We are four days into National Preparedness Month, and I am challenging all of you to make a difference in our profession. It sounds hard. However, it can be simple. Improving yourself and becoming a better you will make a better profession. Lead by example, and others will follow. This brings me to the person we all can follow as an example.
Last week I wrote a piece on design thinking and emergency management. It was inspired by a conversation that I had with Brian Barnier. Just after the post went live, I received an email from Desi Matel-Anderson, and for those who know Desi, it is for the work she has been doing. And the message was simple, hey Todd, remember that this is what I have been doing over the last ten years. The best part of her reaching out to me was that Brian and I talked about her great work over lunch.
This is true; Desi has been a driving force in moving emergency managers toward design thinking and action. She is the founder of the Field Innovation Team. FIT has the goal and purpose to “empower humans to create cutting-edge disaster solutions.”
I had the opportunity to interview Desi on a few subjects, including her excellent book Future Survivor. She states on the Future Survivor website.
“Each personal roadblock I have faced in my life and every emergency I have been involved with since discovering the 3 Step Prep I have intentionally solved using this 3-step planning and preparation process. Defining each stage in that process in my mind and then applying the steps to my own crises has helped me not only discover my life’s purpose but myself. When these steps guide my day-to-day life decisions, beautiful things happen — that’s why I want to share the framework of this preparation process more broadly. It’s the reason for this book. From love lost and then found to being true to oneself, this book’s menagerie of stories is based on my life and loosely on the lives of others who have inspired me. Bringing you wanderlust, adventure, and 3 steps for optimal decision-making, Future Survivor is intended to help you, my dear reader, discover ways to creatively and successfully solve challenges in your life’s emergencies, large and small.”
Desi has truly dedicated her life’s work toward making emergency managers better at thinking outside the box. She conducts “Do Tanks” and forces people to use unique solutions to complex and hairball problems. She tells stories about times she challenged group thinking by giving unnecessary wild solutions to problems. One thought was placing trampolines around a landslide so rescue workers could move freely and not get stuck. Would that have worked? She was not sure, but that thought process broke the mode of groupthink to find a solution that would.
We need more of the work that Desi is doing, not less. We must break out of the traditional thinking model and be extreme in our process. Have fun with the process during blue sky days so that we have workable solutions, whether we are facing gray skies or black swan events.
Reach out to Desi and work with her. And also, buy her book at www.futuresurvivor.org. It would make an excellent gift for national preparedness month!
What to Read
Preparedness month: 30 days in 30 ways
How best to get the word out to as many people as possible with minimal investment? Leveraging social media is one of the answers, which is why, since 2015, ‘#30days30waysUK September is Preparedness Month’ has been run by local emergency planners across Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Our approach is positive psychology based and gamified to inspire and inform personal action towards household preparedness and community resilience. The program, fully open source, adaptable and transferrable, is based on the National Risk Register in the UK and has just been released…
Leadership in the new era of disruption
The Level UP Leadership model is a theory based on specifying a leader’s style or trait that best fits the relationship between the follower and the organizational-work environment to meet and exceed the strategic goals of both the organization and the follower.
Level Up Leadership identifies six factors that contribute to follower success and engagement. These are Professional communication and authentic leadership, decision-making, motivating people; managing people, leading people; and leading change…
Podcasts
The Todd DeVoe Show
Celebrating Leadership During National Preparedness Month
Why does public leadership matter in emergency management? Ray Cheung works with many partners to monitor, assess, and teach communities to prepare for a wide range of natural hazards. Ray and his team provide policymakers, emergency managers, and the public with the understanding needed to enhance family and community preparedness, response, and resilience.
Business Continuity Today
The Art of Conducting Cyber Security Exercises
Today, the concepts of cybersecurity training, cyber drills, and cyber polygon do not have clear boundaries. Historically, cybersecurity exercises were paper, command, and staff exercises. Such events, which bring together representatives of different departments, were aimed at identifying individual skills. However, today cybersecurity drills are primarily needed to train teamwork.
Sponsors
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