Collaboration and Communication in Crisis Response

Marc Mullen 0:07

Hello everyone , welcome to the Leading in a Crisis podcast . On this podcast , we talk about all things crisis management with a focus on leadership . We deliver this through interviews , storytelling and lessons learned from experienced crisis leaders . I'm Marc Mullen . I'd like to welcome my cohost , Tom Mueller , joining us from the great state of Texas .

Tom Mueller 0:34

Hey Mark . Hi from Texas .

Marc Mullen 0:38

Great . Our guest today is Lynn Miller , formerly Regional Communications Manager and PIO for King County , Washington . She's a respected colleague who models diplomacy , tact , creativity and humility in sharing best practices and contributing to information sharing planning efforts . All that to say , she's great to work with . Welcome , Lynn . Could you take a couple of minutes and tell us about yourself ?

Lynne Miller 1:08

I'd be happy to Thank you , tom and Marc , for inviting me to join your podcast and for that glowing intro . You're making me blush . As Marc had alluded to , I've enjoyed a long career in communications 35 years within private , public and nonprofit settings and most recently I served 12 years as Regional Communications Manager for King County Emergency Management . I have to say it was one of the toughest jobs I've had , but also the most rewarding , and , ironically , I didn't study communications in college . In fact , I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up .

Lynne Miller 1:52

However , written and verbal communications are skills that I've naturally applied both professionally and in my personal life . Since I resigned from the county three years ago to pursue an early retirement, I've accepted a few short-term contract jobs and have enthusiastically continued decades old volunteer work promoting safety and disaster preparedness in my community , and I often tell friends and colleagues as they say you can take the girl out of emergency management , but you can't take crisis communications out of the girl . So I love this stuff and it's pretty hard to leave it just because you leave a job .

Marc Mullen 2:42

Wow , thank you for sharing that , Lynn . Having you on the podcast gives us an opportunity to look at incident command and stakeholder communications from a slightly different perspective , that of a response agency communication professionals . Much of our background is focused on the responses that occur where there's somebody called a responsible party , where there's one organization who is at the center of the response and all the response agencies show up and work alongside to accomplish the purpose of stopping it , cleaning it up and so on . But what I've come to realize from working with municipalities and government agencies is that those major incidents like Deepwater Horizon or Macondo , or like the Refugio Oil Spill on the West Coast , they are major incidents , but in the numbers of those incidents they're a tiny fraction of the sort of things that you're always responding to . I was talking with the emergency manager on the East Coast and we had worked together on a plan and it was six months after the plan had been implemented and he rattled off more than a half a dozen incidents that they'd used it in in that period of time .

Marc Mullen 4:10

So what I'd like to focus on in today's podcast is basically three main topics , and we'll drift around them and we might land on one for most of the time . But first of all , the public agency , private entity response methods and how we end up working together and how an RP can fit gracefully inside incident command , and how agencies can come alongside a specific organization in the middle of a response , basically built around the idea of how do we work together , because we come from two slightly different worlds with a common goal . And then and I've noticed this is a real difference between public and private responses who's going to be the spokesperson , who's going to be the face of the response ? And I've noticed that can be really different . So I'm hoping we can touch on that a little bit .

Marc Mullen 5:00

And then , finally , because while you deal every day in your role you dealt every day with crisis management of all sorts of levels inside King County what do you do with those really big , long duration responses ? And something that's interesting there is all of us on this call have had experience with long duration responses . They've just been really different in what the cause was . So I'd like to talk a little bit about that and get a sense from you about what it was like going through that and what your lessons learned would be . So with that , why don't we go ahead and just jump right in . First of all , let's talk about how private industry comes into a response and works alongside public agencies , and what have you seen in your career of where that worked well or where it caused some kerfuffles along the way ?

Lynne Miller 5:59

Well , without airing any dirty laundry , because we all have lessons learned and things that we could do better . My experience has been that this has worked rather well and after each experience , during debriefs , changes were made to strengthen those relationships . In my opinion , foundational to success in collaborating during exercises and real-life disaster response is relationships . We need to build trust through regular stakeholder engagement , and this needs to happen when we're determining policies , putting together plans and all of the operational procedures that support those . This really goes a long way in effective crisis management , but I have found , especially the higher up the food chain you are , it often requires letting go of some of the control and checking egos at the door , and some organizations and regions of the country do that better than others . I also think it's important to recognize that both public and private responders each bring unique skills and resources to the table , and the best outcomes result when we can share and capitalize upon those differences rather than keep them to ourselves or think that we're the only agency that can effectively respond . We really need to recognize that we all have blind spots , we all have resource shortages , and it's only when we can come together and share those that we really can walk away from an incident or even an exercise , with a much better outcome .

