The Community Focussed Planning Program offers emergency management professionals a structured methodology for integrating business, community, and government efforts in disaster management. The program is based on extensive research and collaboration, aiming to enhance disaster preparation, response, and recovery while promoting shared responsibility among stakeholders. Through a nine-step framework and tailored training, participants develop the skills necessary for effective interagency collaboration and community engagement, increasing operational effectiveness during crises.

1. Community
Focussed Planning
www.sonnyneale.com

2. A structured approach to the effective integration of Business,
Community and Emergency Management Agencies.
The Community Focussed Planning Program provides Emergency Management professionals with a structured process for bringing community,
business and government together in a seamless approach to disaster preparation, response and recovery.
• Do you sometimes you feel valuable time is wasted engaging across agencies and with communities for little tangible result?
• Do you worry operational effectiveness is put at-risk because of competing demands or the lack of a common-framework for working together?
• Are you unsure how to concretely operationalise ‘shared responsibility’, especially when it comes to integrating community concerns and
preferences?
Codifying the approach that won state and national awards for one of Australia’s
fastest and most effective recovery efforts, the Community Focussed Planning
Program brings together the experience of leaders from Federal and state Police
Forces, ARMY, Red Cross, representatives from disaster-affected communities and
most Australian state governments.
This step-by-step modular training, coaching and mentoring program represents
the learnings from a two-year participatory research trial, led by the Australian Red
Cross and a local Council with the support of the Australian Emergency
Management Institute (AEMI) and Monash University. The elegant approach to
interagency and community partnership that resulted from this collaboration was
endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG).
This program provides Emergency Management professionals with a tested and structured process for how to:
• facilitate the seamless integration of efforts across community, business and government before, during and after incidents
• enhance post-incident recovery through the tailored and sequenced delivery of services and support (including identifying and supporting
appropriate community-based governance arrangements)
• create appropriate levels of shared responsibility with relevant stakeholders
• support themselves and their staff to manage competing demands and complexity, especially during and immediately after incidents
A nationally-developed program

3. This program is appropriate for people who:
• are accountable for coordinating emergency services across agencies
• work directly with communities
• are responsible for leading and supporting incident management staff or people who experience periods of intense pressure during and
immediately after incidents
• lead, or could be expected to lead disaster preparation or recovery efforts from local or state government and emergency services agencies
• need to be mentally and conceptually prepared for managing the competing demands and interests engendered by disasters (especially if
disaster response and recovery is a secondary role for them)
• interested in how to ensure disasters increase and don’t decrease long-term community coherence and resilience
Who should do this program?

4. In our sector there exists a vast reservoir of experience and knowledge. Unfortunately, we also continue to experience overlap and duplication of
services and each community and agency is unique and moves at its own speed. Not everyone always agrees on the best way forward and it is
sometimes hard to get people to work together, especially when they are under pressure.
For cross-sectoral collaboration to flourish, Emergency Management professionals need to go beyond technical and bureaucratic aptitude and
become effective facilitators of cross-sectoral outcomes.
From Functionary to Facilitator
Functionary
Engaged
Embedded
Breakdown
Facilitator
Skillorconfidencebarrier
•Technical Proficiency
•Effective Systems and
Processes
•Focus on Material
Outcomes
•Seamless Integration
of Services
•Effective Mobilisation
of Existing Networks
•Focus on Social Value

5. Many training organisations provide skills-based training that improves their ability to effectively deliver services. Equally, many organisations have
internalised excellent community engagement modules. On-the-ground, these two approaches are inherently contradictory.
To successfully navigate and manage the interaction of bureaucratic and social ‘systems’, the Emergency Management professional must be adept at
integrating hierarchical, command and control approaches with pre-existing social networks and governance arrangements. The success of this
balance determines the effectiveness, speed and ultimately the cost of subsequent recovery efforts.
Designed with real-world input from senior leaders, professionals, academics and community representatives, and leveraging recent breakthroughs in
social network theory, the Community Focussed Planning Program provides Emergency Management professionals with critical skills in the
management of authority inside, through and across government, business and community. This approach makes the seamless integration of effort,
and an extremely rapid and robust recovery a real possibility.
Managing the flow of Authority
Mgmnt
Systems
Authority
Flow
Bureaucratic
Systems
Services
Delivery
Mechanics
Social
Systems
Community
Governance
Majo
Methods
2.0
1.0 3.0
Local
Empowerment
Share
Responsibility
Command
& control
2.0
3.01.0
Technical
Skills
Managerial
Skills
People
Skills

