Podcasts about npli

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2021 37:17

The National Preparedness Leadership Initiative is a joint program of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Combing the resources and thinking of these two entities enable their faculty to help program participants appreciate and prepare for the full range of crisis leadership challenges, from the health and well-being of diverse communities to the intricacies of multi-entity operations, and working with political officials and the media. Eric McNultyWeb - https://npli.sph.harvard.edu/Twitter - https://twitter.com/HarvardNPLI/LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvardnpli/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/HarvardNPLITodd De VoeWebsite - https://toddtdevoe.com/Speak N Spark-https://bit.ly/3sTVUfrLinkedIn - https://bit.ly/3sVHL1gEM WeeklyWebsite - https://bit.ly/3jj5ItlTwitter - https://bit.ly/31z8MeXFacebook - https://bit.ly/3dMlbRPLinkedIn - https://bit.ly/34mXyfzYouTube - https://bit.ly/2FQDhWdSister ShowsEM Student Web - https://bit.ly/2Hw0sFxTwitter - https://bit.ly/31z8MeXFacebook - https://bit.ly/3dMlbRPLinkedIn - https://bit.ly/34mXyfzYouTube - https://bit.ly/2FQDhWdThe Business Continuity ShowTwitter - https://bit.ly/3ojEIO2Facebook - https://bit.ly/2Tjqv5HLinkedIn - https://bit.ly/34mXyfzYouTube - https://bit.ly/3mePJyGSponsors Titan HST https://bit.ly/31yxrQWVanquest https://bit.ly/34i5NJM Coupon Code “EM5WEEKLY” Outer Limit Supply https://bit.ly/2FR26Bp Coupon Code “EMWEEKLY” If you would like to become a sponsor or advertiser Call Sitch Radio (714) 643-2500 X 1

Episode 11: Public Safety Leadership in Campus Settings

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2020 33:20

Universities are microcosms of the communities in which they reside and often present health, safety, and security issues as complex as those found in major urban areas. Darryl Darnell, Senior Associate Vice President for Safety & Security and Superintendent of Police at George Washington University and Kelly Nee, Chief of Police at Boston University discuss the issue with the NPLI.

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Episode 13: YOU'RE IT, with Eric, McNulty and Lenny Marcus

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2020 29:46

Today, in an instant, leaders can find themselves face-to-face with crisis. And active shooter. A media controversy. A data breach. This book takes you to the front lines of some of the toughest decisions facing our nations leaders. Leonard Marcus, founding Co-Director and Eric McNulty, Associate Director of the NPLI and two of the authors of the book provide you with some background of what you can expect from the book.

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Episode 25: Coronavirus episode with Greg Ciottone, Director of Disaster Medicine at BIDMC

Business Continuity Today

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2020 14:34

Just-in-time COVID-19 leadership lessons with Greg Ciottone, Medical Preparedness Director, NPLI and Division of Disaster Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he works clinically in the Department of Emergency Medicine. He's known around the world as an expert in disaster and crisis medicine.

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The Curious Crisis Leader

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2020 9:16

In times of crisis and significant change. Information is incomplete, evolving, and sometimes conflicting. Yet leaders must make decisions and take action. It requires situational insight, not simply situational awareness. Today we are talking about the principles written in the book “You’re It: Crisis change and how to lead when It matters most”NPLI-https://npli.sph.harvard.edu/executive-development/online-training-programs/The Business Continuity ShowTwitter - https://www.instagram.com/titanhst/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Business-Continuity-Today-107622617647974LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddtdevoe/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm6x_5nxAyrlSbLC_xBimEQSister ShowsEM WeeklyWebsite - https://sitchradio.com/our-shows/em-weekly/Twitter - https://twitter.com/EM_WeeklyFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/emweeklyLinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/company/17905473/admin/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE-wAle11GsM_0r1XggqCqwEM Student Web - https://sitchradio.com/our-shows/em-student/Twitter - https://twitter.com/EM_WeeklyFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/emweeklyLinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/company/17905473/admin/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE-wAle11GsM_0r1XggqCqw

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Being the Meta Leader

Business Continuity Today

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 4, 2020 10:39

Eric McNulty from Harvard’s NPLI and author of the book You’re it describes meta-leadership as a leader that seeks to see the big picture or a perspective beyond the obvious toward an understanding for how multiple connected factors act and interact with one another. The Business Continuity ShowTwitter - https://www.instagram.com/titanhst/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Business-Continuity-Today-107622617647974LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddtdevoe/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm6x_5nxAyrlSbLC_xBimEQSister ShowsEM WeeklyWebsite - https://sitchradio.com/our-shows/em-weekly/Twitter - https://twitter.com/EM_WeeklyFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/emweeklyLinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/company/17905473/admin/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE-wAle11GsM_0r1XggqCqwEM Student Web - https://sitchradio.com/our-shows/em-student/Twitter - https://twitter.com/EM_WeeklyFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/emweeklyLinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/company/17905473/admin/YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE-wAle11GsM_0r1XggqCqw

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Episode 9: NPLI Fifteenth Anniversary

Play Episode Listen Later May 22, 2020 25:28

Welcome to the latest episode Leader ReadyCast. This month, the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative marks its 15 year anniversary. In this episode we are looking back at the program's greatest hits—and looking forward at what is next to come. Our guests are Dr. Leonard Marcus, founding co-director of the NPLI, and Rich Serino, a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the NPLI. Both have been with the program since the beginning; Dr. Marcus as one of the original faculty and Mr. Serino a participant of the NPLI Executive Education Program, Cohort I.

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Episode 02: Public Health Emergency Preparedness with Dr. Suzet McKinney

Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2020 29:17

From flu to unusual threats such as Ebola to the possibility of a chemical or other unconventional attack, public health leaders sit in a unique perch in the world of emergency preparedness and response. Dr. Suzet McKinney, CEO of the Illinois Medical District, program faculty at the NPLI, and co-author of the new book, Public Health Emergency Preparedness explains that they must be familiar with a complex array of possible threats and, when an incident occurs, skillfully lead their peers, political officials, and the general public who may not fully understand the threat and its consequences.

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Leading Through a Crisis Day by Day

Three Big Points

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2020 11:54

During a crisis, leaders may find it difficult to determine the best approach to managing the day-to-day business challenges while simultaneously developing a strategy for the future.  On this week’s episode of the Three Big Points podcast, Eric McNulty, associate director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard, shares some of the lessons he has learned from studying past crises and how they can help today’s leaders address the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Managing Uncertainty Podcast - Episode #85: Rethinking Active Shooter Preparedness & Exercises

