"The exercise was not perfect," Long said. "Its purpose was to identify shortcomings. There was a definite lack of communication between law enforcement and firefighters at the scene. Fortunately, we identified that in an exercise instead of a real live event." Long did not attribute communication gaps to technology but called it a person-to-person problem within the various responding agencies. "The federal government is promoting integrated command systems," Long said. "We didn't accomplish that.”
- 9 April 2006, Baltimore Sun, quoting Maj. Thomas H. Long, chief of the Field Services Bureau for the Carroll County Sheriff's Department following a WMD response exercise |
Operational Synergy
Bringing order to chaos is a messy business, one that will never be made to be clean, simple, or neat.
Those in the business of managing emergencies have come under increasing pressure to be accountable for how their organizations do their job – how fast, how well, how smoothly. Although the emergency responder, as an individual, may still be the hero of the day and be forgiven of oversight or error, parent organizations are increasingly being held accountable for their actions, or lack thereof.
The efforts so far
In recent years, the U.S. Government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars underwriting the development of new response capabilities for larger and emerging threats. In a first effort to stitch together the distributed quilt of U.S. emergency response organizations, the Government has reinforced and expanded the technical capability of response organizations through increased technical training, improved planning support, and new equipment. It also has instituted an operational baseline of processes, tools, and roles in the forms of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and communications interoperability.
Yet in the chaos and disorder of the disaster and emergency response environment, these changes have yielded only limited advancements. The best laid plans are easily overrun by events; technical training helps only in the right place at the right time. The radios may work, but it does not matter if the communication among units is not timely, accurate, or complete. The right people don’t always show up and say the right things. Leaders don’t always lead. Team members don’t always follow. Equations about risk versus gain and values at risk may go askew in the momentum of the moment.
NIMS and new tools alone will not sew together a new national response quilt because people (not systems) are the true threads that must hold it together.
The art of operations
Extensive interviews with experienced Type 1 Incident Management Teams reveal that progress in the initial phases of a response has less to do with the tools and forms and more to do with the art: how well the response teams, organizations, and leaders work together. On the ground, the culture of the unit, which is a reflection of the leader’s attitudes and behaviors, sets the tone for performance and cooperation with other units.
Time after time, incident after incident, exercise after exercise, documented delays and problems are found to be a result of differences in the values, fears, expectations, and personalities – in a word, the culture - of the leaders. In general, many leaders have not learned the art of leading effective teams.
The bottom line - culture
Beyond technical interoperability and NIMS standardization, a shared operational culture among leaders comprises the most critical components for alignment and action. The glue of shared culture extends to vocabulary, values, and leadership skills that pull the response effort together, turning raw material into cohesive and concentric action. These factors – interoperability, technical ability, and cultural alignment - combine to create true Operational Synergy.
Operational Synergy describes the momentum produced through a positive alignment of thought, approach, and action among the leaders of an organization or incident. It is generated from shared values, common processes, and unified operational norms; it is executed through common practices and systems. Organizations that strive toward a goal of operational synergy realize positive and substantial outcomes: error-resilient and cohesive teams, purposeful and proactive leaders, adaptive and responsive organizations.
The Problem... |
