Tom Mueller: 0:08

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis podcast. It's great to have you with us again today. On this podcast, we talk all things crisis management and we deliver that through interviews, storytelling and lessons learned and shared from experienced crisis leaders. I'm Tom Mueller With me again today, my co-host, mark Mullet. Hey, mark.

Marc Mullen: 0:29

Hello Tom, Happy to be here and looking forward to our time together today.

Tom Mueller: 0:35

We've got an interesting conversation lined up for you today because we're going to talk to two emerging leaders in the communications space here who recently served their first major Gulf of Mexico oil spill drill as PIO and as deputy PIO, and they're going to talk about the experience and what it felt like doing these roles for the first time. For a major regulator attended oil spill drill time. For a major regulator-attended oil spill drill. So let me just welcome Will Fitzgerald and Celina Cardenas from Occidental Petroleum Guys welcome.

Will Fitzgerald: 1:14

Nice to be with you. Thanks for having us.

Celina Cardenas: 1:16

Hey, tom, thank you for having us.

Tom Mueller: 1:18

Okay, just a quick bio on these guys before we roll in. Will's been with Oxy. He works in corporate affairs and has been with Oxy about two years or so. Previously to that worked at Halliburton for about seven years and then also worked at the MD Anderson Cancer Center here in Houston area for four years. And Celina's been with Oxy about two years now and before that worked at Atmos Energy, which is a local distribution company here in Texas moving natural gas to customers, and before that she worked at the Richardson School District in the Dallas area as a community relations person and public information officer, and before that she was a teacher. So, Celina, you're in a great place to do some teaching today and we hope that skill set comes through.

Celina Cardenas: 2:15

Thank you.

Tom Mueller: 2:17

Will, if you don't mind, kick us off here, give us an overview of the exercise and what you guys were walking into on that day.

Will Fitzgerald: 2:26

Absolutely, tom. It's quite a day. But just for some background, on Oxy and our Gulf of Mexico business, we're the fourth largest producer in the deep water of Gulf of Mexico. We have a large lease position there and we have 10 deep water production facilities that we operate in the Gulf of Mexico. And this drill that we're going to talk about today is for our Gulf of Mexico business and it's intended to simulate a real world incident response.

Will Fitzgerald: 2:56

So it's a full day exercise, involves hundreds of people outside consultants, regulatory agencies, emergency responders, outside consultants, regulatory agencies, emergency responders and the goal of the session for us is to set up a formal incident command to respond to a crisis in our operations. This could be a hypothetical uncontrolled release of oil blowout, a significant accident. So the idea really for us is to practice how we play and provide an opportunity for the teams to work through that FEMA response management protocol that we go through and build those muscles and then exercise those muscles so in the event of an incident, we're ready to go. So as communicators, the culmination of this event for us is a mock afternoon news briefing that we do with the incident command and you walk into a room full of mock reporters who are going to ask you all of the difficult questions. So we try to prepare our incident command leadership for that. So our goal in the process is serving as public information officers.

Will Fitzgerald: 4:06

So for this exercise I served as the PIO. It was great to have Celina as my deputy so we managed the flow of information through. You know this incident response.

Tom Mueller: 4:19

Okay, and it's no small challenge walking into a room full of people just in your joint information center, not to mention all the other sections that are staffed up between operations planning, the environmental section, logistics, all of that, as you mentioned, hundreds of people. So it's a big deal to go through one of these exercises. Well, I'm just so curious. Guys being your first, were you nervous walking into the room that day?

Celina Cardenas: 4:51

I wasn't nervous. It was more just kind of getting into mode of being calm and organized. So it was just a change of mindset and I think you have to, if you're an energetic person like me, try and stay really positive. I just had to kind of level set and talk through. This is how I'm going to introduce myself and this is how I plan on engaging our folks as best as possible from the get go. Folks as best as possible from the get-go, and one of the other things I told myself is the key to this in meeting people for the first time in crisis is having them trust you immediately as well. So first impressions do count. Let's just put it that way From my standpoint.

Will Fitzgerald: 5:41

yeah, there's certainly a lot of anticipation and some nerves, because the organizers of this really do their best to make it as real as possible. So there's mock reporter calls. They even have news websites that will publish stories on the incident that you're responding to and then another part of it is what we call injects, where the organizers will add, you know, a scenario into the equation that forces us to pivot and to respond, which makes it a lot more challenging, you know. So I think, going into this, my concern was really getting started on the right foot, making sure we had an organized team that was ready to go, you know, because there's no time to waste. So the response really depends on how quickly we're able to move and then source information, verify the accuracy of that information and then communicate it to our stakeholders and public. So you don't want to fall behind, in that Falling behind can be an easy thing to do, just given the gravity of what you're dealing with given the gravity of what you're dealing with and the pace of how things move right.

Tom Mueller: 6:49

Social media is always a step ahead of us on these things because there's so many citizen journalists out there on the ground snapping pictures of things or, you know, reporting what they're hearing from different places. That's a little more challenging in an offshore environment, but word still finds its way back on shore. And then you guys in the Joint Information Center have to respond to that and do rumor control and all of that. Well, one of the challenges is just getting organized. Will, as you mentioned, and there's lots of documents and things that you need to get cranking out to keep the public informed. How do you get organized and get that rolling effectively?

