May 11, 2025 • 36 mins
What does it take to prepare a community for disaster? In this revealing conversation with municipal crisis planning expert Alicia Johnson, we explore the critical differences between organizational readiness and community resilience—and why both are essential when disaster strikes.
Drawing from her 20+ years of experience in emergency management, Alicia shares how her journey began with witnessing the Yellowstone fires as a child and evolved into a career dedicated to building community preparedness. She offers a powerful distinction that many emergency planners miss: while organizational readiness is built on procedures and protocols, community readiness depends on trust and relationships that can withstand crisis.
The conversation explores recent catastrophic events like the European power outages and the Texas freeze that left Houston homes flooding in freezing temperatures. These case studies reveal how quickly modern infrastructure can fail and the cascading impacts that follow. As Alicia notes, "We have to acknowledge that bad things happen to good organizations"—the first step toward meaningful preparation.
We dig into why "checkbox planning" continues to plague emergency response, with organizations creating plans that look impressive on paper but collapse under pressure. Alicia challenges listeners to move beyond the organizational chart to build genuine capacity through regular training, full-scale exercises, and empowered decision-making.
Whether you're a municipal leader, emergency planner, or simply someone concerned about community resilience, this conversation offers critical insights into building systems and relationships that can withstand the unexpected. Because when disaster strikes, trust might be your most valuable resource.
If you'd like to reach out to Alicia, you can reach her below:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/aliciadjohnson
We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Tom Mueller (00:08):
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a
Crisis podcast.
We're very happy to have youwith us again today.
On this podcast, we sharestories from the front lines of
crisis management throughinterviews, storytelling and
lessons learned as shared byexperienced crisis leaders.
I'm Tom Mueller.
With me again, my co-host, markMullen.
Mark, good morning.
Marc Mullen (00:29):
Good morning Tom.
Tom Mueller (00:31):
On our podcast.
Today we're going to talk to anexpert in municipal crisis
planning and get her take onsome recent issues and also kind
of best practices in crisisplanning for municipalities.
I'm going to hand it over toMarc now to introduce our guest
and to kick us off, Marc.
Marc Mullen (00:52):
Thank you, tom, and I'm very happy to have this
time together with you and withAlicia Johnson with Two Lynchpin
Road.
Alicia, that would be fun justto know how it got that name and
maybe you can share that withus as well.
As Tom already mentioned,alicia has deep background in
crisis preparedness and responseand we thought she'd be a great
(01:19):
guest, because there's a lot ofsynergy that can happen between
public and private planning andit would be nice, I think, to
take a look at some of thedifferences, but some of the
similarities and the strengthsand and maybe wrap it up and
talking about a few possiblecrises along the way.
So, alicia, welcome, glad tohave you with us glad to be here
.
Alicia Johnson (01:36):
Thanks, Marc
Marc Mullen (01:37):
okay, and why don't we if you would?
I've been reading about you onyour website and following your
newsletters and I'm curious.
We all end up doing what we dobecause there's some passion or
event behind it that has led usto it.
So I'm curious to know, as youintroduce yourself and tell us
(01:59):
about yourself a little, if youcould also sort of focus on what
brought you into this field andwhat makes you stay in it.
Alicia Johnson (02:06):
Yeah, that's a great question.
So I think every emergencymanager, frankly every emergency
responder, kind of has animpetus event.
For me specifically, thatoccurred when I was very young.
I distinctly remember theYellowstone fires and partially
(02:26):
because my dad grew up in thatparticular area of Northern
Wyoming and we spent almostevery summer going through the
park, and the summer after thefires we didn't go because it
was too painful for my dad tosee the destruction of that
particular area and it reallykind of stayed with me in a way
(02:49):
that I don't think I recognizedat the time, but it was just
kind of hovering there in thebackground.
And then when I got out ofschool, after majoring in
communications and politicalscience, I wanted to go to work
in local government, as Tomalluded to, and there was a role
available as a publicinformation officer in a
community that was near myhometown and it sort of all
(03:13):
coalesced at one moment and Iremember a key point in the
interview when the director ofemergency management said well,
do you understand what this jobdoes?
You know as a publicinformation officer, do you
understand what this job does?
You know as a publicinformation officer, do you
understand the role?
And I said.
You know, I thought for aminute.
I thought, well, can I, can Ilike tap dance around the answer
or should I be brutally honest?
(03:34):
And I decided to go with brutalhonesty and my comment back to
them was you know, I don'tunderstand everything this role
does, but what I do know is thatwhen something bad happens, the
blue line across the bottom ofthe television screen comes on
and tells people what to do.
And this job has everything todo with the blue line.
That's the whole point of itand apparently that was the
(03:55):
right answer, because I got therole and then continued to kind
of work in that process and Icould never escape the orbit of
emergency management.
I tried multiple times to workin other areas and it just
didn't happen.
I kept coming back to theimportance of risk communication
, of community resilience, ofbuilding connection and
(04:21):
readiness with a community,building that trust and all the
aspects of that, whether thatwas in public information, in
emergency management, as adirector, working with area
stakeholders through grants andother projects and that sort of
piece, and now working as acontractor and helping
communities support themselvesin that kind of forward momentum
(04:41):
.
That kind of forward momentum.
So I just couldn't escape thatinitial kind of awareness of how
important it was for acommunity to be prepared for
anything that might happen.
Marc Mullen (04:54):
Very fascinating and you're obviously happy with
your choice.
You've done this for some time.
You've moved, you've hadmultiple, multiple, different
levels of impact as I look atyour resume so you've obviously
run with a passion in that.
Alicia Johnson (05:12):
Yeah, thank you, it's been a fun 20-plus years.
Marc Mullen (05:16):
Wow.
Well, so between all of us it'slike that Amco transmission ad
when they say we've done thisfor 10 days now, so we have more
than a week's experience.
Between the three of us here,we've been doing this since the
dawn of time, practically.
Alicia Johnson (05:36):
Yes.
Marc Mullen (05:38):
But it was interesting that you mentioned
again that it's all about theblue line, because you could
almost say it's really all aboutcommunication.
Any response ends up being acommunication challenge.
So I noticed that you talk onyour website about helping
communities and organizationsprepare for disasters,
(05:59):
emergencies and any other typeof crisis.
So it sounds like you work withcommunities themselves, you
work with governments, you alsowork with corporations and so on
.
So it gives you a unique skillset to live on both sides of the
fence, and I'm curious to knowwhat's the difference between
(06:20):
getting a community ready andgetting an organization ready?
Alicia Johnson (06:30):
Well, let's start with the organization,
whether that's at the corporatelevel, at the nonprofit level or
even in terms of the governmentorganization.
Right, all of thoserecommendations are structurally
driven.
They're driven through standardoperating procedures.
You have very clear roles andprotocols, ideas of moving
things forward.
This happens, and then thishappens, and then this happens.
(06:51):
If this happens, do this typeof thing.
It really revolves heavilyaround those standard operating
procedures and the training forthose standard operating
procedures and the continuationof that conversation.
I think one of the key aspectsof that is also recognizing that
bad things can happen to goodorganizations and so you have to
(07:13):
be prepared, and that idea ofhaving a continual level of
awareness and then preparednessthat follows when it comes to
the community.
