#88 Interview with Dan Scott, Host of the EM Student Podcast

Dan Scott is the host of EM Student - Relaunch happening January 2022!

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab

The EM Student podcast brings interviews of academic and industry leaders to students who are new to the emergency management field, as well as emergency managers with an always-learning mentality by discussing the multifaceted nature of emergency management, including how other fields interact with EM and what skills are helpful to cultivate while navigating a career in the EM field.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.

Radio comms just got a major breakthrough with the L3 Harris XL extreme 400P. It’s the newest and toughest radio out there built by their space and tactical teams. The XL extreme series can take a beating, 1700 degree blast of heat, repeated three meter drops, rain, salt water, you name it, the XL extreme series by L3 Harris can take it. Visit L3harris.com to schedule your demo today.

The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech, distributed by FS global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs. This is a disaster tough technology, for more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.

Host: John Scardena (1m 40s):

Welcome back to the show everybody! Its your host John Scardena, I'm so excited for this episode. As you've heard several times before, we've talked about EM weekly. We're big fan of theirs, obviously, cause they're one of our sister shows on the Readiness Lab and one of the co-hosts of EM weekly is also the host of EM students. His name is Dan Scott, he's a great friend of mine. He's definitely leading the way in emergency management, trying to get people to think conceptually about some of these topics in our field to try to push that needle so it's really fun to have him on the show. Dan, welcome.

Guest: Dan Scott (2m 12s):

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Host: John Scardena (2m 15s):

Good. We obviously interact quite a bit between everything that we do and I see on LinkedIn, you're a big fan of trying to inspire other people. You put up these quotes, you put up these comments out there to try to get other people. What motivates you or what's what's driving that for you on your side of the house of why you think you should be doing this?

Guest: Dan Scott (2m 41s):

Oh, well there's a couple things that drive me to do it. One is that ultimately, I need to see this stuff too. I need to be practicing what I'm trying to preach. But ultimately we see in our field of emergency management and this is opinionated in my area having done this for so long, because we don't see enough leadership and we don't see enough people taking action. There's a lot of theory out there. There's a lot of emergency management, which they feel that ultimately they need to be reserved there. A lot of reserved emergency managers out there. I'm trying to bring a little bit different approach to how we do emergency management a lot more forward, not just forward thinking, but a forward acting, being more out front, more vocal in what we do and how we do it.

My goal behind the inspirational quotes is to push people a little bit further, but also to engage them with questions and how do we get better and not just as emergency managers, but as people. Ultimately how we increase what we do and how we are, who we are, and how we approach things will definitely increase in and improve the way we do our jobs and whether it's emergency management or something else. I mean, my goal isn't to necessarily only, only approach emergency managers. That's what I am passionate about myself. That's what I love doing. It's what I do. But it's ultimately just in general, what we do and what we go about doing every day that we do it with passion and we do it because we want to be doing it not because we have to do it. If we do have to do it make the best of them.

Host: John Scardena (4m 21s):

Yeah that’s really good call out. You used these words like leadership, passion, and inspiration and people trying to get people to take the lead. Sometimes when people are passionate, it's hard for them to articulate that passion into leadership skills because they get really excited about it. If they're so excited about there, they almost don't want to step in the realm of leadership because they just want to focus on their little pocket of what they think is really important. But the problem with emergency management and emergency management field is that this our field in itself does touch everybody else. I think the pandemic has really highlighted that. I think it's exhausting for people. Great call-outs there. So in terms of your approach of how you want to do things differently and why you think it should be done, what are some examples that you could provide the field that say, Hey, like maybe you should try doing X, Y, Z, and this will be make you a more effective leader.

Guest: Dan Scott (5m 34s):

Ultimately the level of engagement that we see and not during disaster, there’s the emergency manager that we see during a disaster or during some sort of response. Then there is the emergency manager we see, and one of the ways I equate to, we hear this a lot, the blue sky versus the gray sky, right? Well, there is so much we could be doing in the blue sky that would make the gray sky so much easier. In emergency medicine, we hear this a lot. You should never be introducing yourself on the scene of emergency or in EOC. Well we say that a lot, but we don't necessarily practice it when we shouldn't be out engaging more. I've heard this and it ticks me off to no end. It's one of those things I have a chip on my shoulder about it is that emergency manager is usually in her office type could have a plan doing is working in our office. Emergency management in general is not an office driven job. Although a lot of what we do is in the office. It doesn't mean that we have to be in the office everyday, all day. We should be out engaging our community, engaging in our organization. Just recently, we had a conversation with someone on the podcast and it was about engaging the community. Well, you don't necessarily, necessarily need to look outside of your own organization for engagement. You can be engaging those that are within your own organizations to gain partnership, to gain goals that would be to aid you in what you do to aid them and what they do.

You build partnerships in the organization that you don't necessarily know were there, but we ultimately need to be engaging. That's what my goal is, to drive and inspire the emergency manager, emergency manager professional, however, you classify yourself because it's an arising thing. How do we classify ourselves? However, you classify yourself as the engagement that we see in blue skies and in gray sky. When I walk into a room and you got a gray sky environment, everybody should know who I am, what I'm bringing to the table, how I'm going to help them and that I'm there to help. I'm not there to take over. I'm not there to tell you what to do. I'm there to help you. There's no struggle for power. There's no struggle for who's doing what you walk in, you know, your capabilities, you know, each other, you know you're there to help there's trust in the room in gray sky. You build that in blue sky and blue sky is where we need to be spending more of our time.

