Did EMs really just say that?

If you’re not enjoying great, objectively-measured (not hopefully-, or worse, delusionally-projected) emergency management program success, this post could save your job, not to mention the well-being of your program, your parent organization and community.?

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Earlier this week, I posted an informal poll here on LinkedIn asking what was most important for EM program success. ?While the poll is not designed or executed to produce a sound statistical finding, the results closely approximate what I’ve observed the last 30 years working in this profession.? What the poll shows is that the vast majority of EM respondents believe that program authority is more important than a HIRA, incident planning or ICS training.?

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Whoa! Ouch! Let’s break that down.? ??

1. Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (HIRA) is absolutely critical to all phases (or Mission Areas, if you prefer) within the scope of EM work.? When programs don’t do HIRA, they cannot know their risk.? Almost by definition, everything else they do in EM without a HIRA is speculative or misguided and, thus, of questionable value.?
2. Without a HIRA, incident planning cannot earnestly occur. Can you see now where a program following this path is going? [insert flushing sound] I have not met a single mayor, county administrator, governor… in the past thirty years who hasn’t wanted their EM program to anticipate what might happen and to try to be ready for it.? ??
3. This week, RAND published a report on the problems with HIRA and THIRA. Within it, they share an observation that “… thousands of hours…” are expended each year by the average jurisdiction on HIRA and THIRA.? Thousands of hours each year is a lot of effort for something less than a quarter of EMs find most important. A full-time EM in the U.S. is only funded for 2080 hours per year.? ?
4. Since at least 2005 (when national EM doctrine incorporated NIMSiblity), I’ve suspected NIMS/ICS training largely replaced HIRA and incident planning work under the false belief that a well organized EOC or IMT could handle anything, even catastrophic disasters easy to anticipate, with no incident-specific planning. I could argue almost every month that significant events continue to highlight the fallacy of a NIMS/ICS-centric readiness approach.? If NIMS/ICS was indeed the recipe for EM program success, all successful race car drivers would be mechanics and all successful cops would be lawyers. ???
5. Does any EM really believe a directive from a county administrator or a citation in a municipal code book is going to get a sheriff, county judge, county administrator, mayor, public works director, public health director..., let alone, any of their staff, to comply with the wishes of an EM Coordinator??

So then, if EMs really believe program authority is the most important thing for EM success, why are we not seeing more EMs expanding county code, sharing their success at getting their administrators to compel fire and police chief compliance with an EMPG work plan, or talking openly about how program authority is the prescription for what ails EM?

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Now comes the tough love for my EM colleagues.? If you find yourself thinking you need more authority to be successful, that end-state in most all circumstances is neither practical nor mainstream. Most often, it’s how EMs rationalize when they don’t get compliance.? Moreover, the iterative practice of trying to impose will while insisting on more authority is destructive and certainly not collaborative.? And collaboration is still really what we all want, even with NIMS, correct?? Collaboration and compliance with directives are not the same thing.? They are, in one respect, almost perfect opposites.?

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If you want collaboration in program development, engage stakeholders, explore what they want, build a team you can coach, guide them as best you can, do HIRA, develop incident- and function-specific planning, develop and incrementally grow shared interest and accomplishment.? It’s not that difficult and is nothing less than critical to EM program success.

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George Whitney is a former local, state and federal emergency manager who founded Complete EM, a Software as a Service (SaaS) and consultancy helping emergency managers achieve program success. Click here to join Complete EM's email list where you'll receive free emergency management program tips. You may also feel free to join him as a connection on LinkedIn.? ??