The theme of the week is AI and the impact it will have on preparedness.
After a number of conversations this week with clients and people working at the intersection of tech and disaster management, I remain convinced that the public safety field is about to begin evolving at a faster and faster pace. There will be a lot of opportunities for people to drive innovation, and it is a shift I'm excited about.
The two themes that I'll cover in this week's newsletter (with the articles and videos below) relate to the skills that professionals will need, how AI impacts them, and how organizations will want to look at prioritization of the work they are doing.
But it raises a critical question: with the inclusion of AI into our job, what will remain uniquely human in our profession?
There are aspects of emergency management and public safety that technology won’t replace - like building trust and fostering connections with the community. With 2024's disasters as recent examples, the need for this deeply human role - rooted in empathy, understanding, and leadership - will only increase.
My hope is that the time we free up will be re-focused on the community and truly understanding the unique dynamics of the people you/we serve. But that is only possible if we first make the time, and then thoughtfully re-allocate it to the things that only local leaders can do.
With that, let’s get left of bang.
AI’s Impact on Skill Development & Retention
AI will redefine how we approach preparedness and make a lot of our work not only easier to complete, but also require a lot less time.
Plan writing (including preparing for and facilitating planning meetings) will be accelerated.
Exercise design will become more streamlined with scenarios and injects developed in minutes.
Training development will become increasingly customized for different audiences at the click of a button.
Risk assessments will be developed using disparate databases that we probably aren't including and referencing today.
But there will be a tradeoff. The skills that professionals develop to succeed in this new reality will change, and the skills that used to lead to long-term career success may no longer be practiced and honed.
Recommended Article | The Hidden Cost of Efficiency. This article is written for sales professionals, but it won’t require a large mental leap to apply this to your field. As AI and automation replace repetitive tasks, the skills that were traditionally developed through those tasks will no longer be developed or maintained. For the same reason why Google Maps replaced navigation skills and Wikipedia diminished the need to memorize historical facts, these impacts will now be felt professionally.
This article examines that dynamic and raises an interesting point. As the article quotes, “Back in the day, most jobs made us physically strong. Now we have to hit the gym. The same is true for cognitive skills in sales - we need to deliberately develop them.” Chances are, most organizations haven’t developed “skill gyms” for things that are often learned through the act of doing the job. But that might be the new requirement for success.
When you can do more with less, what do you say “yes” to?
For smaller agencies with limited resources, AI will be a game-changer. AI will enable small teams to produce higher-quality outputs and match the expectations placed on their office with their capacity in a way that hasn’t been possible before. But this technology will change the character of small teams.
When a team is small (and therefore limited in the initiatives it can pursue), saying “no” is easy. Most good ideas exceed the capacity of the team, so they can’t be taken on. But AI will require that organizational leaders become hyper-focused on their priorities. It will require that they know the “good ideas” that aren’t going to move the needle and will require they can explain to leaders why that isn’t the best use of time.
Recommended Video | Say No by Default. This podcast/video with the founders of 37signals, a company I have followed and respected for a long time, discusses the hidden costs of saying yes and the burden of commitments that come with it. As they explain why “you rarely regret saying no, but you often wind up regretting saying yes,” there will undoubtedly be examples that come to mind of the times you’ve said yes in your job. It is worth the 35 minutes to watch.
Security Awareness Training Won’t Save Us
Recommended Article | Security awareness won’t save us, and people will continue clicking on links (as they should). “It’s often said that people are the weakest link and that no matter what we do, users will continue to “fail” security.” But are “people” the problem with security?
The article is written about the challenges in cybersecurity but has a direct application for physical security professionals as well. By the end of the article, there are some common sense approaches for security providers to consider: accept and embrace human nature as is, consider if their approach is focused on “guard rails” or “paved roads,” and ask how mistakes are planned for. If these dynamics are impacting your company’s ability to institute a security culture, give this article a read.
That’s all for this week, but whenever you’re ready, here is how I work with clients.
Projects and speaking events. I support organizations and industry events with left of bang-focused presentations and preparedness initiatives.
Helping organizations get left of bang to severe weather events. Technology combined with professional meteorologists ensures organizations never lose their situational awareness for weather events. Here’s how.
Proactive Threat Recognition Training. Learn how to read the behaviors and establish baselines discussed in the book Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life in our online training courses.
If you’d like to learn more and see what is available for your organization, you can reach me at patrick@cp-journal.com or on LinkedIn.