Preparing can make the Difference

Southwest Airlines’ holiday meltdown had many causes. The most obvious: extremely antiquated IT and completely inadequate emergency response. There are lessons here for every brand-name company.

In this fraught third decade of the 21st century, there’s a catastrophe around every corner. Weather disasters have become a way of life. Active shooter events continue at an alarming rate. Smash-and-grab retail flash mobs are out of control in major cities. Electricity substation sabotage (as happened recently in North Carolina, Washington, and Oregon) appears to be the latest domestic terrorism trend. Individual companies cannot stop such events from occurring but can prepare for them diligently and respond to them intelligently. Two things Southwest failed to do.

The best prepared companies—a tip of the hat here to United, American and Delta—can take an emergency punch and keep going. They realize that new 21st century threats require an entirely new approach to internal emergency management. A key component of this new approach is an emerging field called situation awareness. The military has been growing and deploying this capability for decades. In all the best-run big companies today, it is now a mission-critical priority.

I am CEO of a small company that has been toiling in the field of tech-enabled situation awareness for nearly 20 years. We have over 60 brand-name, global enterprise customers for our out-of-the-cloud software and related human analyst services. These customers (along with other, smaller companies) hire us to help them get the jump on everything from huge snowstorms to civil unrest in the streets. In the parlance of our sector, we help our customers take action left of boom. Before the crap hits the fan. early prevention or mitigation is a great way to operate.

Ours is not the only company providing situation awareness to corporate customers. This sector is growing rapidly and includes many fine vendors. Customer awareness of the importance of situation awareness is growing as well.

There are many lessons to be learned from the great Southwest snowstorm debacle. Southwest’s apparent incompetence in situation awareness—especially when compared to its key competitors—is one of them. The good news for companies not wanting to become the next Southwest is that left-of-boom situation awareness can help.

If you are a leader of a brand-name company—in whatever industry—you need to understand how major brands are using advanced situation awareness to reduce corporate risk on a number of fronts. Below is my curated list of links where you can learn more. Only one of which is from my company.

Pete O'Dell is the CEO of www.swanislandnetworks.com, whose TX360 Physical security situational awareness platform helps many corporations proactively.