6. A Structured Training Approach
The Community Focussed Planning Program is built upon a simple 9 step framework. The starting point is always agreeing on principals, where we
help participants learn how to gather information and ‘read’ the community they’re working with and include that knowledge into the development of
formal emergency management processes and policies.
Building on that foundation, we then look at how we work together across the Collaborate to Command continuum. Finally, we examine how
leadership can bring out the best in people, help them leverage existing community, business and government arrangements and lead and inspire a
culture of personal responsibility. Through all this we look at the evolving role of technology in Emergencies.
Engagement
Control
COLLABORATE
Communicate
with Intent
EMPOWER
Identify & Support
Leadership
ENGAGE
Facilitate the Flow
of Authority
Seamless Integration
Build Agreement
Manage Feedback
CONGREGATE
Map & Gather
Community Preferences
DESIGN
Crystallise Formal
Relationships
& Decision-Making
Processes
EMBED
Intimate, Informal
Planning
DEVELOP
Agree on Principals
Systems &
Processes
DELIVER
Make Decisions,
Get Things Done
COMMAND

7. Designed to be delivered over a three to four-month period, the Community Focussed Planning Program is specifically tailored to accommodate
the working dynamics of people in the Emergency Management sector.
Leveraging an action-based learning model with limited class-room contact, a large portion of the curriculum can be accessed ‘on-the-job’
through webinars, videos and exercises. Curriculum delivery is iterative and designed to be delivered concurrent with normal work-load where
lessons can be immediately parlayed into experience and vice versa (this generally also includes high-risk flood/fire periods). Backed by the
models, approaches and mentoring of the program, participants can expect an increase in operational effectiveness even if they are dealing with
increased work-loads and pressure.
• 2 x 1 day training sessions
• 2 x group-mentoring sessions
• Online training program encompassing the full curriculum
• Individual coaching sessions for each participant
• Provision of Reading Materials Pack
• Program Materials, Set-up guides, Exercises and Workbooks
• Development of collaboration, meeting and email protocols
• Access to relevant contemporary international research
Program Structure
Outcomes of the Program
The participants will be able to:
• Improve the sequencing and ‘enmeshing’ of government and infrastructure-delivery services
• Increase local economic and social recovery
• Build ‘social licence’ for agency and not-for-profit interventions
• Improve the targeting of psycho-social and other social support services
• Minimise ‘friction’ between agencies and with the community
• Speed-up public infrastructure rebuild (especially if privileging local services)
• Manage the ‘white knight’ syndrome and control expectations
• Support people under pressure to remain calm, focussed and present

8. Participants will understand how to:
• Identify and empower 2nd, 3rd and 4th tier community leaders
• Manage emergency response in a way that facilitates post-event social and economic recovery
• Consciously create ‘network nodes’: key partnerships and ‘feedback loops’ with individuals, organisations and communities
• Control, tailor and sequence interventions across the preparation, response and recovery continuum by learning how to:
• identify and manage the flow of authority at different operating states and stages
• manage the dynamics and requirements of different agencies and communities
• manage the dynamics and requirements of external audiences/stakeholders
• support and coach people responsible for incident control or other high-stress periods
• identify and manage their own default positions and instincts
Key Components of the Program
Sonny Neale has been training and coaching leaders in the public sector for nearly twenty years. As CEO, he led
Australia’s largest local government sustainability Alliance; was instrumental in creating or expanding some well-
known environmental enterprises and led a number of cutting-edge programs for both state and federal
government.
Sonny created and the award-winning Flood Recovery program and subsequent COAG-endorsed national research
trial from which the Community Focussed Planning program evolved. He is passionate about helping people work
together and obsessed with individual leadership.
He also works in the Emergency Management sector in South East Asia and writes on issues pertaining to the
transformation of public governance. He is currently researching in Asia and Australia for his upcoming book
“Work Across Borders: the role of government in disaster management”.
Sonny Neale

9. If you would like further information on
the Community Focussed Planning
Program or would like to inquire about
purchasing the curriculum
Please Contact Sonny
0409 937 916 sonny@sonnyneale.com www.sonnyneale.com