Communicators’ Corner

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 18^th, 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.

In my last post, I identified  ‘dynamic dozen of dysfunctions’ that challenge an effective Unified Command. There are likely many more such dysfunctions that seasoned responders can recognize and react to.  In this post, we’ll look at solutions to save us from the dynamic dozen of dysfunction and return us to the wonder and glory of our one brief shining moment known as Camelot – in this case Unified Command, specifically the JIC.

First, a baker’s bonus; another common dynamic, to bring us to a baker’s dozen of dysfunction:

The Hoarder (My precious, my precious…)

There’s one in every crowd; the person who knows more than they say. They are the keeper of secrets, the collaborator, the hoarder. More than anything else, they like to know something nobody else knows, holding information as leverage. This can be benign, simply meeting the holder’s need for superiority or safety, or it can be malignant, used as leverage to control someone’s actions by threat of revelation. In a response, the purpose is almost always benign as the Hoarder withholds one more fact to use in case they need it, like a last bullet. But in performance it is almost always malignant, a deliberate withholding of important response information from stakeholders who could really use it.

What do you do with a Hoarder?
Remind the Hoarder of the response reputation equation:

Up-to-date information x Accurate information = Reputation.

Hoarding information breaks this equation, by turning ‘up-to-date’ to zero, which then turns the reputation sum into zero as well. If the JIC (the entity responsible for stakeholder information) doesn’t share information it has with stakeholders, where do they find a trusted source? Erosion of trust leads directly to erosion of reputation. Withholding information only hurts response communication.

Furthermore, old facts lose their currency rapidly. The residual value of withheld information is always lower, as facts in a fluid situation depreciate faster than a Yugo. If you’re a PIO or an APIO, reinforce rapid sharing of information as both process, practice and ideal. If you are a Hoarder and you can’t stop, best to step aside. You can’t cast vision you don’t have. Don’t damage public trust for the small gain of privileged knowledge.

Now, what about the rest of the dynamic dozen of dysfunction? Below find brief descriptions of each, with accompanying suggestions to over come it. For full descriptions, refer to my original post ‘Camelot is a Myth’.

The habitual lair

The trap we all fall into when we bring old habits into a new structure. Our habits are our reality. Particularly in stress, everybody does what she or he was doing yesterday. This happens across Unified Command, not just the JIC. So our response decisions are often made based on yesterday’s realities, not today’s.

What do you do with the habitual lair?
It takes conscious awareness and effort to change habitual behavior. Start by reminding yourself and others that we don’t DO Unified Command every day, and that Unified Command is NOT our day job. Unified Command is a different structure that requires different thought and action.

NEWS FLASH: Any crisis response requires different actions. Even if you’re responding alone to an issue or incident, you still need to perform differently than you did yesterday. You need to understand this, then you need to define the differences:

• Response communication is unplanned, so you can’t use ‘prep time’ like you can with a planned release; doing so will only exacerbate stakeholders’ impatience.
• Response communication is eagerly anticipated by stakeholders hungry for information. You don’t need to find them, they’ve already found you.
• Response information is specific to the response, you can’t clutter it up with self-serving content.
• Response communication is proactive; you have to identify stakeholder information needs and actively provide content that meets them.
• Stakeholders are impatient and they are already tired of waiting for content. They’re likely leaning negative and won’t appreciate any delay in providing key facts.

In sum, the pace is different, the product is different and expectations are different; performance had better be different too.

Help yourself adapt by developing the discipline of creating a Response Communication Plan, a process of identifying specific stakeholders, issues, products and processes needed to communicate effectively in the specific incident/issue you’re facing. This is NOT a Crisis Communication Plan – it is a specific plan for a specific response. Creating and using this plan should break you out of your habitual lair, as you identify, propose and implement incident-specific product and actions needed.

Paralysis of analysis

There is never enough information. This symptom dramatically affects the Joint Information Center. While we all accept the fact that truth comes after the incident is over, we still have a hard time deciding when we have enough information to share. So we delay our decisions until the information train has left the station.

What do you do with paralysis of analysis?
Change your definition of facts: In any response, the facts constantly change. We never have a concrete, final, unchangeable number. We never have exact identification of every event.

