Communicators&#8217; Corner

#3: Effective initial actions ensure effective initial messaging

#8: JIC/Liaison Cooperation is Key

#9: Promote Effective Social Media Use

#10: Share the public’s Key Concerns

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!)

Solve your staffing challenges

Drills are almost always staff and time constrained. The drill scenario activity occurs within a single operational period. Everybody who will work the scenario are already ‘activated’ and prepared to test their response mettle. This limited number of participants work as fast as they can in a time limited setting and go home tired and satisfied at the end of drill, almost always within a single day.

Real incidents are different: In an actual worst-case response, JIC and Liaison would be active for several weeks. JIC members will work faster, harder and longer than they ever have before. A basic axiom of packing to attend a response is ‘take extra shirts’. You will usually be responding for longer than you think!

A high level of response communication typically lasts for several weeks, followed by a longer, declining level of activity while recovery activities are completed, often followed by ongoing stakeholder engagement by the RP until tertiary communication around anniversaries, similar events, investigations, etc. is completed.

Someone has to do it!

While each of these levels of communication is different, one element remains the same: The ‘someone’ is likely to be the RP. You

Having enough communication staff available will be an issue from the first moments. It starts with an initial activation of available communicators, some responding physically to the JIC, some supporting virtually from their laptops. A hybrid JIC will inevitably be formed, dependent on email, cell phones, texts and online meetings, while a physical JIC expands through the first hours and endures as long at Unified Command is in place.

Responses eat communicators.

How many people do you really need, and where will they come from? People can only work so long before they need to step away. Inevitably a room full of communication resources starts to empty out if you’re not ready and able to get more people into the room.

A worst-case response will likely endure for multiple weeks. JIC operational periods are typically 24 hours periods. Each period typically has three shifts. Operational periods are planned for the expected duration of the response.

How do you determine staffing needs for rotating that ensure an adequate presence for each shift? Let’s do the math for a two-week mobilization:

16 JIC participants needed per operation period
- 6 persons for shift #1, ( 8:00am-4:00pm)
- 6 persons for shift #2, (4:00pm – Midnight),
- 2 persons for shift #3 (Midnight – 8:00am)
14 operation periods (two weeks), availability of 70% (5 on, 2 off, 5 on),
Total staff needed for two weeks = 16/.7 = 23

As you can see, you may need significantly more communicators than you have. Where do you find other communicators, and when? That’s your challenge for NOW. The best time to identify communicators is when you don’t need them: When you do need them you’ll be too busy to find them, consumed with immediate needs.

Where do you look?

Develop a list of communication resources that includes their contact information from:

Within your organization. Who do you have who can help?
Local communicators with experience in your industry, preferably response experience.
Regional communicator networks may be available in your area. These coalitions of communicators can often provide highly trained and competent communication professionals.
Within industry networks. Keep track of the ebb and flow of communicators in your area.

Remember federal, state and local response or regulatory agencies.

They’ll likely be responding too, bringing their own staff resources. While agencies often have day-to-day budget or mission constraints that keep them from attending drills at a high level, in an actual event they would have people there. Reach out to response agencies with jurisdiction over your area or industry, to see how they plan their own mobilization and presence they will have in an actual event. You don’t have to plan on mobilizing them, they will be doing so themselves.

How can you speed the process?

IC/UC Logistics: Download an ICS Form 213 RR template to request additional JIC staffing. The 213RR form lets you request any specific resource to use in the response. In your case, it will be used to provide communicators. It’s not a difficult form to fill out, but it does take time and attention, neither of which you will have if you wait until an incident to fill it out.
ICS 213 RR Forms are available online. Download one and see how far you get into filling it out. You’ll be responsible to fill out sections 1-9. Focus on Sections 4 and 6. There’s an entire section of the response called Logistics. They can help you fill it your 213RR out, but they can’t help you with sections 4 and 6.

Improvement Plan:

Identify individuals within your organization who could support the JIC. Look at their competencies, not their experience or training. Do you have a “JIC Positions and Comparable Skills Needed” document to help you determine where people can fit in a JIC?
Network with known response agency PIOs. Don’t make your first response your first meeting with them! Join them at regional exercises when possible.
Find local drills and ask organizers if you can attend them as an observer, or as a participant. Your state Ecology agency may have a listing of upcoming regulatorily required exercises. As an example, here’s Washington State Department of Ecology’s Northwest Area Committee Exercise Schedule.
Join known PIO networks, particularly those where you have operations. Attend meetings with them when they’re held!
Train, train train – both yourself and the people you identify in your organization. Local communication consultants will be happy to provide training sessions and custom drills to provide basic knowledge and hands-on experience for your team.
Note that FEMA provides extensive online training courses that allow you and your team to gain knowledge now, rather than landing in a challenging response without being prepared.

