00:00:00:00 - 00:00:21:10
Aaron Marks
Once again, it depends on where you are in that process. You've got some people who are focused on the emergency management side on on that response, and we see the same weaknesses. We've got others who are focused on the political side or the power dynamic side, and that's where we see the same challenges that you see from the crisis management on the business side.
00:00:21:12 - 00:00:41:20
Aaron Marks
In my mind, consequence management in the political or the geopolitical context, you've got the worst of both worlds because you're dealing with the complications from focusing on people or focusing on power and influence. And from that political side, you've got to think about it all.
00:00:41:22 - 00:01:02:13
Kyle King
Hi, everyone, and welcome to a new episode of the Crisis Alert podcast. I'm Kyle and I'll be your host today. And today we are bringing you an in-depth conversation about the intricate world of consequence management with recognized expert Mr. Aaron Marks. Mr. marks is the founder and principal of 139 consulting and a civil expert for the NATO Civil Emergency Planning Committee, with an extensive background in crisis management.
00:01:02:14 - 00:01:23:05
Kyle King
He brings a unique perspective to our current understanding of consequences and how to effectively manage them. In this discussion, we will unpack the concept of consequences in the context of crisis scenarios and crisis management, and we'll discuss their inherent nature, the impacts that they have, the decision making processes, and the pivotal role of crisis management in our decision making.
00:01:23:07 - 00:01:56:17
Kyle King
Our conversation will also probe into the various factors that determine the severity of consequences, highlighting the criticality of effective prioritization and management. Finally, we'll turn our attention into mitigation strategies and crisis management. We'll discuss the international aspects of crisis management, as well as where crisis management was coming from originally. In terms of CBR in WMD, and we will explore practical and actionable strategies to manage consequences, providing you with deeper and more nuanced understanding of navigating overall crisis management.
00:01:56:19 - 00:02:01:12
Kyle King
Aaron, thanks for joining us again and welcome back to The Crisis Podcast. Good to see you again.
00:02:01:14 - 00:02:02:14
Aaron Marks
Good to see you again too.
00:02:02:18 - 00:02:19:24
Kyle King
So one of the topics that we often talk about consequence management and governance, and I think governance was the last topic we talked about on the podcast, but now we're talking a little bit more about consequence management I think is a good topic for today, especially in light of all the different things that are happening around the world and trying to understand the long term impact.
00:02:20:04 - 00:02:39:01
Kyle King
Some of these events that are happening from a bridge collapse to what we were just talking about when we before we started recording it by gas, was releases of radiation in some countries and evacuating cities and just all this sort of craziness that's happening in the world today. So I know that consequence management for you is a long time sort of passion.
00:02:39:01 - 00:02:54:24
Kyle King
And you've looked at this and from many different angles from emergency management and so EMS systems and also from CBRE and with your work at NATO, but for those who haven't heard from you yet or don't recall our last podcast, maybe just a quick introduction to start out with some of your background and the things that you work on.
00:02:55:01 - 00:03:14:21
Aaron Marks
Sure. Thank you Kyle. My background starts at what my wife calls messy medicine. So I started up my my professional life as a paramedic. I've worked all over the the United States and then spent some time internationally deployed in that role. And I got fascinated in the incident management beyond just the back of an ambulance, beyond the individual patient.
00:03:15:02 - 00:03:39:05
Aaron Marks
So I started looking at systems and complexity, and that's what got me into and my interesting consequences, because I realized that I was making decisions on the next five minutes. You know, I wanted to keep my patient alive for the next five minutes. I wanted to save one life. I wanted to solve one problem, and I wasn't thinking about the issues that I was creating by my short term solutions.
00:03:39:07 - 00:04:04:11
Aaron Marks
That kind of broadened my perspective. I became more and more disillusioned with the way that the first response community is solely focused on the next five minutes, where we're focused on immediate gratification on that short term solution. And to my wonderful wife, in her infinite wisdom, probably if I was going to complain about something so much, I better be willing to try and fix it.
00:04:04:13 - 00:04:30:08
Aaron Marks
So I stepped back from my first response role. I step back from my hands on incident response and started spending more time focused on emergency management and crisis management and ultimately consequence management looking at the bigger picture. So doing that, I've worked with, with the Department of Homeland Security here in the United States, FEMA and Cisa and Secret Service, a couple other entities under that umbrella.
00:04:30:09 - 00:05:03:11
Aaron Marks
I've worked with NATO, both with some of their centers of excellence, with their international staff. I've worked with the United Nations, United States Department of State, most of which looking at different flavors of consequence management, trying to look at how we can address the new challenges that are created by the solutions that we're putting in place today. So I spend a lot of time thinking about contingencies, looking at the horizon and going, okay, we think we saw a problem here, but did we actually just create another one?