I think it's a little bittrickier, only in that it's
relationally driven.
You can't create an SOP thathandles the trust building of
your community.
You can create protocols on howto do that, but it is really
(07:34):
about building trust within thecommunity that you're a part of,
so creating networks andcapacities where you're actually
connecting with keystakeholders who help you spread
your mission.
It's not necessarily a veryformal process.
It is adaptive into moving atthe speed of trust at whatever
(07:59):
your community or the groupsyou're working with can handle,
and so it's a little bit morefluid in its development and I
think it's also, by its nature,can be more fragile, because
trust is easily broken and noteasily developed, but if you are
able to cultivate it in a waythat is resonant with the people
(08:23):
that you serve, then it laststhrough crisis right, it's not
so.
It's fragile in that it takestime to be built and if you
ignore it it can be broken.
But if you are putting in theeffort, then it becomes
resilient and flexible in itsneed.
(08:45):
So they are interconnected andyou know, as we've talked about
in relationship to municipalgovernment, you need both sides
of that coin.
You need both the communityreadiness and the organizational
readiness to pull it off.
Tom Mueller (08:58):
One of the things I've been thinking about lately
is just the reactions to thewidespread power outages that
hit the European continent justlast week.
As we're recording this, knowthinking about all the different
(09:22):
municipalities, counties,states, countries and dealing
with you know a sudden loss ofall power to do everything you
do.
I'm just curious your take on.
You know what would be goingthrough the minds of you know
people running those localgovernment agencies and you know
how do they prepare forsomething as sort of devastating
as losing all your power.
Alicia Johnson (09:42):
When you think about it, especially in a US
context.
Right, we think about thatalmost as if, like that's
unfathomable, it would neverhappen here, but it does happen
here all the time.
Right, it happens in whatCalifornia calls the public
safety power shutdowns, wherethey preemptively cut off the
power for wildfire events orpotential wildfire events.
They don't even have to have alight fire, it's just there's
(10:04):
heavy wind, it's a drought, itmeets certain qualifications.
The power comes off for aperiod of time.
Hopefully it's restored in atimely manner.
It not always is right, I'vebeen through a public safety
power shutdown that lasted morethan 48 hours.
That's a long time to bewithout electrical capacity and
most homes don't have a built-ingenerator like they do in other
(10:26):
parts of the United States.
So, similarly in Europe, right,you're living in an apartment in
Lisbon, you maybe are.
You know your landlord does nothave a generator for the entire
apartment building, right, andif you're in an apartment, you
can't have a generator rightnext to your kitchen, right to
run your refrigerator orsomething like that.
(10:48):
Or even, you know solidly withthe fact that we are incredibly
dependent upon electricity andwhen it goes out sometimes
there's nothing you can do.
Sometimes you could have agenerator.
(11:08):
It's temporary, you power yourrefrigerator and you call it a
day, right.
Sometimes if you're in ahurricane prone area, you know,
maybe you have a generator,maybe your neighbor has a
generator, hopefully you're notdealing with other things on top
of that like flooding andthings like that.
But there is definitely kind of, I think, a real awareness that
(11:32):
must come with the fact thatthis is now a risk that we run
every single day.
10, 15 years ago that wasn't arisk necessarily right, we
didn't think about it activelylike we do now.
Tom Mueller (11:42):
If you're a planner for a municipality - you worked
with the city of San Franciscofor some years - and you know
what's your priority list, youknow for public safety, and that
you know in your as you'reputting together a plan to deal
with something like this, itjust seems overwhelming to me,
because you lose your trafficsignals on the highways and
(12:06):
byways right, you may lose watercirculation if you don't have
backup circulation for watersupplies, which was an issue in
some of the European countriesfor water supplies, which was an
issue in some of the Europeancountries, absolutely so the
planning process around thatjust feels like it'd be so
intimidating.
Alicia Johnson (12:24):
It is.
It is Absolutely A hundredpercent.
It's intimidating, right,because you have the road and
bridge issues, right, are weable to get people on and off in
a safe fashion?
Are they able to travel If theyneed to do we even want them to
travel, right, becauseeverything's dark, so we may not
even want them to travel.
(12:45):
And then you have vulnerablepopulations.
And my first, you know, as theresilience and recovery manager
for the city of San Francisco,working with their emergency
management team, one of my firstpieces was how do we take care
of those vulnerable populations?
If you have people in skillednursing facilities and hospitals
(13:06):
who do not have a generator, orhave a generator but it's only
good for certain pieces, are weable to continue to give them
the care that they need?
Do we need to transport them?
Can we make sure that you havethe capacity you need to do that
ahead of time?
That's where planning comes in,you know, in a clutch situation
because you need to think aboutthose kind of potential
(13:28):
instances.
And then I think there's otherpieces where you're looking at,
you know, from a private sectorperspective.
If they do not have generatorpower for things like a grocery
store, all of their foodstuffsthat are in frozen or
refrigerated areas are no longerviable.
That's a problem because nowthey have written off lots, many
(13:52):
hundreds of dollars, maybethousands, maybe hundreds of
thousands, depending on what itis that they.
You know the type of locationand how does that fit in.
Where does that come into thestructure and how do you help
them prepare for that particularinstance?
I think we're still waiting forsome more data from what to
(14:13):
come out from Europe and fromthis particular outage and what
we can use to implement here inthe States.
Tom Mueller (14:20):
We went through that a few years ago here in the
Houston area where I live.
It was in February, where wehad a huge freeze, came into the
area and took out a lot of thepower generation for a variety
of reasons, and so we hadsuddenly, you know, balmy
Houston in 20 degree Fahrenheittemperatures with no electricity
(14:44):
, and so we had something on theorder of 100,000 homes where
pipes burst, flooded the homesand, you know, just created all
kinds of issues.
Now you've got coldtemperatures, people can't stay
in their homes, you need to openshelters and of course, that in
itself spurred the homegenerator market in Houston like
(15:06):
it's never been spurred before.
You know, all of my neighborssuddenly have Generacs trucks
parked out front and installinggenerators right, and I did that
myself to try and get throughthat.
You know, even dealing with, asyou said, the vulnerable
populations is a huge, hugeissue that planners have to deal
(15:26):
with in these types of crisisplanning sessions.
Alicia Johnson (15:29):
Yes, and those are partners.
So as a municipal planner and,you know, as a public
information officer or anemergency manager as a whole,
you cannot control what they door don't do.
So it is about building thatwe're back to community
readiness right.
It's about building that trustand the capacity that this can
(15:50):
happen to us.
Here are some possiblesolutions.
We urge you to make theseappropriate decisions, and it's
tied to your economic bottomline right.
The more prepared you are, themore likely you are to be able
to serve your clientele, yourcustomers, your partners
successfully, and I think thatis a big part of emergency
(16:14):
management.
It's not just about theplanning.
It's also about making surethat we bring everyone to the
table, that the table is largeenough, that everyone's present
so that we can have really solidconversations and take next
steps on behalf of the peoplewe're supposed to be protecting.
Marc Mullen (16:29):
Sounds like there's an issue here of trust and
really portraying and helpingpeople understand that trust
doesn't mean don't worry, we'lltake care of you.
