The EM Toolbox
Any home should have a proper toolbox. It'll have some sort of driving device for screws, a tape measure, and a blunt object capable of hammering nails. Perhaps a bubble level, if you're the picture hanging sort of person. If you one day find yourself exploring the time-honored tradition of working various woods as a hobby, you may very well see your toolbox encompassing your entire garage (lucky you).
Like every Property Brothers loving homeowner, Emergency Managers own a toolbox as well. As planners, we have a multitude of tools at our disposal- from the Incident Command System (ICS) to Emergency Support Functions (ESFs), community lifelines to risk matrices, and the various standards/best practices we pull from the likes of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), or the Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP), among others. All of these tools have their place in the EM's toolbox.
But like any tradesperson will tell you, not every tool is needed for every job. You may have convinced yourself (and your spouse) you needed that hollow-chisel mortiser, but it isn't going to help you frame a shed (unless you're building a really bougie shed, you do you).
My colleague Tim Riecker, CEDP got me thinking about this with his latest post "Properly Applying ICS in Function-Specific Plans", which I suggest checking out yourself as he lays out the discussion more eloquently than I probably can (and sans my incessant need to relate everything to my hobbies... did you know I'm a woodworker?). But I will share one of my takeaways regarding how to approach plan development. When confronted with an exciting new project, it's tempting to cram every bit of knowledge, experience, and all our tools into it, as if we want the reader to immediately understand everything on the level we do. But that's not the purpose of a planning document- it's not a textbook or an academic paper. It's a concisely worded, easy to read guide developed as the record of a planning process. It should be detailed, but not bloated.
Perhaps a better way to deploy our toolbox is to first ask the much-maligned (unfairly, in my opinion) question of "why?" Why this tool? What outcome are we hoping to achieve from using it? Only then can we write plans that are useable, simple (which shares its unfortunately maligned-word status with 'why'), and effective.
(Side note: did you know there's a third Property Brother? I was recently made aware of this and I haven't been the same since.)
❓ What tools make up your toolbox? How do you decide which are the right tools for the job?
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If you're interested in planning support for your organization, contact me at aplatt@blueskyplanningpartners.com.
(Pictured above: my paltry attempt at workshop organization)