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2019 21:54

In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & Chief Executive Bryan Strawser, along with Consultant Bray Wheeler, revisit the topic of Active Shooter Preparedness & Exercises. Topics discussed include the current active shooter threat, preparedness efforts, active shooter exercises, planning for an active shooter incident, and more. Related Episodes & Blog Posts Managing Uncertainty - Episode #5: Leading during an Active Shooter Incident Blog Post: Active Shooter Training - Management Essentials Bryghtpath's Active Shooter Programs & Services Free Intro Course: Active Shooter 101 Bryghtpath Case Study: Protecting Employees Through Planning and Exercises for Active Shooter Incidents Bryghtpath Case Study: C-Level Active Shooter Exercise for a Major Utility Company Crisis Playbook: Active Shooter Plan //static.leadpages.net/leadboxes/current/embed.js Episode Transcript Bryan Strawser: Hello and welcome to the Managing Uncertainty Podcast. This is Bryan Strawser, Principal and Chief Executive here at Bryghtpath. Bray Wheeler: I'm Bray Wheeler. I'm a Consultant here at Bryghtpath. Bryan Strawser: And today, we want to talk a little bit about kind of rethinking active shooter preparedness and exercises. And I would say there's a couple things that kind of stirred this conversation, and I know we've done a couple previous episodes on active shooter preparedness and maybe even exercises, and I certainly know we have an episode about leading through an active shooter incident that recorded with Jennifer Otremba and Lindsay Bradford who both used to work here at Bryghtpath, both of whom were with Bray and I on the day that we had a active shooter situation at our former employer, across the street from our offices, that we kind of manage through, and we'll link that episode in the show notes, it's worth listening to. Bryan Strawser: But what prompted this are really two things. There's been a number of articles recently about after shooter drills or exercises that I thought were not well done and garnered a lot of negative press, and this is where we've got police running an exercise where they're shooting people with airsoft guns and they're firing off blanks and some other things, and so we want to talk a little bit about that and what makes a good active shooter exercise, particularly for students in the K-12 environment and workers in your organization's facilities. But the other thing we want to just touch on is just some other thoughts on active shooter preparedness that have come out of the incidents that have happened in the last few months, the Santa Clarita school shooting that happened last week, Walmart's mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, the Dayton, Ohio bar entertainment area shooting incidents. There's been some lessons learned out of this that I think are worth talking about in terms of preparedness. So that brings us to bringing this episode together. Bray Wheeler: Yeah. One. And that's, I think to your point, kind of the distinction here is a little bit around, we have talked about exercises on previous podcasts, but really, this one is around, I think more so, who the audience is, the kind of the intended audience of exercises and/or drills and kind of the impact that, that you want to have on those distinct audiences that the airsoft, the Nerf guns, the blanks, the blue pistols, the red rubber pistols, things like that, have audiences but may not fit every audience. And it's important to create the distinction around what your intended objective and purpose of the exercise or drill is for that audience because it these situations, it matters in terms of how they act and how they behave and what you're really trying to prepare them for. Bryan Strawser: I think most of the articles we've seen recently about active shooter exercises that have frustrated us have been in the K-12 education environment where you usually have some kind of statutory requirement that the schools conduct some type of drill on a regular basis. For example, here in Minnesota, school districts have to do five lockdown drills. That's literally what they're called in the state statute, five lockdown drills, in the course of a school year. So if you think, a school year is about 180 days, on average, 180 student days, then you're going to run a lockdown drill five times, that's pretty frequent in there. And so I think this is a good example of what Bray was just speaking to. What's the audience, what is the audience of this drill? And I should point out too, since these are lockdown drills, not active shooter drills, the statute here in Minnesota was written in response at Columbine, which was 20 years ago, and it hasn't been updated. Despite some more recent attempts to modernize that, it has not been changed. So it still says lockdown drills, which that's what's most schools are doing. Bryan Strawser: But the current guidance on active shooter that seems to be most broadly accepted is the FBI, DHS guidance, and that is run, hide, fight. But Minnesota schools are using lockdown. So there's a challenge with that in and of itself. But who's the intended audience of a drill like this? Bray Wheeler: One, if we're talking about the K-12 audience, which is probably where we'll center most of the discussion on, I mean, really, that audience is not, you're not prepping that audience to address the shooter kind of directly like you're asking law enforcement to do. So the drills and the exercises that you're asking law enforcement to do should be very different from what you're asking K-12 students to do. And a lot of that is around making them feel kind of confident and empowered in terms of knowing what to do when a situation necessitates in a swift evacuation, a kind of locked down of a facility of whatever that circumstance is. And I think, we teach stop, drop and roll, we teach a lot of these different things for different incidents and issues, this happens to be kind of reality today that this type of drill, this type of exercise is necessary, but it doesn't always, and I think, kind of my train of thought around it is, yes, it's spurred off of kind of these active shooters, but really, this applies to any incident. Bray Wheeler: You could have a situation in which toxic gases released from a poor science experiment or something breaks in the chemistry department and it's wafting through the school, you got to get people out, and that's just as confusing, that's just as nerve wracking. There could be a fire, there could be all sorts of different situations that's not necessarily an active shooter that you want that student audience, that staff audience to know this is what happens when we're given this direction and we know that we're doing these three, four, five basic things and we're going to prepare, position ourselves to be as safe as possible. Bryan Strawser: Yeah. I mean, I think, one of the points that kind of stood out in some discussion that was happening towards the tail end of last week about the intended audience of a drill in the K-12 education environment is not someone who's engaged in a tactical response, right? We're not testing armed staff, we're not drilling the law enforcement response. The purpose of an active shooter drill where students are involved is to give the students the muscle memory to do the things that we need them to do if this actually happens. And we were talking about this prior to the coming in the studio and doing the show today, you brought up that sometimes, that response isn't necessarily just for active shooter, it's because we have to be evacuated, it's because there's a chemical spill. Bryan Strawser: So those are, I think, are, we lose the fact, we lose who the audience is sometimes when we start talking about this. I would argue, if that's our focus, I want to help 500 students get out of the school in a run, hide, fight situation because of an active shooter, then bringing in screaming sounds and gunshots and shooting people with airsoft guns, that is not the intent of the exercise. The intent of the exercise is to teach them how to run, hide, fight. Bray Wheeler: Because you're all doing in that situation is, it's a desensitization or desensitizing them, objective. And I think that's where, politically, that's where the conversation gets a little kind of tough with folks and there's that debate. But that place there is not, to your point, to do those things. We're not trying to desensitize them to that environment that they would have to operate in. That's the tactical environment. That's what you expect law enforcement or school security teams or something like that, that's where they're... that's what you're putting them through so that they can accomplish their objective in the face of those things for students and probably majority of staff. It's to prepare them to keep themselves safe, whether that's get out, barricade, fight back if they have to. Really, what you're trying to get them to do probably first is to get out or barricade, and that's fight being last resort or direct confrontation. Bray Wheeler: Probably don't have to spend as much resources there because hopefully, natural instinct takes over just a little bit, but if you're focused on getting as many people out as possible, then that's really what that objective of these drills and exercises should be is to get folks out or get themselves in a position to barricade. That it's not just simply hide or lay on the floor. Because I think you brought up in some conversation that kind of some dialogue that you were seeing online with some different folks that even law enforcement was weighing in that statistically, or the details of many of these incidents, folks who were just simply hiding or laying on the floor Bryan Strawser: Not survivable. Bray Wheeler: ... were at greater risk than those that had felt empowered to take some sort of defensive action, whether that was [inaudible] or barricade, fight back. Correct? Bryan Strawser: Totally. Yeah, I mean, the discussion, this was in a private discussion in the online forum where there were several law enforcement leaders and others kind of debating this topic, the studies are pretty clear, and there's a really good one. There's a group out of Purdue, Purdue University, that does computer modeling of previous incidents based upon run, hide, fight, some other things. They've got a using game theory, they got a pretty detailed setup here. And they had a pretty good study that came out last year about run, hide, fight versus hide. And run, hide, fight comes out way ahead because if you can evacuate, if you can get out, run away from the risk, that's survivable. Hiding when you're in a confined space with an active shooter, there's just too much likelihood that they're going to find you or be able to gain access to the area. So statistically, it's better to execute, run, hide, fight than it is to just execute hiding. And that was kind of the point of the online discussion. Bryan Strawser: And again, I think this goes back to what's the intent of an active shooter drill or exercise and what methodology are you following here. I think the point that we want to emphasize is if you're testing a tactical response, that's a different kind of exercise and one where you should really only do that with volunteers who are willing to be subjected to what that exercise might involve as opposed to a general active shooter drill in a K-12 education environment where you're practicing, run, hide, fight, but how do we get out? How do we hide or barricade ourselves when we have to do that? How do we fight if we must? And we've lost this somewhere in this exercise planning and we're having folks bring in flashbangs and firecrackers and gunfire and firing blanks, and just not a place for that. Bryan Strawser: It doesn't help improve the outcome that you're seeking. The outcome you're seeking is, I want to get these folks out of here safely if the unthinkable thing happens. And that we do that by giving them the muscle memory on what we want them to do, which is run, hide, fight. They know how to do it because they've practiced it. Bray Wheeler: One of my, and I think a lot of what's happening too is kind of an overthinking of some of that stuff that really, there are schools already practiced, I mean, I remember doing it in elementary school of evacuations... Bryan Strawser: Fire drills. Bray Wheeler: Fire drills. So really, it's trying to create alignment around some of those components that if it's the run portion of it, create alignment around how you're running regardless of the incident. So if you're already doing that for a fire drill, your run, hide, fight drill, the run portion of that should look very similar to a fire drill. Your evacuation drill should be agnostic of probably the incident with further direction to the staff of saying, hey, in this situation, when we know it's this kind of incident or we believe it to be this kind of incident, we're going farther or we're going to another setup. Whereas fire, it's, we're only going to the outskirts of the parking lot kind of thing and just moving away, whatever the case is, but leaving that to staff to know we're going to continue to move based on whatever the threat or the incident is. But that mechanics of getting kid in the classroom in a desk to the outside of the building into a position of gaining safety should look largely the same. Bray Wheeler: And so you don't have to overthink how you go about doing that. Barricading might be a little bit different. Barricading might be customizing it to the age of the students too a little bit that what you're asking kindergarteners to do probably isn't what you're asking an 11th grader to do- Bryan Strawser: I hope not. Bray Wheeler: ... in terms of those things or how it's being messaged as well because I always go back to, you don't want this to be a situation where your drill ends up looking like the nuclear drill in the cold war area where hide under your desk because it makes you feel better even though it's going to have no impact on whether or not you're going to survive that thing or not. So it needs to be purposeful in terms of what, how you're laying those things out. Exercises are really more for maybe staff in some situations, more for your security teams, your local law enforcement, inviting them into kind of go through a situation in which they're practicing in the school versus, or business, but you have just that minimum kind of security teams or other teams that are in there practicing and you're not subjecting students or broad staff to some of those because that's not their role in those situations. To go back to the kind of the tactical piece, really, what you're looking at is more drill wise. You're trying to build that muscle memory. Bray Wheeler: It's the practice of we're just going to keep repeating the same thing over and over again so that when they get older or move on to other organizations and things like that, it becomes the stop, drop and roll type mindset of I know the fundamentals of what to do in these situations. Bryan Strawser: So that's kind of the, I think we've beaten the drill exercise piece to death here. Again, our point is just knowing your audience, craft exercise the audience, don't deliberately traumatize folks. That doesn't help you achieve the outcomes that we're after in an active shooter drill or exercise. But these are important. They're important because when these things happen, as rare as they are, we need people to act into certain things that we know save lives. And practicing these in a way that builds muscle memory and helps them know what to do when that alert is called for them to take action helps save lives. And those are valuable steps to take without traumatizing folks just by doing exercises. Bray Wheeler: You want them to feel empowered, to be safe rather than fearful of what's happening. You're trying to move them to that empower phase. Bryan Strawser: The other area we wanted to touch on briefly just around other active shooter preparedness is whether you do it for active shooter reasons or not. The shooting tragedy last week in California at Santa Clarita at the school did highlight one I think important thing, and this may have gotten missed in some of the other coverage, but one of the students that was wounded, their life was saved by their teacher because she had taken training for Stop The Bleed and had the Stop The Bleed tools available to her, bandage for pressure, tourniquet, she may have used other things that the story didn't get in a lot of tactical detail, but if you think about lifesaving training that you can provide to your staff or your employees or your community, it's hard to beat the basics of Stop The Bleed about trying to help people survive traumatic bleeding by giving them, there's a training course that they can go to and then they can get a little Stop The Bleed kit that has some of the basic things in there. Bryan Strawser: And, I mean, some businesses even put a big Stop The Bleed kits that have multiple little kits inside them. We use the Stop The Bleed kits here at Bryghtpath. We have one here in the office next to our general first aid kit because we do have storage and we do have places here. We have knives and things where accidental traumatic bleeding can happen. And that and CPR training are two of the best things you can do to empower your staff to survive any type of kind of traumatic or medical issue that comes up. I know there's been some criticism of Stop The Bleed being offered in schools over political reasons, but I think that this is great training and as we saw last week, it saved a student's life. Bray Wheeler: Wait. I think there's, I mean, there's certainly the political debate around it. I mean, at least my take, and I don't know if I'm speaking for you, Bryan, but at a minimum, why wouldn't it be a good idea to armor people with that kind of training? We do first aid training, we do CPR training, we encourage all those different things. Stop The Bleed is just a build on to that because again, if you're thinking about corporate office probably, that would be probably what you're probably using that training for in that environment, but if we're talking a school environment, it's not out of the realm of possibility that you have industrial shops, you have welding and woodworking, you have all sorts of different equipment that there is that chance that there are other things happening that cause those things, so why aren't you preparing yourself to combat that as well in addition to this kind of external, internal slash threat that unfortunately, schools are facing as well? Bryan Strawser: I feel like we have a lot of conversation. I have a lot of conversations with friends about how they defend themselves, how they protect themselves. They might have permits and carry a firearm. They may carry a knife that they use for cutting things they think they're going to defend themselves with. We have a lot of debate and discussion in this country about do we arm teachers, do we arm staff at schools? I'd argue that one of the most valuable things you could do is learn first aid and CPR and how to stop traumatic bleeding or some combination of that, and you will have already learned more than what the average person does to take ownership for your safety and the safety of those around you. I just think it's great that it was used by this teacher who was obviously well prepared for that very tragic situation in the school last week. Bryan Strawser: So you can learn more. It's stopthebleed.org. The folks that started this were actually a cohort behind me at the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, NPLI. The idea came from that cohort and has turned into quite a thing, and I think we want to encourage that. Bryan Strawser: That's it for this edition of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Be well.