There's a point you've just gotto say.
There's a line here and at thislevel above this, we cannot
take care of you.
It's funny, Tom, you're talkingabout the European events were
(16:51):
like a major storm without amajor storm.
All the power went down, as ifit had been knocked out, and yet
you know the cause was whoknows what.
Yet, and you had in Houston,you had water damage like a
hurricane, but without ahurricane.
It was all self-generated.
No pun intended, but the real,it seems like.
One of the real questions ishow do you clearly portray that
(17:14):
we are planning everything wecan to take care of you, but
there will be events that wecan't take care of you?
Alicia Johnson (17:21):
That's the question emergency management as
a whole is really dealing withright now, and one of the
biggest ways I have found, inboth working inside municipal
organizations and as aconsultant, is admitting that
bad things happen.
(17:41):
Right, breaking down this wall,like breaking down the taboo
that we do not talk aboutdisaster, we do not talk about
crisis and making it somethingyou can talk about at the dinner
table so not just withemergency managers, because we
use a lot of Black humor toprocess all the things that we
have seen or heard orparticipated in and responded to
(18:05):
.
And having that conversationwith your neighbors, with your
you know, the businesses youfrequent, right?
How are you preparing for X?
Have you heard about this?
What does that look like here?
Right, and not being afraid tohave those general conversations
One of the things I see themost is that if we don't have
(18:25):
those conversations, then wedefinitely can't get any farther
down the road.
Right, we can't.
We can't build better trust, wecan't build better response
systems, because we haven'tactually jumped to that first
hurdle of really admitting thatsomething bad could happen.
Marc Mullen (18:38):
Sure, so it sounds like again that's.
One of the first hurdles youhave to have is an understanding
that this can happen and weneed to be ready.
Is that common that people getto that point and then their
list of what could happen isshorter and smaller than your
knowledge of what could happen?
Alicia Johnson (19:01):
Absolutely, absolutely shorter and smaller
than your knowledge of whatcould happen, absolutely,
absolutely.
They're oh well, we're at riskfor earthquakes and wildfires,
you're like, and at least 10other things because they might
happen to you.
They're like, oh no, that thepower outages in the EU.
(19:22):
I think a lot of people will belike, well, that isn't going to
happen here because our gridisn't X right, which is kind of
irrelevant.
Yes, maybe that, not that exactthing, will happen, but there
are precedent for that to happenall across the United States in
various areas, both rural andmetropolitan.
(19:43):
We have to acknowledge that.
Marc Mullen (19:45):
Well, just think of all the European airport
emergency managers that did aquick check to see can we
survive a fire in a substation.
And they'll say, sure, we'vegot redundancy.
And then the whole continentgoes black.
Alicia Johnson (19:59):
Yes, and then everyone's flight is canceled
for a week,Alicia, I was thinking back to a
crisis situation that hit acommunity where I own a home in
a little town called Wimberleyin Central Texas, and a massive
flood hit that community oneMemorial Day weekend and the
(20:21):
river that runs through it wentfrom five feet to 48 feet over
the course of about an hour anda big holiday weekend all of
that.
But I was thinking back ontheir crisis response and the
potential conflicts that canarise between leaders in a
response.
Right, I think about the mayorand what's his or her role in
(20:43):
this response versus the firechief or the police chief or the
emergency manager, and there'sjust seems to me there's huge
potential for conflict.
You know when somethingactually happens.
How do you coach people to makesure there are clear roles and
responsibilities in situationslike that?
(21:04):
I think that's a really greatquestion and also an amazing
example, actually, that is justmind-blowing, from that much
flooding in such a short amountof time.
As emergency managers and,frankly, as response personnel,
public safety responders wealways go back to the incident
(21:26):
command system and having an ICSorg chart.
And in my experience, you canhave the org chart, you can
print it out, you can post it onyour wall in your emergency
operations center.
But if no one is filling thoseroles or trained to fill those
roles, that organizational chartcollapses under the stress of
the incident.
And so being able to, as wetalked about before, acknowledge
(21:49):
that there is the potential forcertain types of disasters to
happen, even when they exceedour imagination, like a river
flooding with that extremeamount of water and then saying,
okay, so a flood is possibleand these are the roles that we
will be filling within ourorganizational structure.
Here's how you would fill thatposition, right, if you are the
(22:12):
mayor at the time, and, ofcourse, the mayor changes every
few years, right?
So how are we training thoseindividuals repeatedly, over and
over and over, even every year,whether they're new to the
position or not?
Are you familiar?
Do you understand?
Have you practiced yourconversations, do you know how
you're going to relate to thestructure as a whole?
(22:32):
How are we going to connect toother communities for mutual aid
, for additional assistance,whatever that looks like For the
people who are there, ifthere's a lot of tourists there
because it's a holiday weekend,or if no one is there because
they all left and it's a holidayweekend, right, what are the
extenuating circumstances ofthat particular event?
(23:02):
Of that particular event?
But often, particularly inmunicipal organizations, I have
seen organizations come throughwith this beautiful looking org
chart and it's got three deep,because that's the industry
standard, that's the bestpractice on every single
position.
Those three people, if they areall currently still employed by
the organization high five,because often they're not.
And if they have been trainedthat's always the question Like
(23:26):
well, when was the last timethis person was trained to do X
or Y or feel comfortable here?
When was the last time you guyspracticed a full on activation?
Did you test your IT?
Like those are basic questionsthat we continue to ask over and
over and over because they areincredible points of failure.
And then, if you've surmountedall of those little tiny pieces
(23:48):
that are like we're completelycapable, we're ready to go.
I think you go back to thatquestion.
Do you know what you're goingto say to your community when
things go utterly wrong and notas you expected for Memorial Day
?
Utterly wrong and not as youexpected for Memorial Day right.
How do you combat that and whatdoes that look like?
Tom Mueller (24:12):
does that look like ?
I don't think the org chart isenough.
I think you have to go beyondthat.
Yeah, one quick example on thatis I survived one of many
downsizing.
I worked in the oil and gasindustry and 2008,.
There was a major downsizing.
We cut a lot of people out ofthe communications and external
affairs team, including theperson who was responsible for
our crisis communications plan Iwould never imagine that.
(24:36):
Did not replace that person wasno management of change process
with that.
So, in addition to losing a lotof the people who were on the
org chart in 2008, you know, by2010, many of those people were
gone.
There had been no training innew roles.
And then you know, majorincident occurs and you're in
(24:59):
the mode of let's wing it.
Let's just tap our people.
Let's get out there and do whatwe can do.
But to your point about justmanaging change through the
organization and trying to dothose periodic updates and
adjustments to plan so to makesure everybody's trained Easier
said than done though.
Marc Mullen (25:19):
It reflects what I've seen over the years, which
is still a lot of emergencyplanning is what I call checkbox
planning.
We need an emergency plan checkwe have it.
We need an org chart checkWe've got it.
People are concerned withchecking it off of a list, but
they're not actually taking thatand integrating it into what
they do.
As far as they're concerned,the problem was solved.
(25:40):
When you can say we have acrisis communications plan, we
can let them go.
Now we have a plan.
