The greatest of all drills is the Worst Case Drill (WCD). A WCD simulates a worst case incident to fully test an operator’s response capability. Participating in a WCD allows oil handling operations to gain a greater understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their oil spill contingency plans, equipment, and procedures.
Since communicators usually attend only their own organizations’ WCDs, I’ve compiled a set of lessons learned from multiple WCDs that I attended into ‘Lessons Learned’ to share with current and future PIOs and JIC participants.
I’ve included a mini ‘Improvement Plan’ for each of the lessons learned. These suggestions for specific actions may help ensure readiness for an actual incident. Each Improvement Plan should fit into a coffee break, unless it reveals the need for more work – no guarantees then! (But contact me if you need help!)
I’ll be posting one Lesson Learned per week over the next several weeks. Feel free to use this information to improve your own planning or response actions. I hope they help!
A quick reminder: Effective drill performance is NOT the end goal of attendance: Effective RESPONSE performance is. Don’t fixate on ‘winning’ a drill; focus on being ready for an actual event. If a review of your drill capabilities reveals shortcomings, don’t wait for the next WCD. Fix it now!
2) Don’t do your old job in your new job
The primary WCD objective is to test response capability. Each section of the ICS structure is tested using specific injects to measure response effectiveness. Specific deliverables for the JIC are typically focused on:
- Effectiveness of the PIO in representing stakeholders to Incident Command.
- Effectiveness of the PIO in representing Incident Command to stakeholders.
- Ability to develop a coordinated, cooperative JIC with responding organizations’ communicators.
- Providing an appropriate level of counsel and content the JIC provides to Incident Command.
- Effectively preparing for, and conducting, a press conference or community meeting.
- Identification of stakeholder concerns and creation of content needed to address each one.
- Timeliness and pertinence of communication content.
- Effective social media management.
- And so on
Each WCD requires a strong focus on JIC structure and roles, including effective placement of each available communicator, typically directed by either policy or people: What do the Area Contingency Plan or Joint Information Center Manual prescribe for participating communicators. Who is available and what is their training?
Most JICs invoke some variant of ‘Most Qualified Individual’ (MQI): Who is the best qualified person for each position? This qualification is determined by both training and experience. Higher trained, more experienced communicators will be placed in the most critical positions.
How do you attain these positions? That’s the second reason WCDs are conducted: To offer people the opportunity to gain experience in a ‘practice’ setting that will increase performance in a real response.
A WCD provides a great opportunity to try out new roles and positions. We often jump at this opportunity, and we often run into the same issue: The stress level inherent in the drill causes us to fall back to actions we’re familiar with instead of practicing the actions needed in our new position. This is not unique to the JIC, drills or responses. It’s a common behavior in every facet of our lives: stress freezes us and causes us to seek and stay in our ‘safe place’, which is seldom the new role or behavior we need to succeed.
What happens? Let’s take a detour to fast food.
I worked my way through college at a pizza parlor, rising to the level of assistant manager. In that role, I was responsible for running the store on our busiest nights. One night, we were short staffed, running out of everything and there was a line of customers out the door. To ease the load on the pizza cooks I assigned the slowest worker to run the cash register, which gave more time between each order while managing customer expectations (nobody waits for their pizza until they’ve ordered it!).
We were out of sliced tomatoes, so I ran into the prep room to cut more. I was faster at slicing tomatoes than anyone else, so this was a best use of my time. Pretty good management decisions, right?
My boss didn’t think so: He walked into the prep room and asked what I was doing. I told him what and why. He disagreed. “No matter how good you are at slicing tomatoes, your job on a night like this is to run the register, meet the customers and keep your crew running right. It’s not about slicing tomatoes; it’s about being in front of your customers!”
What had I done wrong? I’d reverted back to my safety zone of being the fastest tomato slicer, and I’d stepped away from what was most important. My crew needed my leadership more than they needed my tomatoes.
The same thing can happen to us in a WCD – or a real response! When we step into a new role in the JIC, and we experience the stress of the new position, we can inadvertently revert to known, safe behavior. If we’ve stepped into the JIC Manager position, we might revert to writing a press release (Information Creation role) or answering inquiry calls (Inquiry Management role). If we’re trying out the PIO position, we may revert to making the JIC run better (JIC Manager role). We know these roles, and we’re safe in them. But we’re not meeting requirements of our new position. And we’re failing the response.
WCDs are rightfully touted as an opportunity to test knowledge and capability, work with people who will be next to you in a real event, and practice new roles in a safe environment. At the same time, the JIC function is being graded and the grade earned will be a part of the overall drill success or failure. So, it’s a good idea to maximize your preparation so you can maximize your capability and success!
Improvement Plan:
- Ambition is be rewarded, so go for it! Go ahead and try on a higher position!
- Read all the pertinent training materials. Take the available ICS courses.
- Remind yourself that your new role is going to be the only role you have. Resolve to perform only the functions inherent in your new role. Don’t go back to slicing tomatoes!
- Practice your new role before participating in the WCD. This requires a combination of study and a response walk-through. Participating in a walk-through with a mentor – an experienced communicator you work with, to give you a combination of knowledge and muscle memory that will stress-proof you for a drill or, more importantly, an actual event.
- Have your mentor conduct a mini-TTX with you. (What’s a mini-TTX? Ask me!)