Field Note: After the Headline

The morning after a high-profile CEO was killed in New York, the atmosphere in Florida felt different. Leadership teams everywhere were taking stock, quietly reassessing what visibility meant for their own organizations.

By midday, a board chair from a healthcare firm in Naples called. Their executives were a married couple, public, steady, not the type who considered themselves high-risk. They were not fearful. They simply wanted to understand what they could not yet see.

We began with their routines. Travel, schedules, online footprints, the predictable intersections between their personal and professional lives. Leadership creates pattern, and pattern creates exposure; most vulnerabilities reveal themselves only when charted together.

Our work expanded outward: home, office, travel, digital habits, family presence online. Nothing dramatic, but enough subtle overlap to warrant structure. Their children posted freely, as most do, often tagging locations in real time. We made small adjustments that preserved normalcy while reducing visibility.

By week’s end, I met with the board. They did not want reassurance, they wanted a framework. Something quantifiable that aligned with governance, not fear. We delivered a structured security study covering movement, travel, digital posture, facility controls, and continuity planning.

When it was complete, the environment felt different. Not safer by accident, but safer by design. The calm that followed was the kind that comes from clarity.

Security is rarely about responding to crisis. It is about shaping the space in which risk never has room to grow.