How To Lose Your Job, Literally Without Trying

If managers don't want to take the time for crisis planning, including communications during and after,  and don't want to bother with crisis drills, they are risking their entire careers. When a crisis is handled poorly, usually someone loses his or her job. Crises will happen, no matter how well the individual believes he is handling things.

In my blog post below on May 4, I praised Churchill Downs for evacuating thousands of people in an orderly manner until an approaching storm passed. The fans returned safely and racing resumed. I compared that evacuation to the failure to act at the Indiana State Fair last summer, when a storm blow over a stage and killed seven people.

No one will be fired at Churchill Downs. But blood was on the floor in Indianapolis last week when the  State Fair Commission met. "Officials on Thursday quietly announced the retirement of fairgrounds facilities manager Dave Hummel, who was noted in a report that criticized confusion among fair officials over their responsibilities. A news release said Hummel's retirement was 'part of restructuring state fair staff.'" (http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9UMG3900.htm)

Retirement? How stupid do they think the public is? But that's beside the point.

"A report by emergency preparation experts from Washington-based Witt Associates criticized 'a lack of oversight or responsibility for the ISFC's contracts with its contractors,' including the contract with the company that owned and built the stage rigging that later collapsed. The report said Hummel and other fair officials tried to pin responsibility for the contract on each other during interviews a month after the disaster.

"The report also said that Hummel's position had authority over fair security, and that while he had 'heard' of the fair's existing emergency response plan, he 'was not aware of his position's specific responsibilities in the plan.'"

The board announced the hiring of David Shaw as chief operating officer. One of his responsibilities will be to develop an emergency response plan for various events and venues at the fairgrounds. Investigators concluded that the fair's existing protocol was unclear and resulted in confusion about who was in charge. It now will be up to him to order any evacuations.

If managers think they're too busy to write or practice a crisis operations plan, along with a crisis communications plan, (Ideally the plans are merged.), they should remember the "retirement" of the facilities manager in Indiana. He failed to make good decisions largely because he was unprepared. Hummel has in effect been replaced with three people. Worse, he has to spend his retirement thinking of the seven people who lost their lives because he didn't know what his role was in a crisis.

Athletes, actors, and musicians have to practice. So do crisis teams.