Don’t wait until you need more help to identify your resources! It’s better to recruit and screen help before you need it.

Making the best out of the Worst #10

Marc Mullen | July 29, 2025

Marc Mullen | June 16, 2025

WCD Lessons Learned posted to date:

#3: Effective initial actions ensure effective initial messaging

#8: JIC/Liaison Cooperation is Key

#9: Promote Effective Social Media Use

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?

Making the Best out of the Worst #9

Marc Mullen | June 16, 2025

This post is the ninth ‘Lessons Learned’ from my experiences in several Worst Case Drills (WCDs) held in 2024. 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:

#3: Effective initial actions ensure effective initial messaging

#8: JIC/Liaison Cooperation is Key

Promote Effective Social Media Use

A key objective of most WCDs is demonstrating an ability to manage the message on social media. In well staffed exercises, a member or members of the JIC are assigned the role of responding to social media injects, using posted content from the JIC. Obviously this role is limited by available JIC staff. In most exercises the Simulation Cell (SIM Cell, or Truth) ensures that at least the JIC receives a representative impression of the challenge in effectively utilizing social media.

In a WCD, directions to the people performing this task are pretty straightforward: Read each inject, answer if possible/directed, track the sentiment and report it for additional content generation. If published releases or FAQs are available to respond, do so. It’s a minimalist approach, but remember that WCDs are short-term and short-staffed. Effective social media management is its own industry, for good reason.

A reality of some WCDs, heard from more than one SOSC: An SOSC-run JIC may not focus on extensive social media use on day 1. They often focus on first-day basics of providing response initial information through traditional media channels first, and ensuring that Unified Command and the JIC function smoothly together. This consideration makes sense when focused on a WCD, evaluating whether the PIO and JIC Manager can effectively work together to assimilate different people and organizations into the JIC, satisfy the initial demand for information and build a sustainable response social media process.

The problem: It looks completely different in an actual response. No need for gory details, but the longer you wait to engage with persons of interest on social media, the more ground you’re giving to the horde. You’re letting people who care about their own interest or bias more than the affected community, provide their own (twisted, slanted, biased, inaccurate, insert adjective of choice here) information.

When you don’t engage directly with people you care about, or who care about you, they’re likely going to receive bad information from these (insert adjective) sources of information. They’re trying to make sense of what happened and what you’re doing about it, but you’re leaving them in the hands of the horde. Instead of providing good information in a format that works on their platform of choice, you’re leaving them to sort through bad information. Your failure to provide important information to interested people can result in long term damage to both your relationships and reputation.

The Solution: Social media management requires rapid information flow. To prevent the disappearing hours between incident occurrence and JIC social media initiatives, the RP simply must lead in ‘pre-JIC’ social media use; it’s your reputation and interested people are your friends!

Improvement Plan: Can you answer the following questions?

Who manages your organization’s social media? Are they available for responses? Are their services scalable to handle a high level of activity? Are they familiar with Incident Command, and have they attended a WCD?
What content do they need? Will they receive all approved content from beginning of the response (pre-JIC) so they can use it as needed? Do they have permission to use all approved content as needed, and the ability parse out information to meet specific needs?
What content do you have? If you’ve conducted an incident assessment which identifies key stakeholder concerns, the accompanying FAQs/Key Messages can serve as initial social media content.
Are you recycling good content? The initial concern-specific FAQs/Key Messages can become introductory posts to expanded content addressing each concern. Initial posts can encourage readers to watch for subsequent posts.
Who runs your organization’s website and social media channels? Are they able to support a high level of posting activity? Are they familiar with Incident Command, and have they attended a WCD? Can they coordinate activities with JIC Social Media initiatives when launched (day 2)?
Have you established a reporting process? Is there coordination between your Web and social media personnel and the JIC to ensure ongoing determination of key issues, common messaging and coordination of schedules?
Can you use content freely? Effective social media use may require a different (faster and looser) approval process to ensure availability of appropriate social media content in a timely manner. The regular measured pace of content approval isn’t built to sustain the fast pace of dialogue on social media accounts.
Inventory, inventory, inventory. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

Interested? Want more information? Contact me!

