The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
What really happens when a crisis hits an organization—and how technology is influencing decisions and reputation impacts. Come hear what happened when experienced leaders were actually in the middle of a crisis—and capture the lessons before it happens to you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Your host, Tom Mueller, is a veteran crisis manager and trainer with more than 30 years in the corporate communications and crisis fields. Tom currently works as an executive coach and crisis trainer with WPNT Communications, and as a contract public information officer and trainer through his personal company, Tom Mueller Communications LLC.
Our goal is to help you grow your knowledge and awareness so you can be better prepared to lead should a major crisis threaten your organization.
Music credit: Special thanks to Nick Longoria from Austin, Texas for creating the theme music for the podcast.
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The Leading in a Crisis Podcast
EP 2 The Tug and Pull of Crisis Leadership with Alaska's Jeff Johnson
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Join us for an entertaining conversation with our guest, Jeff Johnson, president of the Cook Inlet Tug and Barge Company in Anchorage, Alaska. A born and bred Alaskan with a wealth of experience in the shipping industry, Jeff shares with us his background of globetrotting on oil tankers and his subsequent return to his Alaskan roots. As a seasoned leader, he shares invaluable insights on the essence of crisis leadership, stressing the importance of effective communication, humility and adaptability. Buckle up for an episode filled with enlightening discussions and stories from a seasoned crisis leader.
We'd love to hear from you. Email the show at Tom@leadinginacrisis.com.
Leading in a Crisis
Tom MuellerHi everyone and welcome to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast . I'm your host , Tom Mueller . On this podcast , we talk all things crisis management and we do that through interviews , storytelling and lessons learned from crisis leaders . With me today is my co-host , Mark Mullen . Mark welcome .
Marc MullenHi , Tom , glad to be here .
Tom MuellerAll right , hey with us today we have a very special guest from the shipping world , Jeff Johnson . Jeff has a long history working in the shipping business and he'll fill us in on that in just a minute but started off sailing on ships on the West Coast and then currently today is serving as president of the Cook Inlet Tug and Barge Company out of Alaska . Jeff , welcome to the program .
Jeff JohnsonThanks , Tom . Yeah , happy to be here .
Tom MuellerI know you're a native Alaskan , so does it feel good being back in Alaska to work with the tug and barge company ?
Jeff JohnsonIt is . You know , I've been blessed across my career to work across the world , but I've always had my sights on returning home and it's nice to be home and for the last four years I've been living the dream , running one of the greatest tug companies in the United States and living in Alaska .
Tom MuellerThat just sounds like as good as it gets right there . Well , Jeff , one of the things we like to do on this podcast is let guests sort of introduce yourself . So if you're meeting somebody for the first time and just doing a quick intro of your experience and life , what would that sound like ?
Jeff JohnsonWell , I'd probably start with being fourth generation Alaskan , raised up here , a pioneering family that really ventured into the commercial fishing world , and I started as a commercial fisherman . My love of the sea began there and I worked my way up sailing on oil tankers around the world , but primarily US West Coast , out of Valdez Opportunities . Then , as I grew older and had a family , to come ashore and take on various shore roles , both based in Washington State , houston .
Jeff JohnsonAlaska and in Singapore . So most recently I left a role in Singapore four years ago to come home and be back in Alaska and loving every minute of it .
Tom MuellerWell , good , and we're going to delve into your crisis experience a little bit as we continue our conversation . But I want to just kind of start , just kind of ask you what does leading in a crisis bring to mind for you ? What does it take to be able to lead in a crisis , in your view ?
Jeff JohnsonWell being from the shipping industry . It takes a number of things . For instance , the crisis may not be in the location you're at , so it takes several things to help . One, I think the biggest key is communications . Communications across all your help , all the impacted individuals , every responder and regulators , is key . Without communications , the crisis becomes just ultimately harder . I look back on what has helped me and I'll be honest , a sense of humility . When you're a crisis leader , because you are working with folks that have been impacted potentially , you're working with excellent folks trying to correct the situation and , again , regulators and politicians , so you want to show and believe that you're doing all you can . It's in the best interest for everybody . So you know that . Communications coupled with humility , but she got through a flexibility in as well . So every crisis changes daily , sometimes hourly , and you just have to be ready to shift , change your plan of attack and make sure you get the team ready behind you to do that . Those are kind of the three things that I can think of .
