Well, it is brave, but it’s not that new. Unified Command and the Joint Information Center (JIC) have been around in some form since the late 1960s. But it might be new for you! Many communicators spend their entire career without exposure to the JIC. Our only exposure may be in exercises or drills our organization participates in.
But when ‘big’ and the ‘bad’ happen, we will likely meet Unified Command head on. Its good to be ready for the change in key dynamics.
At its core, Unified Command is utilized to provide effective coordination between response partners in a major event. It provides a common playbook for all responders to work under. Why? It was formed to address the reality that response problems often relate to communication and management deficiencies rather than to any lack of resources or failure of tactics. When an incident grows and resources are stretched and other responders are called out, Unified Command ensures ongoing effectiveness in management and communication. While ‘communication’ can refer to interagency and cross-response sharing of information, Unified Command also enshrines the Joint Information Center (JIC) into the response structure. The JIC is where public communication happens, and it is the JIC where response communicators end up working together.
A few key rules for JIC participants:
- Check your influence at the door: You no longer work for your organization; you work for Incident Command. You no longer answer to your boss; you answer to the Incident Commander, or the PIO, or an APIO.
- Check your ego at the door: You may not have the same position or responsibility; you will be assigned a role based on your qualifications.
- Get used to new faces: Your coworkers may be strangers to you; many of them will be from other response organizations.
- Broaden your horizons: You’re no longer protecting your organization’s reputation, you’re protecting the ICS’s reputation. You may have entirely new stakeholders to care about, and you will definitely have new communication goals and objectives.
- Come to learn: This may be the only time you work in a collaborative environment, under intense pressure and with professional communicators from other types of organizations. You will learn a lot about yourself, your profession and your fellow professionals.
Communication benefits of the JIC and Unified Command
- Openness is more likely: Since the mission of Unified Command is the response, not the incident, there tends to be more openness about communicating with stakeholders. Nobody’s reputation is as stake because of the incident itself.
- Less ownership of fault: It really doesn’t matter what the cause of the incident was, or who caused it. Unified Command is the response organization, not the Responsible Party. Unified Command doesn’t have to plan on restoring public trust, it has it.
- Approval moves into UC: Stakeholder communication products aren’t held hostage by corporate attorneys. All content approval happens within Unified Command, within the frenzy and furor of a response. While Unified Command may reserve the right to edit, they share the impetus for approval and release of information.
- Greater resources: The structure and staffing of the JIC is designed around a single objective of sharing as much information as possible. The JIC expands as needed to provide adequate staff to meet communication objectives, and multiplied response organizations mean multiplied communication resources. All your organizations fact sheets, MSDS, FAQs or background information will be augmented by the same types of resources from all participating response groups. Manpower, resources, and approvals should all result in more speed.
- Faster communication: The entire Unified Command structure is built around span-of-control, designed to prevent any function from being overwhelmed. With increased resources, more speed should result.
- Blue shirts: Someone else is the target. Every Responsible Party – the people who either caused it, own it or can pay for it – should welcome formation of Unified Command and the JIC. It places other people and their organizations in front of affected stakeholders. The ‘RP’ is often reduced to regular apologies and commitment to the process, as well as the expected non-Unified Command actions. Unified Command brings people and parties who have resources and desire to bear on the problem, and free the Responsible Party to deal (outside Unified Command) with ongoing reputational and operational challenges. Unified Command is your friend!
Communication challenges in the JIC and Unified Command
- Risk: Unified Command my not be aware of the reputation risks of the response itself. While the incident isn’t their fault, a real or perceived lack of effectiveness in the response will be. There’s plenty of fault waiting to be assigned; Unified Command needs to apply diligence to both effective actions and effective communication. Public opinion and acceptance is fickle, and delays or failures in response will quickly earn their own share of outrage. Communicate quickly!
- Urgency: Sometimes the JIC doesn’t seem to ‘get it’. Lack of personalized reputation risk can lead to greater deliberation or a more deliberate pace. The JIC can easily focus on ‘getting it right’ rather than ‘getting it fast’. With no personal urgency, process and procedure can set a slower pace; approvals can slow down, deadlines can be extended, even delayed. With no external urgency, the PIO can find it difficult to get the ear of Unified Command for key decisions or approvals. Remind Unified Command that they will assume responsibility for any perceived slowness of any response activity – including public information.
- Focus: No focus on the importance of communication. All truths are NOT self evident; the JIC can actually encourage outrage by concentrating more on emphasizing its clean up efforts rather than addressing the public perception that they aren’t doing enough, soon enough. Identify public concerns and address them quickly.
- Opacity: UC doesn’t explain itself; nobody knows what Unified Command is, and Unified Command doesn’t bother to explain. To be assured that everything possible is being done, people need to know what is being done and who is doing it. The JIC tends to be good at talking about what, but not good at describing who. After all, everyone in the response understands Unified Command. But few people outside the response do. “You got some ‘splainin’ to do!” Make sure stakeholders understand Unified Command.
- I want to go home: Everybody wants to go home. That’s the real mission of Unified Command: Put it out, clean it up and go back to your day job. Responses are fiercely expensive in money, time and bodies. Everyone has ‘day jobs’ that are waiting for them, and their daily to-do lists keep growing. The challenge with this is that responses aren’t often couretous enough to wrap up in a timely manner. People report to the JIC with a short term perspective that impacts the key function of building relationships with affected stakeholders. Take more shirts than you think you’ll need.
- MQI vs. reality: You don’t always get to do what you’re best at. While every position in Unified Command pays homage to the ‘Most Qualified Individual’ (MQI) philosophy, reality often falls short. Theoretically, the JIC will be filled with people who are experts in the role they fill; the best person will fill each position regardless of their employer. But since none of us like change when we’re under stress, it is common for Incident Commanders to want ‘their’ PIO to serve in the JIC, regardless of that individual’s actual experience in comparison with other communicators sitting in the room. Its common to fill JIC positions with known people rather than a ‘stranger’ who may be more qualified. Its even possible to inadvertently encourage exclusivity that can ultimately lead to needed organizations and people not even serving in the JIC. Practice MQI.
- Habit: Doing what we did yesterday; it worked for us then! Again, people don’t like change when they’re under stress. So if our ‘day job’ entails setting up press briefings, we’ll want to set up press briefings instead of community meetings. If our ‘day job’ entails email blasts of our latest news releases, we’ll want to do this rather than answer media calls. We all fight this urge under stress, but a well-running JIC requires us all to accept new priorities, strategies and actions.
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