Another PPOST "Aha" Moment: Using It With The ICS Priorities & Complexity Analysis

So, in keeping with my theme around writing articles on innovation in emergency management and staying true to my belief that innovation doesn’t always equal some fancy shiny new technology fix, I want to share with you an “aha” moment I had recently. An innovation that builds on an innovation…that builds on an innovation.

I was co-facilitating an Incident Command System 200 course with my good friend Tom Hansen in the Columbia Shuswap Regional District here in BC a couple of weekends back for a group of their volunteer fire departments. I had a bit of a PPOST "aha" moment. I tested my idea in the class, and it worked well. In fact, the feedback forms reflected that it worked quite well. Similarly, I delivered a PPOST workshop for my good friend Darryl Adrian at Lillooet Tribal Council this last week with similar results, observations and feedback. This is what I landed on.

Recall that I have written a few articles on PPOST. It’s something that was developed here in BC by Dean Monterey, a pillar in Canadian emergency management for the last 40+ years. PPOST works very well for a simple yet thorough systematic inquiry, especially where you’re using existing lists of things. It is being promoted by ICS Canada and I understand that some really smart people from both sides of our shared border are in a conversation about revising the ICS doctrines, and that PPOST is getting a bit of attention within that activity. As a side note, Dean was recently honored by IAEM – Canada for his lifetime contributions to emergency management. Yay Dean!  But let’s get back on track here.

Recall that PPOST simply means:

• Priorities – set your community or organizational priorities
• Problems – identify the issues and challenges specific to your community or organizational interests
• Objectives – what needs to be done; set them based on your priorities & problems
• Strategies – how you are going to do it; set them to achieve your objectives
• Tactics – who is going to do what by when; set them to achieve your strategies

Our little innovative piece to Dean's innovation that sits on top of the Management by Objectives piece was to add a piece on the end where there is a Source for the required resources to do the Tactics identified, and an org chart built concurrently with the PPOST facilitation. It’s a pretty quick slick approach to getting to an operationally meaningful place fairly quickly.

For example, to do a good initial recovery plan we use the 8 BC Emergency Management System (BCEMS) goals:

• Provide for the safety & health of all responders & recovery personnel
• Save lives
• Reduce suffering
• Protect public health
• Protect government infrastructure
• Protect property
• Protect the environment
• Reduce economic & social losses 

and 5 recovery filters:

• human wellness
• housing
• economic
• environmental
• critical infrastructure

Sometimes if there is significant impact to the Seat of Government, our guidance is that it could and should be a separate dedicated PPOST facilitation.

We use PPOST to structure the facilitated inquiry. Basically, when you couple that approach with the 5 Ws (who, what, where, when, why and sometimes how) the model allows you to do a fairly thorough deep dive to identify a bunch of the considerations for the planning in fairly quick order. Works very well. Have proven it out several times.

But for me, even though Dean has told me repeatedly over the years that PPOST was developed for response, there was always something missing personally. I wasn’t quite connecting the PPOST and response dots, so to speak, until now. But in the ICS Canada version of I-200 training, the concept of PPOST is introduced as part of the Management by Objectives content. So, as I was delivering that section of the course it hit me. It hit me real good.

During the course I promoted the idea that on any response there should be someone paying attention to the 30,000 foot level stuff. Someone should be looking at the "what ifs" that could potentially come out of an incident or event. Typically, the fire departments will have a safety officer identified for each incident and in most response scenarios that person can readily identify any complexities and considerations. I know that other responder agencies also do the safety officer thing as well.

But for those incidents that may have some potential to turn into something more, I suggest this PPOST approach might work quite well for response planning. We applied it in a couple of the team exercises during the I-200 training session and it was generally well accepted. In fact, about half the feedback forms at the end specifically reflected very positive comments about the PPOST thing, so I’m pretty sure we’re on to something here. For the PPOST approach in the exercises, the priority list we used comes directly from the I-200 training content on Management by Objectives:

• Life/Safety
• Incident Stabilization
• Property/Environment Protection.

The filter we applied using PPOST comes directly from the I-200 Organizational Flexibility content, and specifically the complexity analysis factors identified:

• impacts to life, property, economy
• community & responder safety
• potential hazardous materials
• weather & other environmental influences
• likelihood of cascading events
• potential crime scene (including terrorism)
• political sensitivity, external influences, media relations
• area involved, jurisdictional boundaries
• availability of resources

As a bonus I notice that this same list is used in a bunch of the FEMA related ICS training, as well as that of other organizations in other countries.

We had the students use a PPOST table with the ICS priority list and these response complexity filters, and it worked. Take a closer look at the image at the top of this article for some context around that table. It’s pretty straight forward. In fact, using the table appears to have made it easier for the students to understand that there is a bigger picture as opposed to focusing just on the actual site level activity. That’s not a bad thing in my world. For me using the priority list and complexity factors together has been the missing piece around using PPOST for response planning. I'm going to include this in all future relevant training, workshops & presentations, and have suggested to ICS Canada that they also include this in any future updates of their curriculum. It just seems like a logical extension of PPOST. And once again, to me this demonstrates the power of PPOST and how it has many different applications in emergency management, and other domains as well. 

If you haven’t taken a close look at PPOST, then please do. If it doesn’t work for you, then I wish you luck with your current practices and remind you of one of my favorite quotes of all time: 

“A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results every time.” 

I don’t offer that to be critical, but it is my view that if ever there was a time in our history of the ever increasingly complex world of emergency management where we needed to think outside the box on how we do some things, that time is probably now. And I’m guessing that many of you reading this article will agree.

Go dig into PPOST a bit and form your own opinion on its value. Ping me directly here on LinkedIn if you want. I’m happy to share with you what I know about PPOST and how we use it.

You might also want to take a look at some of my other articles on innovation. There is definitely more on PPOST, but I also share other things that are on my radar. And there is more to come. There are so many thought leaders and visionaries out there who are actually doing stuff to try to improve on existing business practices in emergency management.  I think we need to honour them and respect what they’re trying to do. My simple little approach to that is to share with you through these articles. I hope they’re helpful, or at least a little bit insightful.

And remember, the day before something was a great idea, it was called crazy…or impossible…or ridiculous…or not needed. Maybe we all need to focus on getting to that “day before”.