Lynne Miller 7:53

One example that I could offer to organizations and this is just something , it sounds kind of obvious , but I remember as a regional communicator working with us one of our cities in King County .

Lynne Miller 8:09

She was a new public information officer and she was working for the mayor's office and really had not experienced the structure of incident command system and I really encouraged her and her public works department and other organizations the police force to utilize incident command during non-emergency events .

Lynne Miller 8:34

So , for example , every year they have a Veterans Day Parade perfect opportunity to bring in stakeholders to engage nearby cities , whether you're using them for extra police and crowd control or using their fire engines just to be on call in case something were to happen . Those are perfect opportunities to practice that stakeholder engagement . And it's that sweet spot between an exercise which is very easy to say oh , this is just an exercise , I don't need to take it too seriously and a real life crisis . It's that sweet spot because it's live , it's happening , there's a lot of variables , but it's a very safe setting because you've done it many times , you've got a lot of things organized already and some muscle memory , but it's also a very fun and happy event . So that's just an example of what people can do to actually put these collaborative partnership efforts to the test .

Marc Mullen 9:42

That's great advice . A quick question for you about that . You mentioned incident command and unified command together and I know that we experience communicators . We tend to do that . But there is a slight difference when you look at your career in King County . How many times were you responding in incident command versus that full-fledged , full-throated unified command and what would be the percentage you could think of of the difference when you did incident commander , when you did unified command ?

Lynne Miller 10:19

Emergency management on a regional level by its very nature is supportive , Without giving too much power and credit to the organization . I do think we are the glue for the multiple cities , tribes , private sector partners that we have within King County , which is the 13th largest county At least it was when I was working there in the nation in terms of size , not population , obviously , necessarily , but I think size and possibly even population . So we were primarily , I would say , closer to unified because we were working with state being the bridge between different resources operating on a regional level . So , by its very nature , whether we were supporting a small city or a utility company , we were naturally bringing together the people that we knew were needed to carry out the response .

Marc Mullen 11:27

Okay , so while the entities that made up King County may be an incident command if you get involved , basically , that's one of the triggers that roll it all to unified command .

Lynne Miller 11:36

That is correct , and even with COVID , public health was the lead agency on the response , but they utilized a lot of different organizations to support that response , and so there would be meetings that involved a lot of different stakeholders that each had a role in how we were going to communicate , how we were going to gather resources and dispense them among the region . So a perfect example of how we're called into it , but somebody else might be taking the lead role .

Marc Mullen 12:10

Sure , okay , thank you for sharing that . So how do communicators network ? How can we do that better ? Because I'm thinking here in Washington state . Up here in Whatcom County , for example , I attended an exercise a few years ago and it was a terrorism exercise and again that type of scenario it's everybody come in the room and play together because it's an external threat . But one thing that I experienced there was that , in addition to the county and the city people and I believe there was a representative from state of Washington some of the local industries had provided communicators as well , and it was really interesting to see how the local government communicators and the industry communicators were put in a position of working together . Have you had experience where you've brought in industries , industry leaders or communicators to be part of your responses and , if so , how would do you use them when they come in the room ?

Lynne Miller 13:19

Yeah , we have . In fact , I'm going to give you kind of a foundational perspective of how it actually happens , because you just don't call somebody up and say , hey , come join my JIC (joint information center) and expect them to do that if you don't have that established relationship . So in my experience I have found communicators from different agencies and organizations in general are more open to networking than their bosses sometimes are , especially if there's a happy hour involved Very easy to get people to show up . But I can share an example . Over just a period of a few years , I and my counterparts in neighboring counties and the state of Washington emergency management formed what is now a 500 or more strong network of communication professionals from private , public and nonprofit sectors . And you know , it's kind of like we would know somebody at them to our list , invite them to participate in a workshop . They then would spread the word to other people within their organization or their little network and people would say , hey , can I be part of this ? And so it was . It was pretty easy to grow the list over time because we made it value added .