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Managing Uncertainty Podcast - Episode #55: Crisis Leadership Roundtable

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2019 31:20

What does strong crisis leadership look like? What makes a strong crisis leader? How do you develop a strong crisis management team? What role does emotional intelligence play in crisis leadership? In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser, along with Sr. Consultant Jenn Otremba and Consultant Bray Wheeler talk about crisis leadership and their experiences coming up in this field. Topics discussed include emotional intelligence, crisis leadership skill sets, how to train & develop new crisis leaders, the Harvard National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI) program, educational and learning opportunities for crisis leaders, and more. Some relevant previous episodes and blog posts include: Top Business Continuity & Crisis Management Executive Programs Managing Uncertainty Episode #5: Leading during an Active Shooter Situation //static.leadpages.net/leadboxes/current/embed.js Episode Transcript Bryan Strawser: Hello and welcome to the Managing Uncertainty Podcast this is Bryan Strawser, Principal and CEO at Bryghtpath. Joining me today are - Jenn Otremba: Hi, this is Jenn Otremba, Consult at Bryghtpath. Bray Wheeler: Hi, I'm Bray Wheeler, Consultant at Bryghtpath. Bryan Strawser: So this is our long form episode for the week and we're going to be diving into a round-table discussion about Crisis Leadership. Since the three of us are here, a few weeks back I had done a solo episode on our podcast about characteristics of strong Crisis Leaders, and we'll link that in the show notes but I think we want to talk just more openly and with a couple of different opinions about what we see as strong and not strong Crisis Leaders, and some of the things we've learned along the way. I think between the three of us we've got a good thirty-plus years of experience in Crisis Management, and we may have learned a few things along the way. Jenn Otremba: One or two. Bryan Strawser: One or two things along the way. So what makes a good crisis leader? What are good examples of crisis leadership? We start there. Bray Wheeler: What makes a good crisis leader? What demonstrates crisis leadership? I think it's a lot of things. I think some of it comes a little more naturally to people. Some of it's learned for folks, but I think some of the key things are really having that ability to kind of see the incident for what it is, and not get too ... not overact to it, not get too flustered by it, kind of see it as an opportunity to kind of jump in and manage the situation for what it is, and make sure that you're trying to do the right things. And make sure that you're bringing the other people along with you, because it's not a solo sport by any means. Jenn Otremba: That's a good point, it's not a solo sport at all so I think it's developing that team around you to work through a situation. It's being careful to not get too emotionally involved with what is going on. I think it's like you said it's really keeping a level head as you're managing through the situation. And then I think also recognizing when you're beginning to escalate or when the people around you are beginning to escalate and get stressed and separate yourself or separate others as necessary. So it's really being able to read the room and understand kind of where everybody is at - that's crisis leadership to me. Bray Wheeler: That self-awareness is a huge piece of it. To your point I think it's being able to read the room, being able to read yourself, knowing when you're tired, knowing when you're stressed, knowing when you need a break, knowing when somebody else needs on too, to be able to take those intentional pauses because that's how you're going to be able to get through that stuff, is to be able to recognize- Jenn Otremba: Especially a long term, on-going situation, right? Bryan Strawser: I kind of start with just the thought about the person of the crisis leader, and I think you've both kind of hinted at this, and I'm just going to go back to the kind of elements of Mettle Leadership that the Harvard National Preparedness Leadership Institute folks have researched and talked about and that's that Crisis Leadership starts with the person of the leader. It starts with that understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, or opportunities, as we like to used to say. But what do you do well? And then how do you build a team around you to compensate for the things that you don't do well? Like I'm not the ... I'm well aware that I'm not the most empathetic person in the world, but I could build a team around me to do those things. To add that to the tool box in a crisis. Bryan Strawser: But I think it is understanding kind of what are the things that you do and don't understand. I think the second is just, the situational leadership aspect that comes with being the leader of a crisis that somebody's got to have their head above the clouds looking around and understanding kind of where you're at and what you know and what you don't know and "What you don't know you don't know", to quote Donald Rumsfeld, and understanding how you need to fill those gaps to really understand the impact of what's going on. It's that need to be able to see the big picture. Bray Wheeler: It's easy to go down a rabbit hole really fast. Jenn Otremba: Really fast. Bray Wheeler: In a crisis. Bryan Strawser: I mean look at ... we always use that example of Japan with the 2011 tsunami- Bray Wheeler: Yes. Oh my gosh, yes. Bryan Strawser: Earthquake, nuclear issue where Japan was really really good at all of those things taken as individual crisis situations. Give them all three at the same time, on a scale that the world had never seen, and they didn't see it. They didn't see the issue for what it was and it cost them. It was really a failure of crisis leadership. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: And it practically brought the government down. From there I think it's the crisis leadership aspect of the leader understanding that they've got a couple of constituencies that they have to communicate and work with. And that's ... they've got to lead and communicate up within their organization, or if they are the top person in the organization that now they're interfacing with executives or political leaders, elected leaders, who look to you to know the subject matter, but they're dealing with all of these other things and you've got to ... how do you communicate the right message? Bryan Strawser: There's leading the Silo, leading the team through the crisis and then the ability to lead across and I think that's the most important it's the connectivity of effort, leading across multiple Silos and some people just don't see that. Jenn Otremba: I think it even comes before that with the ... I think that you had mentioned earlier about developing the team and picking the right team around you, and I think training the team as well so that they're prepared to respond to incidents and it's not shooting at the hip for every situation. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative).. Jenn Otremba: I also find it interesting that you pointed out that you were not the empathy in the room - Bryan Strawser: Oh hell no. Jenn Otremba: Which, we're not either Bray, so who plays the empathy here? Bryan Strawser: Marie. Jenn Otremba: Marie, [laughs] Bryan Strawser: I think you're really empathetic. Bray Wheeler: Not really. Jenn Otremba: Can you? Bryan Strawser: Yeah, I can try. If you've ever taken ... but I knew this because our previous employer put me in a situation to take an assessment tool, the Herman Brain Dominance Instrument, and it told me that I didn't have any empathy. I mean I literally have no empathy on that scale. But it was interesting to me as a leader to see that, and this is long before I worked in Crisis Management, but to look at that and go, "Well I'm going to have to find some ways to compensate for that. I'm going to have to have some people around me that have this". Jenn Otremba: Yeah, I think it's huge to know yourself, and know how you may not know how you're going to react in a crisis situation, we see this all the time especially in the military, you don't know how you're going to react in those overly stressful situations that are unheard of to the normal population but you may know yourself to know at least those types of things. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jenn Otremba: That you're not the person to go to for that but you know the people on your team that are. Bray Wheeler: Well I think it's one of those things to where ... excuse me ... I don't think that ... Bryan to your point ... I don't think that that you're not an empathetic person, but it's probably not your natural inclination to go the - Bryan Strawser: No, you're right. I have to think about it. Bray Wheeler: And that's those traits in a Crisis Leader that they need to be aware of, I am that person and I could be that person outside of work or outside of this situation but my natural instinct is not to go there it's to go here. Which isn't wrong, but to know those things and to know those things about ... to your guys' point to build that team around you ... where they go there. And then that kind of- Bryan Strawser: That helps me go there. Bray Wheeler: - And that kind of support. Bryan Strawser: Yeah I mean, to your point, I had to train myself that when things happen, that my first questions were, what is the impact on the team? And how are we doing, how is the team doing? Bray Wheeler: Yeah. Bryan Strawser: And that team question is two-fold. How are the folks at the sight or the sights that are impacted, like how are they doing, but, and I think both of you have brought this up, it's also how the crisis team is doing, right? Bryan Strawser: My team and the other folks that came there to work on the crisis, how are they doing? Because you get into four or five days of 16-hour a day, 24-hour day response, and you're dealing with ... you've got employees that have been killed or injured and families impacted, homes lost - Jenn Otremba: Or you don't even know where everyone is at. Bryan Strawser: Right, yeah. Jenn Otremba: I think of like the Boston shooter situation. Trying to account for people and trying to get creative on how we could find out who was where. And that lasted for days. That was stressful for everyone. Bryan Strawser: That was a week. Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: Almost a week. Although really only about a 48 hour period that was crazy. Bray Wheeler: And I think, back to your point, that a Crisis Leader kind of sitting in the middle of all those different tiers, the across, the up, the down, it's their disposition that probably matters most. Especially in the probably first 24, 48 hours of ... they set the tone. Bryan Strawser: They do. Bray Wheeler: Their disposition of how they react, how they're kind of constructing, how they're seeing the scope of the incident matters to how people are reacting to it. Because if you're frazzled, you're overcharged, certainly the people underneath you are going to act that way, people next to you are going to maybe be asking questions, and the people above you are going to be asking questions too of, are you the right person or do I need to be doing more? Or, is this a bigger deal, or ah it's not that big of a deal, you're overreacting. So I think it's ... to your earlier point, Jenn, that level-headedness, that disposition, that calm in the storm. Bryan Strawser: Yeah, you can't be otherwise. You've got to find ... I mean, first of all, this isn't for everybody. Crisis leadership isn't for everybody. Bray Wheeler: No. Bryan Strawser: But it's ... you have got... there is some of the ability here to kind of train somebody to do some of this, but you've got to ... you have to portray a calm, in-control persona even if it's not ... even if you're not at the time. I mean you might have a thousand things going on in your head, you better be talking about one. Jenn Otremba: Yeah. Bray Wheeler: Right. Jenn Otremba: I think, and some of the things that we've done in the past and our different experiences, is we've had teams that were large enough to where we didn't have to be that direct leader each time. We could take turns as to who, okay you got this one, all right then I will step back and play the other role of taking care of everyone while you're managing through that. So I think for us, we were lucky enough in a lot of different situations that we've worked into where we had other leaders that we could lean on to, you know this time isn't my turn, this time is my turn to be the follower. So I think being a good leader, demonstrating crisis leadership, is a big part of that is also being a good follower when it's not your turn to be the leader. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: A friend of mine was the Police Incident Commander during the 35W bridge collapse here in Minneapolis back in 2007. Jenn Otremba: Yeah, I think so. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: I was not in Crisis Management at the time, I was on my little hiatus doing other things within Corporate Security at our previous employer. But he was the ... I mean the fire department and the Sheriff's department had Incident Command because this was on the river. But the Minneapolis Police were a significant part of the response. They had hundreds of people down there and they get their Command Post set up in the Red Cross parking lot there, overlooking the Mississippi. Bryan Strawser: And they had trained this particular Lieutenant for a couple of years to be like one of the top, he was going to be the next guy to run this kind of stuff when my friend retired. And they had a couple of incidents where he had kind of been frazzled and had kind of yelled and snapped at some people but apparently just went off on somebody a couple of hours into the response and my friend relieved him and sent him home. And that was the end of his time in, kind of large scale incident management in the public sector. Went on to a great law enforcement career, I don't want to impugn the guy's reputation, but this was not for him. He did not have the mindset to do this because you can't act like that. You've got to be calm and controlled and in control of the situation - you have to demonstrate crisis leadership. Bray Wheeler: Oh yeah. It doesn't make you a bad person or a bad professional it just ... it's almost a calling. You have to naturally kind of be inclined to put yourself in those situations, want to be put in those situations, know yourself well enough to know that that is what you're going to do ... you're going to kind of go into the fire so to speak. Jenn Otremba: I think sometimes it can be important to acknowledge to that, while you may portray good traits as a good Crisis Leader one day, another day you may have a lot of personal things goin on- Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jenn Otremba: - Or your mind isn't there and that's not your day. So even though today may not be the best day for you when the 35W Bridge collapsed, they may be a great leader in another situation. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jenn Otremba: When their mind was in a different place. Bryan Strawser: Or they're more comfortable with that kind of an incident. Jenn Otremba: Exactly. Bray Wheeler: That's true. Bryan Strawser: You know, put me in a cyber incident and I'm probably not as calm as, you know, a natural disaster or something else but I think it's that comfortability factor too is huge too. But it's also, to your point, having a bad day. Jenn Otremba: Yeah. Bryan Strawser: You've got to be able to recognize, I'm having a bad day. Jenn Otremba: You really do. And then I think- Bryan Strawser: It's not my day. Or, I have to know enough to set that aside if I'm the only one that's on the docket. So, I kind of stepped in. Jenn Otremba: I think you may also have to recognize as a, maybe a secondary leader, that your primary leader is having a bad day and they may have to be removed like you said Bryan. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Jenn Otremba: And as a good leader you have to recognize, somebody is telling you that it's probably true. So step down and move aside and let somebody else take over at least for a while. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And certainly, I mean lots of responses are a 24/7 thing. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Bryan Strawser: Your own fatigue is a big issue, the fatigue of your team I think, to your point about rotating and shifting people in and out. It's necessary. I mean I remember when I first got into Crisis Management full-time in 2005, come around Labor Day Hurricane Katrina hits, followed by Hurricane Wilma, and Hurricane Rita, or that's out of order. Hurricane Rita, and then Hurricane Wilma and I don't think I had a day off for 60 days, 58, 59 days. Because we didn't have, at the time we didn't have the resources and we didn't have the structure that we would have later on. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: When we built those capabilities out. That was not a healthy environment for the four or five of us that was carrying the load for this, but we didn't have anything else. That was it. Jenn Otremba: Well I think of... to your point there... working in consulting I've learned a lot about working with smaller organizations that don't have built out teams quite like we did and we've had a lot of different organizations reach out to us for specific needs, you know maybe it's just to understand or be better at Crisis Communications in that moment because you don't have that expertise. And I think there's no shame in asking for help outside of your organization as well. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jenn Otremba: Whether that be a consultant or even just people you know. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative).. Bray Wheeler: Well I think it gets back to one of the mantra's we use too when you need a friend- Bryan Strawser: It's too late to make one. Jenn Otremba: Yeah. Bray Wheeler: And that goes ... it's not just external partners and law enforcement or EMS, it's the internal partners. It's having those teams, it's having that buy in, it's having those relationships in place that ... if you are a one, two person Crisis Management shop you need those other players in the organization to know that, yeah my other hat is Crisis. When something happens, I am shifting it to that. I am helping. And the organization knows that too. It's not just ... you know that HR person wanting to. HR knows that that's ... yep something happened and I'm shifting into that because that's what the company needs, or that's what the organization needs. Bryan Strawser: Well, I think the partnership thing is ... if you think about partnerships with other organizations, I think it's important to look at .... there's a two-way street there that develops over time in that relationship or that partnership. It's not just about transactional nature of needing something in a crisis. I remember during ... there were tornadoes that came through Minneapolis ... gosh I don't remember when, 2009, 2010. Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: They went into north Minneapolis- Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: Caused a lot of damage, right? Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: Remember this? Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: It was a big deal. So, I wasn't impacted, I was in charge of Crisis Management at the time for a Fortune 50 Company, we were not impacted, but on my own accord I picked up the phone and called Minneapolis' Deputy of Chief of Police, and said "Hey," ... and it was like eight o'clock at night I think when this thing happened. I'm like "Hey, Chief, just calling to see if you need anything. Do you need anything?" And he goes, "Hold on." He was in the Command Center. "Does anybody want anything?". But they were okay, they had a great response. Bryan Strawser: Fast forward to 2012, we had an active shooter situation that we were all three involved in, that was across the street from our offices, and for three or four hours we didn't really know what was really going on. And it turned out to be a construction noise that occurred. This guy, at this point, is retired from Minneapolis PD. Calls me, just to see, one do you need anything, two, do you want to talk? And this was that night. Do you want to talk about, kind of what went down that day? Knowing that like, we thought people were in harm's way and it turned out to be a false alarm. But we were all concerned about that. That's the kind of partnership I think you develop over time, it's not just about Big Company helping Big Police Department and vice-versa. Bray Wheeler: It's that community piece of it, too. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bray Wheeler: That communal, not only broad scale but just that Crisis Community of people who are in that .... kind of in the weeds all the time with it. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I do ... and then I want to shift and talk about how do you kind of train, or get educated on some this but, during the 2017 Hurricane Season, which was such a monumental event for you know, four months. Between Harvey and Irma and Maria, I was at Bryghtpath but we were supporting ... I was serving as Interim Chief Security Officer for a University that was impacted in all three of those. And it was a pretty stressful time because they didn't have the resources that we had had previously. We've since, you know, they built some things after this. But I went to the Harvard NPLI program, and it ... you know I got an email in the middle of the Hurricane Season from Dr. Lenny Marcus, the Co-Director of the Program, who said, "Hey, I'm down here with the Red Cross today in Virginia, but I've been all over talking to people, and I see a lot of you as alumni making huge impact, but here are some things to remember." And kind of took us back to the things we would talk about in the program. Bryan Strawser: And I thought that was such a meaningful email to send, knowing that, God he probably had 200-250 alumni on the ground, in leadership roles, doing different things, private sector, public sector. That connectivity I think really helps as you think about how you're dealing with and working through these situations. Bryan Strawser: So how do you learn this, beyond doing it? Bray Wheeler: Practice, unfortunately. Real-life experience. Jenn Otremba: Yeah, you don't really know how you're going to react, because I know I said this before but nobody knows how they're going to react in the situation unfortunately until you're put into the situation. Jenn Otremba: I think, if you want to get into this line of work, the best place you could be is in an organization that has multiple Crisis Leaders that you can learn from. Being thrown into it where you're the only one and you've never done it before I don't think is the best place for you, that's not what I would recommend. I think it would be best to be somewhere where you can learn from other people, see different styles so that you can develop your own