Guest: Dan Scott (7m 49s):

There's a lot more of it, but we see the gray sky so often because that's what's sexy, right? That's where all the lights and sirens are. That's where we, when we just had the tornadoes. Right? Then I was just big response. What about all the stuff that led up to that, that we could have been doing to aid ourselves and repair ourselves and mitigate against these types of incidents? I guarantee you that wasn't done in previous and now we're this huge response. But as soon as this response over, what are they going to do going forward until the next huge response. I want more blue sky engagement and that's why I'm doing what I do.

Host: John Scardena (8m 23s):

Yeah. I think that's a big pitch of what we work on as well. From what we do when we get in there, one of our first questions are who's your stakeholders? Do you know who they are? Are you willing to hear that you might not know who all your stakeholders are. Reviewing them and sitting down with our side, the emergency manager that has hired us and the stakeholder and say, what is your capabilities? What's your competency? What are you good at? What do you want to bring to the table? Then when you start putting all these pieces together, it's much easier to see the puzzle. Also, it's a lot easier to make decisions because you can say, well, I don't need to do this myself. Somebody else can do this and somebody else can do that. You're able to refine that decision-making process to being most efficient. I think that's a great approach and I think it's the right approach. I think it's the approach of the future, which is a fun, little segue into you trying to attack the future by a podcast on EM student and helping those who are the future to think about these things. Can you just kind of give us a plug? Or what are your ideas for EM weekly and to help our audience, tune in essentially?

Guest: Dan Scott (9m 48s):

Sure. So with EM student, my goal ultimately was to drive not only just the student, but also the current practitioner to learn more, to be a continual learner, always looking to make themselves better when it comes to what we do, how will we do it, and the avenues in which we can do it, and what tools are available to us who don’t need it. As a student myself, I'm a lifelong learner. I'm going to be a continual learner for as long as I can learn, as long as my mind will allow me to. But ultimately what we see is that emergency management touches, as you said, so many different avenues, you touch everything, right? As a student myself, I wanted to reach out to those that are teaching emergency management and the levels that we don't think about using IT right? Information technology in an emergency management future and how we can use that and apply it to emergency management theory into practice. What we don't see a lot of is that we don't see a lot of theory into actually taking action to make it happen. Right? We see a lot of, well, this is the back history and this is how it could get by, let's apply it. So my goal for emergency the emergency management student or EM student is that we're going to have professors and people who've written books, and basically the specialist in the field to come on and teach what it is that they teach in the classroom in a very short amount of time. Or give you information on where they can go find more learning or specific topics, whether that be a core capabilities, whether that be technology, whether it be communications, was that a very under underutilized skills and leadership.

Leadership is one of the most underutilized skills out there, and it is don't get me wrong, no mistake. Leadership is a skill, not everybody is. If you're not a born leader, you learn to be a leader and then you apply leadership and you learn and you correct, and you learn and you correct and you apply. These are the things that I want to bring to the EM student podcast, not only as a student myself, but also as someone that teaches this stuff. I teach this stuff, I teach emergency management. I want to know that the stuff I'm teaching is going to be applied and can be applied. There's a lot of stuff out there that they teach that cannot ever be applied and what it is that we do every day. One of the ways I equate it is we have, you know, you have EMS and you have fire and PD, right. They go to the school and they already get certified to do what they do. As soon as they get into the field for filtering and what do they tell, forget everything you've learned in the classroom, I'm going to show you how to stand on the street. Well, that's the way emergency management is too. You learn all this stuff when in real life, it's applied differently. I want to bring those two together. How do you learn it and then apply it in real life situations? so that it aids communities or the organization of which you represent.

Host: John Scardena (12m 35s):

Yeah, great call-outs because I think of my own education and getting to my first EM job, you know, how many years ago that was 10, 15 years ago. It's like, okay, can you write a hazard vulnerability assessment? And I said, what? Then like three months later, I said hey, we need to write emergency operations plan and an occupant emergency plan and I said, what are those? You know, but hey, you asked me about the Stafford Act. I'm all in, you know oh good Samaritan law. I knew about that kind of stuff, but putting like theory into practice and how to do the actual application. So I think it's kind of a fun idea to talk with people who are doing the theory and say, hey, that's really great and this is how you apply it in as an emergency manager. It really is as you called out, whether you're a college student or you've been practicing for a while and you just want to get to that next spring, be willing to be teachable. EM student is for those who are teachable, those who want to hear different perspectives and learning models and apply that learning model. I think that's ultimately the goal. You know, we did a plug for EM students, I think that the plug for the Readiness Lab is that we want to innovate the field of emergency management. I think a great way to innovate the field is to help two different sides of the house that usually don't talk together and bring them a lot closer. I think your podcast doing that is a great idea, just because we were changing this model for ourselves. Speaking of models, you know, we're thinking about innovation and we're thinking about these changes. One way you're attacking it is through bringing theory to practice and how they can collaborate rather than fight against each other. If you were going to talk to our audience, we have what, 20, 25,000 emergency managers listening to this episode. You're going to tell them, say, hey, I want you to change one thing. There's this one thing about emergency management that I want us to get better as a field, as what would you say? What would be your call-out?

Guest: Dan Scott (14m 47s):

My call-out would be, how we classify ourselves. This is a new project that I, just within the last two days, I've been thinking about. We have so many names for what we do so many names for what we are. We don't classify ourselves in a way that is universal. You know, when you think of a fire, you say you know what that is, right? When you think of law enforcement, you know what that is. You think of EMS or, or hospitals, you know what that is. When you look at emergency management or you say I'm an emergency manager, people don't know what that is. Sometimes you don't even know how to explain what you do.

Host: John Scardena (15m 26s):

I have a dissertation every time I want to explain that to someone.