Will Fitzgerald: 7:33

Yeah, I think that was one of the big challenges because this was the first year. You know, we set up the Joint Information Center not just as Oxy, but under a formal unified command. So you have all of the federal and state regulatory agencies that have their own policies and procedures that they need to go through. In this instance, we have the Coast Guard, the Texas Land Office and others who are all working together. So it's really important to have each of these groups integrated within the Joint Information Center and the incident response and have very clear guidelines of what they're responsible for within that group. So there's somebody that's monitoring for news coverage, there's somebody that's writing a one-page briefing on offshore oil platforms, there's somebody dealing with reporters all these different roles that come into play. You have to have somebody responsible taking ownership of that role, because that will contribute to an effective response.

Marc Mullen: 8:33

How did that work for this exercise? Because you got a lot of cooks in the kitchen. I'm curious as to how you ended up getting them into their specific roles.

Will Fitzgerald: 8:43

Yeah, so we literally, if you were to walk into the room where we had the Joint Information Center, we had a huge whiteboard. So just as the exercise was starting, and even a little bit before, we were thinking through the roles and responsibilities that we needed to have for the response and we built a decision tree and an org chart so people would know exactly where they sit and then, as they needed to make decisions and get approvals and things like that, they would be able to follow that chart and see who they need to go to next.

Marc Mullen: 9:16

And so you rolled up to. You were the PIO for the entire exercise. Or did the Coast Guard come up and say it's our turn at the podium, or anything like that?

Will Fitzgerald: 9:27

We operated in a unified fashion, but it was all of us working together.

Tom Mueller: 9:34

Thank you. C elina, from your perspective, getting prepared for this exercise. I just have this memory that maybe you didn't sleep the full night the night before that Am.

Celina Cardenas: 9:47

I right about that? You're actually wrong. I did and I told myself I must, otherwise tomorrow is is, it's going to be difficult, um, you know there's there's hangry and then there's sleep deprived, so I was not going to do that. Um, and going into this, like like Will said, we take it very seriously and we have the mindset, and so I think, also as communicators, we kind of thrive on this feeling. It's our jobs. We have to be able to get up and get ready to go and think quickly, and so sleep is one thing, regardless of the drill or not, I always am very mindful of Well, that's excellent.

Tom Mueller: 10:34

I do remember you guys coming into that room and the energy level was pretty high in terms of, hey, we got to get organized, we got to get roles assigned, we need to set priorities here, and that's another challenge you have is just setting priorities. And, selena, I wonder if you can talk to us about that a little bit trying to keep that joint information center wheel just cranking things out, how do you keep that organized and productive?

Celina Cardenas: 11:06

Well, and I think the other thing too with the drill is that you never know what's going to be thrown at you, and that's for reality as well. Right, and that's what made this such an incredible opportunity to link arms and see how we move through it. As practice, you know, my mindset was I needed to quickly understand the talents of each person in the room, and some folks I knew and some folks I did not like. The Coast Guard I knew and some folks I did not like. The Coast Guard the Coast Guard did an incredible job with coming in, removing their ranks and saying put us where you need us. They were actually the group that I kind of fluctuated to different areas and I rotated them more than others. My sole goal was making sure I knew the talents of the team, positioning them for success, and if they were lacking in any way or needed support, then I would jump in, because I needed to make sure Will had everything he needed at all times. I also needed to make sure that anything he communicated was documented, heard, put up on the whiteboard as a goal, and we needed to meet that, and you have to meet it quickly, and keeping up with that type of flow of information is a goal and we needed to meet that, and you have to meet it quickly, and keeping up with that type of flow of information is a challenge itself, but if you have good team members uh, taking in that information, as he would come back to us, or even myself and tracking that properly, then it can, you know, it can be moved through pretty quickly and you can meet those goals.

Celina Cardenas: 12:35

I think the the challenge with it all is you, like I said, you never know what you're going to be thrown at you during the crisis, and so he would go to his meetings and come back and it was always something new. And the pace of this is not over a course of a week. The pace of this is every five minutes. It was making sure I supported him, making sure I listened to him, making sure I listened to my team and then producing the materials that he needed. And there's, you know, if you think you know your, your deadline for the end of the day with the media is something.

Celina Cardenas: 13:12

This is a whole different ball game as far as deadlines, and you also have to be prepared to. We got smarter as the well we I thought we did really well, but we got better as we moved through it, I will say because, while we might have short statements about how we wanted to communicate, I was starting to get to the point where we could have backup statements and things in the wings because we just, you know, you have the unified command, you have coast guard. You know, you have the Unified Command, you have Coast Guard, you have our team and with all of those, like you said, cooks in the kitchen, you need to be prepared for, for what they might want to voice at the end of the day, and that's what makes it quicker is if you have options.

