Volume 8 No. 3 March 2016

In This Issue

Featured Video

Blog Highlights

The Leadership Challenge

Consulting Transitions

Featured Article

Professional Development

Life Balance

From the Bookshelf

Speaker's Corner

Featured Video

The Tenerife airport disaster

The collision between a Pan American aircraft and a KLM flight on the Spanish island of Tenerife on March 27, 1977 was the worst aviation disaster in history, killing 583 passengers and crew. There multiple factors that created the conditions for the crash which was ultimately held to be the fault of the Dutch captain of the KLM flight. The crash was a focusing event that led to changes in accident investigation, communications between tower and cockpit, and the ability of crew members to challenge command decisions.

Blog Highlights

Visit My Blog

The following are excerpts from my blog

Canton on Emergency Management. Please visit my blog to see the rest of my articles.

United Flight Attendants Fired Over Security Concerns Reinstated

03-09-2016

United flight attendants fired last year for raising security concerns have reached a settlement that vindicates their actions. But was all this really necessary?...ť

If you are having trouble accessing these articles, go directly to the blog by clicking either the logo or the green "Visit my blog" button.

Visit My Blog

The following are excerpts from my blog, Managing Crisis, published by Emergency Management Magazine. Please visit my blog to see the rest of my articles.

FEMA Releases the National Planning System. So What?

02-23-2016

FEMA has just released the National Planning System, a much anticipated document intended to provide a unified approach and common terminology to all-hazards planning. It's a bit underwhelming...ť

If you are having trouble accessing these articles, go directly to the blog by clicking either the logo or the green "Visit my blog" button.

The Leadership Challenge

What Is The Leadership Challenge?

Is leadership a learned behavior or an innate personality trait? While there are certainly naturally charismatic individuals who are considered "born leaders", leadership is a measurable set of behaviors that can be learned and taught. This is the conclusion arrived at by researchers Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner after years of rigorous research. Starting in 1982, Kouzes and Posner set out to understand what happened when leaders performed at their personal best. They conducted hundreds of interviews and reviewed hundreds of cases studies and survey questionnaires. What emerged were five fundamental practices common to extraordinary leadership achievements:

Model the Way
Inspire a Shared Vision
Challenge the Process
Enable Others to Act
Encourage the Heart

The Leadership Challenge begins with a 360-degree assessment of thirty leadership behaviors associated with the five practices, the Leadership Practices Inventory. The results are used to identify opportunities for improving as a leader by increasing the frequency of specific behaviors. Based on over thirty years of research, the Leadership Challenge is an effective and practical tool for leadership development.

To find out more about the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership, consider taking The Leadership Challenge. Just click on the icon below for more information:

Click here to take The Leadership Challenge

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The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations

by James M. Kouzes & Barry Posner

The Leadership Challenge is a registered trademark of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. www.leadershipchallenge.com

Consulting Transitions

Free Resource Guide for Solo Consultants

For solo consultants, true wealth is discretionary time. Don't waste yours on simple tasks that can be handled by technology. This free resource guide reveals the four essential online tools I use to manage my solo consulting practice and save hours of valuable time. And the best part is - they're free!

Interested in exploring the world of consulting? My new membership site might be just the resource you need to get started. You'll have access to blogs designed to answer very specific questions, a resource library of templates and articles, the opportunity to network with peers, and discounts on coaching and training programs. Download the free guide or click on the logo above to go straight to the site.

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Archive

Welcome to the March issue of Emergency Management Solutions.

As I was finishing this newsletter, I received word of the terrorist bombings in Brussels. A good friend of mine lives there and I was glad to hear that she and her partner are safe and well. Like another friend who survived the 9/11 attack, they could easily have been at the station that was bombed because he works close by. While I am saddened by the deaths and injuries, I am glad my friend and her loved one are safe.

But I am also saddened by the reaction of some of our leaders who are calling for restrictive and authoritarian measures to "safeguard our way of life." As I have frequently pointed out, we can never guarantee complete safety; that's a fact of life. The goal of terrorism is to create the circumstances where government becomes more and more repressive until it ultimately collapses. It is our mission to keep those we serve as safe as we can but we should not do that by compromising our values and the freedoms that we cherish. It is up to us as emergency managers to maintain our perspective.

Regards,

Lucien Canton

Featured Article

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Is Your Hot Wash Just a Gripe Session?

5 Steps for Improving Exercise Evaluations

The immediate after exercise debriefing, usually referred to as a "hot wash" is an important part of the exercise evaluation process. However, it is often not used to its full potential. Many devolve into a general gripe session and the typical outcome is a laundry list of problems that never really get addressed. The reasons are painfully obvious: facilitators don't always keep the session focused and rarely use a structured process.

