In the early days of January in 2017 as I was preparing to transfer ownership of the guiding company that I had run for twenty-five years, I asked the new owners if they wanted to meet to talk about basic functions of running the company. Did they want me to record videos for them? And most crucially, did they want to discuss risk management strategies and the years of work (and many sleepless nights) that I had given to consideration of critical incidents and emergency response? The new owners had a vision of their own, and we never met to discuss these things, but I’ve often thought of the conversation that we might have had. Regardless of a company’s assuredness, everyone stands to benefit from learning principles of Risk Management and Emergency Response. To the credit of institutions such as NOLS, Outward Bound and the Student Conservation Association, their co-branded Wilderness Emergency Response Conference presents an opportunity for all organizations in the fields of guiding, expeditionary learning and experiential education to share their learnings, and their best practices. So in that spirit: here is what I learned, during over 500,000+ student days, regarding best practices in managing risks and responding to critical incidents.
Start with client empowerment. Everything rests on individual choice: Clients who engage in guided programming of any type must, at all times, have the agency to say “no.” When someone signs up for a guided experience, they are signing up to participate; however, they are not signing up to be coerced. A great guide, and a great guiding company, will work with the client to understand the client’s growth needs and wants, and will work with the client to meet the goals that the client aspires to meet, not the goals that are defined by an external locus of control. The guide’s work is to help the client realize and develop confidence in their internal locus of control.
Be honest 100% of the time: Everything that filters through a company to the client must represent an honest representation of all-things pertaining to the organization and the program. There isn’t room to shade the truth. If you don’t have an answer, or know an answer, say so and don’t make up a response that just sounds good. Make an effort to put everything in writing when communicating with clients, guides, participants and the assets who will create access to an experience. Write only what you can deliver and what you know is true. There’s a shade of gray with marketing – I once had a lawyer ask me if there were as many sunny days in a country as we were portraying in our promotional photos. There’s a fine line between selling and communicating the gamut of potential challenges. So post beautiful pictures, because beautiful moments happen. But also be super candid, and be sure to include copy that communicates clearly, resolutely, that things could go south, really south, and may even cause irreparable damage to life and limb. It’s important that clients opt-in knowing the risks, as well as knowing their responsibilities in participating in the risk management processes - processes that will limit risks to themselves individually, but also to the other group members, the organization and the community/environments in which the client will be engaging.
Guides Matter!: Consider the “Swiss Cheese” model for understanding and managing risks: Every layer of risk management has holes, and sometimes risks make it through the holes. The first line of risk management may be through the risk copy that’s put into promotional materials, but someone may not read everything, and, for example, an asthmatic participant may enroll in a high altitude course without realizing the inherent dangers. A second layer of risk-mitigation, again with some holes, may be an interview with the prospective client, and perhaps the asthma issue is missed. A third layer of risk management may be course preparation materials which talk about the dangers of traveling at high altitude, but the asthmatic participant may be swept away by thoughts of standing on a glacier, and may miss further discussion of altitude issues. It goes on like that: a layer of risk management when the client first arrives and goes through a secondary medical screening; a layer of risk management when clients are partnered up and asked to check-in with one-another each morning; a layer of risk management when the inflatable hyperbaric chamber is introduced and explained. It’s hard to imagine that through all of the layers a client with a pre-existing breathing disorder may find himself with a sudden case of HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) but even with all the layers of risk management - and like with Swiss cheese, occasionally the holes line up in such a way that a risk makes its way through the slices. The ultimate, last layer of risk management Swiss cheese is the most crucial - for being the last, but also because it can be most effective in managing just about every risk: supervision. Not just supervision, but SUPER-VISION – the vision that the guide has on the risk management landscape. No single guide is capable of seeing all things at once. But I always believed that the expeditionary learning programs with the highest ratio of guides to students were best at realizing SUPER-VISION. It matters too that guides are staffed on programs for which they have essential skills, or are part of a complimentary team with essential skills – area knowledge, skills knowledge, language knowledge, at or above industry standard for medical training, etc.