Tom MuellerThe humility aspect of that is something worth repeating here because it's not something you hear talked about a lot when we think about incident commanders or crisis leaders and , jeff , I know you've been an incident commander for incidents over the course of your career , but it's fascinating to hear you touch on that Because , as I think back on leaders I've worked with , you know who I really enjoyed working with . That was one of the key factors there was the humility that they brought into that job and into that room . Everyone was important and you know they just checked their ego at the door and were super humble , even as they were managing a very complex organization and response .
Jeff JohnsonI agree , the genuineness is important .
Jeff JohnsonYou know you have to want to be a crisis leader and you have to want to care , and you're right , some folks may struggle with that , but I think you said checking your ego at the door is absolutely one of the couple of things you're going to hang up as you walk in , because , again , you're dealing with folks that are impacted either to a large degree or a small degree , but you want to make sure that you're doing all you can to help them and then keeping your folks safe while you help .
Marc MullenSo , if you're in the line of taking care and helping those younger folks come in aboard , what are two or three things that you would really recommend that a young communicator should do to be ready to respond in the crisis ?
Jeff JohnsonYou know it's funny you may not know you're in a crisis until you're in one . In various roles you may have and I've often helped coach and maybe mentor folks in their daily jobs . You're trained in crisis techniques and crisis management and even in the US , the ICS system . You can use that in daily jobs to help in the system and actually drive maybe better outcomes . So if you're in an operations group , maybe in a refinery or a factory , and something goes wrong , you can actually go through the steps of ICS and you can resolve that issue instantly there with the folks you have and it's a training opportunity .
Jeff JohnsonI think it's important also you know tips for folks coming up is to swap roles frequently if you're active in the instant command system .
Jeff JohnsonSo just because you run an operations team , maybe at a refinery or , again , a factory , doesn't mean maybe you're the best suited person for an operations role on a nice CS . Logistics may be where you should be and you may enjoy it more . So I think it's good to swap roles and kind of learn where your niche is . We all have the emergency crisis plans in place from business continuity to oil spill response to earthquake and other natural disaster plans and it's really important for folks to know those plans . I mean , we have them , they're on the shelf , but pull them down , look through them , because a lot of smart people help put those together and they're really a usable guide for folks to grab and go . So a lot of companies , I don't think , do that enough , and for young folks wanting to , or for new folks in the crisis community , that's a good thing to do is to start with knowing the response plans that are in place .
Marc MullenGreat , glad you could share that . So again , the first one is try to coordinate working on ICS on a daily basis so that when the real thing comes you're already used to the structure . Swap roles , so you find your best fit , which is great advice . And then to know the plans you have . And you're absolutely right , every client I've worked with has plenty of plans . Most times they're not refreshed or they're not read and so many times they're not actually even coordinated . So I agree with three points there , for not just new people in the field , but it's a good discipline for everybody .
Tom MuellerSo , Jeff , a s an incident commander , kind of looking back on your experiences , what are the characteristics that you think make for a good public information officer or liaison officer , or even an op section chief , for that matter ?
Jeff JohnsonAgain , I'll start with what I said earlier around humility . But a PIO really is kind of leading the outward , facing fits and pieces of a response , and this is what the people out there will see when the operations teams and the command staff are grinding away in a command post movie . So the PIO is an important role and I think one of the biggest keys there is and we've seen it in responses , we've seen it when we watched something on television is knowing your data there's a lot of information inside the command post and knowing where to go and to drive consistent use of data and clean data , accurate data . It ultimately will help that PIO in the end and the ops team and I've seen chaotic times in my past where different data is used or different data at different times throughout the day is used and so numbers don't match up . It leads to concerns or angst amongst maybe citizens or politicians or regulators .
Tom MuellerYeah , there's probably a whole episode around data management within a unified command or an incident management team , you know , just keeping track of the vessels deployed , the boom deployed , the people deployed , all of that . It's a huge logistics challenge , but one that the ICS is sort of designed to manage , but a huge challenge nonetheless .
Jeff JohnsonI think the last bit for all three of the roles you mentioned is right . I think listening is key . You know we've we've seen training films in the past where maybe PIOs might not have listened . You know , if you can stay as long as you possibly can , answer every single question three or four times , at the end of the day the response will go easier , the community will feel better . But if we rush through the communication side of providing information to the public , it usually leads to more angst at the end of the day .
