Marc Mullen | June 16, 2025
This post is the tenth ‘Lessons Learned’ from my experiences in several recentWorst Case Drills (WCDs). Each ‘Lessons Learned’ focuses on one specific issue revealed in the WCDs that affects communicators’ ability to communicate in a crisis. Feel free to use this information to improve your own planning or response actions. I hope it helps!
This post is the tenth ‘Lessons Learned’ from my experiences in several recentWorst Case Drills (WCDs). Each ‘Lessons Learned’ focuses on one specific issue revealed in the WCDs that affects communicators’ ability to communicate in a crisis. Feel free to use this information to improve your own planning or response actions. I hope it helps!
WCD Lessons Learned posted to date:
#1: The approval dragon lives!
#2: Don’t do your old job in your new job
#3: Effective initial actions ensure effective initial messaging
#4: Build cooperation in the JIC
#5: Can you send content to stakeholders?
#6: Adapt, adapt, adapt – adopt, adopt, adopt
#8: JIC/Liaison Cooperation is Key
#9: Promote Effective Social Media Use
A quick reminder: Effective drill performance is NOT the end goal of drills: 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!
There’s a mini Improvement Plan for each Lesson Learned, to help you ensure your readiness in an actual incident. Each action should fit into a coffee break, unless it reveals the need for more work – no guarantees then! (But contact me if you need help!)
Share the public’s Key Concerns
Unified Command is staffed by responders, experts in their roles. Their language is that of physical response: Determining the physical impact of the event, planning the best response strategies and conducing the best tactical actions for an effective response. Their measurements are of physical activity and material objects (boats, boom, birds, bodies). They aren’t in the room to worry about public perception (unless the public interferes with their activities!).
PIOs need to remember that the JIC represents the community to Unified Command, as well as representing Unified Command to the community. Only the JIC can identify and quantify public concerns, the risk to the response if they aren’t addressed, and strategies or methods to alleviate people’s concerns.
Initial communicator actions must include a process of determining the impact of an incident on the surrounding public, including the actual level of stakeholder interest and sensitivity. Communicators also need a process of rapidly determining what key concerns stakeholders will have, including the potency of each issue. These measurements can be shared with Unified Command to give them a PIO’s view of the communication environment (This is a good time to request an appropriate approval process!)
Once Unified Command recognizes the need for rapid, effective communication about the public’s concerns, the following actions can be taken by communicators.
- Determine Key Concerns to be addressed in initial and updated statements. You can use an incident issue worksheet for this process.
- Access templated FAQs/Holding Statements that best address each Key Concern (you do have these templates prepared, right?). If necessary, write one for each Key Concern. If you don’t have templates to use, deal with the most critical concerns first, based on your assessment of issue potency.
- Share Key Concerns for Press briefing and Elected briefing content, create social media posts and to answer inquiries.
- Overreact in addressing Key Concerns! They’re the most critical information to provide, so use them in every possible medium.
- Enforce UC sharing of critical information: Anything that touches the public MUST be reported to the PIO and the JIC. Many Key Concerns have to do with response facts and progress, which can often be easily addressed by the JIC – if the key response developments are shared by UC!
- In one drill, UC didn’t share information about a responder injury with the JIC.
- In another drill, UC didn’t tell the JIC about the establishment of an air quality evacuation zone.
- Both injuries and evacuations were included as within UC-established Critical Information Requirements (CIRs), yet neither was shared with the JIC.
Improvement Plan: Does your crisis communication plan include an accurate, easy to use method of determining initial key concerns, with appropriate message templates to address each one? Does it include inquiry management tools that help identify emerging issues? Do you have a report format for sharing key concerns with Unified Command? Is one of your available templates designed to quickly share critical information requirements (CIRs) that are critical to the JIC?