WISDOMSOURCE NEWS

Vol. 2, No. 11
Monday, November 7, 2005

Effective Disaster Planning & True Preparedness

Last year a critical essay was published in WisdomSource News that described the three levels of disaster preparedness: 1) Response Planning, 2) Response Preparation, and 3) Prevention. See: K3M Level 5: Organizational Knowledgebase & True Disaster Preparedness.

Accompanying each of these three levels must be the planning process itself; this process is the essence of disaster preparedness, civil defense leadership, and all hazard mitigation, because applied expert-knowledge is the power by which terror, confusion, and danger are alleviated. This edition of WisdomSource News focuses on how to do effective disaster planning.

Disaster Planning Deliverables

Disaster planning and all hazard mitigation involves the development of EOPs, SOPs, and checklists as the result of planning activities that occur before, during, and after disasters and emergencies.

Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) consist of procedures for the stakeholders to first response to follow in the event of an emergency [Disaster Preparedness Level 1]. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) consist of procedures to follow in mitigating risk and preventing disasters [DP Levels 2 & 3]. Checklists provide lists of sequential tasks that must be confirmed to ensure certainty of activity in the face of critical situations.

Optimizing Disaster Preparedness Budgets

Globally, billions of dollars are being spent countering the threats of natural and person-caused disasters such as avian flu pandemia and terrorism. As the result of public outcry from recent high-profile apparent failures, leadership is making significant financial commitments that must now be used to increase readiness.

Wars in the Middle East are currently limiting the availability of human resources, supplies, and fixed-assets that could otherwise be allocated for responding to civil emergencies and disasters. As a result, precise planning is required to ensure that limited resources can be optimally mobilized as needed.

In addition to preparing for and mitigating the near-term risks from disasters, government spending should consider the dual-use effects of spending, producing lasting changes in and across government agencies to systematize and maximize resource efficiency so as to meet the demands of the future, whatever they may be.

The Stakeholders to Disaster Preparedness

The stakeholders to disaster preparedness include, but are certainly not limited to: law enforcement, fire departments, emergency medical personnel, state & county civil defense departments, The United States National Guard, government agencies & legislative bodies (Federal, state, local, and tribal), land owners (commercial & private), local businesses (utilities, phone companies, hotels, etc.), good Samaritan organizations (such as the Red Cross, Citizen Corps, and local churches), everyone in your community, the nation, and the world. Additional Federal stakeholders of interest include: The Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, WMD civil support teams, TSA, FBI, CDC, and the US Armed Forces.

In successful disaster preparedness, the process of planning is what creates a unity between stakeholders, thus ensuring understanding and commitment to the plans.

Planning Methods

In the formulation of disaster preparedness plans, there are two methods of planning that can be utilized:

1. Expert Planning
2. Facilitation Planning

Expert Planning

Expert planning uses a core group of specialists and professionals to write plans that inventory threats and put preparedness procedures into different plan annexes. With the just-right people who are detail-oriented and well-steeped in subject matter and planning approach expertise, expert planning has the potential to produce very high-quality plans that think through the different possible scenarios to comprehensively reduce or eliminate risk.

The problem with using experts to draft plans is that planning is not conducted by the appropriate stakeholders (e.g. first responders), so it is possible the appropriate personnel may be alienated and not take full ownership of their individual roles & responsibilities to the plans.

Facilitation Planning

Facilitation planning uses management-level personnel and management consultants who are experts in organizational change to facilitate the development of plans by the actual stakeholders to disaster preparedness themselves.

Facilitation planning typically utilizes: (1) formal government directives to ensure resource participation, (2) the establishment of a PMO (project management office), (3) planning templates & sample plans to boost stakeholder thinking, (4) structured interviews to lead people to the completion of their component plan sections, and (5) weekly meetings and status reporting to drive plan completion.

The benefit of facilitation planning is that stakeholders take ownership of their roles and responsibilities in the finished plans because they do their own planning and vest their personal integrity in a public forum. Facilitation planning reduces operational uncertainty, fosters teamwork through an understanding of shared destiny, and alleviates stakeholder anxiety by giving people a sense of control over their work environment.

Facilitation planning usually requires the use of a trusted resource with no perceived organizational political bias to selflessly get stakeholders to work together cooperatively towards the common goal of readiness. Often this resource is a management consultant, consulting firm, or WisdomSource.