00:05:03:11 - 00:05:08:13
Aaron Marks
We're going to have to deal with in five days, weeks or months?
00:05:08:15 - 00:05:28:17
Kyle King
Thanks for sharing that. I think you're highlighting an important point. I came from the emergency response side of the house myself was 17 years in. The emergency services were trained and we operate with that response mindset, which is needed. Right. But it is and we are we have I'm actually just doing a presentation on this week at a security forum, but we're probably done by the time the podcast comes out.
00:05:28:17 - 00:05:49:11
Kyle King
But the idea being that I think the way that we're viewing civil security and the way that we're viewing emergency response these days is going to drastically change over the longer term, say, the next three, five, ten years. And the mindset that you mentioned about response or recovery response recovery. And then we go back to the station when we're done with the fires out, whatever the case is, I think that's going to and it should evolve.
00:05:49:14 - 00:06:06:24
Kyle King
We're going to have increasingly complex crises that will be intertwined, that will be seemingly unrelated, but have the synergistic effects that we're going to be dealing with. You know, if we're talking about, you know, a fire, but then at the same time, there's a cyber attack occurring, which leads to the 911 centers or 112 centers being shut down.
00:06:06:24 - 00:06:36:09
Kyle King
Then all sorts of issues happening all at the same time, causing massive sort of problems for us in terms of managing a crisis. And so when you're saying that you're looking at the long term effects of solutions, that's interesting to me because coming out of that community of a first responder mindset of where we have a task, we have a responsibility, we go out, we take care of it, and then we go back to the station, so to speak, and we recover and we get ready for the next one that longer term view, other than if what we would have like in prevention or public education programs of like slowly changing culture and building codes
00:06:36:09 - 00:06:54:04
Kyle King
and standards, we don't really pay attention to the long term effects of just what is happening, because we are in that response mindset. So there's many different dynamics here. But and I'm going a little bit off track on this conversation a little bit, but I'm trying to just unpack it a little bit because I think there's a response mindset that you've correctly highlighted.
00:06:54:06 - 00:07:12:21
Kyle King
I think there's also the private sector mindset and business mindset. That is also one aspect. and then how are we looking at it in terms of, say, more traditional crisis management that you mentioned? How is consequence management and that the perspective of consequence management wrapped into all three of these and how they differentiated amongst each other?
00:07:12:23 - 00:07:39:10
Aaron Marks
I think that the big differentiator is the underlying motivation. So if you look at traditional first responders, traditional emergency management, you're protecting life, then you're protecting property, then you're protecting the environment. And nothing else is really on that primary mission level. The approach is, okay, what if we address those three things, then all of the consequences of our actions someone else can deal with because they're minor in terms of that.
00:07:39:10 - 00:08:09:13
Aaron Marks
And I think the best example of that is if you look at humanitarian response specifically, food aid is the big example that comes to mind where if there's a major disaster somewhere in the world, an earthquake, a pandemic, a civil war, one of the big things that the international humanitarian response community ramps up is food aid. They send 50 pound bags of rice or corn that say the gift of insert country name here, and they show up in order to support the population of the impacted area.
00:08:09:13 - 00:08:35:00
Aaron Marks
But what we don't think about is the artificial economy that creates where instead of buying food from local farmers or through local stores, everybody's going down to the air bridge or going to the port or wherever the humanitarian aid is coming in. And they're getting essentially free food. So we're saving lives or preventing hunger with that, we're destroying the agricultural industry of that region.
00:08:35:02 - 00:08:53:23
Aaron Marks
The farmers can't sell their food because people are getting it for free. The stores can't sell their product. So that part of the industry, that part of the economy atrophies or goes away when the disaster ends and all the humanitarian aid stops, people can't go down and get their free 50 pound bag of rice or water or flour.
00:08:53:23 - 00:09:12:18
Aaron Marks
The local economy has already been damaged to to the point where it can't step back in. So you've created a cycle of dependency in there as a consequence. Manager. In the beginning, the responders are great, but we have to recognize that the response is going to cause its own harm, and we have to manage that before the response ends.
00:09:12:18 - 00:09:39:18
Aaron Marks
And we just create another disaster from a business side. Private sector. It's all about patterns. It's all about maintaining the economy, maintaining the financial element, business continuity. It's maintaining your operational continuity and my experience in that site or crisis management in that pure concept is that we forget about the people. So for me, in emergency management, we focus on the people and forget about the economy, crisis management.