Size Matters: Though I had worked in the field of international travel and experiential education for ten years, I didn’t earnestly begin a study of Risk Management and Emergency Response until the fall of 1998, when I attended my first Wilderness Risk Management Conference. The conference – now a large annual event – was just figuring itself out. There were less than a hundred attendees. One of the conference sponsors – the SCA – was represented by a few of their top administrators, and their head of risk management gave a presentation on the SCA model for Emergency Response. It included a handful of dedicated staff to respond to a crisis, but also relied on a full complement of other administrative staff to run other course operations while the emergency team did their work. I was a business of one person. How could I possibly meet emergency response needs as effectively as an organization that had dozens of staff members? Four years later, when I had grown my company to a business of three people, I had to deal with three threats to life and limb in a period of six days. It was the most taxing, most overwhelming week of my professional life. To meet the emergency response needs that I felt my clients deserved, I realized that I had to scale. Eventually I grew my company to an administrative staff that was large enough to meet the needs of big emergencies, and when we needed to facilitate the egress of two groups, 30 people total, from the epicenter of an earthquake to an airport where they could fly to safety (after 8-days of trekking,) we did so smoothly and effectively – mostly by tasking individuals to have daily, scheduled calls with the participants’ parents, while other individuals liaised with the guides, and others liaised with airlines and our emergency evacuation company, and still others liaised with a range of in-country contacts to retrieve on-the-ground information that wasn’t otherwise available. We still made some mistakes. In particular, we didn’t realize that the guides who were with the students were absolutely trashed by the experience, and we should have done more to support them. But the students, the parents, and the rest of our organization felt super well taken care of because we had the numbers to make it so. That’s not to say that small offices can’t respond to emergencies, but small offices should ensure that they have access to additional personnel and resources if/when circumstances require. (Salt and Clay can help – write for more information.)
In an emergency, designate roles, keep a timeline, manage (well) outside contractors: Guides manage the head during any critical incident – they are at the literal head of an injured participant, or they are in the heads of clients who need to be managed through a crisis. The guiding company supports the guide and the client, liaises with all actors who participate in emergency management, makes available necessary resources, and tells the holistic narrative. In handling dozens of threats to life and limb, I’ve found these roles to be essential:
The Incident Commander only communicates with other members of the emergency response team. It is the IC’s role to see things from a distance and to make strategic decisions and to support the members of the team
The Scribe keeps a rolling account of everything that is known, and only things that are known. Ideally this is kept on a large piece of paper that records all communication on a timeline, and the timeline is available for all members of the team to see, at all times. Any time a member of the team has new information, the information goes up on the timeline
Program Officer #1 talks with the guide(s) who are managing the in-field incident. The Program Officer is the only one who communicates with the guide(s), and is available 24/7 until the incident is resolved
Program Officer #2 is an assistant to the Incident Commander and communicates with external resources that might assist with the emergency – such as evacuation services, consular services, law enforcement, etc.
Admissions Officer liaises with people who are concerned about a client’s welfare – family, next of kin, etc. Only the Admissions Officer talks with people close to the afflicted client
Communication Officer deals with media, and is the only person who speaks with media
Banker ensures that financial resources are available to meet all spending needs (and during an emergency, a maxim is to spend and not think about the amounts, just spend; spend as much as necessary to realize the best possible outcome.)
Few organizations can staff, train and manage an emergency response team with this many people. But there are workarounds. Before growing my company to a size that could manage a crisis with this many personnel, I kept a list of past guides that I could pull in to fill these roles. There are also medical and psychological contractors who are available on retainer and contract basis. But beware: question the capacity and motivation of any external assistance, and question any time that an external assistance provider claims to know more or better than the sponsoring organization. In facilitating the egress of 30 people from the Nepal earthquake, the most significant kink in our operation occurred when we were given false information (relating to usable airports) from our emergency evacuation provider.
Communication: THE most important aspect of managing risks and effectively responding to emergencies is communication. Guides develop uninhibited communication pathways with clients – “how is your stool today?” shouldn’t surprise anyone. Trackable communication pathways should be set-up pre-course to increase transparency and front load risks with clients (i.e. an online bulletin board that is used to communicate with clients from moment of sign-up through reflective moments post-course.) And sponsoring organizations should create dedicated risk management/emergency response communication pathways between guide and supporting company, (i.e, a dedicated email address for all risk management communication.) From organization to guide to client, all communication should be accurate, articulate (concise), and consistent. It is critically important that an honest, comprehensive and thoughtful narrative be told and retold through the length of the incident, with the Incident Commander guiding the narrative.
Debrief, learn, move on: Post-incident, leave no stone unturned. The sponsoring organization should get written debriefs immediately after the incident, from everyone who had a role in addressing the incident. The sponsoring organization should make available medical, psychological or legal assistance to anyone who was affected by the incident. Everything that can be learned should be learned. And then expect that all people involved will need to move on. Research is clear on this: people want/need to sort through traumatic events, but few benefit from re-living them. Wring out all of the learnings and offer as much support as possible, but then move on.
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Solid guides SUPER-vise. A supporting organization knows the terrain, the capabilities of the guides and the available resources. A solid supporting organization has confidence in what it knows and knows enough to question and not reflexively defer to any outside entity. A solid organization maintains the narrative and holds things together through role definition, good use of available resources, planning and testing of systems, and communication, communication, communication. These are the lessons that have stuck with me from over 500,000 days of managing students on the ground. Managing their risk, promoting their learning and responding to whatever came up in between.
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