Can you identify this photo? A schematic of your Unified Command News Release approval process? No, though it sometimes feels like it!
It’s a photo of exhaust headers from a performance car, carefully designed to maximize the flow of exhaust out of the car’s engine. A properly tuned exhaust can actually help “supercharge” an engine by harnessing the wave action in the exhaust. When an engine’s exhaust valve opens, the high pressure in the cylinder following combustion creates a pressure ‘wave’ that travels down the exhaust primary tube. Effective design ensures that that pressure wave is properly directed to actually increase engine efficiency. This process is known as exhaust scavenging. The trick is to properly time the waves.
Exhaust headers aren’t a topic that keeps us up at night, nor are they the pressing issue of our day. But they are critically important to an engine’s efficiency. When auto manufacturers are looking for every additional mile per gallon, or mile per hour, they include well designed headers in their quest. Plus, there are those times when we’re glad our car has some extra ‘oomph’ to merge safely onto a busy freeway.
While communicators don’t have to know how to ensure smooth exhaust flow for our vehicles, we should know how to ensure the efficiency of our communication flow. There will be times when a maximized communication flow becomes critically important. Particularly in a crisis situation, you’ll be glad your communication process can have its own extra ‘oomph’!
How do you make sure your communication efforts in a crisis will be effective? You have to perform your own version of ‘timing the waves’, looking for the smoothest possible workflow for your critically important function of sharing response information with a concerned public.
Where do you start?
Start with good design: A process and structure for creating and sharing response information that ensures a smooth flow of information. In the world of incident command or unified command, that process and structure is encapsulated in the Joint Information System (JIS) and Joint Information Center (JIC). The JIS and the JIC provide a structure and workflow tested over decades of actual use in scores of incident responses.
Make sure you know how to use it: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provides multiple independent study training courses for response communicators, including comprehensive training in JIS and JIC usage. Most of them are online and free, so take advantage of this valuable resource.
Make sure your information flow functions effectively: There are impediments to effective response communication flow ‘built into’ many plans and processes. As communicators we need to look for these ‘traps’ that slow down effective response communication.
Identify and correct barriers to good information flow: One of the biggest impediments in engine performance is inefficiency that should have been identified and corrected. It’s an even bigger impediment to response communication. Many of these impediments are hiding in plain sight in our current response plans and communication plans. There’s an obvious reason for this: Most planners aren’t communicators, and most communicators aren’t planners. So effective communication isn’t ensured by a well written response plan, it isn’t supported by a rapid response guide for communicators, and it isn’t proven through targeted training and equipping of communicators.
How do you do this?
Read your organization’s emergency response plans: They tell you what physical actions will be taken, by whom and how. They also ensure effective initial notifications, often required by law. They’re your guarantee that an effective response will be conducted, and their capability is regularly tested in tabletops, drills or exercises.
They let leadership sleep at night.… unless leaders are concerned with effective stakeholder communication. While carefully written, tested and implemented emergency response plans ensure an effective physical response, they don’t ensure effective public communications. It’s up to communicators to read the response plan to know what communication issues should be addressed in it or with it.
An example: One key Response Plan function that communicators need to be aware of is the Initial Notification process. This is a list of notifications that must be performed at the onset of an incident by responders requiring immediate contacting of multiple pre-identified public or private entities: Response agencies, elected officials, critical infrastructure, vulnerable populations, regulators and other key public people or entities. Most of these notifications will result in the recipients taking public actions or sharing information with their stakeholders. Do you as a response communicator know who these contacts are, when they will be notified and what will be said to them? Your initial public message is being shaped, timed and delivered, but not by you. You need to know what information is being shared, and whom it is being shared with, so you can plan your communication around it.
Get to the top! But it can be worse: Some notification lists won’t even include you as an individual to be notified – or you’ll be listed last, after all the ‘important’ calls are made. Some calls are assigned to an internal call out list, and you may not be near the top of that list either.
Public awareness and concern about an incident escalates much more rapidly than any physical response actions can, so communication with your stakeholders is the first and most effective response action your organization can take. As the creator of this information you need to be notified immediately, as a primary resource and not as an afterthought. If you’re not one of the first people notified, your messaging is in trouble and your organization’s reputation is too. Get to the top of the list!
Ideally a communicator already holds a corporate leadership position, but that’s another post….
Where’s your rapid response guide? Can you develop public messages quickly and accurately from the information you’ll be provided when you are called about the incident? Do you have a formalized review and approval initial information flow that will quickly provide response information to affected (and notified) stakeholders? Has it been tested? (easier to do than you may think)
A good rapid response guide includes content that addresses the following questions:
- How bad is it? Incident evaluation tools that help you communicate incident severity from a communication perspective to response leadership, and helps communicators plan and conduct communication activities.
- What can you say? Statement templates and key messages that can be used as rapidly as possible.
- Who has to approve content? An effective approval process that ensures rapic publication of content
- Who do you share information with? Key stakeholder lists and guidance for accessing dissemination platforms
- Who can help? A list of response communicators who can help you as the inicdent grows, including mobilization, capability assessment and effective placement within a response communication structure.
- How do you engage? Guidance for effective inquiry management with concerned stakeholders.
Just as it’s nice to know that your car has a little extra oomph to merge onto a busy freeway, it’s nice to know your response communication can happen as quickly and effectively as possible. Does it?
If you aren’t sure, contact me. I can help!