Will Fitzgerald: 13:52

You know, tom, you mentioned priorities and one of the things that I was thinking about, you know, morning was going into the initial incident command meeting, I asked for approval to release any information that was on the ICS Form 201, which is that form that contains just the basic information of that incident the basic facts, if you will without having to go through approval from Unified Command to release that information. We're under such pressure in the initial stages to provide information to the public. That was an area where I didn't want to get bogged down, so I asked for permission to do that, so we didn't have to go back through the incident command, and that would really get us off on the right foot, because if there's a void in information, you know, we know that can lead to speculation, rumors, false narrative, all of those things that you know we're trying our best to control that we're able to just provide basic information right up front. That goes a long way basic information right up front.

Tom Mueller: 14:59

That goes a long way and that's a best practice actually Will. If you can get pre-approval for releasing that information or other information on social media, for example, right, if you've got a press release that's approved, do you have permission from the Unified Command to use that on social media, everything else, or do they want you to come back for specific approvals? So getting all that set ahead of time with the Unified Command is paramount actually. So kudos to you for getting that done, okay.

Marc Mullen: 15:34

So let me ask real quick on that, will, did you have to wrestle for that, or did they sign off on that really quickly with you?

Will Fitzgerald: 15:41

I didn't get it. I asked for it but I didn't get it. So unfortunately that meant we were on our heels a little bit. We still had to go out and get the information, but it just created an extra step for us which slowed us down a bit. An extra step for us which slowed us down a bit. But I will say, you know, once you're in those incident command briefings, one of my recommendations is just to get a little, just a few minutes of face time, you know, with that incident commander so they can kind of learn how you work, understand what's a priority for them and then, hopefully, to Selena's point, as you kind of get through the exercise or the incident, you do get that trust and maybe you would get approval to release information without having to go back through the chain of command.

Marc Mullen: 16:26

Right, and I've been in exercises where we start at that point and then, as the JEC and it sounds like you've supercharged the JEC, so you're creating content rapidly, Like you've supercharged the JET, so you're creating content rapidly but as the JET begins to do that, eventually Unified Command understands we can't keep up with this. We need to cede some of this responsibility back to the JET. But it's a matter of competency, capability and trust. So did they warm up to the ideas you went through the day or did you end where you started?

Will Fitzgerald: 16:57

They did warm up, particularly in one of those injects where I mentioned earlier. We have, you know, literal mock news stories that are written, you know major news outlet about the response. And when I was able to raise one of those stories, one of the incident command briefings, and it had incorrect information in that story.

Will Fitzgerald: 17:19

You know that's something that needs to be corrected immediately or we need to have the ability to release information to prevent, you know, incorrect things from being published. So when they saw that, I think they realized the value of moving quickly, having the ability to get that information and then empower us to release it without having to go through additional approvals. Yeah, they saw the value in what we needed to do.

Tom Mueller: 17:45

So, guys, you've both been involved in dealing with emergency situations over the courses of your careers. I wonder you know, if you think about dealing with this major Gulf of Mexico oil spill exercise? How does that compare with other incidents or issues that you may have dealt with in the past?

Will Fitzgerald: 18:08

You know. So this was the first time I had ever been through, you know, a major crisis situation as the PIO. The year prior I worked in the Joint Information Center but was not the.

Will Fitzgerald: 18:19

PIO. So this was a kind of a leadership position for me and I was thinking about it. The main thing from a leadership standpoint I was focused on was putting the team in a place to succeed. So it was having that organization that we talked about, placing people in the right roles that can suit their expertise and then empowering them to run with it.

Will Fitzgerald: 18:39

Because the nature of a leader is you have to take a more macro view of the response and you need a strong team in that joint information center to manage the flow, the media relations, putting all the deliverables together. You know all those kinds of things. So I learned very early on that you have to strike this balance between being decisive and moving quickly, but you can't move so quickly that you run the risk of releasing some piece of information that might not be accurate or vetted in the way that you would like. So it's a challenge because, as we know, an incident is not linear, so different things will happen and the inject will happen. But if you've got that strong team that's empowered, clear roles and responsibilities, you know that goes a long way to making this process a little bit smoother.

Celina Cardenas: 19:31

One thing with crisis communications is there's several things that I've told myself as I move through different scenarios for the companies that I've been honored to work for.

Celina Cardenas: 19:43

You need to remain calm and that's not an easy skill and you have to remember that for the sake of those that you're working with, if they see someone that's calm and, for the most part, as organized as possible within the situation, that's what I tell myself, going in, no matter what we're faced with.

Celina Cardenas: 20:02

I have had some quite a few experiences where I've been a part of supporting the company. That are companies that I've worked for and that has held me in a position of leadership as we move through those, and also someone that my team members can lean on. So that's one thing. If you're super energetic like me, it's just a matter of kind of changing your mindset to be that calming force as you navigate that through that. You also need to be prepared to take any conversation just as best as possible, because if people are going to lean on you, then they're going to show their feelings and hopes and dreams and it helps them to have somebody to rebound off of. I'll tell you that, in working with so many fantastic leaders, just having that sounding board alone is really critical as you move through something so intense.

Tom Mueller: 20:58

And that's going to do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast. Thanks for joining us. If you like what you're hearing, then please like and subscribe to the podcast and please tell your friends and colleagues about us as well, and we'll see you again soon for another episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast.