There are two arenas where we must work on becoming ‘Us’ – one arena for efficiency, the other arena for impact. First, for efficiency, becoming ‘Us’ inside Unified Command, with your response partners. Then, for impact, becoming ‘Us’ outside Unified Command, in the community as you communicate with affected stakeholders.
Go home
A key aspect of every high performing team is a shared goal. The shared goal of both the Joint Information Center and Unified Command can be summed up in two words: Go Home.
This is an admirable goal, both for brevity and clarity:
- Brevity, because ‘go home’ is an easy goal to relate to. In a response, everyone is ‘away’, from home, from familiar faces, from their ‘day job’. Going home is a powerful lure.
- Clarity, because understanding the goal leads to very focused decisions and actions. Responders eagerly consider every possible action and embrace the ones with the greatest potential of success. After all, the goal of going home will be accomplished faster when the best strategies and practices are implemented.
External dissonance
Affected stakeholders don’t see it exactly the same way:
- They will be very happy with effective strategies and practices that lead to a successful response. The faster the response is over, the sooner their lives can return to normal, with a lower likelihood of enduring damage. The urgency of effort responders exert in order to ‘go home’ will also be seen as urgency of effort to minimize duration and damage. Stakeholders will appreciate this.
- They will not appreciate any indication that responders are eager to leave. Any expressed desire to ‘go home’ will be seen as betrayal. The response actions are the only protection stakeholders recognize against the insult and injury of the incident that has occurred. All the goodwill gained by aggressive response will be squandered by an early departure, or hint of same.
Your team is focused on going home, but this goal doesn’t play well with affected stakeholders. It actually bothers them, and makes them doubt your sincerity. How do you address the dissonance between maintaining team focus (of going home) and assuring external stakeholders (of being there for them)? How do you maintain high performance internally while building trust externally?
Becoming ‘Us’
There are two arenas where ‘Them’ must become ‘Us’; one arena for efficiency, the other arena for impact. We’ve already addressed the first topic; becoming ‘Us’ inside Unified Command, in an earlier post. We addressed that topic to ensure the efficiency of Joint Information Center efforts.
Now we need to zero in on impact. How do you impact the external stakeholders you’re reaching out to; the people impacted by the incident? They’re looking for information they can trust, as they try to decide what to do next. Their decision of what to do next will impact your response, for better for worse, much worse.
How will Unified Command relate with external stakeholders? Again, this is the role of the Joint Information Center; in your efficiency, you now have to ensure impact. You have to become ‘Us’ to external stakeholders so they can trust and accept the response.
Impact
Impact is a combination of trust and effectiveness.
Response activities tend to be very effective, at least as effective as possible. Unified Command culture and ethos assures this. The physical response is usually good, even excellent, but that’s only half of the equation: The impact of successful actions is dependent on the trust of affected individuals.
In any response, we’re asking a lot of external stakeholders. They’re under stress, pulled this way and that by emotions, misinformation, biases, ignorance and suspicion. It is very difficult to provide comprehension to individuals under stress who don’t have deep knowledge of the circumstances they are facing. How do you help them understand, and accept? By engaging with them at a personal and persistent level; personal so they can relate to a person instead of an organization, persistent to hear information often enough to finally understand and accept it. When you engage personally and persistently, you build trust. Trust combined with effectiveness yields impact.
And you need this impact.
Personal and persistent
How do you develop personal and persistent communication? How do you become ‘Us’ to your stakeholders?
Stick around: All incidents start locally and end locally. The response may escalate to include organizations and agencies from outside the area, but their objective is to leave as quickly as possible. Sooner rather than later, all the ‘out of towners’ will head for home, leaving the locals behind, worried about everyone leaving.
The best thing the JIC can do is to clearly identify participants who will be there for the long haul. As much as possible, use these people in public meetings and news conferences so stakeholders recognize their names and presence. This may mean sparing them from some JIC work shifts to retain their availability at the recovery end of the incident.
If you represent the Responsible Party (RP), plan on a long shift on-location. As Unified Command stands down, the RP communicators should be the last people out the door, likely well after the JIC is disbanded. The RP’s long-term capability to operate will be greatly benefitted from a long engagement during the recovery process. There is a tendency to devolve response presence to a series of web pages located on the RP’s or local Agencies’ websites. This isn’t enough for a heavily impacted public; you need to keep a person on the ground.
How long? That decision is different in each response. A safe plan is to consider having a person on-location until the first anniversary of the event. This may be longer than needed, but it is good for planning purposes. If the impacted facility needs repairs or is in limited production, the end of repairs or reopening of the facility can mark end dates as well. Other measurement could be counts of web visits, inquiries submitted, social media mentions, or media calls for interviews. Just don’t plan on leaving town when the rest of Unified Command does.
Note that sometimes Unified Command itself has a hard time shutting down, often due to local sensitivities about the adequacy of the response or thoroughness of the recovery plans. Having known, recognized and committed Agency and Corporate spokespersons remaining may help the community turn loose of the whole of Unified Command.
Engage: Whether embroiled in the initial response, planning and entering a recovery process or minding the farm for a time after stand-down, don’t sit in a rented office or at a desk at the local EOC. The purpose of a person left behind is that they can be seen and heard, even touched. They’re real.
Engagement requires personal contact, so get out to available forums. Hit the service club circuit. Join response agencies in open houses to review response and share lessons learned. Offer Op-Eds to the local print media. Visit association meetings, especially those whose members were affected by the incident. Volunteer for the dunk tank at the local fair! Shop. Eat. Worship. Become as involved in the community as you can.
While you’re at it, advertise your presence. Wear a polo shirt with your Agency/Organization logo. Advertise in athletic programs or local media. Let people SEE that you’re still around.
People really don’t expect any commitment out of you or your organization; they’ve been shown too many times that people don’t care, commitment isn’t corporate, and that promises are broken.
Surprise them.
Care: Get involved in people’s lives. Find out what is happening in the community and take part in it. Is Habitat for Humanity building a house? Is the local Women’s Shelter conducting a fun run? Go. Do.
Encourage people to share their stories about the incident and their response to it. Don’t be afraid to be sympathetic. Offer updates on the recovery process. Talk in elevators! (Yeah, right.)
Talk to people at the grocery store, restaurants, stores. Find out what concerns them and address the issues. If you’re representing the RP, utilize Community Investment resources, Sustainability Report resources and local employee involvement.
Reach into people’s lives.
To conclude
In fundraising, there is an adage; ‘people give to people’. If you want someone to care and connect, humanize your message. We all need a human connection to trust something not human. An Agency or a corporation won’t be readily trusted, but person from an agency or corporation will be.
Work at Becoming ‘Us’.