An Independent Ideology on Crisis Management
I love the movie, Jerry Maguire. Tom Cruise plays a Sports Agent, Jerry, who writes a rambling, stream of conscious, Mission Statement for how Sports Agents and Lawyers should be and what is really important. He wants to start a revolution and change the industry to focus on personal relationships. He gets fired. I won’t spoil the rest of the movie for you.
We never actually get to hear his whole Mission Statement during the movie. But, spoiler alert, it exists right here. At one point he quotes his Father’s advice, “Every time you allow a problem in your life, you are actually at a point of transformation. Crisis is a powerful point of transformation.”
During my crisis management career, I saw many problems. I would try to address them at different times and different ways, but in the end, I lacked Jerry’s courage to take it further. But I am retired now. I still don’t want to offend anyone, but I still see the problems. And crisis management still has an opportunity to transform. With humility, honesty, and a touch of fear, I present my stream of conscious mission statement, my personal thoughts, on how we should change our approach and I address those emperors who wear no clothes.
Personnel Structure. Jerry said it all starts with personal relationships in his business. Same here, to include personnel matters. If we were going to construct a crisis management team from scratch, knowing that we would need many more people during a disaster than in steady state, than wouldn’t it be a good idea to design a system that could hire a sufficient number of staff, provide everyone equal hiring rights for every position, treat everyone with the same level of dignity, and protect those who do not serve full time? Seems like that should be the starting point. Day one. And it’s not like there was not a successful model to follow – the National Guard has been doing this since 1636.
Qualification System. It is a brilliant idea to have a qualification system. It ensures expertise. It provided validation. It ensures a standard. But who in their right mind would then design that system where you can only get qualified through deployments and then allow impediments to deployments? Who would require tasks to be approved by already qualified individuals, but then deny them the opportunity if they were not both deployed and in the same physical space? Who would write the criteria so hard that nobody who applied would qualify but you hire them anyways and then pretend they are qualified even though you know they are not, while another more talented person does not earn the same title due to organizational self-imposed red tape?
Deployment Cycles. Come work for us! We will send you to austere locations under high stress. But here is the good news. As soon as you come home, no extra time off, we will try to send you again. Oh, you need training? Sorry about that? You are burned out? Bummer. Well at least everything you do is thankless. Now we are going to send you to Louisiana. I hate to use another military example, but they will often rotate through four cycles, Deployment, Maintenance, Training, Steady State. If your four cycles are, deploy, deploy, deploy, and deploy, then there may be a smidge of room for improvement.
Retention. Um, gee, this one should be simple. If you are a good organization, and you treat people well, and you pay them fair wages, this should never be a problem. But, if you have a high turnover of talented people, there must be a reason or two. Don’t you think?
Work-Life Balance. If your boss tells you they believe in a work-life balance, but they email you after work or on vacation for non-lifesaving issues, then your boss is what we in New Hampshire call a liar. And as far as these last two items, I have heard senior officials try to defend themselves by claiming, typically with a smirk, “this business is not for everyone.” I call the bull on that.
Diversity. Just look at a few numbers. If the organization boasts about diversity, but the workforce is not made up of people who represent the same ratio in the country, the words become hollow. If there are 400 people deployed to a disaster and only one or two are focused on tribal issues, one on disability integration, and one on equal rights, then diversity does not seem to be a convincing goal.
Turning the Other Cheek. This one boggles me. If you are doing important lifesaving work and others insult you, why not boldly stand up for yourself every time? That doesn’t mean we have to attack someone else. Just be bold and honest and stick up for your work and your employees. Show some pride. Show some spine.
Stakeholder Disengagement. Let’s pretend we are starting at the beginning again. If you were going to create positions for tribal engagement, disability engagement, private sector engagement, faith-based engagement, surely you would put them with all of the other trained communicators like public affairs, congressional, and intergovernmental? Right. Or am I missing the game plan? Is the idea that we pick a handful of ways to engage and then reach out to them from different offices with different policies, with different training, because that will ensure consistency? Or is it possible that this developed over time because of poor performances, lack of accountability, fiefdom building and power grabs? If you know, you know.
Private Sector Engagement. Something about crisis management inherently attracts people who like a crisis, even at work. The private sector is by far the largest stakeholder. And they are different from almost every other stakeholder group – they can be partners instead of adversaries. They can accomplish amazing things. They are a good news story during a crisis. So why do crisis managers focus on bad media and congressional queries and put all their effort behind them. Why do crisis managers only see the private sector as a logistical commodity, and operational arm? They have the capacity to communicate to the world through a plethora of mediums. Never mind. Give me ten people and let’s get back to that media reporter. The other stakeholders can cause a little angst and help or not. The private sector could make you famous.
Senior Leadership. If someone took a survey and learned that the senior leadership in an organization had an extremely high satisfaction rating, but everyone lower had an extremely low satisfaction rating, would you recognize a problem? If one organization had 44 political appointee position but another organization triple the size only had 11 political appointee positions, would you see a problem? I fully believe in and support the need for political appointees, but when the percentage and turnover get too high, don’t wonder why the organization does not continue to move forward. There is a thing called the Plum Book.
Knowledge Management. Knowledge management is where the mission dictates technology. If the technology dictates, the mission suffers. If you find yourself having to do everything on SharePoint even if it is not the right platform for the task, you may need knowledge management. If it is painful to process time and attendance, travel, purchases, and awards through various convoluted web platforms, you may need knowledge management. Technology should make life easier, not more difficult.
Mission Creep. When your mission and doctrine describe your job as one thing, but the senior leadership continue to accept more missions and more responsibilities outside of your mission, that is creep. And it is creepy. And it is wrong. When they shut you down for even asking why, it is because they don’t want to reveal that they either can’t say “no” or do not want to say “no” for their own self-interest. It is especially heinous when there are already organizational problems. Oh sure, we are losing a lot through failed retention, we can’t fill our vacancies, and everyone is burned out, but yes please, give us a new mission, outside of our lanes, and without staff or resources to support. We will get bonus points and kudos for doing another agency’s job. Yes, please and thank you.
Designated individual Training. If you organization has about thirty different required training courses, then of course they offer you specified times to take them. Is it every Friday morning, one day per month? I’m sorry, did you say never? They said training is important, right? Hmmm.
Self-Reliance. Why don’t we hear crisis management officials ever talk about self-reliance? If more people who have the ability to take care of themselves did so, we could focus more on the historically underserved who truly do need our help.
Presence is our Mission. Crisis managers love to spout this motto, “Presence is our mission.” Um, no it’s not. Helping people is the mission. Dealing with the crisis is the mission. It is a cute motto to cover leadership who just, well, feel better, when everyone is physically deployed. It doesn’t take into account that someone can write grants just as effectively 2,000 mikes away. It doesn’t take into account that bringing more people into a disaster area can often cause more harm and inconvenience than good. It doesn’t take into account that whole work-life balance thing.
I’m sure if you read this you may have agreed with some, disagreed with others. You might even feel sore about a few things. And if that is the case, I am sorry. Like I said, these are just my thoughts, my stream of consciousness.
And I can’t resist this spoiler alert, Jerry Maguire turns out fine in the end. You should still watch it. It’s a great movie.
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Stoneking Strategic Communications (SSC) 