style. And experience those things where you're not the only point person. Bray Wheeler: Yeah. Jenn Otremba: There are obviously school programs you can go to that Academia has all kinds of options out there but that's not going to be how you learn how to actually be in the nit and gritty. Bray Wheeler: Right. Jenn Otremba: You're going to learn some basics there but- Bray Wheeler: Yeah some of the structure and fundamentals and the background - Jenn Otremba: Exactly, which is important. Bray Wheeler: And the context of all of it, but to your point, it is one of those things where you ... you have to put yourself in situations where you experience it. Whether it's, you're just kind of one of the minions, you know to help execute it. Or you're a partner, or you have some sort of an assistant role or something like that. But you almost have to be in it, watch it, observe it. Bray Wheeler: I know from my early days I was brand-new into the concept and hired in but it wasn't until the wildfires in California, '08, that it was really like, "Okay, now my feet have been wet for a little bit, for nine months or something like that, but now I understand what's going on, now I see what's happening." Bray Wheeler: And that was really eye-opening for me to be able to step into that and get a taste for ... this is full-on. And watching it play out and being able to jump in and kind of my instincts kicking into kind of know what to do, what to expect. Jenn Otremba: Yeah. One benefit too, I think for me having a pretty long career military-wise is, we in the military like to train, over train, exercise, train, exercise, exercise, train, train. And there's something to be said ...I mean, when we do it, man it is awful. But there's something to be said about having so much training behind you, so that when you're in a situation you at least have an idea, a little bit of an idea about how you can react and have some of the automatics happen right away because you don't have to go back and read again a protocol because you have memorized, "what am I going to do in this situation?". Jenn Otremba: And you work together with other members of your military unit as well so that when you're in those situations together you've worked together. Jenn Otremba: In the Civilian Sector we do the same thing where we run exercise, after exercise, after exercise. We don't do it as often, I think in the Civilian Sector as we do in the Military, but doing those over and over help to develop those sort of skills and those checklists in your mind as well. Bray Wheeler: Especially if your organization is brand-new, or the people that kind of comprise your team, however big however small, if they're new to it as well, it's the more you do it, the better relationship you have with each other, which makes whatever response you end up doing, easier. Because otherwise, you're ... everybody's flying blind or everybody's inexperienced or nobody knows and then it becomes ... you're just complicating it for yourself, you're throwing up other obstacles in your way because of you ... nobody has that experience or nobody knows how to interact with each other. Bryan Strawser: I mean I think it's fair to say, everybody's got their own learning style. Jenn Otremba: Yes. Bryan Strawser: And we should accommodate that as we think about this but I don't think there's any substitute for experiencing this in real life. In an organization where there are people senior to you that can teach you and mentor you and kind of bring you through this, that's how all three of us kind of learned - Bray Wheeler: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bryan Strawser: - this. At least when we started. I think exercise are great if they're realistic, and we do exercises as a company for clients and we are getting ... we've gone to the very realistic stage I think at this point in our consulting careers. Where we want it to be under pressure, we want people to feel time constraint, we want them to have to make the tough decisions. And where there is limited time and information and you've got to decide what you're going to do. I also think there's a place for the academic aspect of this which is ... there are programs you can go to and learn this. I am biased, I think the Harvard NPLI Program, because it is focused on leadership versus like, how do you structure an exercise? None of that happens there. Bray Wheeler: The nuts and bolts? Bryan Strawser: There's none of the nuts and bolts. This program is about, how do you lead in a crisis? And when you're talking about ... there's a lot of discussion of cases where ... that I think is even beyond what I saw in business school, on my M.B.A., in my M.B.A. program you read a case and then you discuss the case, and you might take action on the case in terms of talking through or writing something. Bryan Strawser: But at NPLI, when you talk about a case you bring the Principal that was involved in the case to the class and they tell the story. And you talk to them about what happened. And I think that there is no substitute for that kind of experience in terms of learning about what happened, right? They would explain how they led - what crisis leadership looked like to them. Bryan Strawser: So when we talked about managing an organization through reputational challenge we had the Director of the Secret Service, the Incumbent Director of the Secret Service come in, off the record conversation, no press contact, no sharing, and he walked us through what happened in their scandal in Cartagena, where they had agents that were hiring prostitutes and other things that went on down there, and military personnel, and others. And they got caught. So he's the Secret Service Director, how does he manage through that? Okay, so that ... I thought that was a great example of Crisis Leadership. And I agreed with many of the things he talked about doing. Right or wrong. About how they dealt with this. Bryan Strawser: But I think programs like that are great, there are other good programs in Crisis Management and Business Continuity but they're not focused on leadership. And I think what I got out of Harvard was about, here's how you should think as a leader dealing with these situations and what are the things you should look for in yourself, good or bad, and how to compensate for that as you're building the team around you. Bray Wheeler: Yeah, I think it's ... I mean, to build onto that it's that self-assessment piece that's critical. To know yourself, we talked about this earlier but just, it is important. To know those things and to know where your limits are. I think the other piece too is, there's a lot of good companies that have gone through different situations whether it's reputational, whether it's right or wrong, or tragic or not, finding those stories, finding those breakdowns, finding those reports from Harvard, from other places where they've deep dived into it and they're talking to people and reading those articles or those papers or books. You know, to at least get a sense of, how did they respond, what were they thinking about? What did they learn? What, you know, at the very minimum, I mean it's, it's that preparation. It's that. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Jenn Otremba: That's a good point. I love that actually because we spend a lot of time talking about things ...at Bryghtpath especially we talk about a lot of things that go wrong and how they manage ... and we break it down to, well how did they manage through it, what did they do, what could they have done better? So I think, to your point, that sort of, even if it's your own incident, making sure that you're running through that after action with your team so that you can get better for the next time. I think that says a lot about a leader when you're able to not only assess yourself but have your team assess you. Bryan Strawser: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And we've seen this, we've seen good and bad leaders in our experience from a crisis standpoint. Bray Wheeler: Yeah. Bryan Strawser: We've seen incredibly intelligent folks who are great leaders within their organization, could not lead through a basic crisis situation because of a number of different reasons. It could be they have low kind of emotional intelligence and so they panic and they get frustrated. We've seen the "Let's debate the decision for four hours" - Bray Wheeler: Yep. Bryan Strawser: - situation. Meanwhile, you've got people in harm's way, looking to you to make a call. There's a lot of different things that we've seen but what we've run through is a pretty good example of, here's what a good Crisis Leader looks like, here's what good Crisis Leadership looks like, here's some ways to grow it within the Org. Closing thoughts? Bray? Bray Wheeler: I would say, one thing that we kind of talked about off here too is, I think it's important to remember is this isn't an opportunity for promotion. It's not an opportunity that a Crisis Leader should look to take advantage of. It's an opportunity that needs to happen for the company. You need to step into that role with some clarity and that's not about you at that point. No matter what's going on, and if does involve you or it is part of you or it is you, you should probably step aside. You know, because there is that bias coming into play, but it really isn't about you at that point it's about the organization it's about the people impact - Bryan Strawser: It's about the team. Bray Wheeler: That's where your head's got to be at. Bryan Strawser: There's my lack of empathy speaking. Bray Wheeler: It's about the team. Jenn? Jenn Otremba: I don't think I could put it any better than that, honestly. I completely agree with what you're saying. Bryan Strawser: Yeah I mean I think we've hit everything that was on my mind. I'd just end with this, that if you're the Crisis Leader in the critical moment, your team and your organization is looking for you to lead them. Lead them. Take them through the situation. Show crisis leadership. Jenn Otremba: Be the leader. Bryan Strawser: Be the leader. And if you're not the right person, find somebody that can and bring them in and put them under you. And let them lead it. Bray Wheeler: I would say too, so my final FINAL thought. Jenn Otremba: As it turns out, Bray has a lot to say. Bray Wheeler: I have a lot to say on the subject of crisis leadership. No, I think it's, to your point, if you're the designated Crisis Leader that's your opportunity to kind of step into that and lead them. That's why you're in that role. But I think if you're not in that role if you're one of the key partners, you're on the Crisis ... you know, their cross-functional team, if you're underneath that person, you're still a Crisis Leader. You still have a job to do you still have to lead your respective area, you still have to be that player. So it's also about being a Crisis Follower too where you're in it. And you're self-aware enough to know, "I'm tired, I've got to take a step back", or "I know about this, let me see what I can do to help." I think there's that designated Crisis Leader but everybody else has got to have a little bit of that too to be able to get through it. Jenn Otremba: Right, there's some responsibility for everyone on the team. But yeah, be the leader or be the follower, you know, right? Bray Wheeler: Because the culture of the team is probably what makes or breaks that response. Jenn Otremba: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Bryan Strawser: That's it for this edition of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, join us next week for our update on Current Events and News from around the World. Hope to see you then.