And that's really dangerousbecause you end up thinking
you're ready but, alicia, as yousay, you've never actually
tested it, it's never beentempered.
Alicia Johnson (25:56):
Or you have tested it, but in a way that is
so contrived that it isn'tactually real right?
I'm currently working with aclient who has gone through an
exercise and when we started toprobe more about how did the
exercise work was you know, wereyou able to test this piece or
this piece you know?
(26:16):
Tell us about the informationflow from field gathering all
the way into the EOC and beyondthat, right into recovery.
Did you test your field teamsand they said no, because we
were just fed the informationfrom the field, right?
So the sim cell fed them theinformation.
So the only piece they testedwas directly inside the EOC.
(26:38):
When they received the data,what did they do with it?
And then they, you know, we putit in this spreadsheet and then
that's where the exercisestopped.
So it was.
It was.
The rest of it was notional.
That's fine.
If you're going to, you'respecifically only testing one
piece of the puzzle, but thenyou need the rest of the process
to also be tested.
(26:59):
And if you're not going tostage an exercise or even have a
tabletop you tabletopdiscussion about what happens
before the EOC and what happensafter the EOC then you haven't
done your due diligence on theprocess.
Marc Mullen (27:13):
I was curious to know what you see that breaks
most often.
But I think we just discussedthat somewhat of
underpreparedness and lack offocus and not understanding the
scope.
But if you could mandate, we'llgive you all the power in the
world.
Now, if you could mandate threeactions for every emergency
planner to take, what would theybe?
I think one.
Alicia Johnson (27:35):
This is hard to think about.
Three is not enough.
But let's and this is in noparticular order, these are just
the thoughts that are coming tomy head.
One, I think, is run a fullscale exercise around the issue
that is most pertinent at thetime, right, so that could be a
power outage, that could be anatural event, it could be a
(27:58):
human caused event, whatever itis, but run a full scale
exercise because you want totest everything tip to tail and
see where it breaks right.
Once you get that, then youhave a really good operational
checklist of what you want to bemoving forward on and fixing.
So that's one thing that Iwould quote unquote mandate.
The second thing I would mandateis deeper conversations with
(28:23):
the communities that we support.
We are here for them.
That's the job of municipalgovernments and we need to be
able to connect with them.
So focus more on building thattrust and resilience over time
and do what it takes to makethose relationships solid and
also flexible right, so they'reable to withstand a diverse
(28:47):
piece of types of events thatare happening.
And then I think the otherpiece that I would say is that
we need deeper conversationswith our decision makers, not
only those who are directly inpositions of leadership, but
also those beneath them whowould be making regular, you
(29:08):
know, hopefully accuratedecisions during a time of
crisis and designate and empowerthose decision makers as they
move forward in their process,so that they are not waiting to
make a critical decision becausethey need someone else above
them to sign off and so beingable to ensure that there's.
You know, we're moving again atthe speed of trust that we have
(29:29):
already built with thecommunity to bring, and with our
responders as well to bringthings full circle.
Marc Mullen (29:35):
Very good.
Tom, d o you have anything toadd to that?
Because you can look at it fromthe other side in your
experience of how does acorporation build resiliency and
trust?
Tom Mueller (29:46):
Well, yeah, certainly I'd start off with
have a plan and test that planand train your people to that
plan.
Themes we've already talkedabout here with Alicia this
morning Gosh, so much can beaccomplished if you just do that
right.
Given the speed of change, thespeed of transitions that we're
(30:10):
all working through these days,whether it's politically or
personally, there's justconstant change that's roiling
us in our global environment, usin our global environment.
So that to me, is just a hugeone is have a plan, train your
people on your plan.
Worked with clients who reallyhad really great people on their
(30:31):
communications teams but hadnever really thought about a
crisis thing.
That's usually something thatthe media relations team is
going to deal with.
But when it's something that isa brand crisis or that affects
the overall company, yourreputation heaven forbid.
You injure people in acommunity somewhere and now
(30:54):
you've got the whole worldlooking over your shoulder and
watching it.
What is your plan to deal withthat and how trained are your
people to be able to manage that?
And I think, alicia, to onepoint you made you know what's
the trust, what's the delegationof authority that you give to
your people out in the field toengage and to manage
(31:16):
relationships on the ground, orare you controlling all of that
from up on high?
So there's a lot of trust thatgoes with that.
But you know, I think back toyou know we worked the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill and we tookeverybody we had and threw them
out into the field and it wasn'tnearly enough people, but we
(31:38):
had.
The people who were left afterthe big downsizing were good
people and we just said go outthere, find the community
leaders, find the TV camerasthat are there, tell them what
we're doing and be a source andbe a good communicator there.
And we let them run right anddid our best to provide updated
(31:58):
information each and every dayso they had good things to talk
about.
But in the end we put a wholelot of trust in those people out
in the field and it was becausethey were well-trained, knew
their jobs and could workindependently like that.
Those are all great points tomake, mark.
Excellent question there.
Thanks for bringing that in.
Alicia Johnson (32:18):
Sure.
So one of the questions Marchad posed to me was what are the
things that break the mostoften?
And I was thinking back topretty much every AAR I have
ever read, and it's alwayscommunications.
But more generally speaking,what they're actually saying is
(32:43):
like we just couldn't talk toeach other, we didn't understand
, there was no way tocommunicate, there was no way to
have sort of this broaderconversation about.
Here's the talking points,here's the the importance of
communication, and yet everysingle AAR reflects that it's a
piece that's broken, and yet wecan't seem to communities and
(33:16):
organizations to struggle to getpast this, like what's
happening on the radio kind ofthing.
We haven't figured, we haven'tcracked the nut yet.
We haven't figured out how todo that, and I think that's
something that probably will youknow.
Hopefully we see more momentumin the coming years on what that
looks like and how we do itbetter.
Marc Mullen (33:37):
That's where the organization chart we depend on
so much starts to go to war withitself, because it's built to
direct information in onedirection and built to take
multiple information up tosingle source.
And you're talking about theopposite.
How do we take um a lot ofinformation and get it across
(33:57):
the across the board march?
So that will be an interestingdynamic.
I do know that when you're in ajake, a lot of times what the
jick forgets is you have astakeholder group called
everybody else in command,because everybody's doing their
job and nobody has time tofigure out everything else.
So that was a lesson I learnedfrom a drill where we had a
(34:17):
glass wall and we just puteverything up on the wall and
because it was a glass wall, wesaw the people that came over to
read to say what's going onanyway, and these are people
that were right in the middle oftheir response.
So I think that's communicatorsneed to remember.
You've got this otherstakeholder group called
everybody else in the room withyou.
Alicia Johnson (34:36):
And Tom mentioned that they were
empowering in Deepwater Horizon.
They were empowering thecommunications professionals to
go into the community and havethose conversations daily.
Getting briefs, here are somegreat stories we can talk about.
You're giving that informationto us as well.
Everything you find out thereis a level of.
When we talk aboutcommunications breaking down,
(34:58):
it's not just the technologiesthat don't work, it's often the
technologies are working justfine.
It's that we're not talkingabout it, we're not giving those
conversations, those talkingpoints, and we're not receiving
that information back.
