As the cleanup effort gets under way for Hurricane Irene, it is critically important to conduct an “after action” review of your planning and response processes. An “after action” report is a review normally conducted after an exercise to determine the effectiveness. All too often, the review is either put off till no one really remembers the specific details, which in turn makes it very inefficient or it is not done at all. In the past week we have had two episodes from which to learn lessons; the earthquake and the hurricane.
One of the lessons learned in the hurricane event is once you have a specific response to a specific issue; you can use that response in other crises. By example, the shutting down of the mass transit system was not unique to this one event. During last years’ blizzard, the transit system was shut. In a terrorism event, it may get shut down or be underutilized by passengers. During a work stoppage, it fails to run. Three separate scenarios, same effect to deal with. Did you apply the lessons you learned from the last time you had to deal with this issue? Are you aware of other options you had available to you?
Organizations are reluctant to develop proper continuity of operations plans except where mandated by statute. The time needed and costs can be exorbitant. Utilizing lessons learned meetings from each event, while not a preferred planning method, should be utilized at the very least. A few short meetings are all that is needed.
Conducting an effective team meeting identifies some key questions that need to be asked. What was right with what you did? What was wrong? Did your ideas work, and most importantly which areas need improvement.
Failure to conduct such meetings on your response will only prepare you for failure again in the very near future.