Tom MuellerJeff , one other issue that you bring to mind there is just the preparation aspects of doing a press conference , and that because when you're an incident commander and potentially going out to stand in front of a phalanx of television cameras , being prepared for that is quite a challenge and in my experience in most incidents there's just not a lot of time to prepare an incident commander for a press conference . But I was curious your experience in that for the you know the incidents and exercises that you've worked Did you , did you feel prepared to step out and do that ?
Jeff JohnsonSo I'd say there were times where I did and probably more times where I didn't , honestly , but you know , I look back on what happens during you know a busy day in the command post and I think one of the common issues we see is your command staff , the federal state if you're in the US and , of course , the responsible party . They get sidelined into continual stream of meetings .
Jeff JohnsonThe things I always like to do is book time on the meeting schedule for us to be out and on the floor and talking and seeing what people are working on , look at the graphics that are being developed , look at the information sheets that are out , that are being developed by the teams on the floor , because ultimately , when you get asked the question In a press conference , that extra 15 minutes giving yourself being on the floor and talking to folks and understanding what they're working with will go a long way and helping you in the press conference Much more than you know handing being handed a couple of pages of bullet points
Challenges in Information Management and Communication
Jeff Johnson. To repeat , I think you really need to know the response and know what's happening , which is difficult at times given the stress in the timeline .
Tom MuellerYeah , absolutely , and the number of meetings that incident commanders required to attend on a daily basis . So schedule or calendar management is a really important point that you've raised there and we coach that into sections all the time , as if you've got something that you're going to need the incident commander in , you need to get that on the schedule so we can make time for it and then make time for preparation as well .
Marc MullenAnd you're really talking about what used to be called the Hewlett Packard way , where it was management , by wandering around Just enough time to know what's happening . I made a little note while you're talking because , from from what you're saying , it's possible that when the dick brings up a press release or a new , a new statement that , as you're describing as possible , that that may mention some things that you might not have seen before if you're not out there seeing what's been being developed and so on . So , although more important that that review and approval process occurs and I'll have a question about that later , but real quickly . You've talked about what are the characteristics of a good PR section leader , but let's let's flip the table and say what are some of the mistakes you've seen made in some of your exercises are in the actual events either by PIO , or by the incident commander , or again , as Tom mentioned , by a section .
Marc MullenNo names , of course .
Jeff JohnsonYeah , no names , but I think they're all lessons learned right . So at the end of the day , well , I'd have been deemed a mistake or or one of those . I wish I would have done better moments , I think not answering questions are not staying long enough to answer a full gambit of questions . You know when , when a press conference is given 20 minutes but there's 30 minutes for the questions in the room , you know that's real important that you might want to stick around and be able to field some of those further questions because if you know they battle help again with the public information . But I think that's one of the bigger issues I've seen is is we rush through a press conference and we believe people wanting more , and that bites us in the backside at the end of the day because in a vacuum , people will will come up with their own information . So I think that's one of the bigger issues I've seen .
Jeff JohnsonAnd then I talked a bit about the data you know , knowing , knowing where to get the data and consistent use of it .
Jeff JohnsonI think back to a , to a time where I was in a in an actual response and there was a team of folks walking around a very large command post and they were federal officials and they came up to my section I was , I think I was in logistics at the time and they said we need this information now for POTUS and POTUS isn't a word I'd used very much in my career , honestly and I realized that you know here to in the afternoon , our data set might have been set at eight in the morning and they'll be coming out at six PM at night , but you know they're looking at information to give to the president that is going to be off cycle for the information that we've been sharing publicly .
Jeff JohnsonSo in that moment I quickly went and found the PIO , said hey , we got people asking can you help usher them through . But they just wandered around as they as they're allowed to and came across our graphics boards in our little section and we're writing things down feverishly . And so today that information had changed since we'd last posted it publicly . So that's one of the fears that that had seen come true .
Tom MuellerIt's interesting the you know , the sort of demands for information are constant , but the organization that's running the response , as a team they've got to be able to have time to develop that information , verify it and then make it available for public information uses , and that's that's a forever challenge within a command post . So there's real challenges there and that's why we often fall back on the infamous 209 form , which hopefully is updated twice a day .