Guest: Dan Scott (15m 27s):

We need to get better at that as practitioners, and as those that think about it and teach it, we need to know how to define emergency management and what it is that we do. We need to get on the same page and what we call ourselves, how we describe ourselves and what it is that we actually do when we apply. When we show up on scene, if we show up on scene and to get away from the fact that emergency management is not a first response profession, it is a secondary tertiary response. We are not first responders going licensed sirens to the scene, and we need to get away from that in the visual aspect.

Host: John Scardena (16m 2s):

I think the hardest part of trying to get on the same page is that if I ask a hundred, I mean, I say this all the time on a podcast, I know I never call out my guests because I never want to make my guests like one way or the other. But if I ask people, what is the definition of emergency management? Now I've called it out on my show. I believe my definition is simple and kind of straight forward, you know, emergency management is protection of life, property, and continuity of operations. But if I ask somebody else, they'll say, well, it's about community lifelines and another person will say, well, it's about the whole community approach and resiliency and the whole community approach. I don't even know what that means, you know? So we can't even standardize what we're talking about because the reality is our field, as much as we want to claim this or that, had a major shift after 9/11, especially after DHS 2004. When that came out like that was a restart button in my mind of what emergency management is. Therefore as a general field, firefighters have been around for hundreds of years, they've had that time to refine what their job is, and the skill sets. We are essentially, if you want to be really nice, maybe 120 years, if you think of the hurricane, Galveston, and Red Cross response.

Host: John Scardena (17m 33s):

But if you really want to look at it, we were talking under 20 years, new programs left and right, there's no standardization, there's no any of this stuff. I think that's again, a great call-out, that hey, let's figure this out. It's time for us to figure this out and not have to be confused when we try to explain to somebody what we do. If you're confused, you don't know very well.

Guest: Dan Scott (18m 2s):

A lot of it too, is how it's applied, where it's applied, where it was formed. If it was formed, is it a primary duty, a secondary, or tertiary duty, other duties as assigned is very common. Or, if it's just someone who says, yeah, that's what I do because it's a mandated compliance issue. But they never really touch it ultimately, but they're the person that's in the position. That's supposed to be directed with that responsibility. There's too much of that going on right now and we ultimately can correct it. It's going to take time. It's not going to happen tomorrow. You know, it's going to take time, but we all have to be on the same page before that change is going to come. A lot of that comes too with no… you know ultimately there's so many different names for what disaster management, crisis management, emergency management, emergency manager, specialist, merchandise coordinator, disaster specialist. I mean, it's all over the place. Then their level of responsibility goes anywhere from safety compliance, OSHA, NFPA all the way, you know, to emergency managers responsibility, to prepare and response. These are full-time positions that are all being crammed into one job, that nobody can do fully. That's where we keep getting caught up and that's where we're caught up. Especially when you have someone who's other duties as assigned, because there's no way that they can do it. You have those, you think, it's only preparation. So I run the CERT team and that's emergency manager. No, it's not. So there's so many ways in which we look at it. We have to narrow that down to where we are focused on what it is we do. Even though we touch all these different things, there is still a singular focus on what it is we do.

There's many ways you could describe it for emergency management. One of the ways I describe it, emergency management is the road and then you have all of these lanes on the road, on the highway. We are trying to keep everybody going in the right direction, the same direction at various speeds and keeping them for going out of their lane. There are merging, there's going off. We keep everybody on the right place, moving forward, we're support and coordination. We keep people driving forward, right? There are two ways to a highway, but we keep them going, the ways they need to go in the lanes that they needed to be, and we help drive that forward. That's how I describe it the most. But they think, well, you know, you're the quarterback in the game. No, I'm the coach on the sideline. You know, all the directions of people to do. If you want to go that way and have a sports analogy, we're not the quarterback, we're the coach on the sideline. We know all the positions, we know what they're supposed to do. We help them do that. We'd call it, we call it on the sideline. But then some think you're the IC. We're not the IC. We play that role occasionally, but we are not incident commander.

We're the guy on the road driving for that coordination. That's one of the areas in which we just need to get on the same page, bring our focus down, but we're so all over the place, and it's not anybody’s fault necessarily just because of the way they're applied and where they're applied. Again, we just need to keep moving the ball forward. We're going to get there. It's not going to happen as soon as we would like it. Definitely not as soon as I'd like it to be there. You know, I'm very passionate about emergency management. One of the things that I tell people is that emergency management, generally, if you're not passionate about emergency management, then you're not doing it right. I love what I do. I love being an emergency manager. I don't necessarily like where I'm doing it, but I love emergency management and if you love emergency management, you should do the job correctly where no matter where you're at.

Host: John Scardena (21m 28s):

Yeah. You're talking about a response and you're talking about quarterback versus coach, and you're talking about these different concepts. That is definitely a very popular thing. I have guests come on the show and some guests are very passionate about, they only do response, and some are very passionate that they don't do response, and who's right. From this guy who gets to interview a bunch of really great minds. My thought is you're all wrong and you're all right, because maybe I should say the other way around to make people feel better. But the reality is it's emergency management. I don't want to be the guy known as the guy, as you called out, sitting in a desk, writing a plan that no one ever reads, but that's not the goal. That goal is supporting life, saving life, sustaining operations. 99% of what you should do is in blue sky so that you don't have a gray sky. So when gray sky happens, it's it's as short as humanly possible. The reality is not only are we the coach, but we're writing up the playbook. We're the analyst upstairs watching the game, we're the coach, we're the sub in the game, you know, we're kind of all parts. But the reality is, our real job is whoever has the football, we are the group moving all the debris out of their way to be able to get that football down the field. It's an ironic term because we say football for a nuke, so we're not trying to move nukes, but we're trying to understand. I love the idea of a coach knowing all the different players. Yes, an emergency manager must know all the different players, but one big gripe I have with the five areas of preparedness is you don't prepare to respond. You actually respond. You don't prepare to recover, you actually recover. So we have to get this mindset, as you're saying, most of the time we need to focus on the blue sky stuff so we don't have the gray. Just reiterating. But I think they are great call-outs and I think these high level discussions have to happen. Again, I'm going to do a nice big plug for your show is your show. You’re show will talk about people who are arguing on those different perspectives, and you'll say, hey, well, this is what we actually do in practice. How do you make that fit? And I'm excited for the 2022 season. I'm going to call it, you're getting a football analogy for EM student and for you to run with it even harder and to do great things there. I want to thank you again, Dan, for coming on my show, kind of a fun conversation to talk about your road analogy, how we can make the rubber hit the road. Too many puns, but.

