Learning Through Writing and from Being Wrong

Over the past few weeks, I moved all of the articles and blog posts that I previously wrote for The CP Journal over to this new page.

There are a number of reasons why I made this shift to Substack, but as  I copied or redirected the 400+ blog posts that helped us launch The CP Journal in 2012, announce and promote my book Left of Bang in 2014, and support students going through our online courses, I had the chance to reflect on what I was teaching over the course of those years and how I went about it through my writing.

As any writer might empathize with when reading prior writing, there was a lot in my old blog posts that made me cringe. There were articles that I published with some obvious grammatical errors or misspellings. There were articles in which I shared advice that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't. There were articles that analyzed the nonverbal behaviors of celebrities and politicians, which I have some regrets about writing even though those articles had large numbers of page views.

So, I was faced with a question. Do I go back and improve what I’d already written years ago, or do I look forward and start fresh? I chose not to update the articles, and I am sure there will be articles I publish in the future that make me wince in hindsight as well.

But I’d rather look forward. My views of the emergency management and homeland security industry will continue to evolve. My understanding of the challenges that our communities face when preparing for an uncertain future will continue to deepen. And my thoughts on what skills professionals need to succeed in this changing landscape will continue to mature.

I would rather continue to learn and deepen my understanding of these challenges through my writing than spend my time trying to make marginal improvements to articles written years ago.  

I share that because as the demands placed on public safety professionals increase, and as things feel like they are in flux, professionals have a choice. We can look at the uncertainty that comes from change and wait until the fog lifts before acting and preparing our organizations. Or we can start acting now, even if it means that some of what we produce falls short or doesn’t age as well as we’d like it to.

What I have always found interesting about the professionals and organizations I have worked with is that they are very comfortable with uncertainty in response settings where “ensuring life safety” for their community can guide their actions. They have no problem adjusting and adapting, and doing so in the moment, to constantly changing situations when lives are on the line.

But it can be harder to embrace that same uncertainty when there isn’t the perceived time pressure of a life-or-death decision. It can be easier and feel safer to return to tried-and-true methods, use less risky approaches, and do what the organization has done in the past. That is often true when looking at preparedness initiatives that have a time horizon of years to bear fruit instead of days and hours.

It might be easier to make minor updates to existing plans than it is to initiate a new planning process and bring in stakeholders that you haven’t worked with before. But will the disasters of tomorrow require the same plans and partners that you have today?

It can feel easier to do the same types of exercises that you’ve done in the past than it is to change the format and push the envelope with more challenging scenarios. There were likely a lot of gains made bringing an existing team and group together to get to this point of competence in exercises, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t benefits to pushing past the group’s level of comfort.  

For the professionals in the disaster management industry to stay relevant and to truly prepare our organizations and communities for an uncertain future, we shouldn't be doing things the old way simply because that way feels easier. Evolution and innovation need to occur. That drive needs to come from those working to prepare, even if the way each person does it is a little different.

For me, I find myself evolving and reaching toward new innovations through writing. Others may find this through attending training sessions and presentations, participating in different community events, and or perhaps through boundary-pushing exercises.

How each person drives themselves or their organizations into that point of discomfort is less important than remembering that, as professionals, we need to hone the same comfort with uncertainty that we embrace in response settings in how we prepare when things are calm.

If we are testing something new, some of what we do will be right, and some of it will be wrong. It doesn’t mean that we don’t learn from these activities or ideas that didn’t take hold. Quite the contrary. As long as there is time to reflect to understand what has worked (and what didn’t) these innovations will fuel a continual drive forward, and the industry will continue to make progress despite uncertainties.