The threats that both the public and private sectors face today are dangerous and fast paced.
Through our experience managing real world critical incidents, the FBI believes mental rehearsal is an absolute necessity to succeed in various complex scenarios, whether they be terrorist attacks or active shooter situations. By taking the guess work out of our decision making and acclimating our personnel to chaotic scenarios, we are able to move faster, operate more efficiently, and get resources moving in real time to address crisis situations.
Hoping for the best or trying to figure it all out under real-world pressure is a recipe for failure. A 90% crisis mitigation strategy executed immediately is better than a perfect solution executed too late. To that end, running through a checklist of emergency procedures, as airline pilots do in case of engine failure, is a comprehensive and deliberate way to respond to crisis situations.
In The New York Times bestseller “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande, Gawande addresses this same practice in mechanical engineering and medicine. Dealing with an active shooter, a terrorist strike, or a mass casualty event is no less dangerous. Key issues need to be systematically addressed so important life saving measures are not missed.
To prepare for a real-world event, we need to remember several key things:
At our FBI Field Office, we tested crisis checklists against our most experienced and well-rounded agents. The results were incredibly enlightening: Our most junior personnel with little experience, running our checklist, were better able to handle a dynamic critical incident than our most seasoned experts who relied solely on their experience. The junior agents handled the situation better, more comprehensively, and without missing a step.
Checklists standardize our responses. Standardization makes us faster and eliminates “single points of failure.” As we continued to develop our crisis protocols, we soon learned that key crisis leaders were becoming single points of failure; in that without us, the procedures didn’t work as well. By standardizing what we do and how we do it, we now ensure the organization can survive and thrive under pressure, with or without any single individual.
So, what’s the significant take-away? Our belief is that mental rehearsal is an absolute necessity to succeed in complex scenarios. Having had significant operational experience addressing national level incidents, I found by taking the guess work out of actions and relying on our established protocols, we were able to move quicker, adjust when necessary, and adapt to dynamic situations.
About the Author:
Joe Denahan is an FBI Special Agent and senior Field Office executive currently second in command of FBI Newark Division. He has leadership responsibility for all Counterterrorism investigations and operations in New Jersey and oversees the Division’s Crisis Response, Threat Management and Crisis Management programs.