Guest: Dan Scott (24m 35s):

Really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and bringing me on, and hopefully we can do it again soon..

Host: John Scardena (24m 39s):

Absolutely. So again, if you like this show, we always shameless plug, give us a five star rating and subscribe. If you have a question for Dan Scott, the easiest thing to do is actually start following EM student because they'll probably answer it on one of the shows. But you can also reach out and ask a question on one of the social media channels for the Disaster Tough podcast. We're trying to build disaster tough communities. We want people to be better and the way to be better as blue sky as Dan's calling out some great thoughts there again, and we'll see you next week.

#66 Qualifying Emergency Managers - Interview with FEMA's Kevin Coleman

Kevin Coleman is working on addressing the qualification process of emergency managers at FEMA and provides insights on how you can increase your own career footprint.

Kevin Coleman is an experienced Federal Response Official with years of experience and countless deployments to large-scale disasters. During the COVID-19 Federal Response, he worked on a joint agency taskforce to recommend and build federal capabilities around the county. This task force was responsible for testing over a million people by the beginning of the summer alone.

This Podcast has moved to the Readiness Lab.

Host: John Scardena (0s):

You've just entered the Disaster Tough Podcast, the place for emergency managers, first responders and humanitarians who want to get the job done. Stories, lessons and tips are provided by field experts. This show is owned and operated by professional emergency managers at Doberman Emergency Management. We apply disaster tough logic by protecting life, property, and business continuity through planning, mitigation, and training. Check us out at dobermanemg.com or click on the show notes.

Radio comms just got a major breakthrough with the L3 Harris XL extreme 400P, is the newest and toughest radio out there built by their space and tactical teams. The XL extreme series can take a beating, 1700-degree blast of heat, repeated three-meter drops, rain, salt water, you name it, the XL extreme series by L3Harris can take it. Visit L3harris.com to schedule your demo today.

The battle to monitor and contain COVID-19 just got exponentially better for us. We are officially introducing an electronic reusable yes, reusable COVID-19 test through our sponsors. It's called the COVID plus test created by Tiger Tech distributed by FS Global. This is the first FDA authorized rapid non-invasive pre-screener. It's extremely easy to use. Forget those one-time use swabs, this is a disaster tough technology. For more information on the COVID plus test check out our show notes.

Host: John Scardena (1m 41s):

Welcome back to the show everybody, it’s your Host: John Scardena and I am so excited for this episode. I think it was maybe back in March, maybe before that February-March timeframe, we had Kevin Coleman on the show. It was a great episode, obviously. Very well-prepared, he's very well prepared now because he's been working on so many different things in FEMA. If you recall, from our last episode, he and I served on the national team together.

He went over to FEMA headquarters he's he was working on that vaccination mission. He's going to give us an update on that. He's also going to be talking more about qualifications of emergency managers specifically within FEMA, but you can apply that to your own sphere of influence, right? If you're a local emergency manager, state, or federal, there's things that are going to help you be more qualified and you can add to your career. So, Kevin can talk more about that. Kevin, welcome to the show. Hey, so let's give an update real quick vaccination mission. Are you still involved with the vaccination mission? Is that now wrapping up? It's kind of weird cause we're still in the pandemic and we have to worry about the Delta variant, but things are all opening back up. Nobody wants to like want to focus on COVID anymore, so what does that look like in your world?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (2m 58s):

The backend, probably January, February, I was spraying the vaccination efforts. I had an activation campaign after Biden was inaugurated. I asked them, he tapped a FEMA to deliver a hundred million shots first a hundred days. So as part of that effort, ran out of the gate and served out of the NRCC a headquarters. My role is to make sure that we were getting the nonmedical folks to those federal vaccination sites. It was very interesting experience for me because it wasn't just FEMA staff that we were deploying. We worked with a bunch of different agencies to fill those non-clinical roles. So, it was just an interesting experience,

Host: John Scardena (3m 44s):

Probably a mixed bag of experiences and competencies probably in that team that was the most emergency management like life ever, right. When you have everybody coming in, you're like, okay, what do you do and what qualifications do you have? So, we've had Joe Dellamura on the show a couple of times and he does more of the logistics side of like vaccination sites where you coordinating with him at all, or were you completely in different wheelhouses?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (4m 15s):

Sure. So, we sort of had two wheelhouses, it was clinical and nonclinical. So, my puzzle piece, the non-clinical piece. In order to stand up a federal federally supported vaccination site, and depending on the size, it required X number of medical folks doing, you know, these different things. It required Y number of nonmedical folks doing, you know, these different things. So, we started with both, had to align our efforts in filling those needs on the same timetable. So, you know, we're not deploying people to a site where, he hasn't found medical folks or vice versa yet. It was a big coordinated song and dance to make sure that as if there's so many of the requests, especially at the beginning we were staffing positions that we were making up.

