I'm Back

This week I begin the next phase of my working life.  I have retired from government service after some 10 years at the helm of a provincial emergency measures organization. You will notice a long gap in my posts, that was not of my choosing but as a senior official I was advised that there could be a perceived conflict. That constraint has been removed.

I have considerable time on my hands and no less passion for emergency management, resilience and good public policy so I hope to contribute to the growing professional dialogue via blogging and other professional social media.

Lately I have been pondering the challenge of innovation within government.  My experience leads me to conclude the that the desire to innovate runs contrary to the desire to control all activities in a risk adverse world.

Staff have a deep and diverse understanding of what works well and what needs change in their program area.  Senior leaders are continually messaging the need for innovation to improve government services to the public and openly encourage staff to innovate.  But in the journey from idea to execution it would seem to the innovators, the system of control (DM committees, TB secretariat as well central agencies for procurement, technology and HR) are put in place to test the innovators resolve.

Think of it like this:  a manager has an idea to improve his/her program. First they have to convince their bosses (and maybe their boss's boss) that the idea has merit and is worth the effort (not easy in times of dwindling resources).  Most change in government involves some combination of new equipment, new technology or changes to the work force.  Now it is up to the innovator to get buy in from one or more of the central agencies to support their idea for change. You are now asking managers outside your program area and ministry/department to set aside space in their agenda to facilitate your crazy new idea.  Not easy and we still have asked for money, which is another exercise in breaking through the control mechanisms.  I know many managers who have run this gauntlet only to watch their idea wither from a lack of support.

True innovation culture allows freedom to experiment at all levels of the organization.  It requires a level of trust of management and a willingness to allow failure.  In today's risk adverse culture that seems nearly impossible.

So while senior leaders continue the mantra of the need to innovate it rings hollow when it is not accompanied by the necessary freedom of actions and a true culture of trust and innovation.

I am sure there are examples of organizational culture in government which embraces and delivers true innovative services to the public and I would be happy to hear of them in response to this rant.

Recovery

I have been re-reading a couple of Chubbm's blog posts on R4 Resilience. What Mr. Chubb drives home in both of these articles rings very true with this Recovery professional. I have been writing for some time on the theme of Holistic Recovery and the need to be innovative and even daring when faced with the task of recovering from a catastrophic event.

Pehaps the first phase is to bring Recovery truly under the Emergency Management umbrella and spend as much effort on having excellent recovery programs as we do in preparedness, response and mitigation.

I highly recommend Failure is Fertilizer and Recovery: 8 Principles vs. 12 Steps as primers for more engagement on Natural Disaster Recovery.

Convergence

Not having the budget to trek down under to hear Ken Simpson’s presentation to the BCI Summit, I have settled for the next best thing…I reviewed his slide deck at Contemplating.

As with my previous post on a Profession in Transition, Ken subtly (at least without a script or speaker’s notes it appears subtle) suggests that EM and BCM are converging. I work at a rather complex level service delivery and I can tell you that when we examined our maturing BCM program it led to a similar convergence. So much so that Emergency Managers are cross training as Business Continuity Managers and taking ownership of the whole BCM program as a sub-component of the Disaster Management program.

This was done when it appeared to the EM world that BCM seemed to be satisfied once the plan was written. In fairness the task of developing a BCM program in our organization was enormous and as a result the focus was tended to be on compliance. This level of satisfaction was seen as complacency which frightened the Emergency Management crowd; you know the ones who see cascading effects around every corner and seem to want to push the dynamic nature of disasters (wicked problems) on the BCM planners.

It has yet to be tested, but it would appear that though this example of convergence, we paid attention to the techniques and processes of BCM while applying the more general concepts of EM to the finished BCM plans.

A Profession in Transition?

I have just finished reviewing the results of the 2009-2010 Preparedness, Security and Crisis Communications a survey co-sponsored by Honeywell. The results are interesting and show a continuing trend towards all hazards approach to Emergency Management.

As a relative new comer to the profession of Emergency Management I have been intrigued by the specialization and competition amongst the various fields that contribute to the preparedness field. I often wondered why the various specializations seemed to want to claim primacy where in fact all contribute to the field of Emergency Management.

Being a former soldier I pictured this as the various branches of Armor, Infantry, Artillery and Engineers all clambering to prove they are the most important component of the Army. But as any true soldier knows its only when the four arms are combined and supported by the necessary resources is the full power (resilience) of the whole Army truly on display.

Perhaps what the client group is trying to tell our profession is that they need a whole solution to their preparedness challenges and the focus should shift from specific BCM, IT or crisis communications to a broad all hazards approach to the task.

I wonder if this is true Emergency Management?