Lynne Miller 14:39

The things that we did is those of us that were the organizers of it . We regularly shared training and conference opportunities that individuals may not otherwise be privy to . Many of these were free to attend hosted workshops at our own shops or tagged along with statewide and regional conferences . We would meet socially in small groups several times a year , and again those were usually just after work gatherings , and we developed a website , and this is something , mark , you'll recall , you helped us with that . We developed a website that contained resources to assist each other carry out our individual responsibilities within our given organizations , and this Washington emergency public information network , or we've been for short , proved its worth during in the snow home , ish County landslide in the small town of .

Lynne Miller 15:40

Oh so , I think that was 10 years ago , 10 year anniversary , because we had this trusted network of communication professionals that had trained together , socialized together , at least knew the name of those of us that had a wider regional reach .

Lynne Miller 15:59

We could draw from them and we were able to send a steady stream of people to fill joint information center positions for more than a month , or I think was almost two months during the response .

Lynne Miller 16:11

But kind of circling back to your original question , I think it's not hard , when you've already reached out to people , to offer them something , to then say there's a need , and so even some of the interns or America volunteers that work for different organizations within King County . If they showed a budding promise as a communicator or wanted to learn more about the joint information center , I would actually make a spot for them in the jack during an exercise or real life event so that they could actually work it with us . And that was some of the best learning that they could do , because we just looked at their skill set , plugged them in , guided them and , even if they can only give us a day or two , it helped me out and it also then started to develop the skills in more people that could be drawn , called upon in a in a true crisis . That would be have a regional impact versus just a local impact .

Marc Mullen 17:21

Thanks for sharing that . And that leaves me to an observation , which is it sounds like it's an open door . If somebody , if somebody , has moved into town and an industry role as a public affairs person and and wanted to get to know the neighborhood , I think they'd be more than welcome to join an exercise that's going on . Is that ? Oh , absolutely Absolutely .

Lynne Miller 17:44

Absolutely .

Lynne Miller 17:44

In fact we had .

Building Relationships, Disaster Response Lessons

Lynne Miller 17:46

This is going way back to early in my career at emergency management , but we had started to build a relationship with the Canadian consulate in Seattle and they came into the operation center and I was in the same ranch in where I was located and I learned who the communication people would be , who would be my resource , so that if something happened and they had a responsibility for Canadian citizens in the area and tourists , what , what would we do to leverage their unique needs and resources ?

Lynne Miller 18:22

Over time , we just incorporated them into some of our exercises in real world experiences so that they could actually have a seat in the emergency operations center (EOC) and we had a communications arm and we also had someone who was more in the operational area , being willing to let people kind of come in . You don't have to have your act totally together , but including them . It builds those relationships and the knowledge about what each other does , how the EOC that I'm using the acronyms , forgive me , emergency management center operates , so that when they are more of in a virtual partnership collaboration , they can . They can remember what it looks like , they know how it's set up , they know how information flows . It just really builds a much stronger backbone for regional response moving forward .

Marc Mullen 19:24

In light of this , I'd like to jump now to what you mentioned , lynn , about the Oso landslide or the Oso mudslide . I've seen it called both , but I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about what happens when something really big occurs and the Oso landslide did occur almost 10 years ago now and basically about a mile of earth outside of a small town in Washington state slid away , a hill collapsed , there are mud and debris everywhere , and it ended up with multiple fatalities . So again , remember , this is Snohomish County , which is north of King County . You're in King County , but it actually involved the whole state in the response .

Lynne Miller 20:14

So you know , I as much as I wanted to be boots on the ground and be in the thick of it , because what an experience and what an opportunity to serve a community and help them . My role was much more valuable at the time in working support remotely . I stayed in King County because there was my colleague that would normally pick up my duties as a regional support was out of the country , and so what I was able to do is leverage that network of public information officers to help create that steady stream of personnel to fill the JIC responsibilities . And that was no easy lift because it was sudden . People had to drop what they were doing , make childcare arrangements if they were going to go , because we were asking people to stay there for five days Because you , by the time you arrive , you get acclimated , you're kind of learning the rhythm . To leave in two days just creates an added burden for those that are trying to run the JIC , because they have to retrain , restaff , reposition people , and so we were trying to get people to stay at least five days , if not seven , any more than that , and we found that people were burning out . This was a very , very emotionally exhausting position as well , because there were 43 deaths I believe , and it was just very sad . The small community lost a lot of their community members . So my role was to work with the state so that when the resource requests would come in for personnel to fill the JIC in particular , I then leveraged my network , made personal call-outs and then I fed the names and contact information for the people that were able to go , and this was from across the state . I would feed that to the state , who then would fulfill that resource request and direct people when to show up and where . We continued that model for at least a month and then by that time we were circling people back in and the Snohomish County had some of the resources in-house that they could do to carry on much of the long-term recovery . But it was really time's challenging because a lot of times you have people working together who had never worked together ever .

