I was inspired by this short (~1 minute) video from TrainingJournal.com. In the presenter’s brief but pointed message, he describes many trainers as being akin to shopkeepers, providing organizations often times with rote solutions just as a shopkeeper will pull a product off their shelves. He goes on to say that this these solutions are usually effective, but only for a limited duration. He offers, instead, that trainers need to be more like engineers, examining every facet of a problem and constructing lasting solutions. As an experienced trainer and proponent of a detailed root cause analysis, I couldn’t agree more, but as I readied myself to write a post about the implications of this on training, my mind carried this metaphor to many of our practices in emergency management.
Consider how often we quickly dismiss identified gaps with an assumed solution. Write a plan, conduct a training, install a bigger culvert. Those are usually our solutions to an identified problem. Are they wrong? No – we’re correct more often than not. Are these lasting solutions? Rarely! How often does the problem rear its head again within a relatively short span of time? How do we address the re-occurrence? As shop keepers we simply pull another solution off the shelf. Can we do better?
The things we do in emergency management are often based upon best and current practices. We address problems through the prevalent way of dealing with such things industry-wide. Emergency management has a great community of practice. I’ve mentioned in several previous blog posts the spirit of sharing we have and the benefits we see come of that. It doesn’t seem often, though, that we engage in an industry-wide groupthink to solve various problems. We use and adapt ideas of individuals and small groups, we see a steady and determined progression of the practices within our progression, but we rarely see ‘game changing’ ideas that revolutionize how prevent, prepare for, respond to, or recover from disasters. Why is this?
Perhaps we need a greater collective voice locally, where practitioners are dealing with the problems directly? Our methods of practice in emergency management are generally driven by the federal government (THIRA, NIMS, HSEEP, etc.). I’m not saying any of these are bad – in fact they are excellent standards that we need to continue to refine and apply, but it’s generally not the federal government that is dealing directly with the constant flow of issues being dealt with at a state, and even more so, a local level. We need to follow that metaphor of being engineers to apply more permanent solutions to these problems. We need to create, innovate, and problem solve. Or do we?
Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. We often miss the necessity of improving because we have current, functional solutions – we have things that work. So why fix it if it’s not broken? I say we can do better. The realization of the need for lasting solutions is the necessity we need. If the solutions we have on the shelf don’t work for us 100%, let’s figure out a better way.
I don’t know what or how, but I’m sure that as a community we can identify needs and prioritize what must be addressed. Given the right people, time, and maybe a bit of money, we can be innovative and effect some lasting change.
I’d love to hear what others think on this topic.
© 2015 – Timothy Riecker
Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC
The Contrarian Emergency Manager 