It’s a great
scene: Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in the basement of a large
library, stalking a ghost, and Dan Aykroyd yells: “Get Her!” They rush the ghost, the ghost flares
up at them, and then we next see the three of them running out of the
building. Later, as they sit on
the steps of the university Bill Murray turns to Dan Aykroyd and says: “That
was your plan? ‘Get Her?’”
Unfortunately,
that is in fact about how involved are many of the plans we bump into on a
daily basis. I was reminded of
this just the other day: I was talking to someone – a trusted and competent
observer – about the plans of several state agencies and the associated
companies – multi-billion dollar firms - that work with them.
The state in
question is large, heavily populated and has access to the most competent
business and university minds of the nation or the world. The agencies, which are responsible for
electric power monitoring and public safety, as well as crisis response, have a
fairly long record of fair to poor response to major crises. (I would say miserable record,
but I am trying to be charitable.) The companies involved have an equally fair
to poor record in sustaining the providing of power to their customers during
various crises and contingencies.
And all have
plans.
Ask them and
they will tell you: “We have crisis response plans for extreme heat, for
extreme cold, for flooding, for fire damage, for hurricanes, for tornadoes, for
terror attacks. We have multiple
‘continuity of operations plans.’
We have support plans to assist in neighboring power grids as well as in
neighboring states. And we have
top executives who were paid to produce the plans, and others who will monitor
the plans. Some of these folks
also have ‘Ops Centers’ and ‘Crisis Response Teams’ and all sorts of neat – and
expensive - ‘toys’ that they drag out whenever there is any sign of a crisis.
And yet every
time there is a good-sized storm, or some other unusual – but not unprecedented
– event, they step all over themselves and the people they are supposed to
support suffer for it. Here’s why:
The plans
stink. And the ‘leadership’ is not
equipped – either through experience or training – to deal with the crisis.
A few weeks ago
I had the opportunity to spend several weeks – working with a small group of
friends – training a particular military organization to respond to various
crises. This small team has been
working together providing this training for 5 years, but also, everyone has
several decades of experience responding to crises, and training to respond to
crises. And, we have all, in one
form or another, worked with various civilian organizations in the preparing of
plans, as well as the training and mentoring of leadership teams to respond
properly in a crisis. Several
points stand out:
Even working
with the organization we work with – and have for the past 5 years – which is
arguably the best organization in the Department of Defense in response to
crises and unusual developments, mistakes are made. Top people, literally the very best, make mistakes – at
every level. From the senior
leadership down to the newest guy (and all already have years of experience and
training), mistakes are made. Over
time plans are made that can account for ‘error rates,’ and the leadership is
trained to recognize mistakes early, as they are happening, and correct them
before things ‘go south.’ But it
requires hard work, good mentoring, training and exercises.
Crisis
leadership, more accurately, good crisis leadership requires good leadership
and lots of experience. No one
handles a crisis well the first half-dozen times. And experience is of essentially no value without a
structured approach to analyzing each crisis after the fact and drawing from it
the appropriate ‘lessons learned.’
Creating good
crisis and continuity of operations plans are ‘non-trivial’ events. Everyone thinks they can, but history,
even very recent history, shows this to be false. FEMA’s performance in Super Storm Sandy was in many ways a
replay of their performance in Hurricane Katrina, and arguably worse, as there
was better warning and the region hit had more possible flexibility in the
response. That FEMA is, in fact, a
crisis response organization makes FEMA’s actual response a textbook
demonstration of just how difficult this is.
Good plans
without a vigorous exercise program are as valuable as the exercise bike that
is never used. Plans need to be
practiced: to find mistakes, train people, identify new and better options, and
to train and condition watch teams and the leadership.
Few if any
companies, or public service organizations or the like, can afford as vigorous
and thorough a training and exercise program as the military. But they can benefit from even a
limited planning, training and exercise program, if overseen by the right
people. Private corporations and
organizations such as utility companies, and specifically the leadership of
these organizations, should take some time to find some people who have the
experience in leadership, planning, training, and exercise generation and spend
the time to develop meaningful crisis response capabilities. It will seem expensive – most
particularly in the amount of time that you will need to commit to training and
exercises (hiring the consultants will be relatively insignificant), but it
will be paid back when you have a real crisis and find you have a plan that
really can be implemented, and really works.