We do have actions taken by Unified Command. As an example, a report of an oiled bird may or may not be accurate, but assigning Wildlife Section to send a team out to verify the report. Our fact is not an oiled bird, it is the disposition of a team to determine if a bird is oiled. After they check, you might have a fact that an oiled bird has been spotted and recovered, so you can communicate that, then. Right now you can report on the team actions.

Unified Command takes many actions based on reports of actual status. Response assets are ordered, products are staged and resources are deployed. By the time they get where they were deployed, they may not be necessary – the reports or projections may have been wrong. Or they may be inadequate because the situation has worsened. Neither negates the truth that they were deployed on the basis of changing information. The information changes, the actions remain. Communicate actions with the provision response figures change constantly. Use (and mean) the magic phrase ‘as of this time’, and add the proviso that ‘information changes constantly; we will provide updated information as quickly as we can confirm it.

Then remember that the Response Truth is: Anything Unified Command dedicates response assets or actions to is truth.

Fog of war – Confusion in conflict.

The fog of war isn’t just lack of clear information, it’s also lack of coordinated effort. In the early stages of a response everything is in flux. Facts are flexible, both in existence and in duration; what is accurate right now may be completely wrong in a few minutes.

What to do with the fog of war?

See ‘Paralysis of analysis’, above. Remember that ‘what’ doesn’t just refer to ‘what happened’ or ‘what is the volume’ or ‘how many birds?’. It is also and most importantly ‘what we are doing’. This is the only truth you really know. External information will ebb and flow in its accuracy. Response activities are concrete, prescribed and monitored. Resources are assigned, deployed and used as directed. And it is all visible and quantifiable. And it is all justified under the Unified Command mantra of ‘the best people making the best decisions for the best outcome’. So report on what Unified Command is doing and why you are doing it.

The devil we know

We all want to work with people we’re familiar with, regardless of their relative competency. So an Incident Commander makes ‘their’ PIO the response PIO, even if there are more qualified people in the room. APIOs place responders they know in key positions because they have worked with them before, not because they’re the best person.

What do we do with the devil we know?

Remember the MQI doctrine. Enforce it. In the short, medium and long run, the JIC will be best served with the best person in each position. You may not know each other today, but in a few days you’ll know each other very well. Familiarity grows, competency doesn’t.

Beyond competency, placing familiar people in related positions can reduce the quality of decision making. When everyone works the same they often think the same, missing out on better decisions or more varied content simply because in their sameness, they just don’t think from different perspectives. Welcome a variety of personalities and experiences to the JIC; decisions and product will be better for it.

The devil we don’t know

Assimilation of multiple persons from multiple organizations into a single response structure is a challenge. We have to figure out how to share information, what level of expertise each person has. We have to learn how to talk to each other. We have to merge multiple personalities, practices and preferences into a cohesive team.

What to do with the devil we don’t know

Get familiar with the people you’ll be working with BEFORE a response. This isn’t globally possible, but it is locally and regionally achievable. Want to be familiar with the people you’ll work with in a response? Attend exercises regularly and you’ll get to know many of the key players from other response organizations. Participate in available regional conferences. Become a member of the appropriate RRTs and join any applicable task forces. Spread these assignments across your entire comms team.

At a response, be transparent about your capabilities. Share them in the position selection process. Introduce yourself around. Spend break time with other JIC members. Cooperate. Trust that the MQI doctrine is working and that people you’re serving with are competent. Assume that your will learn from them.

Be flexible; people may do things differently than you would. They may think and write differently. They might even use a Mac! Remember that your own lizard brain is running and making you less tolerant of differences. Recall that all differences are threats when you’re under stress. Counter this tendency with rational thought.

More to come…

That’s six out of 13 dynamics of disfunction, and more than enough words for one post. Feel free to digest these, then whet your appetite for the rest in my next post.

Questions? Did you see ideas in this post that you’ve never heard of before? Contact me!

Comments?  Leave them below.

“Don’t let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment
That was known as Camelot!”

In a response, the Unified Command ideal is the same as the Camelot ideal; heroes come together to save the kingdom, chivalry and courage reign, decisions are wise and actions are just.

No myth – Unified Command truly is the best solution to large, complex incidents. It brings the best of the best together, and places each resource in a command/control structure designed to accommodate any scale of response planning, actions and personnel. It is the most expandable command structure extant, the most efficient way to mobilize and manage response resources and the greatest hope for a response structure that fully utilizes every resource.

