One of the requirements for the Certified Emergency Manager designation is for 100 hours of general management training. General management training is also a requirement for re-certification. The reason for this should be obvious: true emergency managers are program managers and not technicians. We need to be a well-versed in current management and leadership theory as we are in emergency management theory. But I'd like to suggest another, more subtle reason as to why we need to study more than just emergency management.

One of the Principles of Emergency Management is flexibility. We need to develop creative solutions to unexpected problems while under pressure. Problem solving during a crisis relies heavily on pattern recognition. That is, we subconsciously compare the problem to ones with which we are familiar and try to find a match that will give us a clue as to how to approach the current problem. This happens extremely quickly and we are often not aware we are doing it; we tend to treat the result as a hunch or intuition. Interestingly enough, research has shown that we can increase our available patterns not only through personal experience but also through training and exercising.