And so the combination of bothtechnology and the talking right
, that is where the breakdownhappens.
(35:21):
And you're absolutely right, weforget who else we can tap into
for information and to help usget the message out and continue
to build the trust that we needso desperately when we're in
the middle of response.
Tom Mueller (35:34):
It's been a really fun conversation.
So thank you, Alicia, forjoining us today.
Marc, thank you again for beingwith us as well.
Marc Mullen (35:43):
Absolutely my pleasure.
Alicia Johnson (35:50):
Thank you,
Tom Mueller (35:50):
and that's going to do it for this episode
of the Leading in a Crisispodcast.
We do thank you for joining us.
If you like what you're seeingand hearing, then please like
and subscribe to the podcast andwe'll see you again soon for
another episode.
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a
Crisis podcast.
We're very happy to have youwith us again today.
On this podcast, we sharestories from the front lines of
crisis management throughinterviews, storytelling and
lessons learned as shared byexperienced crisis leaders.
I'm Tom Mueller.
With me again, my co-host, markMullen.
Mark, good morning.
Marc Mullen (00:29):
Good morning Tom.
Tom Mueller (00:31):
On our podcast.
Today we're going to talk to anexpert in municipal crisis
planning and get her take onsome recent issues and also kind
of best practices in crisisplanning for municipalities.
I'm going to hand it over toMarc now to introduce our guest
and to kick us off, Marc.
Marc Mullen (00:52):
Thank you, tom, and I'm very happy to have this
time together with you and withAlicia Johnson with Two Lynchpin
Road.
Alicia, that would be fun justto know how it got that name and
maybe you can share that withus as well.
As Tom already mentioned,alicia has deep background in
crisis preparedness and responseand we thought she'd be a great
(01:19):
guest, because there's a lot ofsynergy that can happen between
public and private planning andit would be nice, I think, to
take a look at some of thedifferences, but some of the
similarities and the strengthsand and maybe wrap it up and
talking about a few possiblecrises along the way.
So, alicia, welcome, glad tohave you with us glad to be here
.
Alicia Johnson (01:36):
Thanks, Marc
Marc Mullen (01:37):
okay, and why don't we if you would?
I've been reading about you onyour website and following your
newsletters and I'm curious.
We all end up doing what we dobecause there's some passion or
event behind it that has led usto it.
So I'm curious to know, as youintroduce yourself and tell us
(01:59):
about yourself a little, if youcould also sort of focus on what
brought you into this field andwhat makes you stay in it.
Alicia Johnson (02:06):
Yeah, that's a great question.
So I think every emergencymanager, frankly every emergency
responder, kind of has animpetus event.
For me specifically, thatoccurred when I was very young.
I distinctly remember theYellowstone fires and partially
(02:26):
because my dad grew up in thatparticular area of Northern
Wyoming and we spent almostevery summer going through the
park, and the summer after thefires we didn't go because it
was too painful for my dad tosee the destruction of that
particular area and it reallykind of stayed with me in a way
(02:49):
that I don't think I recognizedat the time, but it was just
kind of hovering there in thebackground.
And then when I got out ofschool, after majoring in
communications and politicalscience, I wanted to go to work
in local government, as Tomalluded to, and there was a role
available as a publicinformation officer in a
community that was near myhometown and it sort of all
(03:13):
coalesced at one moment and Iremember a key point in the
interview when the director ofemergency management said well,
do you understand what this jobdoes?
You know as a publicinformation officer, do you
understand what this job does?
You know as a publicinformation officer, do you
understand the role?
And I said.
You know, I thought for aminute.
I thought, well, can I, can Ilike tap dance around the answer
or should I be brutally honest?
(03:34):
And I decided to go with brutalhonesty and my comment back to
them was you know, I don'tunderstand everything this role
does, but what I do know is thatwhen something bad happens, the
blue line across the bottom ofthe television screen comes on
and tells people what to do.
And this job has everything todo with the blue line.
That's the whole point of itand apparently that was the
(03:55):
right answer, because I got therole and then continued to kind
of work in that process and Icould never escape the orbit of
emergency management.
I tried multiple times to workin other areas and it just
didn't happen.
I kept coming back to theimportance of risk communication
, of community resilience, ofbuilding connection and
(04:21):
readiness with a community,building that trust and all the
aspects of that, whether thatwas in public information, in
emergency management, as adirector, working with area
stakeholders through grants andother projects and that sort of
piece, and now working as acontractor and helping
communities support themselvesin that kind of forward momentum
(04:41):
.
That kind of forward momentum.
So I just couldn't escape thatinitial kind of awareness of how
important it was for acommunity to be prepared for
anything that might happen.
Marc Mullen (04:54):
Very fascinating and you're obviously happy with
your choice.
You've done this for some time.
You've moved, you've hadmultiple, multiple, different
levels of impact as I look atyour resume so you've obviously
run with a passion in that.
Alicia Johnson (05:12):
Yeah, thank you, it's been a fun 20-plus years.
Marc Mullen (05:16):
Wow.
Well, so between all of us it'slike that Amco transmission ad
when they say we've done thisfor 10 days now, so we have more
than a week's experience.
Between the three of us here,we've been doing this since the
dawn of time, practically.
Alicia Johnson (05:36):
Yes.
Marc Mullen (05:38):
But it was interesting that you mentioned
again that it's all about theblue line, because you could
almost say it's really all aboutcommunication.
Any response ends up being acommunication challenge.
So I noticed that you talk onyour website about helping
communities and organizationsprepare for disasters,
(05:59):
emergencies and any other typeof crisis.
So it sounds like you work withcommunities themselves, you
work with governments, you alsowork with corporations and so on
.
So it gives you a unique skillset to live on both sides of the
fence, and I'm curious to knowwhat's the difference between
(06:20):
getting a community ready andgetting an organization ready?
Alicia Johnson (06:30):
Well, let's start with the organization,
whether that's at the corporatelevel, at the nonprofit level or
even in terms of the governmentorganization.
Right, all of thoserecommendations are structurally
driven.
They're driven through standardoperating procedures.
You have very clear roles andprotocols, ideas of moving
things forward.
This happens, and then thishappens, and then this happens.
(06:51):
If this happens, do this typeof thing.
It really revolves heavilyaround those standard operating
procedures and the training forthose standard operating
procedures and the continuationof that conversation.
I think one of the key aspectsof that is also recognizing that
bad things can happen to goodorganizations and so you have to
(07:13):
be prepared, and that idea ofhaving a continual level of
awareness and then preparednessthat follows when it comes to
the community.
I think it's a little bittrickier, only in that it's
relationally driven.
You can't create an SOP thathandles the trust building of
your community.
You can create protocols on howto do that, but it is really
(07:34):
about building trust within thecommunity that you're a part of,
so creating networks andcapacities where you're actually
connecting with keystakeholders who help you spread
your mission.
It's not necessarily a veryformal process.
It is adaptive into moving atthe speed of trust at whatever
(07:59):
your community or the groupsyou're working with can handle,
and so it's a little bit morefluid in its development and I
think it's also, by its nature,can be more fragile, because
trust is easily broken and noteasily developed, but if you are
able to cultivate it in a waythat is resonant with the people
(08:23):
that you serve, then it laststhrough crisis right, it's not
so.