Right, I mean, there were no federally supported vaccinations sites. There's no playbook. We wrote the playbook as we were doing the mission. So, going back to your point about understanding what skills that we needed to fill these undefined positions with what we were learning offline. But yeah, so those are the two tracks that we took and it was a whole old government effort to get folks to fill those little slots.

Host: John Scardena (5m 39s):

Talk about writing the playbook. Dublin was hired in February to work with a group that was trying to reopen up a sector and that's like the most generic I can make it, but we went in there and said, you know, what do you have now? I said, well we've been working on a playbook and okay, let's see the playbook. It wasn't really a playbook, it was basic definitions like book. It was almost like a guide of what these terms meant. I said, how long have you been working on this? They're like, well, we're almost done. We've been working on it for three months. I was like what data are you using? We're not using data. It's literally on your website right now, this information.

They were like blown away by that. They're like, oh wait, we didn't know that. I'm like, how do you not know it's on your public facing website? I came back, I said, well, let's look at it. So, a week later we came back and said, okay, you can reopen your entire sector with these parameters with CDC guidance in three more months. Actually, that wasn't three months. Sorry, I apologize. So, it was six weeks. That's right away, it was six weeks. You could reopen everything in six weeks with the CDC guidance. This is what you'll have to do that. They said, that's impossible. I said, t's impossible if you don't know the data or if you don't have a playbook, but here's the plan and they were going through it and they're meeting. They're like, oh, this is possible. This is possible. This is possible. That's what emergency planners do for a full-time job. So, my biggest takeaway for the pandemic was just, I don't think most people understand what an emergency planner can do for them. Did you find that for yourself? Or, what were some of the major takeaways from the vaccination mission? We were like, okay, if we have a vaccination mission again, X, Y, and Z must happen immediately. What were your takeaways?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (7m 34s):

Yeah for me it was understanding how to utilize our available workforce in the most efficient way. I mean this was like most, or a lot of response situations where we have demand that exceeds our supply right. So, decisions happen, how we prioritize resource allocation. We want to make sure that our capability, that our supply we add matches with, to the best extent possible, matches with the need on the ground so we're not under deploying or underutilizing, under optimizing the resources that we have available.

Host: John Scardena (8m 13s):

Okay. So, you said a phrase there that I absolutely loved. You said demand sucks, demand exceeds supply, and in a response that is as always true. I mean, Rodney would always say if we get behind the snowball, we're never getting in front of it again right. I remember him banging his hands on his head because he was so frustrated and in Florida I'm like, oh my gosh. Then I kind of figured out like where he was coming from and talking about response and emergency management has, this is like my very smooth segue, by the way, response has a key placeholder in emergency management. It's not to like degrade mitigation or it's not to degrade, preparedness, not to degrade all these other things that must happen, but response does have a place. I'm hoping that you can come on here and talk about qualification and what response does. And then if people don't have response experiences that they're able to attach to, what can they do to bolster their own career or their own capability? Can you talk to this for a few minutes about that?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (9m 19s):

Yeah so for me, when I hear that and I look at it, first of all, I think you can strip away, response, recovery, mitigation. Like if you strip away those terms, you know, you're presented a problem to solve within some parameters, right, and you do it. Those parameters are different depending on the life cycle of the disaster, that’s your robbery. You’re going to be resource constrained. You're going to be time constrained, all those things that inherently go with response operation. So, for me it's sort of, it's the same approach, right? Again, some of it though, you're making decisions in minutes and hours, they're going to have direct impacts on life safety. Whereas in a recovery mitigation, you know, you might be spending weeks or months to do analysis and make decisions that are going to have, maybe cost impact or infrastructure impact over the course of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. It's sort of just a different mindset, a similar approach, but different mindset and how to apply those different capabilities. So that takes different capabilities, right? Just on both of the problem sets, but in both situations, you're given a problem set and you're asked to solve it. Can you remind me what that thing question was?

Host: John Scardena (10m 41s):

So, if you don't have the opportunity for response, then what are some of the things, because let's actually talk, that's a good way to actually bring this up. You are specifically looking at changing or possibly changing how the qualification process is at FEMA for those who are not in FEMA. Can you tell us like how that happens and like the pros and cons of that process?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (11m 5s):

Sure. So, government change inherently takes a little bit longer than other sectors. But for me, I think varying perspectives are crucial. So, no matter what those perspectives are, I think they're very helpful. So, in my current role, I'm supporting FEMA's workforce development division. I'm looking at the FEMA qualification system, which is a system that tracks, monitors, and defines what it means to be qualified and different incident management positions within FEMA.

So, the way that it's structured, I'm sure, you know, you remember pieces of this. I hated it, but every incident management person so that the majority of FEMA's workforce has a specific title assigned to them. And with that specific title comes with a position task book, which outlines the requirements that you need to meet in order to be deemed qualified in that position. So, you know, those requirements might entail tasks you have to complete or trainings you have to complete, or maybe certificates you have to complete. I think GIS, there was some sort of technical certificates.

Then some of the other specialists’ positions like our lawyers, they need to have that bar, you know, proof of bar and those things. But for the majority of our positions, again, it's a list of 50, 60, 70, 80 things that you need to demonstrate and then a handful of training classes. Once you demonstrate proficiency, we knight you in, do you need qualified in that position? So, that's kind of round about answer to some of your questions already, but I think that there's an argument to be made on capability-based requirements. I think that’s primarily what our current system does, but if you're out in the field and you request 10 planning specialists, you know what you're requesting when you ask for that, you're expecting a certain skill to show up.

