You Don't Get Knocked Out by the Punch You See

Ask a fighter which punch put them down and you will usually get a shrug. They can describe the round, the taste of the mouthguard, the ceiling lights swimming back into focus. The punch itself is missing from the record. That absence is the whole lesson. A punch you see is a punch your body has already begun negotiating with. The chin tucks, the shoulder lifts, the knees soften to steal a little of the impact. Vision turns violence into an inconvenience. What actually ends fights is the shot that lands while your attention is elsewhere, thrown from an angle you quietly stopped covering because nothing had come from there in a while. Corporations are worse at this than boxers, and for an unflattering reason. Boxers get hit often enough to stay honest. Your risk register is a list of punches you have already blockedSomewhere in your organization there is a spreadsheet with a heat map on it. Likelihood down one side, impact across the top, a column of owners who did not volunteer, and a…