STOP SAYING THAT!
Recently, I’ve felt like I’ve been stuck in the movie The Princess Bride. Only, instead of Inigo Montoya, played by Mandy Patinkin saying, “Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die!” over and over again, I hear multiple people saying (or writing ), “Well, looks like it’s time to dust off the pandemic plan,” “well, it looks like it’s time to see if the continuity plan actually works,” or similar phrases.
Whenever I hear this phrase, or others like them, I want to channel Count Rugen and yell, “STOP SAYING THAT!”
There are two types of culprits at whom I want to yell “STOP SAYING THAT!”
The first, whom, I suppose I can cut some slack, are corporate executives, senior elected and appointed officials of various jurisdictions and government agencies, and middle management in the same organizations. The reason that I’m willing to this group some forgiveness is that, though I hope they would know better, they’re not experienced or knowledgeable in emergency management. For the most part, unless they have had a professional emergency manager tell them differently, they really have no way to know that pandemic plans (or other emergency plans, for that matter) should never gather dust, live on a shelf permanently, be used as a door stop, need to be updated as a disaster is beginning, etc.
The second group, to whom I offer no quarter, are fellow emergency management and business continuity “professionals.” The reason that I’ve totally hardened my heart against forgiving these folks for their unpardonable transgression is that they absolutely have no excuse for not knowing better. Furthermore, they have no excuse whatsoever for not educating their non-EM leadership.
EM and BC professionals should learn, hopefully multiple times in their formative years, that one never allows emergency plans, of whatever type, to “gather dust.” To do so is to fall victim to what Erik Auf der Heide termed The “Paper” Plan Syndrome in his seminal book Disaster Response: Principles of Preparation and Coordination (1989), the belief that because an organization has a written (or electronic) emergency plan, it is automatically prepared for whatever disasters may be listed in the plan whether or not the plan has been reviewed, exercised, updated, etc. Though Auf der Heide came up with a great name for it, he’s not the only one to observe that a written plan provides only an illusion of preparedness if the other requirements that go with a plan are not met. Quarantelli observed much the same in (Quarantelli, E.L. Disaster planning: small and large-past, present and future. Presented at the American Red Cross EFO Division Disaster Conference, Blacksburg, VA, Feb 19-22, 1981. Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Newark, 1981. Quarantelli, E.L Human resources and organizational behaviors in community disasters and their relationship to planning, preliminary paper no. 76, Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware, Newark, 1982). In his book, Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster, Lee Clarke made similar observations, arguing that institutions create fantasy documents that convince the public that all is well because experts are in charge, when the reality is that the fantasy documents give people a false sense of security and thus actually increase risk. There are multiple others in our field who have researched and discussed this over the years, however, the lesson does not seem to have stuck with all of us.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that I’ve heard similar statements. In the past, during the run up to disasters such as hurricanes and floods, or in the aftermath of tornados, earthquakes, and wildfires, I’ve gritted my teeth when I’ve heard colleagues say that it was time to “read the emergency plan to see what to do,” or similar statements.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that we should have our emergency, continuity, or pandemic plans memorized. However, we should have a pretty good idea of what’s in each of our plans, because we should study each one on an ongoing basis, exercise each at least once a year, and update each one at least once a year. The plan should be like a SOP or checklist for us – there not so that we can follow it by rote to figure out the sweeping actions, but rather as a reference to make sure that we don’t overlook any details.
Too many of our colleagues treat various plans (and other aspects of EM and BCP such as training and exercises) as mere formalities, as obstacles they have to clear, or hoops through which they must jump to get to the weekend rather than as an integral part of the journey to preparedness. We cannot afford to take the attitude of simply checking the box when we contend with planning, preparedness, exercises, training, or the many other aspects of EM and BCP that are “dull and boring” unlike the fun and exciting response phase. We cannot dismiss regular review and updating of plans, policies, and procedures, nor can we afford to defer regular testing, training, and exercising of plans – this is crucial to ensuring that plans work before we need to use them and that we have all of the resources we need to allow plans to work. The week before a pandemic closes your physical business is too late to “dust off” the pandemic plan, or update the business continuity plan or find out that no, all of your employees can’t work remotely because your infrastructure won’t support it.
Yes, it’s now too late for many organizations to tackle some of these tasks that they should be doing regularly. However, for those of you all out there who are not yet hard hit, today is better than tomorrow or next week.
Also, for the future, when this is over (it will end, and the world will go on), remember the lessons from this pandemic and keep your plans and policies updated, and review and test them regularly.
Those of you in EM / BCP, how do you impress on clients the need to regularly maintain, test, train, and exercise plans when they’re resistant to doing so?
Changing how resilience, business continuity and organizational preparedness are practiced and perceived
4yI have a crazy solution: let’s get rid of plans! Listen to my reasoning: if people know that a plan has been (or will be) developed then there is no incentive for them to learn and practice. This just becomes an exercise in capturing data to be written down for later. If, however, people believe there will not be a comprehensive set of procedures to turn to, they may just figure out what it is they truly need to respond and recover effectively. Who knows, they may even take some steps in that direction.
Capability Developer | Emergency Management Specialist | Operations Officer | Planner in Chaos | Top Secret Clearance
4yAnother movie with 2 great lines about plans is Stripes. "I got a plan." "Great, Custer had a plan" And "So what is the rest of the plan?" "That was the plan. You know you can over plan these things"