You're expecting people to show up, to be able to do certain things. I was always taught, you know, remember I was on the IMAT, but if you ask for something, you know, don't ask DOD for a specific helicopter say, hey I need you to do something for me. Like you figure out what that capability is, but I'm sort of defining the need and you're selecting the right tool to get the job done. So that's kind of the approach I'm taking and how I think through building capability and understanding workforce capability. Again, it goes back to the vaccination efforts. You know, we think of people as having position specific qualifications, but if we can understand the capability, so they go into those positions, then maybe we could deploy our people differently to better optimally use their skills.

Host: John Scardena (14m 16s):

Yeah, we are going to go back to the original question about like, if you're not in a response, how do you get qualified? But yeah, these points that you're making, I had this problem, maybe it was a pride problem, but I had this problem that I was brought in from the outside, from another federal agency. The way I looked at it was if I was getting hired in that position I should be qualified for the position that I'm immediately walking into. The plan to be qualified should be qualified for the next position or for like the next ring up or how to expand it from there.

So, like this idea of, you go in at this level, but they gave you a book one or two, two levels below, and you're working to the system and it's like, give me a break. You should have been able to demonstrate that you can get it up, especially on a national team, like national team should have the best people on there. I would argue that one of the best options for leading FEMA is Diane Criswell, former IMAT of course, right. That's like the best. So, and even to your credit, I mean, look at you, you were on the National IMAT, you did all these amazing things and even over headquarters and you keep on making these really positive waves because of all that experience and walking through the process, you've gone through the playbooks, you've gone through the task books.

I mean, you've gone through that whole process much more than I have, but on the other end, like terms of like capability and like having people go into new roles, it reminds me of my economics days. That's where I studied in school and there's this idea that resources are not exactly transferable. If you say A can do A over here, it actually won't be as proficient. So, there's this capability gap that happens. You'd have to figure out like how much of a degree you are losing in skill set as you move people around so the idea of like addressing capacity and capability, but what you already have is actually really smart in terms of an economic outlook. Man, I could go on forever talking about some of those things. I'm a talker. That's why I do podcasting right. But to go back to the original question then, okay, if you're looking at saying, hey, let me ask for the need and you figure out the tools and you're developing training based off of that, or you're developing qualification based off of that. Let's say I'm a local emergency manager and all I know this happens so much, all I know is that a local emergency manager, I'm supposed to go get my ICS classes, or I want to learn about like, oh my gosh, there's one called flood flight management and you take that course and you think you're going to learn how to fight floods.

Like the entire course, like from an emergency management perspective, but then you go to the course and like the entire course teaches like how to do sandbagging, like that doesn't teach you anything about the emergency management perspective. Right. So how do you balance, like what somebody outside of FEMA is going to do and what advice would you give to them? I guess, wow. So many questions, like 30 questions. There you go, go for it.

Guest: Kevin Coleman (17m 41s):

Yeah. I mean, I think all experiences, any perspective that you can gain. And again, you know, we as emergency managers, we don't want bad stuff to happen. We don't want to have to respond, but we want to send the people to respond that have responded before, or have shown, you know, response capability. Right. I think there's a whole bunch of avenues that people can take to make up that gap in response experience. I think part of it is thinking about response differently. If you take all the characteristics of a response to then, you break that down high stress from limited resources, all these things and apply that like event management, you know. Like if you're planning for a concert or a sporting event or something, you might be operating under similar constraints on different scale, but similar types of thought processes and similar types of like decision-making processes.

I think I backed into the experience can be used to at least think through and like put yourself in a mindset of what a greater response could look like. And then I think there's also supplemental experience you can get exercises and trainings, reading books, listening to podcasts, talking with people who have that experience. Right. I mean, I'll be the first to admit to you John, I don't know everything about emergency management shocking, but I can almost guarantee you that I know someone who does, and I think leaning on those networks is absolutely crucial.

Host: John Scardena (19m 14s):

I would argue that you're probably wrong. Actually, I think you know a ton about emergency management. In fact, I'd be highly confident that you could probably step into any role at this point and probably figured out what that, within a reasonable amount of time, because you've been trained to do that and you've shown that. To your credit, you have, you've obtained constantly new skill sets and new capabilities. That’s really what's most impressive about you is that you've fulfilled all these major roles now it's because you do keep alerting. Like, I remember you going through task book after task, after task book or skill set. I'm like, man, this guy is like blowing through it, but it shows that it's like helping you out.

It's allowing you to gain something and you know, maybe even going back to your statement of, but I know somebody who does that again, shows you that you're teachable, that you're able to keep growing. Steven Johnson who was on the show is world renowned expert in biochemical counter-terrorism operations, he is a true expert. He says, as soon as an expert tries to stop learning, they're not an expert anymore. So, that's why you're an expert because you do keep learning. That's probably the biggest takeaway for our listeners that if you want to come off as somebody who knows what they're talking about, you have to do something about that. You have to keep learning.

I had this opportunity every week to learn from an expert and to see these different perspectives on top of everything else we're doing and that's a lot of fun too, right. Moving forward then if you're applying all these different concepts to emergency management, you're applying the constant learning, the constant growth looking at, okay what’s the ask versus what's the tool and you're looking at okay in disaster, you have to open up new, different realms? Like real talk, in your perspective, what keeps you up at night about emergency management? What do you be like oh, I wish we did X in our field, what can be applied there?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (21m 24s):

Yeah. So good question, I think it goes back to make my varying lenses that I've experienced emergency management through, right? So that experience brings management through direct survivor interaction. I've experienced emergency management through response on the national IMTAT, I've experienced it on program delivery and Porter's level and now on the workforce qualification side. So, I think at the end of the day, I'm a big preparedness person.  I haven't directly worked in preparedness with, you know that P word in the title of my job. But I think everything that we do in the field can help educate or raise awareness to a preparedness because the more prepared we are, the less need there is for response and the more lives and property that we can save in the future. So, I think it's a culture of preparedness, I think it would be ideal. I think it would be a culture shift because preparedness was hard, right? It's hard politically and financially, but after the fact, I think what better time than now, right? Coming off of a pandemic where every single person who has been impacted to preach, talk about, and focus on preparedness.