The goal of the debriefing is to identify systemic problems that require action by an inter-agency or inter-departmental planning team. To truly achieve this requires more work than just asking for and recording opinions. It requires involving participants in helping to identify critical issues through a facilitated decision making process. The reward of using such a process is that it simplifies the development of the after action report and a truly effective corrective action plan.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE

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If you are having trouble viewing my featured article, try clicking on the link at the top of the page. You can always find my articles in the white paper section of my blog site, Canton on Emergency Management.

Professional Development

Keep Your Plans Simple

I've never been a great fan of "doorstop" plans. You know the type: it comes in a three-inch binder or even in several volumes and contains more information than anyone will ever need. However, there's usually so much detail that you can never find the information you need when you need it. Part of the problem is that we write our plans to meet a requirement: they serve as documentation that we have followed all the appropriate planning guidance and included all the bits of esoterica that someone else things needs to be in our plan.

The real issue is that we never craft our plans from the perspective of the user. For the average user, less is more. At the time of a crisis, it's a bit late to read ten pages on how the incident command system works. What the user needs at that point is an answer to the question: what do I need to do right now?

The question is not that simple because we also have the mindset of "one plan to rule them all." That is, everything needs to be in one plan. But users of our plans may be at very different levels. A police officer assisting in an evacuation may need a checklist of specific actions. But person managing the evacuation from the emergency operations center may need information on how to coordinate with supporting jurisdictions. Different levels of operations have different needs for information.

Consider writing your plans from the perspective of the user rather than just to meet state and Federal guidance. Remember, what you plan must be executed by someone else and they won't have time to read your version of War and Peace. Keep it simple!

Professional Development Opportunities

Preparedness Summit

Dallas, Texas

April 19-22

The goal of the Preparedness Summit is to provide a venue where participants are exposed to current information, research findings, and practical tools to enhance the participants' capabilities to plan and prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters and other public health emergencies.

41st Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop
Broomfield, Colorado

July 10-13, 2016
The Annual Natural Hazards Research and Applications Workshop is designed to bring researchers and practitioners from many disciplines together for face-to-face discussions on how society deals with hazards and disasters.

Life Balance

Don't Fear Failure

One of the biggest fears we hide within ourselves is the fear of failure. We worry more about not failing than we do about succeeding. But there's a big difference between the two. Trying simply to avoid failure affects our willingness to take risks, to try new things, or to adopt new ways. It's why we sometimes meet resistance when we're trying to implement new ideas; people don't want to make changes because they fear the consequences if things don't work.

In my early days at FEMA I served as a reports officer on disasters. We set up a bank of fax machines to send out the daily report of our activities to something like 30 recipients. My colleague, Ken Chin, and I thought we'd try this new thing called "email" and send the report as an attachment. We were soundly chastised for not using the "approved" method and for sending a report that did not have the physical signature of the Federal Coordinating Officer.

We countered this rejection by continuing to email the report and also sending the required fax copy. It took several disasters before headquarters finally realized that they could cut and paste our attachment into their daily report much more easily than copying from the fax copy. That changed everything. Now, of course, we wouldn't send the report any other way.

One of the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership is "challenge the process." This presupposes a willingness to take risks and to accept the consequences of potential failure. In means being unafraid of failing and being willing to try again after you've failed. Playing it safe is not a characteristic shared by great leaders.

From the Bookshelf

Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

by David Aaronovitch

Sooner or later every emergency manager runs across someone who sees what we do as part of a conspiracy. This book attempts to answer the question of why people choose to continue to take as fact things that are not only unlikely but proved false.

In this rather lively book, author David Aaronovitch explores the origins of some of the classic conspiracy theories such as the assassination of President Kennedy, the death of Marilyn Monroe, faked moon landings, and the US government involvement in the September 11th attack. While well written, the book does bog down a little but that may be because so many of these conspiracy theories have common characteristics. Aaronovitch does a good job of pointing these out and has some interesting observations on why these theories appeal to certain segments of society.

If you believe in some of these theories, the book won't change your mind but if you don't it will provide you with facts to help counter them.

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Interested in more books on emergency management and related topics?

Emergency Management: Concepts and Strategies for Effective Programs

by Lucien G. Canton

Speaker's Corner

Need a speaker for your next conference? I offer keynotes, seminars and workshops.

Three Reasons Why I'm the Right Speaker for Your Conference

You can find more details and sample videos on my website or on my SpeakerMatch page.

Speaking Engagements

The Situation Room: A Workshop on Crisis Management

The 3rd Annual West Coast Legal Executive Forum

San Francisco CA

April 14, 2016

You may reprint and excerpt this newsletter provided that you include my copyright, the source,
the author, and "reprinted with permission."

ISSN: 2334-590X