It's fragile in that it takestime to be built and if you
ignore it it can be broken.
But if you are putting in theeffort, then it becomes
resilient and flexible in itsneed.
(08:45):
So they are interconnected andyou know, as we've talked about
in relationship to municipalgovernment, you need both sides
of that coin.
You need both the communityreadiness and the organizational
readiness to pull it off.
Tom Mueller (08:58):
One of the things I've been thinking about lately
is just the reactions to thewidespread power outages that
hit the European continent justlast week.
As we're recording this, knowthinking about all the different
(09:22):
municipalities, counties,states, countries and dealing
with you know a sudden loss ofall power to do everything you
do.
I'm just curious your take on.
You know what would be goingthrough the minds of you know
people running those localgovernment agencies and you know
how do they prepare forsomething as sort of devastating
as losing all your power.
Alicia Johnson (09:42):
When you think about it, especially in a US
context.
Right, we think about thatalmost as if, like that's
unfathomable, it would neverhappen here, but it does happen
here all the time.
Right, it happens in whatCalifornia calls the public
safety power shutdowns, wherethey preemptively cut off the
power for wildfire events orpotential wildfire events.
They don't even have to have alight fire, it's just there's
(10:04):
heavy wind, it's a drought, itmeets certain qualifications.
The power comes off for aperiod of time.
Hopefully it's restored in atimely manner.
It not always is right, I'vebeen through a public safety
power shutdown that lasted morethan 48 hours.
That's a long time to bewithout electrical capacity and
most homes don't have a built-ingenerator like they do in other
(10:26):
parts of the United States.
So, similarly in Europe, right,you're living in an apartment in
Lisbon, you maybe are.
You know your landlord does nothave a generator for the entire
apartment building, right, andif you're in an apartment, you
can't have a generator rightnext to your kitchen, right to
run your refrigerator orsomething like that.
(10:48):
Or even, you know solidly withthe fact that we are incredibly
dependent upon electricity andwhen it goes out sometimes
there's nothing you can do.
Sometimes you could have agenerator.
(11:08):
It's temporary, you power yourrefrigerator and you call it a
day, right.
Sometimes if you're in ahurricane prone area, you know,
maybe you have a generator,maybe your neighbor has a
generator, hopefully you're notdealing with other things on top
of that like flooding andthings like that.
But there is definitely kind of, I think, a real awareness that
(11:32):
must come with the fact thatthis is now a risk that we run
every single day.
10, 15 years ago that wasn't arisk necessarily right, we
didn't think about it activelylike we do now.
Tom Mueller (11:42):
If you're a planner for a municipality - you worked
with the city of San Franciscofor some years - and you know
what's your priority list, youknow for public safety, and that
you know in your as you'reputting together a plan to deal
with something like this, itjust seems overwhelming to me,
because you lose your trafficsignals on the highways and
(12:06):
byways right, you may lose watercirculation if you don't have
backup circulation for watersupplies, which was an issue in
some of the European countriesfor water supplies, which was an
issue in some of the Europeancountries, absolutely so the
planning process around thatjust feels like it'd be so
intimidating.
Alicia Johnson (12:24):
It is.
It is Absolutely A hundredpercent.
It's intimidating, right,because you have the road and
bridge issues, right, are weable to get people on and off in
a safe fashion?
Are they able to travel If theyneed to do we even want them to
travel, right, becauseeverything's dark, so we may not
even want them to travel.
(12:45):
And then you have vulnerablepopulations.
And my first, you know, as theresilience and recovery manager
for the city of San Francisco,working with their emergency
management team, one of my firstpieces was how do we take care
of those vulnerable populations?
If you have people in skillednursing facilities and hospitals
(13:06):
who do not have a generator, orhave a generator but it's only
good for certain pieces, are weable to continue to give them
the care that they need?
Do we need to transport them?
Can we make sure that you havethe capacity you need to do that
ahead of time?
That's where planning comes in,you know, in a clutch situation
because you need to think aboutthose kind of potential
(13:28):
instances.
And then I think there's otherpieces where you're looking at,
you know, from a private sectorperspective.
If they do not have generatorpower for things like a grocery
store, all of their foodstuffsthat are in frozen or
refrigerated areas are no longerviable.
That's a problem because nowthey have written off lots, many
(13:52):
hundreds of dollars, maybethousands, maybe hundreds of
thousands, depending on what itis that they.
You know the type of locationand how does that fit in.
Where does that come into thestructure and how do you help
them prepare for that particularinstance?
I think we're still waiting forsome more data from what to
(14:13):
come out from Europe and fromthis particular outage and what
we can use to implement here inthe States.
Tom Mueller (14:20):
We went through that a few years ago here in the
Houston area where I live.
It was in February, where wehad a huge freeze, came into the
area and took out a lot of thepower generation for a variety
of reasons, and so we hadsuddenly, you know, balmy
Houston in 20 degree Fahrenheittemperatures with no electricity
(14:44):
, and so we had something on theorder of 100,000 homes where
pipes burst, flooded the homesand, you know, just created all
kinds of issues.
Now you've got coldtemperatures, people can't stay
in their homes, you need to openshelters and of course, that in
itself spurred the homegenerator market in Houston like
(15:06):
it's never been spurred before.
You know, all of my neighborssuddenly have Generacs trucks
parked out front and installinggenerators right, and I did that
myself to try and get throughthat.
You know, even dealing with, asyou said, the vulnerable
populations is a huge, hugeissue that planners have to deal
(15:26):
with in these types of crisisplanning sessions.
Alicia Johnson (15:29):
Yes, and those are partners.
So as a municipal planner and,you know, as a public
information officer or anemergency manager as a whole,
you cannot control what they door don't do.
So it is about building thatwe're back to community
readiness right.
It's about building that trustand the capacity that this can
(15:50):
happen to us.
Here are some possiblesolutions.
We urge you to make theseappropriate decisions, and it's
tied to your economic bottomline right.
The more prepared you are, themore likely you are to be able
to serve your clientele, yourcustomers, your partners
successfully, and I think thatis a big part of emergency
(16:14):
management.
It's not just about theplanning.
It's also about making surethat we bring everyone to the
table, that the table is largeenough, that everyone's present
so that we can have really solidconversations and take next
steps on behalf of the peoplewe're supposed to be protecting.
Marc Mullen (16:29):
Sounds like there's an issue here of trust and
really portraying and helpingpeople understand that trust
doesn't mean don't worry, we'lltake care of you.
There's a point you've just gotto say.
There's a line here and at thislevel above this, we cannot
take care of you.
It's funny, Tom, you're talkingabout the European events were
(16:51):
like a major storm without amajor storm.
All the power went down, as ifit had been knocked out, and yet
you know the cause was whoknows what.
Yet, and you had in Houston,you had water damage like a
hurricane, but without ahurricane.
It was all self-generated.
No pun intended, but the real,it seems like.
One of the real questions ishow do you clearly portray that
(17:14):
we are planning everything wecan to take care of you, but
there will be events that wecan't take care of you?
Alicia Johnson (17:21):
That's the question emergency management as
a whole is really dealing withright now, and one of the
biggest ways I have found, inboth working inside municipal
organizations and as aconsultant, is admitting that
bad things happen.
