In my previous post ‘Camelot is a Myth‘, I identified a dozen dynamics that challenge the myth of Unified Command as a modern Camelot. These can each, or all, cause a significant level of JIC dysfunction. People who have served in a Unified Command response can share horror stories, including one or more from this dynamic dozen of disfunction.
In my last post. ‘Bakers’ Dozen I‘, I addressed solutions for the first half-dozen dysfunctions. In this post, we’ll look at solutions to protect us from the remaining seven JIC dysfunctions, so we can all return to our own brief shining moment known as Camelot – in this case Unified Command, specifically the JIC.
To pick up where we left off….
The Napoleon complex
These are the seekers of authority. They will leap in to serve in positions that give them power over people. The problem with power seekers is that their ambition has little to do with their capability. They’re neither good managers, nor necessarily proficient. They become a ‘competency black hole’, holding little competency themselves while also sucking other competency out of the room by allowing them to exist and to lead, you are encouraging JIC dysfunction.
What to do with Napoleon
Again, enforce the MQI doctrine. Look for competence, not forcefulness or greediness. We all instinctively have an aversion to power mongers. In this, trust your gut. Command and Control is a concept, not a lifestyle. Minimize the issue by identifying the culprit early. It’s harder to dislodge the wrong person from a position than it is to not put them there in the first place.
If they’re in place, complain about it. Nobody benefits from bad management and power hungry people always manage badly. Better to incur short-term discomfort than long-term pain and poor performance.
Hopefully these individuals’ reputation precedes them and key leadership averts this issue, but sometimes they work their way into positions of power anyway.
A test of any person’s commitment to the Unified Command concept is their willingness to be replaced. Test this often, Regular rotation of Leadership positions can provide relief and time to permanently rotate these people out of power.
The Phantom
Some people disappear when they should take charge. These are the opposite of Napoleons. They are usually highly capable, with great experience and wisdom, but when they’re needed the most they retreat away from responsibility or the spotlight.
Exorcising the Phantom
This one is simple. Let them go away. If a leader doesn’t lead, replace them immediately. The stress and demands of a response leave room only for the strong. Don’t beg or cajole a reluctant leader or participant. Let them leave. If they want to keep a position, enforce performance on threat of removal. Life is too short for poor leadership.
The accidental tourist
Some people just don’t get it. They avoid positions of responsibility, never stepping up into leadership positions their skills and experience indicate. If pressed into a specific role, they delay, divert or disappear. They want to be in the room, but they don’t want to actually do anything.
No vacancy!
By any definition a response is not a vacation. Participation entails hard work and long hours in a pressure-packed situation. Work conditions are stressful, food is usually bad, sleep is scarce and lodging is dicey. There is no reason to spend time in the JIC unless you’re dedicated to a greater cause than having a good time.
There’s never enough room, enough time, enough resources. Every person in the response has too much to do already, without picking up the slack of a non-performer. If the accidental tourist won’t buckle down and perform, send them home. If they’re in the room because they were chosen out of convenience or familiarity, at least request another body to replace their needed function.
If they’re leadership, an APIO or a PIO and you can’t get rid of them, ask for a deputy to be added, someone who will actually fulfill the responsibilities of the position. It’s not fair to the deputy to have to do all the work, but at least that person can manage the Section and build a performing team. It takes broad shoulders, but the end result is better for the response than struggling along with a non-performing leader.
Of course enforcing the MQI doctrine also takes care of this problem. If you won’t do the job, you’re not qualified. Be aware of politics in this instance – the fact that a non-performer holds a position of authority is a clarion signal that decisions are being made to salve or solve political problems.
The Anchormen
Unlike the Phantoms, these people seek out the limelight, not for power but for prestige. They’re the camera hogs, typically very good in front of the camera or in front of the crowd. But they’re often unconsciously unqualified, depending on their looks and skill instead of knowing the details and issues of the response.
Flack Jackets
The PIO is not star of the show. The response is. There are no JIC Emmys awarded. Egos get in the way of effective response communication, because stakeholders are more interested in facts than faces.An effective PIO will set up key leaders to give competent presentations. In the typical slightly antagonistic environment of a community caught up in your crisis, stakeholders want to believe that Unified Command is doing all the right things. They do not want to feel like they’re watching a PR flack. Smooth can easily be mistaken for schmoozing. It’s easy to lose credibility by being a gifted presenter.
The most believable person in the room is going to be the least polished and the most honest. Facts need to trump feelings. What is being shared will be more important than the loquacity of the presenter. A competent Incident Commander presenting without theatre will be more believable than a polished anchorman. A qualified subject matter expert will carry more weight and believability than a glib announcer.