It is in short, ideal, and the ideal for response effectiveness.

But it is also a myth, an ever-elusive ideal. Response realities attack the ideal. As Unified Command forms and responds, the reality doesn’t always, or even usually, match the ideal of Unified Command. It’s not perfect. Nothing created by human beings can be. It is subject to failure and inefficiency. Reality often falls short of the ideal.

The response dynamic dozen

What are some of the dynamics that can create this gap between ideal and real?  There are many, each of which seasoned responders can recognize and react to. People who have served in a Unified Command response can share horror stories, including one or more of the following, a dynamic dozen of disfunction:

• The habitual lair: The trap we all fall into when we bring old habits into a new structure. Our habits are our reality. Everybody does what she or he was doing yesterday, across Unified Command, not just the JIC. So our response decisions are often made based on yesterday’s realities, not todays. We end up making good decisions for the last event, not for this one.
• Paralysis of analysis: There is never enough information. This symptom dramatically affects the Joint Information Center, particularly one afflicted with a slow approval process. In the quest for ‘just a bit more information’, response updates are delayed, revised, delayed and finally released too late. While we all accept the fact that ‘truth comes after the incident is over’, we still have a hard time deciding when we have enough information to share. So we delay our decisions until the information train has left the station. We can’t decide when enough information is enough.
• Fog of war: Confusion in conflict. The fog of war isn’t just lack of clear information, it’s also lack of coordinated effort. In the early stages of a response everything is in flux. Not only do we not know many details of what happened, we don’t know who is doing what, or where. Rapid and large response actions always lead to confusion while all the moving parts settle into place. Facts are flexible, both in existence and in duration; hat is accurate right now may be completely wrong in a few minutes.
• The devil we know: We all want to work with people we’re familiar with, regardless of their relative competency. This dynamic is remarkably common, for good reason; we’re all under stress, unconsciously reverting to our lizard brain. We can’t adapt to new things at this point, seeking instead the comfort of the familiar. This includes familiar people. So an Incident Commander makes ‘their’ PIO the response PIO, even if there are more qualified people in the room. APIOs place responders they know in key positions because they have worked with them before, not because they’re the best person.
• The devil we don’t know: From the many, one. Assimilation of multiple persons from multiple organizations into a single response structure is a challenge. All of Unified Command is built to achieve this singular task, but it is still difficult. Even if we are able to overcome our lizard brain, we still have to assimilate; everything takes time, when we have so little time. We need to learn phone numbers, email addresses, names. We have to figure out how to share information, what level of expertise each person has. We have to learn how to talk to each other. We have to merge multiple personalities, practices and preferences into a cohesive team.
• The Napoleon complex: Some people just love power. These are the seekers of authority. They live for it and will leap in to serve in positions that give them power over people. By the way, this is a stress reaction as well: If you deal with power needs every day, your needs will be supercharged under response stress. The problem with power seekers is that their ambition has little to do with their capability. They’re not good managers, nor are they necessarily good at what they do. So they become a ‘competency black hole’, having little competency themselves while also sucking other competency out of the room.
• The Phantom: Other 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. They don’t offer their skills, counsel or support; they fade away.
• The accidental tourist: Some people just don’t get it. They show up but don’t belt up. When the going gets tough, they get going, out the door. These are the people who arrive in the JIC, survey the scene, and figure out a way to disappear. 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. These are the people who will send a text or email saying they’ve been called back to their own office because of an unspecified crisis. They want to be in the room, but they don’t want to actually do anything.
• The Anchormen: People who promote themselves, but don’t add to the capability of the team. Unlike the Phantoms, these people seek out the limelight, not for power but for prestige. These are speech teachers who will give students’ speeches for them, out of the joy of hearing their own voice. They’re the camera hogs, typically really, really good in front of the camera or in front of the crowd. But they’re often unconsciously unqualified, depending on their looks and comfort instead of knowing the details and issues of the response. They’re caught in their own habitual lair, not recognizing that what worked for them in peacetime is not going to work for them today.
• Nervous Nellies: These people are stressed, and they can’t get hold of themselves. So they stress everyone around them out. They are afraid. Fear in itself isn’t a bad thing when it focuses the mind on what is most important, but with nervous Nellies, fear fogs good judgement. In their fear, every challenge looms equally large, so they end up majoring in the minors, expending resources and energy on irrelevant issues. Where courage concentrates, fear fuddles.
• 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 thing; wrong circumstances, wrong impacts, wrong stakeholders. They end up hurting the response by weighing decisions with wrong information.
• The fifth column: People interested only in their own reputations, at great expense to the response. They may show up, but the often fail to put up. At the end of the day they are going to protect themselves. A persistent hallmark of the fifth-column is an individual’s or Agency’s statement; ‘They decided on that action over my objections.’ Another hallmark is when a response partner keeps their own meeting space, refusing or resisting efforts at integration. This action is never taken for the good of the response, only for the good of the organization doing it.