(17:41):
Right, breaking down this wall,like breaking down the taboo
that we do not talk aboutdisaster, we do not talk about
crisis and making it somethingyou can talk about at the dinner
table so not just withemergency managers, because we
use a lot of Black humor toprocess all the things that we
have seen or heard orparticipated in and responded to
(18:05):
.
And having that conversationwith your neighbors, with your
you know, the businesses youfrequent, right?
How are you preparing for X?
Have you heard about this?
What does that look like here?
Right, and not being afraid tohave those general conversations
One of the things I see themost is that if we don't have
(18:25):
those conversations, then wedefinitely can't get any farther
down the road.
Right, we can't.
We can't build better trust, wecan't build better response
systems, because we haven'tactually jumped to that first
hurdle of really admitting thatsomething bad could happen.
Marc Mullen (18:38):
Sure, so it sounds like again that's.
One of the first hurdles youhave to have is an understanding
that this can happen and weneed to be ready.
Is that common that people getto that point and then their
list of what could happen isshorter and smaller than your
knowledge of what could happen?
Alicia Johnson (19:01):
Absolutely, absolutely shorter and smaller
than your knowledge of whatcould happen, absolutely,
absolutely.
They're oh well, we're at riskfor earthquakes and wildfires,
you're like, and at least 10other things because they might
happen to you.
They're like, oh no, that thepower outages in the EU.
(19:22):
I think a lot of people will belike, well, that isn't going to
happen here because our gridisn't X right, which is kind of
irrelevant.
Yes, maybe that, not that exactthing, will happen, but there
are precedent for that to happenall across the United States in
various areas, both rural andmetropolitan.
(19:43):
We have to acknowledge that.
Marc Mullen (19:45):
Well, just think of all the European airport
emergency managers that did aquick check to see can we
survive a fire in a substation.
And they'll say, sure, we'vegot redundancy.
And then the whole continentgoes black.
Alicia Johnson (19:59):
Yes, and then everyone's flight is canceled
for a week,Alicia, I was thinking back to a
crisis situation that hit acommunity where I own a home in
a little town called Wimberleyin Central Texas, and a massive
flood hit that community oneMemorial Day weekend and the
(20:21):
river that runs through it wentfrom five feet to 48 feet over
the course of about an hour anda big holiday weekend all of
that.
But I was thinking back ontheir crisis response and the
potential conflicts that canarise between leaders in a
response.
Right, I think about the mayorand what's his or her role in
(20:43):
this response versus the firechief or the police chief or the
emergency manager, and there'sjust seems to me there's huge
potential for conflict.
You know when somethingactually happens.
How do you coach people to makesure there are clear roles and
responsibilities in situationslike that?
(21:04):
I think that's a really greatquestion and also an amazing
example, actually, that is justmind-blowing, from that much
flooding in such a short amountof time.
As emergency managers and,frankly, as response personnel,
public safety responders wealways go back to the incident
(21:26):
command system and having an ICSorg chart.
And in my experience, you canhave the org chart, you can
print it out, you can post it onyour wall in your emergency
operations center.
But if no one is filling thoseroles or trained to fill those
roles, that organizational chartcollapses under the stress of
the incident.
And so being able to, as wetalked about before, acknowledge
(21:49):
that there is the potential forcertain types of disasters to
happen, even when they exceedour imagination, like a river
flooding with that extremeamount of water and then saying,
okay, so a flood is possibleand these are the roles that we
will be filling within ourorganizational structure.
Here's how you would fill thatposition, right, if you are the
(22:12):
mayor at the time, and, ofcourse, the mayor changes every
few years, right?
So how are we training thoseindividuals repeatedly, over and
over and over, even every year,whether they're new to the
position or not?
Are you familiar?
Do you understand?
Have you practiced yourconversations, do you know how
you're going to relate to thestructure as a whole?
(22:32):
How are we going to connect toother communities for mutual aid
, for additional assistance,whatever that looks like For the
people who are there, ifthere's a lot of tourists there
because it's a holiday weekend,or if no one is there because
they all left and it's a holidayweekend, right, what are the
extenuating circumstances ofthat particular event?
(23:02):
Of that particular event?
But often, particularly inmunicipal organizations, I have
seen organizations come throughwith this beautiful looking org
chart and it's got three deep,because that's the industry
standard, that's the bestpractice on every single
position.
Those three people, if they areall currently still employed by
the organization high five,because often they're not.
And if they have been trainedthat's always the question Like
(23:26):
well, when was the last timethis person was trained to do X
or Y or feel comfortable here?
When was the last time you guyspracticed a full on activation?
Did you test your IT?
Like those are basic questionsthat we continue to ask over and
over and over because they areincredible points of failure.
And then, if you've surmountedall of those little tiny pieces
(23:48):
that are like we're completelycapable, we're ready to go.
I think you go back to thatquestion.
Do you know what you're goingto say to your community when
things go utterly wrong and notas you expected for Memorial Day
?
Utterly wrong and not as youexpected for Memorial Day right.
How do you combat that and whatdoes that look like?
Tom Mueller (24:12):
does that look like ?
I don't think the org chart isenough.
I think you have to go beyondthat.
Yeah, one quick example on thatis I survived one of many
downsizing.
I worked in the oil and gasindustry and 2008,.
There was a major downsizing.
We cut a lot of people out ofthe communications and external
affairs team, including theperson who was responsible for
our crisis communications plan Iwould never imagine that.
(24:36):
Did not replace that person wasno management of change process
with that.
So, in addition to losing a lotof the people who were on the
org chart in 2008, you know, by2010, many of those people were
gone.
There had been no training innew roles.
And then you know, majorincident occurs and you're in
(24:59):
the mode of let's wing it.
Let's just tap our people.
Let's get out there and do whatwe can do.
But to your point about justmanaging change through the
organization and trying to dothose periodic updates and
adjustments to plan so to makesure everybody's trained Easier
said than done though.
Marc Mullen (25:19):
It reflects what I've seen over the years, which
is still a lot of emergencyplanning is what I call checkbox
planning.
We need an emergency plan checkwe have it.
We need an org chart checkWe've got it.
People are concerned withchecking it off of a list, but
they're not actually taking thatand integrating it into what
they do.
As far as they're concerned,the problem was solved.
(25:40):
When you can say we have acrisis communications plan, we
can let them go.
Now we have a plan.
And that's really dangerousbecause you end up thinking
you're ready but, alicia, as yousay, you've never actually
tested it, it's never beentempered.
Alicia Johnson (25:56):
Or you have tested it, but in a way that is
so contrived that it isn'tactually real right?
I'm currently working with aclient who has gone through an
exercise and when we started toprobe more about how did the
exercise work was you know, wereyou able to test this piece or
this piece you know?
(26:16):
Tell us about the informationflow from field gathering all
the way into the EOC and beyondthat, right into recovery.
Did you test your field teamsand they said no, because we
were just fed the informationfrom the field, right?
So the sim cell fed them theinformation.
So the only piece they testedwas directly inside the EOC.
(26:38):
When they received the data,what did they do with it?
