Readiness begins with story

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Your Readiness Starts with Story!
Readiness is Your Only Protection!
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Presented at HSE Conference !
Asia!
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Presented by:!
Gideon F. Mukwai, CEM, MA!

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Corporate Emergency Preparedness !
Readiness is Your Only Protection!
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Introduction!
Emergencies often happen at the 11th hour, and thus have devastating consequences on the
organisation. To prevent creeping emergencies from becoming overwhelming crises, organisations must
constantly strengthen their internal and external capabilities to respond or mitigate hazards.!
By becoming proactive in anticipating and preparing, companies build organisational resilience. Such
resilience is the product of awareness, procedures, skills, resources and intelligence. In this presentation,
we emphasis 4 critical elements of readiness: Insight, Hindsight, Commonsight and Foresight.!
# 1 ! Insight (the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a system)!
With insight, an organisation is capable of analysing and introspecting the consequences of certain
actions or inactions. When an organisation fails to understand the implications of certain red flags, it will
ultimately face a crisis and pay a price.!
The best way to develop insight is to assume that emergencies will happen at the 11th hour. Thus all staff
must possess an understanding of what is must be done to prevent incidents. Insight enables an
organisation to be more prepared because Lack of action is often caused by lack of clarity.!
Ideas:!
1. Beware of new hazards.............................................................................................................................!
2. Beware of blind spots ...............................................................................................................................!
3. Beware of your weakest links ..................................................................................................................!
4. Implement incentives to act ....................................................................................................................!
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3. # 2 ! Hindsight (organization understanding of an event only after it has happened) !
Organisations that develop an interest in hindsight, often learn about past calamities and incidents. Given
that natural disasters tend to re-occur due to geographical forces, a good understanding of the past
ensures that an organisation knows what can possibly happen in future.!
Learning about the past without insitutionalising the lessons with stakeholders is futile. Hindsight only
pays off, if an organisation appreciates the past as well as implement action steps that must be taken
when the past event happens again. Those who learn from hindsight outsmart their adversaries.!
Ideas:!
1. Beware of human biases .........................................................................................................................!
2. Psychometric testing ................................................................................................................................!
3. Frequent training ......................................................................................................................................!
4. Historical analysis ....................................................................................................................................!
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# 3 ! “Commonsight” (Common knowledge and understanding of interrelationships)!
The culture of an organisation often determines how its employees respond to events and incidents.
Some organisations are very prescriptive and scripted about everything. Employees who work for or what
Bob Marshall calls “organisations with analytic mindset,” tend to be mechanistic and have little trust.!
Organisations must strive to develop a “synergistic or chaordic mindset” (Marshall Model of
Organisational Evolution). This encourages learning, sharing and rapid response to threats. Such
flexibility in crisis prevention implies that, “What matters is not the size, but the price of an incident.” !
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Ideas:!
1. Stress test critical nodes .........................................................................................................................!
2. Implement a buddy system ......................................................................................................................!
3. Build inter-connections ...........................................................................................................................!
4. Build redundancies .................................................................................................................................!
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# 4 ! Foresight (ability to predict or foresee future incidents, disruptions and calamities.)!
There is no escaping; every organisation will face a crisis. The major question is not when, but how well
can your organisation will prevent or mitigate the impact of future incidents by putting in place resources
and procedures to act decisively. !
Proactive organisations take their readiness and resilience seriously. They spend time role-playing on
potential scenarios. Such activities may seem trivial, but their benefits are substantial. They remind
stakeholders that, when your foresight is compromised, your people ‘s future is jeopardised.!
Ideas:!
1. Implement back up systems.....................................................................................................................!
2. Do forecasting .........................................................................................................................................!
3. Develop scenarios ..................................................................................................................................!
4. Avoid short-termism ................................................................................................................................!
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Conclusion!
The essence of crisis prevention is readiness. Readiness is the basis of organisational resilience which is
perceived Trustworthiness of a system. Such trustworthiness must be earned and protected by the
entire organisation because without the “IT” the organisation can not exist in the market place. !
That trustworthiness can be broken by word or actions. Whenever it is broken, it is harder to rebuild.
Therefore, every organisation should strive to build a deeper reservoir or Readiness which depends on
Insight, Hindsight, Commonsight and Foresight. !
This is a necessity for the survival of modern organisations because Readiness is your only protection! It
is better than insurance because your insurance may finance infrastructure, but it will not finance the
processes that enable your organisation to function in the marketplace. !
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6. Notes!
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7. Notes!
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8. !
About the Trainer and Facilitator - Gideon F. Mukwai, MA, CEM! !!
Gideon is an award-winning speaker with over a decade of both local and international
experience from Asia, Middle East, Africa and North America. He has presented training
programmes to over 13,500 executives from organisations such
as Oracle, Siemens, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Dell Computers,
Shell Eastern Petroleum, National University of Singapore, DBS
Bank, Gillette and many professional associations and
institutions of learning.!
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In 2004, he founded XtraMile Solutions in Singapore as a
dedicated training company that specialises in providing training
solutions for both corporate and community organisations. A former Senior Officer and Instructor
with the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), Gideon recently earned an Masters of Art
Degree in Social Media Communication from the Reynolds School of Journalism, University of
Nevada, Reno.!
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Gideon ‘s forte is his ability to communicate complex issues with practical narratives and
examples, without compromising on his ability to inform, influence and inspire action. He
combines his journalistic storytelling skills with rigorous academic and professional insights in
helping participants understand new concepts. !
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In his spare time, he writes non-fiction. He is the author of Facing Adversity with Audacity and a
self-taught musical flute player who cannot even read a single musical note.
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