Without an incident command structure, it was difficult for local leaders to guide the local response efforts, much less command them. Members of the Hammond (Louisiana) Fire Department reported receiving "a lot of 'I don’t knows' from [local] government officials"; another Louisiana firefighter stated, “the command structure broke down - we were literally left to our own devices.”
- The Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned, White House Report |
The Problem with Decentralized Operations
In the U.S. emergency response industry, unit isolation is a natural state. Typically, units are geographically separated; when on an incident, they become even more so.
Decentralized organizations build culture independently. Research conducted by MCS confirms that crew culture can vary significantly, even within the same organization, and that crew culture is usually a reflection of the attitudes of the first-line leaders. First-line supervisors are the primary trainers, enforcers, and communicators of organizational culture and standards.
The need for leadership
In the field, the nature of emergency response is fragmented and isolated, and the requirement of good decision making on the ground is paramount. These organizations must, by necessity of time and speed, delegate most decisions to first-line supervisors who are on scene and have the most situation awareness. They are the ones who make the difficult calls about risk, benefit, and safety; they are at the point of friction.
Yet, despite the reliance on strong leader skills on scene, most police, fire, and medical services have devoted little time and effort toward development of first-line leaders. Typically, leadership development has been limited to an opportunistically deployed mentoring system, sprinkled with isolated off-the-shelf training courses from the National Fire Academy or similar institutions. The industry is awash with retired fire and police chiefs selling their visions of good leadership, but in the end this industry does not have a consistent means of developing strong, adaptive leaders.
Leaders without common ground
An inconsistent framework for training leaders yields inconsistent performance on the ground. Analysis of response actions taken in catastrophic incidents indicates that when responding resources (even within the same agency) were taken out of their normal operational box, the ability to adapt tactics and actions to an evolving new situation depended mostly upon the individual attributes of the leader in charge.
After action reports issued following major catastrophes, such as the 2003 Southern California Firestorm in which command and control could not be established for days, reveal that ground leaders naturally fall back to using personal relationships as the primary base for executing unified action. Without a common culture, leaders have little else to rely on. Although tabletops and other joint exercises help establish roles and responsibilities, the relationships formed are ad hoc at best and not based or rooted in a common unifying doctrine or set of principles.
During the Katrina Hurricane response effort, the effectiveness of individual response and command units varied widely. The agencies and units receiving the highest praise for effective action were those that had previously invested in their leaders, and had strong cultures on which to stand. These organizations were widely effective where many others were not.
The Future... |