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Managing Uncertainty - Episode #31: Aftermath

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2019 17:47

Following a difficult, traumatic, or violent incident, there are a lot of challenges to work through. But when planning and thinking through how to handle these situations, we often focus almost wholly on the response and tend to ignore the short and long-term recovery challenges. In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba talk through their own experiences in the aftermath of major crisis situations. Topics discussed include grief counseling, post-traumatic stress, managing the press, post-disaster payroll policies, and more. //static.leadpages.net/leadboxes/current/embed.js Episode Transcript Jen: I read this article where there was a grief counselor that was interviewed and taking specifically around the aftermath of a situation and how its managed and how its handled. This grief counselor actually would get called onsite for various different high-level incidents, much like the shooting in Florida, 9-11, things like that. The grief counselor would come onsite and they would help the people involved through the situation. We saw that at our previous employer where if there was a big incident that happened we would have counselors that were onsite. Bryan: It was part of our SOP really. Jen: Absolutely, and help out. I just thought this would be a great topic to talk about to kind of educate those around what it's like to go through an aftermath. Bryan and I have both gone through many situations- Bryan: Numerous. Jen: Where we dealt with an aftermath of a traumatic incident so we thought it would be a good idea to talk about what that looks like. Bryan: For me it always ... This kind of is just ... This issue gets overlooked a lot, but because of what I've learned through my experience and our experiences together is that this always seems to be part of the right of boom process. When I talk about left of boom, right of boom, you've got the bad thing that happened, the boom, and there's what you can do before that, the preparation and the training and the exercises and whatever, but then the bad thing happens, you respond to it and then part of your long-term recovery, which what we're talking about here falls right on getting out of that immediate response stage, is how do you deal with the aftermath of the situation in terms of taking care of the team, taking care of the survivors or the victims and their families and the organization, how do you make sure that people are okay through this. Jen: Right, and like you said, this should actually be part of your crisis planning. Bryan: It should be. Jen: It should be part of the plan. Bryan: It needs to be one of the first things that you do once you've gotten to that immediate response and we're sure that people are safe and the immediate danger has passed, is how do you start to help people with the immediate and long-term aftermath of the situation that has impacted them. Jen: Yeah, and understanding some of the things you can expect to see. Some individuals may need to take some time off. They might need to take some time away from where it happened before they can ... Yeah. Bryan: If you're a multi-facility company they may want to work at a different facility moving forward. Jen: Yeah. It might be temporary or that might be permanent, but you need to take that in consideration and understand that that might be part of your planning process. Bryan: You'll find ... And this is definitely not ... This is something that you need to involve a professional organization, outside organization, to do and there's a number of companies that provide this, it's really kind of in the medical field. Whether you call it grief counseling or you call it just kind of the post-traumatic incident counseling, there's a lot of terminology to be used. But what you often see is these services will come in and they will do a combination of kind of group conversation, of working through what has happened, and some individual conversation. It's not ... I wouldn't characterize this as you're hiring counselors for everyone, but you are bringing somebody in that's an expert in dealing with these situations and helping your team talk through that. And then you may have folks, as Jen says, may need some time off and in an ethical organization you're going to find a way to accommodate that, regardless of what your policy is. Say that you're going to help them through the situation, and you may have folks that will need, through your medical coverage, long-term psychological, psychiatric counseling in order to deal with the aftermath of the situation. Jen: Right. I think one of the big things is you need to understand that there's a short-term and a long-term recovery process. Bryan: Right. Jen: There's what happens in the aftermath as far as the immediate aftermath, within days or weeks of something happening, but then understanding what that looks like long-term for people because everyone handles it differently. Bryan: I know one thing to consider, whatever the incident is that causes this workplace trauma, this traumatic incident that occurred. It can be a shooting situation, it could be an industrial accident, it could be a natural disaster, a tornado or whatever. What often I have done in my experience is we have made sure that folks are safe and we realize that we've had this horrible thing has happened, whatever it is. It's going to bring media attention, it's likely going to involve law enforcement and the emergency services. We would often think about how can we get the team out of that situation and somewhere safe. I'm often reminded of an issue we dealt with in my experience in 2010 where I had an individual come into a location and shoot and kill an employee and then took his own life. There's the immediate response, which is there's as run-hide-fight process and even before that was popular, everybody got out of the building. The first thing that the local leadership did for my employer at the time was: Okay, I'm going to account for everybody. I've got a competitor next door, we're going in there, they've offered us a conference room. We're going to get in there. We're going to sit down. We're going to get our families in here. We're going to make the call to the outside counselors to come help us out. We're going to be over here shielded from the media and all of the crazy stuff that comes in. I thought that was extremely astute work by the young leader that was there that day. Did everything right, but that's what we had taught them how to do. Jen: Yeah. I've experienced, aside from some of the ones that Bryan and I have experienced together, definitely experienced a lot of these types of scenarios, particularly at the beginning of the war when I was responding to mass casualty events. Some of the things that we used to do is, immediately following a mass casualty event we would get everyone together and talk about it and make sure everyone was doing okay. Bryan: That's right. Jen: But one thing we don't always do great on is the long-term and how that can affect people long-term. There's no way of knowing how it's going to affect any one person, but there is definitely going to be some kind of effect one way or another, whether it's conscious or subconscious. With good leaders, it's a matter of continuing to check in with your people, make sure they're doing okay and they have the resources that they need. Bryan: When I was a young leader, I was in New England for 9-11 and I had locations that were in southwestern Connecticut near New York City and that's where I was, I was in the Hartford area on the morning of 9-11 when all of those events transpired. I remember, my counterpart and I went back the next day and toured all of our Connecticut stores, not because we really cared about what was going on in terms of the business, but we were worried about the team. Folks there knew people who worked at the World Trade Center, had family members. They had this deep connection to the events in New York City in particular and all we really did was go from location to location and just talk with everybody, like: Is everybody okay? How are you doing? Is there anything we can do? Years later, this still comes up when I talk to people from Connecticut that they had my counterpart and I kind of making this circuit throughout the area to make sure that folks were okay. That was a conversation that we continued as leaders for years, all tied back to that traumatic incident that many of us experienced on the morning of 9-11. Jen: Yeah. You find when you go through something as traumatic as that, people really come together and create bonds that never go away, which is great because with those bonds, years down the road ... I know I can call some of my buddies that I was involved in some of those mass casualty incidents with, that I can call them any time and we can talk through things. There's kind of an untold bond between you because you were together. Those relationships are excellent to keep to continue to help each other through things like this, even down the road. That's a good way to talk about through getting your employees and that through those types of situations, but the one thing we don't always talk about is leaders. Bryan: We are not immune from this. Jen: Not immune to it at all. Leaders also experience the same levels of stress as anyone else does, plus they have the responsibility to take care of all of these people. Bryan: I think when we're talking about leaders, it's not just leaders at the site because I think of them as being directly impacted, but I've worked in crisis management for almost 20 years and it doesn't go away. Even if you're leading at a enterprise level and you're thousands of miles away from the incident that you're managing, it's that you still have impact from that, particularly if it's ... For me if it's one of two things: It's that sharp, traumatic incident, particularly if lives were lost, but it's also the ... Okay, we've had this major incident and we've dodged the ... We've not had people seriously injured, we've not lost anyone or a family member, but we have all of this work that has to be done to get the business back up and running and make sure that the team is made as whole as they can through the process because of damage to their community and homes and schools and what have you. Man, that takes a lot out of people and honestly most companies don't really put a lot of resources into crisis management, so it's often one, two, three people that are trying to manage this or with the help of a place like ours. I think it's very challenging and we miss this a lot, as it happens. Jen: And it's a high burnout career. Bryan: Oh, totally, as we know. Jen: Yes. That chronic stress, chronic fatigue takes a toll on you, both mentally and physically, for not just leaders but for everyone, but definitely leaders probably experience it the most because they're also trying to manage people that are experience it. You can see where the domino effect would happen. Bryan: We've talked before about the National Preparedness Leadership program at Harvard. Jen: Yes. Bryan: And their idea of meta-leadership through a crisis situation, the emergency situation. I remember that a big part of what we learned going through that program and a big part of their research is the psychology of being that leader in the critical moment and how do you make the decisions and what have you. But the question that Dr. Lenny Marcus would always ask, when he would get in the room and ... So there you are at Deep Water Horizon and you've got admiral Thad Allen from the Coast Guard is now the incident commander and calling the shots is, when they're in private: How are you doing? How are you feeling about this? I just saw you do X, Y, Z. Why did you make those decisions? It always came back to: How are you feeling? What are you thinking about emotionally as a leader as you're going through that? Those things are hard to manage through. Jen: Yeah. And what do you need? Bryan: What do you need? Jen: Leaders need time off too. Bryan: What do you need as a leader? Jen: Yeah. Bryan: I think back to that situation in 2010 with the ... That was a violent crime with the employee that was killed. That was my first one managing something like that at that scale and even though I was an experienced crisis manager, I had never done that. I remember coming off the first conference call with the team down there that had just gone through this and lost one of their own and we're trying to manage through the details and then calling a peer of mine that used to be in this job and just went: Okay, I have to ... I've got to walk you through what I'm thinking and what I want to do, but can I talk to you about how I feel for a minute because I'm trying to figure out how to process this. Jen: Yeah. Bryan: I think we often don't think about doing that and we don't think about or have somebody that we can do that with, that understands what you're going through. It's not the same as going home and having this conversation with your spouse, unless you're me and we work in the same field. Jen: That's true. Bryan: You can't just go to the random friend and say: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah because they're not in that same ... They've never been in your shoes, they don't really understand that. I think it's important to find people that you can have that conversation with. Jen: Yeah. That's where I go back to some of my old buddies that I used to work with because they've been through stressful situations too, so you really lean on each other when that happens. Bryan: One of the more moving things for me in the last hurricane season that was so big, and this goes back to the National Preparedness Leadership, the NPLI program at Harvard. There was about 800 and some alumni of the program and the faculty would send us updates during major situations because they go out and deploy and they're walking with us. They sent a pretty heartfelt note one day about halfway through Hurricane Maria that said: Here's some things we're seeing and thinking about ... But it ended with: Look, we know what it's like to be at the tip of the spear as leading through these situations and that it's important to have somebody to talk to. If you don't have anybody to talk to, call us. Here's the phone number. Promise not to make you a research subject, but call us or call somebody in the program that you know, or don't know. I think we could all do that for each other. It's important to do that, but I think the bigger challenge is recognizing as a leader that you're not going to be immune to the stress and you're going to need to find ways to deal with this and seek help with this where necessary as it starts to impact you. Jen: I think what's good in this day and age, we have so many tools out there and there's so much more education and knowledge around this than there once was. Things like meditation and yoga that used to get kind of balked at but they're actually now ... My doctor actually recommends meditation now and this is well-studied stuff, but some of the preventative things that you can do. We also know, and there's been a lot of testing around this, that to reduce the effects of stress and fatigue as these things happen are the self-imposed stressors. Drugs, alcohol although you don't want to be a Drunk Driver, exhaustion, tobacco and ... Bryan: Too much coffee. Jen: Hypoglycemia. Exactly. All of these things can really amplify the effects of stress. Staying away from the excessive amounts of caffeine, which is laughable because I don't know any crisis manager ... Bryan: That is not addicted to coffee. Jen: ... That does not drink copious amounts of coffee. Bryan: Totally. Jen: And then often times at the end of the day, enjoying a beer after the effects of things. But keeping in mind that anything in moderation is okay, but once you've gone to the excessive amounts, no good. Exhaustion is huge. Getting enough rest before incidents happen and then also during the incident you have to take a break, you have to take a step away. Bryan: We forget about this because there's usually somebody in charge. There's an incident commander, there's ... You're the city emergency management director, you're the director of crisis management for a company, but that does not mean that you have to be there all the time because it will dull your ability to make decisions and deal with stress. Jen: Right. Exactly. Bryan: You've got to go home and you have to let somebody else run the thing until tomorrow or whenever. Jen: Exactly. Yeah. Tobacco, I mean need I say more? Hypoglycemia. Okay, again, I don't know an emergency manager out there that can't enjoy a good piece of pizza during an incident, even if it means you're shoving food in your mouth in between trying to get stuff done. It's really important that you're taking care of yourself one way or another. Bryan: Right. Jen: It doesn't have to be pizza, but ... Bryan: Our key message is here: As a part of your recovery, short- and long-term recovery following that immediate response is: Determine the need to bring in assistance to help with the team, understand the signs of stress, particularly post-traumatic stress and what that means and can look like. Make it a priority to touch base with the team as a leader and encourage others to do so to really just check in and just ask folks if they're okay, if there's anything they want to talk about or is there anything you can do to help them through that. You'd be surprised sometimes, I think, at the answers again. Jen: Agree. Make sure some of this is a part of your planning process, let's not forget that. Bryan: Right. And get the vendor lined up. Jen: Yes, exactly. Bryan: And then for yourself, you're not immune. We highly encourage you to find a partner in the field, a peer at another company, the person that held your job before you, or call us, we'd be happy to talk. Jen: Absolutely. Bryan: Best of luck.

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Managing Uncertainty Podcast: Episode #9 – The Hot Wash