Lynne Miller 22:52

But . One testimony I want to share with you . That was kind of interesting . Just about I think it was less than a week prior to the Oso disaster I had held one of my networking after-hours parties at a local restaurant and there were two people who met each other for the first time and then fast-forward less than a week later , when one of them was assigned to Oso for the JIC , he walked in . He immediately saw the JIC manager who he had just met , and instantly , he said , his stress dissipated because here he wasn't in an unfamiliar area but he had somebody that he had bonded with recently and it just made that time of service so much easier because it was already some trust , some things they had in common and he was able to follow the orders very confidently . You asked also , mark , about a dynamic that stuck out .

Lynne Miller 23:53

One of the best things from a public information officer point of view that really worked well is there was this huge debris field and they were using trained dogs and first responders to go through the muck looking for people and parts of people .

Lynne Miller 24:14

It was very , very sad and if you can imagine this horrible , horrible scene , we had a public information officer who worked in fire and law enforcement through his career and he was the perfect person to lead media . Not only did he have the uniform , the badge and a weapon strapped to him if he needed it , but he had that authority that was needed to keep everybody in check , to set the ground rules before media were escorted out , and he made it very clear that if anybody challenged those guidelines , they would be removed no questions asked . He could do that Someone like me ? They wouldn't have listened to me . So , knowing who is in what role , how they present themselves , what they've been doing day in and day out , you want to position people in the right positions , not just fill a position . So it's more than just being able to fog a mirror . You need to be very deliberate in how you place people .

Tom Mueller 25:26

You know , Lynn , just thinking about sort of some of the leadership aspects here and what are some of the lessons we can take away .

Lynne Miller 25:36

Two best practices . The first is before an incident happens . We pre-created a list of messages three or four to a different type of hazard that could be put out immediately , even when you don't have all the facts , and this would be something that could be posted social media . It could be something that somebody you know media shows up at the exec's office door saying we need answers , and he hasn't even necessarily heard from incident command yet about what's going on . There are some in the can , messages that are harmless , that are focused on what our protocols are , what our processes are for this type of response and this is how you're going to stay informed .

Lynne Miller 26:25

And we created this little trifle that I kind of nicknamed the PIO in your pocket , and we made sure that every executive leader , whether they're a mayor or a council head in King County , all got a copy of that and I funded those through their public information and emergency managers . The second thing so we created a blog , an emergency blog , and it is activated automatically when we have an incident with information to share . It can be updated , it can be edited , it can be translated . So not only does that serve as a centralized place for public information for internal operations , but also for stakeholders and the general public . You all could go to the same place .

Lynne Miller 27:12

This is especially helpful when we , as a large agency , have the resources to dedicate somebody to just our social media channels , where other cities are smaller organizations . They're a jic of one person , they are a communications department of one person and there is no way they can handle social media , talking points , newsletters . You know all of that . They're one person , they can't do it all . So this this was a resource that anyone could access and from their website , simply linked to it , so they didn't have to keep updating their individual websites . So thinking smarter and using some of these on-demand tools is really , really helpful .

Marc Mullen 27:57

Thanks for sharing that , lynn . I appreciate your comments and I think we've we've shared enough here for everybody to absorb at once . Thank you for your time today , really appreciate you being a part of that and we look forward to more conversations in the future .

Lynne Miller 28:11

It's a pleasure and thank you for having me .

Tom Mueller 28:13

Yeah , thanks , lynn , it was a pleasure meeting you . That wraps up another episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast . Thanks for joining us . If you're like what you're hearing , please like and subscribe to the podcast and we'll see you for another episode very soon .