecasters fear the Atlantic seaboard could suffer many years of of relentless pounding and that this previous year was only the beginning. So, while many organizations need to be taking action, so should anyone who is involved in this process.

You should probably ask yourself a question. Are you being warned of future storms, or does the future look bright and promising?

As you are contemplating your future in life and other areas, you can strategize better now which will help out immensely in the long run. These things will put you Ahead of the Curve.

What is Strategy? Find out by joining in the conversation of new strategic thinking. CMOE has delivered small business strategic planning solutions to many successful companies. Learn the strategic planning steps that you need in order to become successful by visiting their blog.