The Ancient King's Backup Strategy Your Company Needs
True backup plans require a sacrificial decoy designed to absorb damage first—otherwise, your contingency is just hope dressed as strategy.
When Delta variant lockdowns hit in 2021, companies replicated their offices at home and called it a backup plan. But the ancient Assyrians understood risk engineering differently: they installed a substitute king to absorb the first and worst hit. A real decoy strategy identifies one non-essential asset designed to fail first, protecting what matters. Without a sacrificial layer you can name and lose, your backup plan is merely wishful thinking.
In March 2021, when the Delta variant surge hit, companies everywhere flipped the same switch: work from home. They called it a backup plan. But it was just the office replicated in bedrooms—no mechanism to fail gracefully, no component designed to be sacrificed. It was hope dressed as strategy. The Assyrians, thousands of years earlier, had a different approach. When omens threatened the king, they installed a substitute king—a prisoner or peasant—on the throne. He wore the crown, took the rituals, and if the portents came true, he died in the real king’s place. That wasn’t superstition; it was pure risk engineering with a pre-built sacrificial layer. Modern playbooks focus on preserving and restoring everything. They try to keep all operations intact. But a real decoy strategy does the opposite: it identifies a single non-essential asset—a fake project line, a dummy budget, a shadow operation—designed to absorb the first and worst hit. If you can’t name one piece of your system you’re willing to lose, your backup plan is a placebo. The Assyrian king kept his head because he knew the decoy wasn’t a substitute for the real thing—it was the thing built to break first.