Don’t promote this JIC dysfunction. Don’t allow a spokesperson to hijack the reputation of the response to burnish their own. Unified Command may be many things, but it is not a popularity contest. Aim for respect rather than admiration!
Challenge an anchorman to measure their effectiveness by what stakeholders think of responders’ presentations instead of their own. Restrict their talk-time to introductions and routing of questions. Convince them that their glory-hogging is making people dislike them.
Back to MQI: The best PIO will be the person who has regularly facilitated opportunities for others to look good in front of media or stakeholders.
Oh, and be sure to coach all presenters that their task is to present and promote information about the response, not themselves or their own reputation.
Nervous Nellies
These people are stressed, and they stress everyone around them out. They are afraid. With nervous Nellies, fear fogs good judgement; every challenge looms equally large, so they end up majoring in the minors, expending resources and energy on irrelevant issues.
Wine
Unfortunately this is not an option. Help them calm down by pointing out the support network the JIC structure builds around them. Response communication is accomplished by multiple people working together. Everyone supports everyone else (well, maybe except for the Napoleons). They need to stop, take a deep breath and appreciate overall team resources.
Help them channel their nervousness by placing them in a monitoring position instead of a production position. Let them serve as information gatherers, writers, any ‘line position’ where they can hunker down and work without worrying about deadlines, phone calls and external pressures.
Don’t put Nervous Nellies in supervisory positions, or in external facing roles. Their panic can affect performance inside the JIC and stakeholder confidence outside the JIC. Moving Nervous Nellies to safe positions probably won’t offend them, and doing so allows them to use their often prodigious capabilities effectively.
Outside Experts
People noted for their knowledge, but whose knowledge doesn’t extend to this place, or this circumstance. These people know too much about the wrong things. They end up hurting the response by weighting decisions with wrong information.
Export the expert
As a response unfolds, every external stakeholder unconsciously determines how they would do it better. Everyone knows how to seal off a spewing well-head at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone knows where they would place boom or order dispersant. Everyone knows, just knows, that hair boom would pick up all the oil off the beach.
We do this all the time; in our minds, we’d get the final out in the world series, sink the tournament winning putt on the 18th, design a car to get better mileage and give a better presentation than the one in the last press conference. And we could tell someone else how to do their job as well as we could. Humanely speaking, we hate advice but love advising.
Control the Outside Expert by exercising tight message research, drafting and delivery discipline. Don’t allow their speculation or comparisons – both are deadly. If you take away comparisons, you remove the breath from the instant expert. What they saw before or did in the past doesn’t matter when they can’t compare the present to it.
Remind them that times change so response activities have to change too. Social Media has changed how we share information. 24/7 news has changed the pace of news. Activist concerns and regulatory requirements force new procedures. Experience is fungible.
Test their expertise before mobilizing it. Be sure they’re flexible in how they think and sacrificial in how they share. In one way, an instant expert is a specialized anchorman – they really want the opportunity to pontificate and direct, but their efforts yield smoke instead of fire.
We need to check our ego at the door. The best response communication may be when nobody remembers your name, but everyone remembers what you said and what you did.
The fifth column
These people are interested only in their own reputations, at great expense to the response. A persistent hallmark of the fifth-column is an individual’s or Agency’s statement; ‘They decided on that strategy over my objections.’ This type of decision-sabotage is never taken for the good of the response, only for the good of the person or organization doing it. It’s JIC dysfunction at its most pernicious.
Take the fifth
And put them somewhere else. This behavior is antithetical to Unified Command. The best decisions are made when everyone participates in the decision process and supports the mutual outcome. The best message to concerned and wondering stakeholders is that Unified Command is called Unified Command because everyone is, well, unified.
Disloyalty or dissent kills trust in the response. There’s no room for either. If an individual or Agency can’t own response decisions, they need to leave Unified Command. It may seem worth fighting it out to agreement, but attempting this usually wastes scarce time and resources without changing the outcome. Participation in Unified Command requires adopting the basic tenet of mutual decisions and mutual actions. Without this, the fate of response reputation is at stake; your dogma will be run over by your karma.
There you have it..
A baker’s dozen of dysfunction and thirteen possible recourses.
Again, I’m sure there are more, many more issues that arise. If you have one, share it. If you have other solutions to any of these, share them too!
Questions? Did you see ideas in this post that you’ve never heard of before? Contact me!
Comments? Leave them below.