And then they, you know, we putit in this spreadsheet and then
that's where the exercisestopped.
So it was.
It was.
The rest of it was notional.
That's fine.
If you're going to, you'respecifically only testing one
piece of the puzzle, but thenyou need the rest of the process
to also be tested.
(26:59):
And if you're not going tostage an exercise or even have a
tabletop you tabletopdiscussion about what happens
before the EOC and what happensafter the EOC then you haven't
done your due diligence on theprocess.
Marc Mullen (27:13):
I was curious to know what you see that breaks
most often.
But I think we just discussedthat somewhat of
underpreparedness and lack offocus and not understanding the
scope.
But if you could mandate, we'llgive you all the power in the
world.
Now, if you could mandate threeactions for every emergency
planner to take, what would theybe?
I think one.
Alicia Johnson (27:35):
This is hard to think about.
Three is not enough.
But let's and this is in noparticular order, these are just
the thoughts that are coming tomy head.
One, I think, is run a fullscale exercise around the issue
that is most pertinent at thetime, right, so that could be a
power outage, that could be anatural event, it could be a
(27:58):
human caused event, whatever itis, but run a full scale
exercise because you want totest everything tip to tail and
see where it breaks right.
Once you get that, then youhave a really good operational
checklist of what you want to bemoving forward on and fixing.
So that's one thing that Iwould quote unquote mandate.
The second thing I would mandateis deeper conversations with
(28:23):
the communities that we support.
We are here for them.
That's the job of municipalgovernments and we need to be
able to connect with them.
So focus more on building thattrust and resilience over time
and do what it takes to makethose relationships solid and
also flexible right, so they'reable to withstand a diverse
(28:47):
piece of types of events thatare happening.
And then I think the otherpiece that I would say is that
we need deeper conversationswith our decision makers, not
only those who are directly inpositions of leadership, but
also those beneath them whowould be making regular, you
(29:08):
know, hopefully accuratedecisions during a time of
crisis and designate and empowerthose decision makers as they
move forward in their process,so that they are not waiting to
make a critical decision becausethey need someone else above
them to sign off and so beingable to ensure that there's.
You know, we're moving again atthe speed of trust that we have
(29:29):
already built with thecommunity to bring, and with our
responders as well to bringthings full circle.
Marc Mullen (29:35):
Very good.
Tom, d o you have anything toadd to that?
Because you can look at it fromthe other side in your
experience of how does acorporation build resiliency and
trust?
Tom Mueller (29:46):
Well, yeah, certainly I'd start off with
have a plan and test that planand train your people to that
plan.
Themes we've already talkedabout here with Alicia this
morning Gosh, so much can beaccomplished if you just do that
right.
Given the speed of change, thespeed of transitions that we're
(30:10):
all working through these days,whether it's politically or
personally, there's justconstant change that's roiling
us in our global environment, usin our global environment.
So that to me, is just a hugeone is have a plan, train your
people on your plan.
Worked with clients who reallyhad really great people on their
(30:31):
communications teams but hadnever really thought about a
crisis thing.
That's usually something thatthe media relations team is
going to deal with.
But when it's something that isa brand crisis or that affects
the overall company, yourreputation heaven forbid.
You injure people in acommunity somewhere and now
(30:54):
you've got the whole worldlooking over your shoulder and
watching it.
What is your plan to deal withthat and how trained are your
people to be able to manage that?
And I think, alicia, to onepoint you made you know what's
the trust, what's the delegationof authority that you give to
your people out in the field toengage and to manage
(31:16):
relationships on the ground, orare you controlling all of that
from up on high?
So there's a lot of trust thatgoes with that.
But you know, I think back toyou know we worked the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill and we tookeverybody we had and threw them
out into the field and it wasn'tnearly enough people, but we
(31:38):
had.
The people who were left afterthe big downsizing were good
people and we just said go outthere, find the community
leaders, find the TV camerasthat are there, tell them what
we're doing and be a source andbe a good communicator there.
And we let them run right anddid our best to provide updated
(31:58):
information each and every dayso they had good things to talk
about.
But in the end we put a wholelot of trust in those people out
in the field and it was becausethey were well-trained, knew
their jobs and could workindependently like that.
Those are all great points tomake, mark.
Excellent question there.
Thanks for bringing that in.
Alicia Johnson (32:18):
Sure.
So one of the questions Marchad posed to me was what are the
things that break the mostoften?
And I was thinking back topretty much every AAR I have
ever read, and it's alwayscommunications.
But more generally speaking,what they're actually saying is
(32:43):
like we just couldn't talk toeach other, we didn't understand
, there was no way tocommunicate, there was no way to
have sort of this broaderconversation about.
Here's the talking points,here's the the importance of
communication, and yet everysingle AAR reflects that it's a
piece that's broken, and yet wecan't seem to communities and
(33:16):
organizations to struggle to getpast this, like what's
happening on the radio kind ofthing.
We haven't figured, we haven'tcracked the nut yet.
We haven't figured out how todo that, and I think that's
something that probably will youknow.
Hopefully we see more momentumin the coming years on what that
looks like and how we do itbetter.
Marc Mullen (33:37):
That's where the organization chart we depend on
so much starts to go to war withitself, because it's built to
direct information in onedirection and built to take
multiple information up tosingle source.
And you're talking about theopposite.
How do we take um a lot ofinformation and get it across
(33:57):
the across the board march?
So that will be an interestingdynamic.
I do know that when you're in ajake, a lot of times what the
jick forgets is you have astakeholder group called
everybody else in command,because everybody's doing their
job and nobody has time tofigure out everything else.
So that was a lesson I learnedfrom a drill where we had a
(34:17):
glass wall and we just puteverything up on the wall and
because it was a glass wall, wesaw the people that came over to
read to say what's going onanyway, and these are people
that were right in the middle oftheir response.
So I think that's communicatorsneed to remember.
You've got this otherstakeholder group called
everybody else in the room withyou.
Alicia Johnson (34:36):
And Tom mentioned that they were
empowering in Deepwater Horizon.
They were empowering thecommunications professionals to
go into the community and havethose conversations daily.
Getting briefs, here are somegreat stories we can talk about.
You're giving that informationto us as well.
Everything you find out thereis a level of.
When we talk aboutcommunications breaking down,
(34:58):
it's not just the technologiesthat don't work, it's often the
technologies are working justfine.
It's that we're not talkingabout it, we're not giving those
conversations, those talkingpoints, and we're not receiving
that information back.
And so the combination of bothtechnology and the talking right
, that is where the breakdownhappens.
(35:21):
And you're absolutely right, weforget who else we can tap into
for information and to help usget the message out and continue
to build the trust that we needso desperately when we're in
the middle of response.
Tom Mueller (35:34):
It's been a really fun conversation.
So thank you, Alicia, forjoining us today.
Marc, thank you again for beingwith us as well.
Marc Mullen (35:43):
Absolutely my pleasure.
Alicia Johnson (35:50):
Thank you,
Tom Mueller (35:50):
and that's going to do it for this episode
of the Leading in a Crisispodcast.
We do thank you for joining us.
If you like what you're seeingand hearing, then please like
and subscribe to the podcast andwe'll see you again soon for
another episode.
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