Canton on Emergency Management

Learning from the past

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I have a very strong interest in history, especially disaster history. I frequently make the argument that there is really nothing new under the sun when it comes to disasters. It is just that we often forget the lessons of the past.

One of my current projects is serving as a keynote speaker for a series of events around school safety. In preparing my remarks, I spent a considerable amount of time digging into statistics and anecdotal evidence on school shootings. We assume that school shootings, particularly the mass killings that have made headlines over the past few years, are a recent phenomenon. The truth is the first school shooting in the United States was a mass killing and it occurred in 1764 when supporters Pontiac’s rebellion raided a schoolhouse and killed the teacher and ten children.

Similarly, we often hear the phrase “everything was different on September 12^th”. Yet September 11^th was not the first instance of a foreign terrorist cell operating in the United States. In 1915, German intelligence set up a ring of spies and saboteurs operating primarily in New York and Washington DC that was responsible for the destruction of a considerable amount of war matériel bound for Europe, bombings in major cities, and the attempted assassination of J.P. Morgan. Five years later, an anarchist’s bomb exploded on Wall Street, killing 39 people and wounding hundreds more. Terrorism is decidedly not a new phenomenon in the United States.

I firmly believe that we can learn a lot from the study of past disasters. However, let me add a caveat. We must not use events of the past as predictors of future events. That is, we cannot assume that because something happened a certain way that it will happen that same way in the future. The past can provide us with ideas of what could occur and how our predecessors either successfully dealt with the crisis or failed to deal with it. In the end, however, the lessons of the past cannot substitute for solid situation assessment and sound decision-making in a crisis.

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Language as a precision instrument

A few days ago, I was reading an article in the San Francisco Chronicle when the following sentence caught my eye:

The investigation concerns the actions of (the accused), a 24 year veteran of the… County Sheriff’s office who shot (the victim) in an unincorporated area just outside (the jurisdiction) on (the date).

Now to many, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this sentence. It is reasonably clear that the author is referring to the location of the shooting. However, I’m of a generation that was taught in grammar school how to diagram sentences and this particular sentence had me chuckling and wondering just what part of the body was “an unincorporated area”.

Before you write me off as another nitpicker, recall that one of the three basic skills required of an emergency manager is the ability to write persuasively. We are frequently the authors of important reports and summaries as well as the originators public warnings. It is important, therefore, that we are both precise and concise in our writing.

There is a good reason for this. We live in a world in which much of our messaging is now stripped down to 144 characters or less or given in short soundbites. We need to be able to condense our messages to the shortest possible size that still preserves clarity.

But this is nothing new. Anyone who’s written a report knows that senior executives rarely read past the first page of the executive summary. Advertisers both in print and online know how important it is to get your message “above the fold”. In print journalism, this means the upper section of the publication that is first seen by the reader. To online marketers, this means the section of the screen that can be seen without scrolling down.

It behooves us, then, to keep in mind that language should be a precision instrument and not a blunt one. This means considering carefully what you are saying not only from your perspective but from that of the recipient. You need to be certain that what they are hearing is what you actually meant to say. Taking the time to review your message or, even better, have others review it if time permits will go a long way towards preventing miscommunication.

Not just don’t get me started talking about terms such as “free range eggs” and “organic produce”…

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Get out of your comfort zone - A Tail from the Dog Park

 

Cookie challenges the big dogs

Cookie's a fairly recent addition to our group of friends at the dog park. An immigrant, she was born in India and rescued by her current guardians. Coming to the United States wasn't easy. Cookie spent most of her young life in quarantine, something on the order of four months.

Arriving at a park where she had never been before and being greeted by more dogs than she had ever seen in one place before was, to say the least, a bit traumatic for her. She spent much of that first morning cowering between her guardian's legs and avoiding her new friends.

But Cookie is not a quitter. By the next day, she was sticking her nose out, just a bit, and engaging with the smaller dogs. By the third day she was venturing further away from the protection of her guardian and spending more time getting to know the rest of the pack. Within a week or so, Cookie proved herself completely fearless, eagerly joining the big dogs in their games and completely integrating with her canine pals.

Cookie became a valued member of our group by stepping outside her comfort zone. Interestingly enough, this same issue was discussed in a recent leadership coaching conference I attended. The point made at the conference was exactly that demonstrated by Cookie: to achieve anything requires that you step outside your comfort zone and take risks. This not only helps us grow as leaders but can improve our overall quality of life.

So give it a try. Do one thing today that makes you stretch your talents and makes you just a bit uncomfortable. You never know where it might lead.

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