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2019 19:19

Following a major incident or crisis, it's time to take stock of your plans, processes, and efforts through a thorough after-action process. In this episode, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser and Senior Consultant Jen Otremba talk about the need for after-action processes, the immediate "hot wash" discussion after the end of an incident, and then transitioning into a thoughtful after-action approach that will serve to help mature and enhance your crisis management program. //static.leadpages.net/leadboxes/current/embed.js Episode Transcript Bryan Strawser: The boom is over. Jen Otremba: The event happened. Bryan Strawser: The event happened. Remember, we had this bad thing, whatever it was. We activated our crisis process. We responded, a crisis team came together and interacted and collaborated and schemed and work through a difficult situation. Jen Otremba: Outside parties came in. Bryan Strawser: Outside parties were involved. Jen Otremba: Law enforcement maybe was involved. Bryan Strawser: Now it's over and we've started the process of recovery, which can take years. What do we do? Jen Otremba: Now what happens? Bryan Strawser: Now what happens? How do we learn? How do we know things worked or didn't work? Jen Otremba: I think the first step in this process would be to have an immediate hot wash. Bryan Strawser: Also, we're talking about after action processes. Jen Otremba: After action. Bryan Strawser: We start with a hot wash, what the heck is a hot wash? Because I know the first time I heard this, I was like, "What are you talking about? This is a foreign language." Jen Otremba: Yeah. This is something to be honest I feel like we do fairly well in the military, because we do ... I learned this from a very young age, that after a big incident, after something occurred, you do some kind of an after action. Sometimes it's involved, sometimes it's not as involved, but usually we start with a hot wash. An immediate discussion of what just happened and what went right and what went wrong. Sometimes there's emotions involved in that discussion as well. Bryan Strawser: Because it just happened, and particularly if it was a violent event or it was a traumatic event there's a lot of emotion involved. I think particularly for me, as we've talked before, my emotional and adrenaline dump happened when the disaster was over, when I knew that people were safe. It was the hardest time for me, and I think everybody's going to be different with this but I think most people that do crisis things for a living, that emotional lease comes when the incident's over. So the hot wash was always a difficult time for me, I had to really collect myself and then focus into this discussion that we were going to have. It's dependent on the incident of course. Jen Otremba: I think we've seen over time that that's the fact for a lot of people, a lot of people go through that. Now their emotions are at an all time high during the hot wash and sometimes fingers get pointed and it's not helpful, but sometimes it's really important. Bryan Strawser: We try to keep that out of ... Jen Otremba: Try to, yeah. Bryan Strawser: Hot wash is really more of an informal immediate after action discussion about what just happened. Are we clear on the facts of what just happened? You get into the conversation of evaluating the response from your team. It's not about individuals, it's about what worked, what didn't work. Did we do what we were supposed to do? Did we follow our processes? Or were those processes not adequate and we through them aside along the way? Which happens sometimes. It's really that question of, in the hot wash what worked that we just saw? And what didn't work? Jen Otremba: Yeah, and then in that initial conversation, who should lead that and how long should that last? Bryan Strawser: Right. I think about the ... I think the most difficult hot wash situation that you and I were involved in when we worked together ... Jen Otremba: In a corporate setting. Bryan Strawser: In a corporate setting, was we had an active shooter incident at a headquarters location. It was literally across the street. We've talked about this since then on a previous episode of the podcast. We did a hot wash with the incident commander from the law enforcement agency that led the response. His staff, several of our leaders and the entire SWAT, two SWAT teams actually, that responded ... Jen Otremba: Very crowded discussion. Bryan Strawser: It was a very crowded discussion and we were fortunate to have a room that could accommodate everybody. It was a 30-ish minute, 45 minute discussion that in retrospect I think we said probably wasn't really well led because we thought the police were going to drive it and the police actually had no idea how they were going to drive this particular conversation, so we took over as it went on. That said, there were some valuable lessons that we captured from that conversation, but we also realized that in a hot wash you're looking for the immediate info of what worked and didn't, you don't get the reflective, "Hey, I've had some time to think about this and now I think this and I think this and I think this." Jen Otremba: Hindsight, right. Yeah, or the hindsight of, "Oh, I can see why they were reacting that way, because big picture this is what they were dealing with but we were over here dealing with this and we weren't coming together." Those types of things can come out in a after action, a more organized one, a short period of time after the hot wash but enough time for people to get some rest and to think about what just happened. Bryan Strawser: Think and converse and process what went on. Jen Otremba: Yes, and come from that high, that sort of fight or flight high that they were just on. Bryan Strawser: We always encourage the hot wash immediately at the end of the response but brief, 30 to 45 minutes. It doesn't need to be strongly led. We prefer to lead these as someone, a leader within your crisis organization or a leader from the organization that your crisis team reports to. Jen Otremba: If available. Bryan Strawser: If available. Jen Otremba: The incident lead is probably a good option. Bryan Strawser: Right, but it's kind of a conversation with the team and perhaps other leaders that were involved in that response or recovery, about what worked and what didn't. You need to have a scribe, you need to take those notes. That's kind of the immediate after action, is that hot wash discussion. Jen Otremba: It's like an immediate brain dump. Bryan Strawser: Right, and then a pause. Jen Otremba: How long? Bryan Strawser: Three days, five days, a week, 10 days. You have to judge based on what went on and when is the right time to have this discussion. Jen Otremba: Right, because you might be having people requiring to take some time off in between the discussion. You don't want it to be so long that people are forgetting but it's a good idea if you're involved in a crisis to take some notes throughout that time. That break time between the incident and the after action, the formal after actions, to start taking some notes and jotting down some things so you can remember that during the discussion. Bryan Strawser: One thing that I learned when I went through the NPLI program at Harvard was the value in journaling during an event. We had a requirement to journal daily during the program, but something that I got immense value out of was hearing these guys who have made their life's work talking about the decisions that are made in national scale emergencies, who would go to the command centers of the Deep Water Horizon incident, and sit there with the incident commander and watch a meeting or a conference or a video conference. And then, in the lull that followed to say, "Why did you just make that decision? What drove you to do that versus the other four options that you were given? Why did you decide to pick that person to lead this effort? Why did you say this instead of perhaps these other things that you could have said?" It's the immediacy of that information that you don't remember later, but you remember it in the moment because you've just made it. Jen Otremba: These formal after actions, let's talk about that for a second. This formal after action, who should lead it? What should we talk about? Who should be involved? Those types of questions seem to always come up. It's a little bit more formal, so there's some time to set a calendar invite to get people to start thinking about what they want to say. I usually start when I'm doing an after action is what went well. I like to start with a positive note, what went well in the situation? Bryan Strawser: What worked? Jen Otremba: What worked? What are we going to keep for the next time? Then, once we get through that process, usually people are a little bit on a high of all the good things that they did then and sort of [inaudible 00:08:33] into the, "So now what? What can we do better? How can we fix this for next time?" Bryan Strawser: Again, these conversations are not about blame. Jen Otremba: Not at all. Bryan Strawser: It's about, how do we be better? Jen Otremba: But I think it's natural to feel maybe a sense of being attacked or something like that, but it's not the intent at all. It shouldn't be used against people either. [crosstalk 00:08:52] Bryan Strawser: No, no, no. Not at all. This is not a performance review or audit. It's, how do we be better at the things that we're trying to accomplish here? Jen Otremba: As a team. Bryan Strawser: Right. Jen Otremba: How do we grow from this and how do we fix some of the things? What are the shortcomings that we didn't see before that we now see because we experienced it? How do we fix those? Bryan Strawser: We often encourage after actions to happen in some groups? Like-minded ... Not like-minded, like-roled groups might be the best way to explain it. I always encourage them, we always did them, as the crisis team together, without other leaders or stakeholders or impacted locations. We did just the crisis team because that was a team that had been through many things together and were very candid with each other. Jen Otremba: Very. Bryan Strawser: Very candid with each other, but that's what you want. We would do an after action meeting with that group. We did one with just our internal team that worked on crisis stuff full time. That was often about our internal processes for supporting a crisis, but it was also about the incident leader asking for feedback in a non-blameful way. Jen Otremba: Constructive. Bryan Strawser: But, how do I be better at what I just did? Where did I do well? What did I not do well from a leadership standpoint I need to do better? I always thought those were really healthy conversations but they were held in a safe environment. Jen Otremba: Absolutely. Bryan Strawser: Then we would do a call with the impacted leaders from the locations in that particular case that were involved in this crisis. We were able to glean, how could we better support you? Do you have adequate training for the roles that we expect you to have in a crisis? All of this flows into an after action report but they're separate conversations. In a large scale incident we often did, like the active shooter incident we've referenced before, I think we did some focus group conversations with impacted team members, employees. We met with some leaders who had people in that building based on what they had heard. We did a lot of things a little differently to capture as much feedback as possible, but also to make sure that people felt that their input was included in this very serious situation. Jen Otremba: That's because we worked for a large scale organization where there was a lot of players. But a small organization, same concept. Maybe would be a few less conversations. You probably wouldn't need to have as many but same thing you're capturing. You have to adjust that for the size of organization that you're running. Bryan Strawser: Right. At the end of this you're writing a report of some type, a brief report we always try to get to. But we encourage and we coach our clients on a simple summary of the incident. What are the facts of what happened? The timeline that went with that? And then, here are the things that worked. Here's what went well. Here's what we saw as opportunities, things that didn't go well. Here's what we can do about it. Here's the actions that we've agreed to take as a part of this after action, and those actions should be specific, actionable to a person or a team. They should have dates associated with when they're expected to be done and a priority, like are they high? Is it medium? Is it low? Jen Otremba: Yeah, I think there's also value to sharing that information. Bryan Strawser: Yes. Jen Otremba: Especially in a incident like we're talking about where there were a lot of people involved, not just in the incident but were involved because their friends were over there or maybe they were in one of those rooms and they want to know what the company's going to do about it because they were unhappy about certain things. Getting their input is also valuable, and then to let them know, "Hey, this isn't just going to sleep, we have all of these processes we're improving." Bryan Strawser: Yeah. You bring up a great point about there should be a way to share this information with stakeholders, with impacted locations. There has to be some overall accountability and tracking of the action items. If you have a crisis team, that's probably the place that that should be owned but if you don't, and many of you that listen to our podcast we know don't really have teams, somebody needs to own that follow up process. Jen Otremba: Yeah, it makes everyone feel better when they know that the place that they're working or going to school or the hospital that they're in, they know that they're working towards better things. I think that's a good thing. I have a question, after you do the working group and all of this, all of this sounds like really good stuff, right? So why isn't there one done sometimes? Why wouldn't you do an after action report? I don't understand why you wouldn't do that. I know there's a lot of times when things don't get done, and for a lot of reasons. For instance, no one maybe wants to initiate the discussion. Bryan Strawser: Right, and it can be a hard discussion to initiate. Jen Otremba: Super hard. Bryan Strawser: You're questioning how I performed. Jen Otremba: Yeah. Bryan Strawser: Even though I'm not. Jen Otremba: No. Bryan Strawser: That's not the attempt, but some people will take it that way. Jen Otremba: Yeah, and some people will mean it that way but that shouldn't be the case at all. That's hard, to point out your mistakes and other people's mistakes. That's one reason that maybe they don't get done, so you just power through that. You've got to work through that and put your emotions on the table and just say, "Okay, let's put this aside and let's have this discussion." An other reason I know that maybe this doesn't get done is there isn't someone that's assigned to initiate that conversation. I think before an incident happens it's a good idea to have somebody, whether like we talked about is the incident lead that their responsibility is to hold this after action so that it actually gets accomplished. Bryan Strawser: I think in a lot of cases this doesn't happen out of ... It's not because of malice that after actions don't occur, it's that we just get busy. Where we've had the event and now we're post-response and we're in recovery and we're thinking ahead to what's next and we probably don't do this full time. We're already thinking about, "I've got to go back to my regular job and do this other stuff." Yeah, but you need to also talk about what ... You will never get better if you don't engage in some type of after action process with some accountability. Jen Otremba: Sometimes there's the idea that you just want to move on. Let's just put that behind us, let's just move on, let's just move on. Bryan Strawser: What was it? Who was it that said that if we don't learn from history then we're doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, we may as well lie down on the railroad tracks so the train of history can run over us? Jen Otremba: Right, and everyone's been in an organization that just repeats the same mistakes. The after action is a way to correct that. Bryan Strawser: It's a way to make sure you only commit original new mistakes. Jen Otremba: Yeah. Bryan Strawser: Which are better. Jen Otremba: Yeah, better new mistakes that you're making, because we all make them. There's always getting better. Bryan Strawser: I think that's always ... Yeah, I was trying to think about the other discussions that I've had in my career on this. I think that particularly if you have a well oiled crisis process, the after action stuff can seem like kind of a drag. Because I remember coming out of Hurricane Sandy, where we had performed at our old employer really, really well. The CEO was thrilled and the board was thrilled. Local communities were thrilled. We had really come off of pretty phenomenal management of the situation. And then we had to sit there and go, "Yeah, but God, there's like 40 things that didn't go great." Jen Otremba: I was going to say, and I eventually guessed, that during an after action [crosstalk 00:16:26] Bryan Strawser: Yeah, we had a whole list of stuff, good and bad and ugly, that were like, we've got to figure these things out so that we can be better. I'm not sure how we could have been better. Jen Otremba: Except for those 40 things. Bryan Strawser: There was a list of things. There was a list of things we thought we could do better but our results ... Jen Otremba: We needed to order the pizza earlier. Bryan Strawser: We need to order pizza early. There were so many problems, so many problems. I think that's worth bringing up, that I think a good crisis team is going to identify lots of opportunity for improvement. There's also opportunities for improvement that are big and that take time to result. I know one of the issues I recall coming out of Hurricane Sandy is we thought that we had licked this, how do we get access to a site, how do we get credentialed to gain access to get our people in and get our equipment in in order to recover a location that was critical infrastructure, and that worked. Except in one state. In that one state, the state was like, "Well yes, you can get in." So here we go, convoy of trucks and stuff going in, and then you get township officials going, "No, we're not open for business here." We're like, "Wait, but the state told us ... " We had to find a way to fix that. That took forever to figure out. You had to move some political mountains to make that happen. Jen Otremba: Yeah. I also think too, from the outside looking in it may seem that everything went really well and everyone's giving you kudos and a slap on the back and all this. You're doing really good things. Like you said, we did all these great things during Hurricane Sandy. But you internally, your team internally knows that there are things that could be made better. Bryan Strawser: Yeah. To me, I think that that's just part of being a good crisis leader, is the ability to see that there's things that you can always be better. You're always enhancing those and figuring out how to prioritize that through a good process. Jen Otremba: I think it should be implemented into your process, so you go through the crisis, after action is documented right in there as the next step. Bryan Strawser: Right. So have an after action process and have those difficult conversations about how to do better. Be transparent and share the information. You'll be better for it over time and so will your response.