Expert Planning vs. Facilitation Planning

In the final analysis, both expert planning and facilitation planning have the potential to produce good plans. Facilitation planning is typically considered a better technique, because plans ultimately succeed or fail depending upon their adoption by the people who will execute the tasks in the plans.

In order for spending on disaster preparedness planning to be effective, it should utilize both the expert planning and the facilitation planning methods: calling on experts to augment and direct stakeholders’ efforts to create comprehensive plans that consider all possibilities.

Types of Plans

In addition to the two methods of planning are the two types of plans:

1. One-Time Plans
2. Process Plans

One-Time Plans

One-time plans use funds allocated for disaster preparedness as a one-shot activity to assemble information. One-time plans are typically disseminated in paper or electronic format, such as Web sites or PDFs.

WisdomSource planning consultants encounter numerous binder-based plans at client sites around the world - many of which are quite impressive and contain vast expertise that expands awareness as to the meaning of broad disaster preparedness. There are also many resources available on the Web that reflect significant expertise in planning, such as the Department of Homeland Security’s National Response Plan. Available at: http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/interapp/editorial/editorial_0566.xml

One-time plans come about because agency directors are, as a result of bureaucratic requirements brought-on by public pressure, tasked with the responsibility of demonstrating their public trust. They assemble teams of the best people and produce impressive documents that often fail to effect front-line initiatives.

One-time plans typically have a strong content-focus and can be good go-to sources of information.

The major drawback: one-time plans are short-sighted because they lack a mechanism to remain up-to-date and to deal with resource connectivity to the plans in the case of employee turnover or complacency.

Process Plans

Process plans put in-place management systems by which disaster preparedness is established and kept up-to-date ad infinitum. Lessons learned from readiness exercises, real-world disaster relief, and hazard mitigation are reviewed, and once affirmed via an established approval-process, incorporated back into the organizational knowledgebase. Plans are then republished to the people whose roles and responsibilities have changed.

Process plans require a commitment to maintain a continual level of readiness and the discipline to keep plans up-to-date.

With process plans, future funding can build upon existing planning efforts to improve the overall level of readiness as opposed to starting from scratch every few years with plans that have gone out-of-date and put the community at risk.

One-Time Plans vs. Process Plans

While process plans are clearly superior to one-time plans, one-time plans can be leveraged into process plans to instill knowledge-creating disciplines that build organizational knowledgebases over time.

A Model Success in Disaster Preparedness Planning

The following chart details the organizational management practices that must be considered in any true preparedness strategy.

Investment in the facilitation of the planning process must accompany disaster preparedness expenditures if sustainable levels of readiness leading to mitigation and prevention are to be achieved.

WisdomSource Maximizes Funds Allocated For Disaster Preparedness

WisdomSource affords your organization the ability to start at any level of capability and build to the highest levels of readiness through gradual incremental effort. WisdomSource software, our expert planners, and the Knowledge Management Maturity Model (K3M) bring the true discipline of planning to your agency or company. Using WisdomSource, you are empowered to bring peace of mind to your organization and the community that you serve.

WisdomSource provides the infrastructure to formulate and continuously maintain plans based-upon expert knowledge, stakeholder expertise, and lessons-learned. In addition, WisdomSource enables stakeholders to be able to peer-review and use each others’ plans to continuously improve readiness. WisdomSource connects people to plans before, during, and after emergencies and readiness exercises to prepare for and mitigate hazards.

Meet Immediate Operating Demands AND Bring Lasting Change to Ensure a Positive Future

Using the availability of funds for disaster preparedness to adopt WisdomSource and to instill the discipline of process thinking enables you to build true dual-use infrastructure that can be leveraged to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of governing operations across the board. Operating under the knowledge-creating paradigm of WisdomSource, capital expenditures meet present operating demands AND bring lasting change to ensure a positive future.

Contact WisdomSource Today for Turnkey Disaster Preparedness Planning

WisdomSource is one of the world’s foremost authorities in disaster preparedness and risk mitigation planning and a premier plan writer. Contact us today to see how you can use WisdomSource and the K3M to make the wisdom of your people the source of your success in disaster preparedness planning.

If you would like to discuss the possibilities that a WisdomSource Knowledge Management Solution affords your organization, please Contact WisdomSource.