Jeff JohnsonWell it's . It's it in the early stages . You know , in the reactionary stage , information's flowing in quickly in some cases and some cases not at all . You may have a section of a once where when we've got live TV feed , we've got , you know , people on the ground calling in , and then there might be a section it's quite remote and we haven't heard from folks in four hours . So it's kind of a mixed bag what we've seen .
Challenges and Strategies in Incident Response
Jeff JohnsonBut you know , at the end of the day , the challenges , of course , is how do we , how do we react and report that out,
Jeff Johnsonand deal with it especially in the re actionary stage when we're first standing up . It's , tough but you have to recognize it . I think you know , as we go into response and we settle in now , having that agreement with your , if you're in the US , that the unified command as to times for data approvals and which data set is correct , like you mentioned , the 209 form and getting that approval amongst the unified command and the agencies that are there , that this will be the Bible of information goes a long way . So I've seen in the past work . Maybe we rushed through that and Nobody agrees that this is the set of stone tablets that we'll use moving forward of information and it does create hardship in the future if we don't .
Marc MullenActually saw that in one actual event down here on the California coast . The jack actually got permission from unified command to Turn the 209 into a daily update listing that you could keep multiple dates on so Stakeholders could look and see the difference in birds or boom and so on , and it became automatic and that as quickly as unified command accepted the new 209 was immediately available to post and that seemed to be really helpful because it then gave More time at that press conference to talk about why all those events are occurring or why you're doing what you're doing , and it seemed to really help with that .
Tom MuellerHey , Jeff , a little softball question here . What's as you think about , as you think about the incidents you've worked and the Exercises you've worked . I wonder if you have kind of a pet peeve , things that bother you , that you see sort of behaviors you see in an exercise or even in an actual response that people should watch out for and try to avoid .
Jeff JohnsonYeah , and I think fortunately my list isn't very long .
Jeff JohnsonI mean , I think there's an external piece that most folks are disgusted with and that's where we're
Jeff Johnsonmaybe seeing fraud occurring , but I don't want to speak to that . I think for me , one of my biggest pet peeves is , you know , we assemble a structure of the stock unified command and he's got the right people in the room and those are folks that , in all Senses , are delegated all the authorities they need to help with the response and make the response move forward . And More often than not , we slowly find that Maybe it's not the right people in the room and maybe that FOSC or state on-scene coordinator has to make calls before they can make decisions and that really , while while we allow it , it does slow things down and it does kind of muddle the effectiveness of the unified command . So if I could just put one kind of Stick in the ground around what I think upsets me a bit , like you said , a pet peeve , it would be having the wrong people in decision-making roles that aren't delegated the authority to do so . How about , in crisis exercises , anything you see in ?
Tom MuellerExercises and one of the one of the things I'll throw out is when people just play to the exercise . You know they're in the room and they're doing things , but they're not really taking it seriously as a good way to practice . Yeah , I agree with you , tom .
Jeff JohnsonYou see that Regularly and you see it across all , all groups , command and general staff , and see it from regulators , politicians , now responders . It's a great opportunity to roll up our sleeves , figure out what we're not doing well and fix it . But oftentimes , you know , those drills are unfortunately . They're graded I guess is the best way to say it so under an environment where we're practicing as hard as we can , but there's a pass-fail Component to it . A lot of times you will see , you know , maybe some folks playing to the microphone , so to speak . But you know , if you dive deep you'll see that maybe they're not doing what they should be doing . So so if it's , if it's a pass-fail environment , sometimes you lose some of that training credibility . I get it . Drills are required . Drills , you know , prove your response capabilities . You know , oftentimes we forget that they're training environment and we can learn from them . So I usually try to stress that , but there are times when it's truly a pass-fail . Can we ask you one more thing about ?
Marc MullenWearing your incident , commander hat PIO shows up with a document for approval . What advice can you give for getting that approval process to happen in one swoop instead of present , revise , present , revise , present , revise - the death cycle that we can get into .
Jeff JohnsonOh yeah , it's a spiral , and it's frustrating for everybody .
Jeff JohnsonOne of the things that in the shipping side of the business that I used and shamelessly stole from somebody else was
Jeff JohnsonWe delegate authorities . As an incident commander we had several deputies so in my past we'd always have a command staff deputy and a general staff deputy , so operations or logistics had questions and maybe instant commanders on a site visit or in a meeting . That person has full delegation and authority to respond as if they were the instant commander and what that does is that helps especially for the deputy and the commander on command staff . It helps work with the PIL . So by the time it walks through the command unified command room it's done and we encourage in responses and in drills that our colleagues maybe on the unified command do the same and for the most part they try . I think sometimes that slow down process occurs maybe at a state level where they haven't followed . That same practice we like to get was the best practice to have multiple deputies just filling in and sorting things so that it did speed that process up and when it worked it worked great .
