It’s been an interesting month or so since we began the EDM Digest. Although our stories tend to be more dark than not–goes with the territory–it doesn’t mean they’re not interesting, varied, and full of lessons to be learned about how to improve the service we provide to our public. Here’s a partial list of the issues we’ve covered:
- European Terror Attacks
- Russian Airline Crash
- Drought / Flooding / El Niño
- Climate Change
- Police Shootings
- San Bernardino Terrorists
- Methane Leak
- Mississippi Flooding
- Flint Water Crisis
As EDM professionals fulfilling an assigned EDM function–which could be as varied as firefighter to FEMA Administrator–one thing we tend to love is our checklists. They save us from all manner of unintentional errors! However, any checklist is only as useful as the spectrum of thought and experience that goes into it. And that’s where we can improve.
I teach a course called Crisis Action Planning. As a final project, students develop a crisis response plan for an organization of their choice using forecasting and planning tools that they learn in class. One of the hardest things to get students to understand in this exercise is the difference between an emergency and a crisis.
The instructions say: ‘If you are a fire department and you respond to a call by hooking up to a hydrant, that’s an emergency. If you hook up to the hydrant and no water comes out, that’s a crisis.’ Most students eventually ‘get it’, but some still find it hard to ‘think outside of the box’, as the saying goes, and they write their plans for their organization’s routine emergency response operations rather than for true crises.
In the past month or so, we have attempted to educate and inform about true crises. Everyone reading this is probably pretty well versed in how to deal with emergencies. But are you ready to deal with crises? Here’s how to tell–take out your favorite emergency action checklist and see if it enables you to cope with any of the following:
- Are you prepared for the head of your organization to be arrested on ethics charges?
- Are you prepared to be the only person on duty in your organization because of quarantine?
- Are you prepared to fulfill your legally-obligated services if politicians delete your budget?
- Are you prepared to (fill in the blank with your worst nightmare)?
Yep. You’re right. Not a single one of those examples was covered in any of the stories we’ve examined so far. And that’s the point. A true ‘black swan’ event, by definition, is something that’s nearly impossible to plan for–but has the ability to bring down an organization in the blink of an eye. The point here is to illustrate the danger of checklists: That essentially, once a threat is listed on paper; and mitigation, response, and recovery actions are planned for–that ends thinking about the issue. But we can never stop thinking–either about the threats themselves or the response planning that goes into the process. That way lies failure. And sometimes tragedy.
So PLEASE–whatever your role in EDM is, please go examine your checklists. Do your checklists address ten possible threats? GOOD! But why not 25? Or 75? What have you missed? You know you’ve missed things–so regather your team and improve your planning. Do your mitigation, response, and recovery actions accurately respond to all of the threats? If not, why not? Fix it! And mostly, do your absolute best to address your own failure of imagination–black swan events only are what they are because we fail to envision them. But you have resources available to you that can help you avoid that. Use them.
We at the EDM Digest will continue throughout the coming year to make you aware of current issues and activities in the field. Whether they are in your backyard or not–don’t worry too much about that. Any issue that we report could be in your backyard tomorrow. But beyond what we report–consider it food for thought–develop your own food for thought that is designed to protect your own served public better than our ideas could provide. And don’t hesitate to ask for our help–not to overstate our qualifications, but all of here at the EDM Digest are experienced in our own ways and committed to your success–so use us!!
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