Every communicator, every responder, has a list of this type. Any one of these dynamics impacts the effectiveness of Unified Command; how does it endure multiples? With so many impediments, how does Unified Command ever succeed?

Unified Command is a wonderful thing

First, the structure was built out of actual responses, and many of these dynamics reared their heads in those responses. Remember the adage; “If you want to know how to fight a fire, ask someone who smells like smoke.” Unified Command was invented by people who smelled like smoke – literally. The structure, policies and practices of Unified Command provide much of the solution. The experience and accumulated wisdom of past response veterans provides additional insight.

This is why Unified Command can be compared to the fictional Camelot. While not perfect, it is the closest we can get. There are solutions! Preparation is the process of identifying problems and planning procedures to prevent them, Future posts will outline some of the solutions to these dynamics.

But first, what other additions to the dynamic dozen do YOU have? Share them by commenting on this post, and we’ll build a larger list to take on!

Questions? Did you see ideas in this post that you’ve never heard of before? Contact me!

Comments?  Leave them below.

Inertia is real, and it affects everything we do. Whether getting out of bed, competing in a drag race or starting crisis communication efforts, it takes time and effort to get going. In exercises, a common phrase for the JIC (Joint Information Center) performance is “It is going slowly, but finally gaining traction”. This reflects the reality that it takes time to form a JIC, establish objectives, create content, gain approval and share it with stakeholders. Unfortunately, stakeholders are much more nimble at communicating, and they expect your communication pace to match theirs. So while ‘gaining traction’ sounds like a wise observation of organizational dynamics, but it is actually an admission of failure.

Crisis communication is like a drag race: the winner is usually ‘the first one out of the gate’; the driver with the fastest reaction time often beats the driver with more horsepower. When an entire quarter-mile drag race is over in less than 3.6 seconds, the briefest delay in launching can cost the race. If your JIC is ‘gaining traction’, you’re losing the communication race. And there’s no trophy for second place.

Now imagine that your vehicle doesn’t top out at 386 miles per hour, but actually runs at the speed of light, or as Bill Gates puts it, at the speed of thought. How do you keep up with instant news? A simple rule of victory in racing is ‘start fast and keep accelerating’. Yet much training and strategy for crisis communication is the opposite.

How do you gain traction quickly? You start fast and keep accelerating.

Start Fast – to gain traction

If your organization is experiencing an incident, communicate immediately. Get out of the gate fast:

• Require immediate notification by operators, so you know what is happening as soon as they do.
• Evaluate stakeholder impact and concerns from the incident as quickly as possible.
• Brief leadership on your Incident Evaluation so they understand and support aggressive stakeholder communication.
• Publish an Initial Statement, using facts from the notification call, plus key messages that match your Incident Evaluation.
• Email to identified stakeholders, publish to your organization’s website and social media accounts to share the Initial Statement.
• Publish first, then call in reinforcements! Get the Initial Statement out and then mobilize the rest of your team.
• Activate an Inquiry Management process to capture stakeholder concerns and deliver consistent messages.
• Publish an Update Statement!
• Publish available background material (FAQs, Fact Sheets, Graphics) for stakeholder understanding
• Provide media management helps to all employees, both management and field
• Wash, rinse and repeat until you….
• Join the JIC (this is about the time Unified Command is forming in earnest)

Congratulations! You’ve conducted a fast start!  Now, embark on an information acceleration curve, adding staffing resources and product as available.