Host: John Scardena (22m 58s):

Yeah. That's like me talking about mitigation in the same way. The more you can mitigate, the more you are prepared. I don't like the idea of preparing. When we say the five missionaries of preparedness, I don't prepare to respond, I actually respond at one point, I actually recover. So, in terms of the past tense, the more you can have preparedness, the more that process is complete, the state, the staging is complete, the resources are in place, hundred percent agree, I call that readiness. The more they're ready. You are the least likely, you're not going to have to have a catastrophic response scenario. I a hundred percent on board and it is hard to change that culture.

One thing I've been thinking about a lot is I get questions from people of like, well, how do I actually implement what FEMA is doing? Sometimes my response is stop. A lot of people look at an IAP, an incident action plan. Like how do I do an incident action plan for my campus? We probably wouldn't do an incident action plan. I walked through like it's a legal document between FEMA and the state and what that implies for a campus. I've been working on this train of thought and just follow me. You can correct me because you're the man. But I think most emergency managers outside of FEMA are on boats in the ocean.

They look at FEMA as driving on land and they're like, how do I put wheels on my boat? And when they put wheels on their boat, trying to do an incident action plan, when really, they should do an emergency operations plan, which is different, or they do an occupant emergency plan, which is definitely not what they do, they get into this part, this spot, where they're spending a lot of time and resources have like how to figure out how to put wheels on their boats. Then what happens in the leadership who is not involved in emergency management for their campus, the deans, the university directors, the CEOs look at that and like, why are we spending all this money, putting this thing there? And like, oh, it's super important.

Well no, it's not to us. Well, FEMA is doing it. They have their wheels, but they have a car, you know, their mission is different. I think there needs to be a cultural shift as well of understanding what the mission of each group does. FEMA's mission of emergency management is very different than somebody who works in a sky rise, their mission is going to be much more cyber and physical security related. Just to understand the differences of that is something I've been trying to work through, or what do you think about that?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (25m 55s):

Yeah no, I think I agree with and I’ll argue with you on some others. So, I think that to me, like the concepts are the same, right? We all want the same thing at the end of the day. It's life safety, property, property preservation, all that good stuff. Right. We want the lights come on and we want to stop the work. I know you said it in past shows, emergency management, you know is emergency coordinating, right, so it's coordinating efforts and it's, problem-solving. I mean, that's what we do. We coordinate, we problem solve as emergency managers at any level. I think you apply those concepts differently, depending on the situation you're in.

I'm going to coordinate with different people, if I'm responding to the BP oil spill, then I'm going to coordinate with, to some other events. But you might use a different planning tool, but I'm also a big process over product person. So, I think that the process of getting there is incredibly important and the process drives the product. By following process, the process can be tailored, it can be a little bit different that's okay. Going through a process that's designed to develop common objectives and understand what resources you have and assign them to meet those objectives in some capacity, it’s important.

Host: John Scardena (27m 24s):

Yeah, I liked that answer a lot. Basically, what you're saying is you take what's applicable and apply it to you. My fear is that people try to replicate and to your credit of what you're just saying is like, hey, remember the need versus the tool. The need is the same, you know, saving life, property and continuity of operations, the tools are very different. I hope that know as people think about, okay, how do I take the tool, you know, or what tools can apply to me. So, some things are going to be applicable from the FEMA training and some things you should probably look into the private sector for.

That CEO, you know, oh my gosh, it’s like a burden to bear for, especially the private sector. But I think even federal agencies I saw that a little bit too, of like, there's a cost problem. Hey, you want to add what level of physical security to our federal agency. This is directly related to my experience in DC, we wanted to add X, Y, Z. I'm like, how much does that cost? What's the benefit? We always talk about the benefit of saving lives, but we have to realize that we work with people who don't really get it sometimes, their objectives are different and to understand that. I don’t know, it's something I haven't like fully formed yet, but I just keep walking through this idea, trying to figure out the right tool for the right audience, because people keep asking.

I'm going to go back one question, a question that came up in my mind was related to you. I want to see if we think the same way here in following leadership in emergency management. If you know the leader doesn't have any response experience, does that not effect, but does that weigh on your mind a little bit of wanting to follow them?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (29m 23s):

No, I don't think that way though in wanting to follow them. If I trust them and I know that they trust me, then I think we're good. I think that goes back to my comment earlier on, if you don't know everything, make sure you know the people that do know the things that you don't know. It's the kind of leader that's willing to say, hey help me out on, like you're an expert in what you do. I know I'm the leader on paper, but I'm following you in this scenario. I need you to show me the way you do, kind of thing.

Host: John Scardena (29m 54s):

Yeah. That's the mic drop moment, it's the quote. When you say, hey, if you can trust your leader and your leader trusts you then you're probably going to be successful at least in some degree. That's really great. The last bit, this is all about like QA today, QA with Kevin Coleman, working through thoughts of the concepts of emergency management. That's really what it's turned into, that's why its free form conversations. It's like, what’s on the cupboard for the day. But everything that you've acquired, we've talked about acquiring, we talked about learning different skills from different people, we've talked about a little bit of Rodney in there about process over product.