Jeff JohnsonIt worked great .
Marc MullenRight , well , and that's also training your next incident commanders . I recently did an exercise in Texas with your guys' alma mater , moderate , where one of the injects was command . The command leaders had gone up for an overflight and their plane was forced down so they weren't back in the incident command post in time for the next round of decisions and briefings and so on . That was a very significant wrench in the works because a lot of people in the room just weren't ready to step into those roles .
Jeff JohnsonIt's a great test , and in that moment you quickly find who is ready as well . Right , so I'd encourage that . I've seen exercises , thinking back to my shipboard days where maybe the chief engineer , who's accountable for , you know , starting the fire pump , doesn't show up . So now the second engineer , third engineer , has to figure it out . So I think it's a great training tool to use . Yeah , sometimes you know , you either show the world that you're not ready or you see some greatness and some of your folks .
Tom MuellerI had the opportunity to work a very large crisis where the incident commander actually followed that process . You just talked about appointed deputies and I was just so thankful and so amazed at how that simplified the approval process , because there was somebody always available then to get the latest FAQ or latest press release approved and we get it out the door quickly . So I really grab on to that as a best practice and thanks for sharing that reminded me about that , because that's something that I'd like to see more of in more exercises and actual unified commands .
Jeff JohnsonIt kind of kills two birds with one stone . You know , you're training your future deputy , your deputies are now trained to be instant commanders and you know , don't frustrate all the process and slow it down needlessly .
Tom MuellerSo one final question for you here today , Jeff . I was thinking about , international incident planning , and you mentioned your stint working in Singapore . Shipping , you know , involves vessels that are moving from port to port and so you've got to be prepared to manage an incident kind of anywhere around the world that a ship might be going . How , how difficult , how challenging is that process , and what did you find that sort of worked for you as you were thinking through those issues ?
Jeff JohnsonI remember just having a conversation with a refinery manager one time and I said you know , when you went to bed at 10 o'clock last night you knew where the refinery was and when you woke up at eight in the morning it was still right where you left it . And , unfortunately for us , that a ship moves and they move all over the world . So you're absolutely right that the challenges are huge for us and that , from a shipping company perspective , typically it's small groups of folks in teams located globally . So in the US maybe a shipping company might have 20 people in an office , and maybe in Europe they might have the same and maybe in Asia . That's not a lot of people , you know , spread across those those three areas that can instantly help , and not all of them are trained to respond . So what you really need are good partners , good organizations that you've contracted with , and visit them as much as you can . I've always liked to be able to know , you know my regulators and in a global scale .
Jeff JohnsonThat's really not possible . You can't really go around the world and meet everybody . You may end up sitting across the table from in an incident . So I think it's important to have good partners . You know , if you've got oil store response organizations with global reach , they do a lot of that for you . So be active with those and responses aren't typically . It could be anything from you know a natural disaster to you know an environmental incident .
Tom MuellerJeff Johnson
You know , human issues where maybe somebody unfortunately passes away well on board a ship , maybe of natural causes , but you know having the right connections to respond to that . You know it's no different than a big response you might see in an environment because you've got to figure out how to move people around the world , how to respond , and you end up with a very large Rolodex of response agencies that will help . And I think that's the biggest piece to it . If you're part of a larger organization , you can really lean on other business units within it . So I'm thinking naturally maybe an oil company and you can rely on employees maybe in another country to help . But you know , in most cases shipping companies just don't have that . They're running 20 ships around the world and they might have a total short side crew of 20 . So it becomes a challenge .
Tom MuellerThanks so much for joining us today , Jeff . Really appreciate you taking time and sharing some of your many experiences in the shipping world as an incident commander . Thank you again .
Jeff JohnsonWell , thanks , Tom and Marc . It's my pleasure and it's an important topic and I'm glad you're doing this .
Tom MuellerThanks everyone for listening to this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast . We'll be back next week with some new content for you . Please like and subscribe this and tell your friends about us as well . Thanks , and we'll talk to you again soon .