Keep Accelerating – to use your traction

Many responses will not escalate to Unified Command, so you may be on your own for all ongoing response communication. If the response isn’t rolling into Unified Command, now is time for you to develop your ongoing Public Information Plan. This is an expanded version of your initial evaluation, in both time and scope. As additional communication resources come online for you, you need this roadmap to place them where they’ll have the greatest impact. Take the time to build this plan, then place people where they’re most qualified and release them to perform.

Share the Public Information Plan with response leaders to ensure understanding of the critical role stakeholder communication will play in the response and recovery stages. This will help with approvals, cooperation in press or public meetings and in mobilizing the resources you’ll need to stay in front in the communication battle.

If Unified Command does form, the JIC will form at the same time, and new players will come in the room to join the effort. They will start from a standstill, as positions are determined, approval process set, Incident Command consulted about a release schedule, and Unified Command product is developed, approved and released.

The fast start you’ve performed will provide the only content to get stakeholders through this ‘start up’ time. It may also provide a communications momentum to foster faster processes in the JIC.

• Your initial response objectives may endure, particularly if they’re based on the ICS 201 form
• Initial distribution platforms and stakeholder contacts may persist if they’ve been used and are being accessed by stakeholders
• Publicly announced events will likely persist. They won’t be cancelled.
• Posted content will endure: FAQs will be maintained, Fact Sheets will be retained, Incident Updates will persist as they are the communication history of the response.

The most key resource for a quick transition will be the incident evaluation you’ve conducted (Start Fast). If you have demonstrated a commitment to early communication activities (measured in product), they can be a foundation for the JIC; your early work will allow a faster creation and adoption of a JIC Public Information Plan.

JIC or no JIC, your fast start and continuing acceleration provide the best hope of maintaining a voice in response communication. Early content that is well received gathers stakeholders for additional sharing. Your speed will allow your organization to retain the right to share information. You will remain relevant to stakeholders, and you can build that relevance with continued information that only the response organization can provide.

Don’t give your voice away. Win the race to relevance. Start fast, and keep accelerating.

Questions? Did you see ideas in this post that you’ve never heard of before? Contact me!

Comments?  Leave them below.

Well, it is brave, but it’s not that new. Unified Command and the Joint Information Center (JIC) have been around in some form since the late 1960s. But it might be new for you! Many communicators spend their entire career without exposure to the JIC. Our only exposure may be in exercises or drills our organization participates in.

But when ‘big’ and the ‘bad’ happen, we will likely meet Unified Command head on. Its good to be ready for the change in key dynamics.

At its core, Unified Command is utilized to provide effective coordination between response partners in a major event. It provides a common playbook for all responders to work under. Why? It was formed to address the reality that response problems often relate to communication and management deficiencies rather than to any lack of resources or failure of tactics. When an incident grows and resources are stretched and other responders are called out, Unified Command ensures ongoing effectiveness in management and communication. While ‘communication’ can refer to interagency and cross-response sharing of information, Unified Command also enshrines the Joint Information Center (JIC) into the response structure. The JIC is where public communication happens, and it is the JIC where response communicators end up working together.

A few key rules for JIC participants:

1. Check your influence at the door: You no longer work for your organization; you work for Incident Command. You no longer answer to your boss; you answer to the Incident Commander, or the PIO, or an APIO.
2. Check your ego at the door: You may not have the same position or responsibility; you will be assigned a role based on your qualifications.
3. Get used to new faces: Your coworkers may be strangers to you; many of them will be from other response organizations.
4. Broaden your horizons: You’re no longer protecting your organization’s reputation, you’re protecting the ICS’s reputation. You may have entirely new stakeholders to care about, and you will definitely have new communication goals and objectives.
5. Come to learn: This may be the only time you work in a collaborative environment, under intense pressure and with professional communicators from other types of organizations. You will learn a lot about yourself, your profession and your fellow professionals.