Can you tell that I actually had Nino DiCosmo on here from L3 Harris, a for-profit company, one of our sponsors, we really like the radios. I asked him that specific question and he was like, at the end of the day the outcome is what drives success in his business. I think an emergency planner gets the idea of, if you have a really great process, if you've already connected with all the stakeholders, then your response is exponentially better. So, it's just different mindsets for sure. But in terms of like everything that you've acquired and the everything you're trying to go for, what do you think it will take? Like the pandemic is so easy to like a point in time. What do you think it will take for emergency managers to get to the next level of maybe authority and respect in our field across different sectors?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (31m 30s):

That's a good question. I mean, emergency managers are the people that others go to solve problems, right? I know I keep saying this, but emergency managers are problem solvers. So, maybe it's that educating the public on what emergency management is what it is and what it isn't right. Emergency manager, not first responders, but emergency managers are, or can be the people that understand how different things are connected so they can bring people to the table to say, hey, did you know that if you talk to them, then we can quickly solve this as opposed to both trying to work in their siloed lanes. So, I think it's an education piece.

Host: John Scardena (32m 21s):

Yeah. Gosh, you just named everything in emergency management. The biggest problem I've found is kind of along the same lines of our job, is problem solving. I was trying to think of a problem solver, there's all these different parties and I think the best emergency managers, to your credit, know who those parties are. If they don't know who those parties are, things suffer as a result. I think emergency managers and the future should be hired as the think tank people to go in there and be like, hey, let me figure out how to do your problem set.

Based off of all the different parties who would touch our problem like they do that in economics, they do that with finance, they do that with all these different sectors, emergency managers also do it, but in very different ways because it's all about people and resources, not just capability. If those parties actually came together to collaborate on how to build a program off of that, man, the skies would be limited in terms of like a chess match with a major hurricane because demand will always succeed supply. Where do you move the puzzle pieces to be most effective? Gosh, I'm talking a lot.

Guest: Kevin Coleman (33m 42s):

Yeah, there's a lot of things that are going through my head and it goes back to the patient and standardization and what does an emergency manager do and what does it mean to be a qualified in a position or a qualified emergency manager? Talked about that topic on some of your past shows as well. I guess you can take it back to the beginning of what is an emergency manager defined? If they're, you know, problem solver or coordinator, or if they're a leader, it's building a program that enables someone to have those skill sets so that when in the van someone's ready to be able to respond, regardless of if they've had actual experience or not, they've been trained to think a certain way to be creative.

This is where I always contract myself because I never thought of myself as a creative person necessarily. I like checklists and I like following those things, but I also like going outside the checklist and outside the process when needed. I think that's what it's all about. I want my pilot to check off every one of those pre-flight boxes, but there's the manager, you know, we can skim a box and be okay because it doesn't apply to our particular situation. I think that's where the creativity comes in and knowing how to be a critical thinker because a lot of what we do is novel.

If you asked me what the typical disaster is, I don't know how to answer that. Maybe a couple years ago I would have had a better answer, but after some of the responses and things that we've dealt with over the past few months and years from vaccinations to, Southwest order migrant surges, to the Surfside Building Collapse, I mean, you name it, right. Like I would have normally called these things, abnormal response events, but it just seems like my surprise is dwindling for each new thing that happens or each new thing that emergency managers are tasked to do. So again, I think setting that standard or understanding what it means to be a qualified emergency manager is getting more challenging because our field seems to be expanding.

Host: John Scardena (36m 8s):

Expanding rapidly. I would have never thought if somebody told me in January of this year, that I would be directly helping USR operations in Miami, I would have been like, that's not my, like that's not even close to what I do, but then all of a sudden, I'm in a USR training in may, and the same people I know are at the Surf Side building collapse. Now I'm working on the background trying to help those guys out. I mean, we didn't even talk about the Southwest border, we could have talked about that today. Maybe we'll have you back on, but there's just so many things. In fact, you've done that now twice right? You did that once with the IMAT and then now you're doing it again with the headquarters. Were you with the IMAT when they did it, when they went down

Guest: Kevin Coleman (36m 56s):

No, no, I just did that back in March. I did some things at quarters.

Host: John Scardena (37m 3s):

Yeah. It’s like the world is expanding in terms of our need and perspective. I think at one point we're going to have to define like what we do and what we don't do. I do hope response is always one of those things. I mean, you never want to have a response, but coordination is never more important. Process has never more important than in the direct life-saving mission. I got to see that this month with a Surfside Building Collapse and even the equipment that they needed to be able to kind of help out with that. I'm still kind of reeling over it cause it's just heartbreaking to think about, but in any case, Kevin, before I let you go, I want to ask one final Q and A with Kevin Coleman.

Host: John Scardena (37m 50s):

Right. What are your final thoughts to the audience, to emergency managers around the country who are listening in right now, what message would you want to share to them?

Guest: Kevin Coleman (38m 1s):

Yeah keep learning. I think the more we can learn and grow as emergency managers, I think the better off we're going to be and the better prepared we're going to be for the next level.

Host: John Scardena (38m 14s):

Gosh another quote. We're going to have all these quotes that we're just going to try to figure out how to put it on social media. So, Kevin, thanks again for coming on, talking about qualification, talking about an update with vaccinations, answering all my random questions surrounding the concepts of emergency management even. Thank you again so much for coming on the show. We're going to have you come back on again I'm sure in the future, you have really good insights.

If you like listening to Kevin Coleman today and wanted to ask him a question about the concept of emergency management or qualification or how you can kind of up your own game, which you can do, you can do it a couple of different ways. We would love on social media for people to be brave enough. I do say brave enough now, I've kind of learned my lesson, to put your question out on social media for people to see whether it's on LinkedIn or Doberman Emergency Management Page, or on Instagram with Disaster Tough. You can also send us an email at info@dobermanemg.com, which we will forward on to Kevin there so he can look at that question. But if you liked this episode which you should have, give us that five-star rating and subscribe. Tune in next week and we'll see you then.