On a related note: Does your Crisis Communication Plan provide guidance and tools like this that are needed for effective stakeholder communication in a crisis? Do you worry or wonder about its capability and currency? Here’s how you can be sure:

Ensure coordination between plans. Review both Crisis Communication Plan and Emergency Response Plan to be sure they play well together.
Assess your Crisis Communication Plan’s capability. I use 30 specific measurements.
Recommend Plan edits. Draft the edits needed in Plan or policy language.
Implement Plan edits. Add or edit content needed to maximize Plan effectiveness.
Enjoy a newfound peace of mind. Both you and your plans are ready for the worst!

I’m happy to work with you to ensure your success! Here are two steps you can take right now:

Contact me NOW! The first person to contact me to mention this post will receive a credit for 8 hours of my Plan review services.

Making the Best out of the Worst #8

Marc Mullen | June 3, 2025

This post is the eighth ‘Lessons Learned’ from my experiences in several Worst Case Drills (WCDs) held in 2024. 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:

#3: Effective initial actions ensure effective initial messaging

JIC/Liaison Cooperation is Key

I walked into one Worst Case Drill anticipating another opportunity to work with the State-On-Scene Coordinator’s communication staff in the JIC. I was ready to represent the RP to support response communication with this team of trained professionals. I settled down at the table dedicated to JIC and Liaison and waited for the rest of the team to arrive. And waited… and waited. Crickets. Due to cancellations and conflicting schedules, I was the default PIO… and the default JIC. The WCD requirements for the JIC remained, now the responsibility of a JIC of one person: Me.

Fortunately, I’d spent the early hours of the response scenario creating an RP-specific initial communication assessment, initial statement and key FAQs, so we already had some response information in front of stakeholders. But the drill-specific content needs were daunting.

What do you do when it’s only you? How does one person gather response information for incident updates, answer telephone calls, create key messaging and prepare for a press briefing? You don’t. You can’t.

Fortunately, I had a superpower with me. No capes, tights or face masks: My superpower was the two SOSC staff serving as Liaison Officer. The NWACP JIC Manual includes the following key guidance for the JIC:

“Coordination with the Liaison Officer: Coordination with the Liaison Officer is an important responsibility of JIC personnel. A Liaison Officer is appointed by and reports to the Unified Command. The Liaison Officer is the point of contact for federal, state, tribal, and local agency representatives and elected officials with a vested interest in the response. Calls received by the hotline may be directed to the Liaison Officer. The Liaison Officer coordinates all calls from public and private entities helping or requesting information. The PIO is responsible for ensuring that the Liaison Officer’s messages are consistent with those from the JIC.” (page 9202-19)

This guidance wasn’t theory that day, it was reality! We split up responsibilities, supported one another and met WCD expectations. A single strand of communication became a three-fold cord, capable of providing response information to concerned stakeholders and providing key communication context to Unified Command. Cooperation between JIC and Liaison was a critical help in short staffing. Shared preparation for both Elected Officials Briefing and Press Briefing minimized time requirements and maximized Unified Command preparedness.

Our work together that day proved the value of maintaining the highest possible level of coordination. In an actual event this would have had even greater impact. In that WCD we participants got to see the value of our coordination. In an actual event, this three-fold cord would have maintained the JIC mission of effectively informing and assuring a concerned public about their own safety and enhancing public understanding and acceptance of response actions.

Improvement Plan: As in ‘Making the Best out of the Worst #4‘, reach out to ‘your’ PIOs at the Federal, State, Tribal and Local organizations who will serve in a Unified Command in ‘your’ incident. Ask the PIOs you meet with to introduce you to their lead LNO. Same routine: Contact that person and get their email address and cell phone number. Schedule a meeting with them to walk through the initial information flow in a response. Know how you’ll work together before you have to!

Interested? Want more information? Contact me!

Ensure coordination between plans. Review both Crisis Communication Plan and Emergency Response Plan to be sure they play well together.
Assess your Crisis Communication Plan’s capability. I use 30 specific measurements.
Recommend Plan edits. Draft the edits needed in Plan or policy language.
Implement Plan edits. Add or edit content needed to maximize Plan effectiveness.
Enjoy a newfound peace of mind. Both you and your plans are ready for the worst!

I’m happy to work with you to ensure your success! Here are two steps you can take right now:

Contact me NOW! The first person to contact me to mention this post will receive a credit for 8 hours of my Plan review services.

Making the Best out of the Worst #7

Marc Mullen | March 27, 2025

This post is the seventh ‘Lessons Learned’ from my experiences in several Worst Case Drills (WCDs) held in 2024. 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:

#3: Effective initial actions ensure effective initial messaging