Contingency Planning

Courses [F] Forecasting a Crisis Contingency Planning

We plan in the sunshine to operate in the storm.  What storms lie ahead?

“One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” ~ Arnold H. Glasow

After 20+ years of responding to natural and human-made disruptions (tornadoes, hurricanes, murders, suicides, crime scenes, etc.) a few common traits emerged among leaders I’ve worked with:

We’re all imperfect people ...

performing an imperfect task ...

in an imperfect environment.  

Achieving a perfect result is unlikely.

~ Mike McKenna

We’re all imperfect people, performing an imperfect task, in an imperfect environment.  Achieving a perfect result is unlikely. ~ Mike McKenna

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Therefore, expecting perfection under these conditions is a fool’s game.

So, by knowing that our event (planned or unplanned) will be imperfect, we can more readily embrace the need to anticipate and address what can and will go wrong.

It bears repeating:

“If it’s predictable, it’s preventable.”

What about the “worst case scenario”?  These catastrophes are what inspire the news headlines: 

"the world is ending"

"the stock market is crashing"

"the people are dying from poison"

However, most assume that “it can never happen to me” because that scenario is unlikely.

Worst case though is about consequence, not probability.

Therefore, planning must include both consequence AND probability.


Proportional Risk Management

If you’ve been following my work for any length of time you’ve likely heard me grouse about "proportional risk management," i.e., keeping your risk proportional to the reward or upside of the activity.  

  • Not surprisingly, most of us are addressing the wrong thing, and as a result, our actual risk doesn't go down at all.  Oops.

In his short video called “What Kills Us? How We Understand Risk,” Dr. Aaron E. Carroll of Healthcare Triage illustrates these irrational approaches perfectly.

Example (from the video):

In 2001 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) promoted a policy that all children under the age of two must sit in a safety seat while traveling in an airplane.  The existing policy allows young children to ride on a parent’s lap.  The AAP policy would require purchasing a separate seat for the child instead and require the logistics of traveling with a child safety seat.

When researchers studied the impact of the policy more closely, they determined that:

  • Less than one child airplane death would be prevented per year at the cost of $1.3 Billion for the prevention (extra plane seats purchased at an average of $200 each.)
  • Nearly 20% of the traveling families would not pay for an extra plane seat, choosing to drive to their destination instead.
  • Statistically, driving instead of flying would drastically increase child deaths.  Nearly 1000 children per year die in car accidents.
  • If you had to choose between a policy that could cause one child death or choose a policy that could cause 1000 child deaths, what would you do?

Using an ill-informed and fear-based policy to push children from a better place (less-risky airplane sitting in a parent’s lap) to a worse place (more-risky ground transportation) fails to consider consequence and probability.

More data from Dr. Carroll:

  • Accidents, including car accidents, are the leading cause of death in children, causing nearly 1600 deaths per year.
  • Alarmingly, to me at least, the second and third leading causes of death in children and young adults is suicide and homicide.  In adults, heart disease outpaces all cancers, strokes, and respiratory issues combined as the leading cause of death in adult men and women.  Even with statistical fluctuations and imperfections, the data is compelling.
  • However, when we look at the ‘death prevention landscape,’ we see a disproportionate focus on different cancers and children dying in airplanes instead of mental health and heart disease.

Information is available to develop risk reduction strategies; we just have to be willing to look through its imperfections and take action.

Now, let’s look more closely at risk for strategies to be less imperfect.


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