ADAPTATION: THE EVOLUTION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
ADAPTATION: THE EVOLUTION OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
Randal A. Collins, Ed.D., CEM
Randal A. Collins, Ed.D., CEM
Foundation for the Research and Advancement of Emergency Management
As an impressionable high schooler and someone who had an eye on becoming a legacy U.S. Marine from an early age, I was enamored by the film Heartbreak Ridge, released in 1986 and starred Clint Eastwood. As Gunnery Sergeant Highway, Eastwood taught his Reconnaissance platoon that Marines improvise, adapt, and overcome. Once I became a Marine, I discovered that Marines live by this mantra. These are just a few of the values that are beat into Marines. These values make them successful on the battlefield, and I believe they are values that have served me well in my emergency management career.
About ten years later, while studying the teachings of U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd, I learned that not only is he the mastermind behind the decision-making process termed the OODA (eww-dah) loop, but that he also had many theories on learning, energy, warfare, and leadership (Coram, 2004). One of them was on developing an ability to un-learn. He believed being tied to obsolete concepts inhibited a person from their real potential and inhibited technological development (Coram, 2004). You must be able to discard and forget what has become outdated and useless. Boyd also believed in the power of synthesis (Coram, 2004). He was insulted if you called him a military analyst because that meant you were calling him a half-wit (Coram, 2004). He would say that analysis, or breaking things down into their individual parts, was only good if you could synthesize them after your analysis (Coram, 2004). Synthesis means combining things for a superior product (Coram, 2004). Good emergency managers do this. In a collaborative process, they can identify how partner organizations may have individual assets that can be synthesized with other partner assets for a superior disaster-related product. Unlearning, analysis, and synthesis must be in the emergency manager toolbox.
Two decades later, as a doctoral student of organizational change and leadership, another lesson was impressed upon me. That lesson was about creativity and innovation. You must question everything to be good at these concepts (Dyer et al., 2019). You must ask yourself (or your bosses and others in positions of authority, some of whom may not like these questions), “Why is this that way?” Ask why, and whatever the answer is, ask why, and then why about that. Keep asking until you reach the root of the reason (Dyer et al., 2019). This will help you ascertain why things are as they are, and then you can imagine how things can be.
For 35 years of learning, I have combined these cognitive tools to make a radical multi-dimensional proposal for the emergency management discipline. This discipline seeks to mitigate, prepare for, and respond to disasters for the whole community's benefit. Aside from the arguable changes made with the advent of homeland security, this discipline has doctrinally been unchanged since its genesis. The phases of emergency management have gone untouched and unquestioned as if they were written on tablets and handed down to us by Noah himself. Why are these the phases? Are they still applicable? Can there be other phases? Can there be a change?
I propose to you that one phase has ended within our doctrine. Recovery is outdated. It had a good run. It has served us well. It is a part of our heritage. But it is done. Its time has passed. Continuing to utilize recovery should be reserved for those still using fax machines, dot matrix printers, and the telegraph. Recovery gaslights your brain with a cognitive bias to go back. It sends a signal that implies returning to normal is the goal.
Psychology tells us that to heal from trauma, we must accept that it occurred. Recovery inhibits us from accepting the trauma that has occurred, making meaning of it, and learning from it because it seeks to return to pre-disaster status. The first objective of managing trauma should be to improve your quality of life (Rothschild, 2010). It shouldn’t be to return to your previous quality of life. Our communities are no different. They must accept, understand, and learn from the event and then adapt to it to transform it into a thriving community.
Adaptation refers to a process, action, or systemic result within a particular community or cohort that allows a system to better cope with an altered state, stressor, hazard, risk, or opportunity (Smit and Wandel, 2006). When we replace recovery with adaptation, we unlearn returning to normalcy. Adaptation allows us to acknowledge a change and accept that there will be more change, more hazards and risks, and more opportunities to flourish and thrive amid the trauma.
Many emergency managers would be correct to point out that the emergency management definition of recovery includes wording that allows for improvement (National Governor’s Association, 1979). However, the mindset cannot return to normal or be better. The mindset of the new generation of emergency managers needs to be to respond to a disaster and then adapt so that our community thrives and never has to incur this trauma again. The old definition and the word recovery make returning to a previous state the standard, and improvement is a secondary option. Removing the word recovery and making adaptation the new phase of emergency management means that returning to the previous state is not an option, and the only acceptable standard is change. The result of the change is not only an improvement based on the past disaster but an improvement based on the disaster yet to come.
In Savanah, you will hear me talk about adaptation, adaptable intelligence, adaptability, and embracing change with the change. The world is changing, and when we return to previous states, we miss the goal of emergency management. We must change with the change. That is adaptation.
However, accepting the proposal of replacing recovery with adaptation is not the endpoint. It is the kick-off to a new era of emergency management that includes adaptation not only in our emergency management phases but in the approach to our discipline and as a personal leadership trait among emergency managers. We will seek to adapt the discipline of emergency management. We will question what we are doing and why and adjust it to the changing world. We will apply adaptation in our office environment and with our elected officials; they will see us as the change agents of the community. We will unlearn the dogmatic traditions of our communities past. We will analyze, synthesize, and create a vision of the community. Because we are great collaborators who are willing and able to say why we are changing, we will be able to elevate emergency management to its rightful place within the community, the government, and our private and nonprofit sector businesses. That will be the real and lasting change needed for emergency management. It starts with our willingness and ability to change just one word in the phases of emergency management.
It is time to change how we do things now and in the future, and we need to change our mindset. We must have adaptable intelligence and apply adaptation in our cyclic phases of the emergency management process. Adaptation allows us to transform, flourish, and become more resilient.
Randal A. Collins, Ed.D., CEM
Foundation for the Research and Advancement of Emergency Management
Citations
Coram, R. (2004). Boyd: The Fighter Pilot who changed the art of war. Back Bay Books/Little, Brown.
Dyer, J., Gregersen, H. B., & Christensen, C. M. (2019). The innovator's DNA: Mastering the five skills of Disruptive Innovators. Harvard Business Review Press.
National Governors' Association. (1979, May). Comprehensive Emergency Management: A Governor's Guide. Comprehensive Emergency Management: A Governor's Guide. Washington, D.C., USA: National Governor's Association.
Rothschild, B. (2010). 8 Keys to safe trauma recovery: Take-charge strategies to empower your healing. W.W. Norton & Co.
Smit, B., & Wandel, J. (2006). Adaptation, Adaptive Capacity and Vulnerability. Global Environmental Exchange, 6(3), 282-292