Communication benefits of the JIC and Unified Command

• Openness is more likely: Since the mission of Unified Command is the response, not the incident, there tends to be more openness about communicating with stakeholders. Nobody’s reputation is as stake because of the incident itself.
• Less ownership of fault: It really doesn’t matter what the cause of the incident was, or who caused it. Unified Command is the response organization, not the Responsible Party. Unified Command doesn’t have to plan on restoring public trust, it has it.
• Approval moves into UC: Stakeholder communication products aren’t held hostage by corporate attorneys. All content approval happens within Unified Command, within the frenzy and furor of a response. While Unified Command may reserve the right to edit, they share the impetus for approval and release of information.
• Greater resources: The structure and staffing of the JIC is designed around a single objective of sharing as much information as possible. The JIC expands as needed to provide adequate staff to meet communication objectives, and multiplied response organizations mean multiplied communication resources. All your organizations fact sheets, MSDS, FAQs or background information will be augmented by the same types of resources from all participating response groups. Manpower, resources, and approvals should all result in more speed.
• Faster communication: The entire Unified Command structure is built around span-of-control, designed to prevent any function from being overwhelmed. With increased resources, more speed should result.
• Blue shirts: Someone else is the target. Every Responsible Party – the people who either caused it, own it or can pay for it – should welcome formation of Unified Command and the JIC. It places other people and their organizations in front of affected stakeholders. The ‘RP’ is often reduced to regular apologies and commitment to the process, as well as the expected non-Unified Command actions. Unified Command brings people and parties who have resources and desire to bear on the problem, and free the Responsible Party to deal (outside Unified Command) with ongoing reputational and operational challenges. Unified Command is your friend!

Communication challenges in the JIC and Unified Command

• Risk: Unified Command my not be aware of the reputation risks of the response itself. While the incident isn’t their fault, a real or perceived lack of effectiveness in the response will be. There’s plenty of fault waiting to be assigned; Unified Command needs to apply diligence to both effective actions and effective communication. Public opinion and acceptance is fickle, and delays or failures in response will quickly earn their own share of outrage. Communicate quickly!
• Urgency: Sometimes the JIC doesn’t seem to ‘get it’. Lack of personalized reputation risk can lead to greater deliberation or a more deliberate pace. The JIC can easily focus on ‘getting it right’ rather than ‘getting it fast’. With no personal urgency, process and procedure can set a slower pace; approvals can slow down, deadlines can be extended, even delayed. With no external urgency, the PIO can find it difficult to get the ear of Unified Command for key decisions or approvals. Remind Unified Command that they will assume responsibility for any perceived slowness of any response activity – including public information.
• Focus: No focus on the importance of communication. All truths are NOT self evident; the JIC can actually encourage outrage by concentrating more on emphasizing its clean up efforts rather than addressing the public perception that they aren’t doing enough, soon enough. Identify public concerns and address them quickly.
• Opacity: UC doesn’t explain itself; nobody knows what Unified Command is, and Unified Command doesn’t bother to explain. To be assured that everything possible is being done, people need to know what is being done and who is doing it. The JIC tends to be good at talking about what, but not good at describing who. After all, everyone in the response understands Unified Command. But few people outside the response do. “You got some ‘splainin’ to do!” Make sure stakeholders understand Unified Command.
• I want to go home: Everybody wants to go home. That’s the real mission of Unified Command: Put it out, clean it up and go back to your day job. Responses are fiercely expensive in money, time and bodies. Everyone has ‘day jobs’ that are waiting for them, and their daily to-do lists keep growing. The challenge with this is that responses aren’t often couretous enough to wrap up in a timely manner. People report to the JIC with a short term perspective that impacts the key function of building relationships with affected stakeholders. Take more shirts than you think you’ll need.
• MQI vs. reality: You don’t always get to do what you’re best at. While every position in Unified Command pays homage to the ‘Most Qualified Individual’ (MQI) philosophy, reality often falls short. Theoretically, the JIC will be filled with people who are experts in the role they fill; the best person will fill each position regardless of their employer.  But since none of us like change when we’re under stress, it is common for Incident Commanders to want ‘their’ PIO to serve in the JIC, regardless of that individual’s actual experience in comparison with other communicators sitting in the room. Its common to fill JIC positions with known people rather than a ‘stranger’ who may be more qualified. Its even possible to inadvertently encourage exclusivity that can ultimately lead to needed organizations and people not even serving in the JIC.  Practice MQI.
• Habit: Doing what we did yesterday; it worked for us then! Again, people don’t like change when they’re under stress. So if our ‘day job’ entails setting up press briefings, we’ll want to set up press briefings instead of community meetings. If our ‘day job’ entails email blasts of our latest news releases, we’ll want to do this rather than answer media calls. We all fight this urge under stress, but a well-running JIC requires us all to accept new priorities, strategies and actions.

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