MissionMode

Crisis Planning seems to be big–but how do you know if they are any good?

I found this article by Gerald Baron, a great crisis communications expert, on his Blog. It provides an excellent and concise view on what is important in a crisis plan both for communicating externally and internally. The media is such a big issue in crisis management, but people often forget that what the media is told should be the culmination of a lot of internal communications to ensure that the message is accurate, valuable, timely and believable.

These end-to-end communications are increasingly difficult in times of stress, reduced time windows and where teams are brought together only when a crisis hits. Of course, in organizations that are increasingly distributed and mobile, the luxury of having a single point at which the crisis team can congregate is no longer available.

You can find the article here. It is well worth reading.

Briefing Executives on Crisis Management

There is often a disconnect between the crisis management professional and the c-level executives. Executives don't want to spend time on something that won't affect them today. They often have a innate belief in their ability to deal with any situation that arises - not without some truth. However, time and time again we see that crisis management behavior changes significantly after a crisis. The sheer magnitude and terror it instils is enough to motivate executives to plan for crises in the future.

How do you get your senior management to understand the impact and the planning that is necessary without having to suffer a crisis?

Elizabeth Stevens, a veteran of many crises and incidents, has written an executive brief white paper specifically to address this issue. Her experience across aviation, retail and financial services is second to none. In this article Elizabeth Stevens provides an executive’s introduction to crisis management, why it’s important and the key tenets for successful crisis management.

You can find this white paper here

Emergency Notification Systems Are Not the Answer at Universities

The results of the Virginia Tech shooting investigation were released today and the underlying theme of the report is that the Faculty is responsible and accountable to communicate faster. I'm not trying to say that emergency notification systems don't have their place. But getting the actual message out is the easy part. Figuring out what to say is a lot harder...and that is where MissionMode comes in.

From an AP article on the story published August 30 titled Va. Tech president defends himself:

"It took administrators more than two hours to get the first e-mail warning out after Cho killed two people in a dormitory. In the interim, Cho mailed off a video confession to NBC and then made his way across the Blacksburg campus to a classroom building, where he killed 30 more victims and committed suicide.

...during those two hours, administrators carefully considered how to deal with the first burst of gunfire, including a warning or a complete campus lockdown...

At the time, however, only two administrators had the ability to send campus-wide e-mail, and the message first had to be formulated by the Policy Group, a body that includes nine vice presidents and several vice provosts and is chaired by Steger. It took a half-hour just to assemble the group."

There isn't a more appropriate scenario I could come up with as an argument for the need for MissionMode.

1. MissionMode's emergency notification feature can send an alert to all team members via their phone, email, cell, pager, etc within seconds. Team members manage schedule by time of day, and day of week.
2. Team members can then log in to an online situation center where they can communicate and collaborate no matter where they are located.
3. Pre-defined situation templates ensure that the most up to date information related to your response plans and SOPs are available at everyone's fingertips and not sitting on a desk miles away, or clogging your email server as you try to email them to everyone.
4. Task assignments can be automatically triggered and responsible parties can give task status can be updated for all team members to see.

The sooner you can get to work on a situation, the quicker you can react, take action, and save lives. MissionMode can help.

 

Emergency Response Legislation for Colleges & Universities

Just saw an interesting  article about some national legislation that has recently been presented on the floor about emergency notification at colleges & universities.

http://www.campussafetymagazine.com/News/?newsID=1080

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced legislation on April 26 to strengthen the safety and security of college and university campuses. The Campus Law Enforcement Emergency Response Act of 2007 will ensure that all colleges and universities develop emergency response procedures and campus notification systems, and test them on at least an annual basis.

The legislation would require colleges and universities to do the following:

• Develop and distribute policies for responding to law enforcement emergencies, including procedures for notifying students and employees about such emergencies. The term "law enforcement emergency" would include situations that occur on a college campus, that involve a law enforcement response and that pose a potential threat of continuing danger;
• Report on statistics concerning the occurrence of such emergencies;
• Test their law enforcement emergency response procedures at least annually; and
• Provide notification to the campus community no later than 30 minutes after the discovery of a law enforcement emergency situation.

What is extremely interesting about this legislation is the time limit they have on the amount of time the school has to send out the alert after an incident. Actually getting a mass alert out is the easy part. Emergency alert systems are a dime a dozen. MissionMode does it as well as anyone via voice and text to phone, fax, email and SMS.

However, the hard part noted here is complying with that 30-minute window. How will you get a hold of all the decision makers, get them up to speed, and quickly make the decision of what exactly you are going to say in that alert? That is the key, and the MissionMode crisis management system is exactly what you need to accomplish it with an online command center where team members can access emergency response plans, get up to speed quickly on the current situation, and collaborate on the action to take.

Learn more by visiting MissionMode at  http://www.missionmode.com/products/index.htm. Call +1 877.833.7763 to schedule a demo today!

Learning from History

Our resident expert on school safety and security, Don Fraser, just sent me the following link to a New York Times article from May 19, 1927.

MANIAC BLOWS UP SCHOOL, KILLS 42, MOSTLY CHILDREN; HAD PROTESTED HIGH TAXES; 33 PUPILS AMONG VICTIMS

It brings to mind the quote by philosopher and poet, George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Before Columbine, the thought of a tragedy of this magnitude seemed to be impossible. We collectively forgot about this unthinkable, horrific act in Michigan, and so here we are 80 years later, with 32 more lives cut short.

We can not - must not - forget. The real tragedy will be if in another 80 years, we still have not done anything to improve the safety and security of our schools to protect our children. The technology exists to help detect and prevent incidents, but help is needed on the federal level to fund the initiatives.

Minneapolis-St. Paul Ranks High in Crisis Communications

Congratulations to our home town of Minneapolis-St. Paul!! Today the AP reported that only 6 US cities excelled in crisis communications - and the Twin Cities is one of them. You can read some great coverage of the report on the emergency.com blog.

At MissionMode, we like to think we have a little something to do with the success of the Twin Cities in this arena.  All 29 hospitals are customers of ours, as well as all local public health organizations in the seven county metro area, MN-ISAC (an organization of business, government and emergency preparedness organizations) is also a customer in addition to some of the largest corporations (Best Buy, Wells Fargo, Target, 3M, Fairview Health Systems and Xcel Energy). All using MissionMode for crisis communications. 

In addition, we have exposed MissionMode to a wide variety of other businesses and state, city, county EMS coordinators through the Snowball exercises; in the deployment of medical personnel to the New Orleans area in the Hurricane Katrina aftermath; and in Symposiums held in the Twin Cities area.  Out own Len Meger has also been very involved in over a half dozen organizations dealing with emergency response, not only promoting MissionMode, but being a champion for emergency preparedness in the area we live and work in.