“No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.” That is a quote from German military strategist, Helmuth von Moltke, in its unabridged form, as he uttered it during his tenure as chief of staff of the Prussian General Staff from 1857 to 1871. Words to live by, I say, and I have always conducted my own mission planning with that very doctrine in mind.

Me, I like a good, concise, pithy, aphoristic one-liner to sum up a wealth of knowledge and to guide me through troublesome situations. Here’s another one that I hold of great value: “A plan is nothing more than a common point of deviation.”

The originator of that little jewel is none other that the man himself–Nic McKinley, the founder of the counter-human traffic task force, DeliverFund. Yes, that is him in the feature image of this article. I took that photo of Nic in the tactical operations center (TOC) preparing for operations in Houston, Texas during the Super Bowl. And no, it was not staged, though hard to believe, given the timely DeliverFund coffee mug turned just right.

Nic may give the appearance of being some sort of comic book superhero. In fact, in my mind, he is the very embodiment of a modern-day superhero in a country that grows increasingly poor in the essence that superheroes are made of. We need more heroes to come along—that we do.