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The Education of an Emergency Manager

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2019 24:36

This week we are discussing the education of emergency management vs training. Why it is important to get formal education. However, you do not need a degree, because there are certificate programs out there for you as wellGuest BioTodd De Voe is the Director, Emergency Management for Titan HST and the host of the leading emergency management Show EM Weekly. Todd involvement in Emergency Response, Emergency Management, Education and Volunteer Management started in 1989 when he became a volunteer firefighter in upstate New York. In 1991 Todd joined the United States Navy and became a Hospital Corpsman assigned to the Fleet Marine Force. After his service, Todd served as an emergency medical responder (EMT) in some of the toughest parts of Los Angeles County. In 2005 Todd was hired by the City of Dana Point at the Emergency Services Coordinator.In 2008 Todd was asked to be on a steering committee for Coastline Community College, as they developed their emergency management program, later that year Todd was invited to join the faculty.Today Todd not only continues to teach for Coastline College, he now is an instructor of Emergency Management at California State University Fullerton for the MPA program and, The University of California Irvine's Certificate of Emergency Management. Todd is a graduate of the National Emergency Management Executive Academy's Cohort VII.Todd is an active member of the International Association of Emergency Managers and is the Region 9 representative on the University and Colleges Caucus.Todd is an avid reader. Some of his favorite topics are leadership, emergency management, history, and spy thrillers.Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddtdevoe/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/EMWeekly/Twitter: https://twitter.com/EM_WeeklyWebsite: https://tdevoe.wixsite.com/mysiteEmail todd@emwekly.comAdvertisersTitan HST https://www.titanhst.com/

YOU'RE IT!

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2019 29:47

Today, in an instant, leaders can find themselves face-to-face with crisis. An active shooter. A media controversy. A data breach. This book takes you to the front lines of some of the toughest decisions facing our nations leaders. Leonard Marcus, founding Co-Director and Eric McNulty, Associate Director of the NPLI and two of the four authors, discuss the book, its’ fifteen years of research, and the pragmatic model and methods of Meta-Leadership.

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You’re It Crisis Change and How to Lead When It Matters Most

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2019 36:08

This week we are talking to Eric McNulty from the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard. We have had Eric on to speak about the NPLI; however today we are talking about the new book that has just been releases called You’re it. Guest BioEric is an active writer, speaker, and educator on leadership and, in particular, leading through crisis, change, and turbulence. He holds an appointment as associate director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI), a joint program of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and as Instructor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Eric teaches in numerous executive education and graduate level courses at Harvard as well as at M.I.T and the University of California, San Diego. He speaks to executive audiences around the world about the challenges of leading in the fast-moving, unpredictable circumstances.Eric is co-author of the book, You’re It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When it Matters Most (PublicAffairs, June 2019) and author of Three Critical Shifts in Thinking for the Evolving Leader (O’Reilly. 2015) and Your Critical First 10 Days as a Leader (Safari, 2015). He is also the co-author, along with Dr. Leonard Marcus and Dr. Barry Dorn, of the second edition of Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration (Jossey-Bass, 2011). Eric is a co-author of a chapter on meta-leadership in the McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook (2012) and many articles on leadership, decision-making, and negotiation.Eric’s columns on leadership and management appear regularly at strategy+business, where he is a contributing editor. He seeks to stimulate honest conversations and return humanity to organizations. He has particular expertise in leading as a subject matter expert, whether a physician, engineer, or preparedness and response executive.Eric holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics (with honors) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Master’s degree in Leadership from Lesley University.Related Showshttps://sitchradio.com/em-weekly-14-engaging-senior-leadership-emergency-management/Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emcnulty/Twitter: https://twitter.com/RicherEarthFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/RicherEarthWebsite: https://npli.sph.harvard.edu/ https://ericmcnulty.com/ Advertisershttps://www.titanhst.com/

Eric McNaulty You're It

EM Student

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2019 25:56

This week we are talking to Eric McNaulty from the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard. We have had Eric on to speak about the NPLI; however today we are talking about the new book that has just been releases called You’re it. Guest BioEric is an active writer, speaker, and educator on leadership and, in particular, leading through crisis, change, and turbulence. He holds an appointment as associate director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative (NPLI), a joint program of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and as Instructor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Eric teaches in numerous executive education and graduate level courses at Harvard as well as at M.I.T and the University of California, San Diego. He speaks to executive audiences around the world about the challenges of leading in fast-moving, unpredictable circumstances.Eric is co-author of the book, You’re It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When it Matters Most (PublicAffairs, June 2019) and author of Three Critical Shifts in Thinking for the Evolving Leader (O’Reilly. 2015) and Your Critical First 10 Days as a Leader (Safari, 2015). He is also the co-author, along with Dr. Leonard Marcus and Dr. Barry Dorn, of the second edition of Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration (Jossey-Bass, 2011). Eric is a co-author of a chapter on meta-leadership in the McGraw-Hill Homeland Security Handbook (2012) and many articles on leadership, decision-making, and negotiation.Eric’s columns on leadership and management appear regularly at strategy+business, where he is a contributing editor. He seeks to stimulate honest conversations and return humanity to organizations. He has particular expertise in leading as a subject matter expert, whether a physician, engineer, or preparedness and response executive.Eric holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics (with honors) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Master’s degree in Leadership from Lesley University.Related Showshttps://sitchradio.com/em-weekly-14-engaging-senior-leadership-emergency-management/Links LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emcnulty/Twitter: https://twitter.com/RicherEarthFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/RicherEarthWebsite: https://npli.sph.harvard.edu/ https://ericmcnulty.com/

Public Safety Leadership in Campus Settings

Play Episode Listen Later May 22, 2019 33:20

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NPLI's 15 Year Anniversary

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2018 25:29

Welcome to the latest episode Leader ReadyCast. This month, the NPLI marks its' 15th anniversary. In this episode we look back at the program’s greatest hits—and look forward at what is next to come. Our guests today are Dr. Leonard Marcus, founding co-director of the NPLI, and Rich Serino, a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the NPLI. Both have been with the program since the beginning; Dr. Marcus as one of the original faculty and Mr. Serino a participant of the NPLI Executive Education Program (EEP), Cohort I. The NPLI now boasts more than 800 alumni from the NPLI EEP and thousands more have been trained in meta-leadership through other symposia and initiatives across the country and around the globe. Many of these individuals being trained by the NPLI are leading today's preparedness and response efforts.

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Building a Culture of Preparedness

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2018 34:55

Welcome to the latest episode Leader ReadyCast. I’m your host, Eric McNulty, and my guest today is Dr. Eric Goralnick. Dr. Goralnick is Medical Director of Emergency Preparedness, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School; and Instructor of Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He has also spoken to cohorts of the NPLI executive education program on his experiences in the Boston Marathon bombing response. He has developed deep expertise on the intersection of emergency medicine with disaster preparedness and response. Today, we’re going to speak with Eric about building a culture of preparedness, educating the public—and the limits of relying upon the public in a response, and understanding the dynamics of active shooter and other mass casualty events.

What’s Your Story? A Conversation with Dr. Murray Nossel

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2018 38:14

Welcome to the latest edition of Leader ReadyCast. I am your host, Eric McNulty. My guest today is Dr. Murray Nossel and our topic is storytelling. One of the more frequent concerns that I hear from NPLI participants is that the media fails to “tell our story.” Whether in the aftermath of a human or manmade disaster, it seems that government responders are cast as inefficient, inept, and at times uncaring. That doesn’t reflect the people that I know and so when I saw Dr. Nossel’s book, Powered by Storytelling, I knew he would have valuable insights to share. Dr. Nossel has been helping organizations craft and present stories for more than 30 years. His firm is Narativ (one R, no E) and its clients include everyone from The Walt Disney Company to UNICEF. He is an Oscar-nominated documentary film maker and a co-star of the storytelling performance, Two Men Talking that has been on stage in Edinburgh, London, and New York. He’s a fascinating individual with a lot to teach us about stories and why they are so important.

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Public Health Emergency Preparedness

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 19, 2018 29:18

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EP 14 Engaging Senior Leadership In Emergency Management with Eric McNaulty