00:09:39:18 - 00:10:09:00
Aaron Marks
In terms of the private sector, we focus on the economy. And a lot of times we forget about the people. And you go through and talk about, okay, we're going to have everybody work from home because of a pandemic. But what we didn't realize is that we're now instead of having centralized infrastructure where we only have to worry about one power center, one internet, no one communications piece, we now have to worry about a distributed network where, you know, now, instead of having 100 employees in one office, I've got 100 employees in 100 sites.
00:10:09:02 - 00:10:36:22
Aaron Marks
So I've got to think about 100 power grids or 100 internet grids or communications grids. So it's that scalability. And then from the international side, once again, it depends on where you are in that process. You've got some people who are focused on the emergency management side on on that response. And we see the same weaknesses. We've got others who are focused on the political side or the power dynamic side, and that's where we see the same challenges that you see from the crisis management or the business side.
00:10:36:24 - 00:10:53:05
Aaron Marks
In my mind, consequence management in the political or the geopolitical context. You've got the worst of both worlds because you're dealing with the complications from focusing on people or focusing on power and influence. And from the political side, you've got to think about it all.
00:10:53:07 - 00:11:08:16
Kyle King
So in terms of and you mentioned the international aspect, and I do want to correlate that a bit to the local aspect as well, because I don't think there distinctly or at least not two part, not too far apart from each other, because when we have we both worked in an international environment for international organizations and things like that.
00:11:08:16 - 00:11:23:18
Kyle King
And I think what we continue to see to back up your point is that it's a very sort of linear process. As an international organization, we will provide X, Y, and Z. We will do this. And this is our mission set, and this is what we're allowed and authorized to do. And then somebody with us, somebody else wants to do that.
00:11:23:18 - 00:11:41:13
Kyle King
Then that's in their responsibility. And these two things shall not touch right. That's their mandate. But we have our mandate. And so we'll take care. This will work with local actors and then they take care of their stuff. And then but for delivering food and they're doing shelter and medical treatment and then we're not really coordinate our efforts very well.
00:11:41:13 - 00:12:00:01
Kyle King
And that's generally due to limitations and pipes and pillars and the organizations and mandates and all those things like that. But bringing it back to a local level, I think that also exists. Right. And so you have authorities at a city level, another and a community level that are like, okay, this is the police's job and this is the fire's job, and that's the ambulance's job.
00:12:00:01 - 00:12:19:24
Kyle King
And everybody has a solution from their perspective. But when people are talking about consequence management, like the way that you're framing it, I don't know who exactly is looking across that horizon of five, ten years. Whatever the cases in this border future scoping type of exercise, do at least walk through some of the issues that might come up in the decisions we're making.
00:12:20:01 - 00:12:36:11
Kyle King
Is this something that is ingrained inside of, city architecture infrastructure or in terms of like staffing and, and policy? Is it built into international organizations? Where does one find people who are working specifically in consequence management?
00:12:36:13 - 00:13:07:22
Aaron Marks
So in a perfect world, I would say it should be ingrained. I think that in my world space or my mind space, I would say it would be in that emergency managers role or in that crisis managers role is part of that is thinking about the contingencies and also thinking about what are the consequences of our actions. There used to be, if you look back in to the old versions of ICS, the incident command system, there used to be a branch under the planning sector called contingency planning.
00:13:07:24 - 00:13:27:17
Aaron Marks
And that's where in my understanding, that's where consequence management used to say it used to be going about, okay, what if things don't work? What if we run out of resources? What if what if we're successful? About what if we fail? So you're looking at that consequence element that's disappeared from modern ICS starts. It's not usually used a lot.
00:13:27:18 - 00:13:58:10
Aaron Marks
We're so focused on here and now. We're so focused on immediate situation. And I think that our world is so complex and our lives are so complex right now. It's really challenging to say I've got limited resources, but I need to pull some of those resources to think about the what ifs, to think about that long term. And and resource requirements have been triaged and consequence management has fallen out of favor because of that, because we're so focused on the crisis and the emergency, and it'll be someone else's problem, or we'll deal with it later and kick the can down the road.
00:13:58:10 - 00:14:16:09
Aaron Marks
But I would think that it needs to exist or it should exist at all levels. It should locally walk because the point of reference is different from where you're at. Your idea. My idea of a consequence at a local level, is it even going to be a blip on the consideration at a federal or national level, and at a national level?
00:14:16:09 - 00:14:47:11
Aaron Marks
Thinking about consequences would be potentially something so overwhelming that at a local level, you just get brain freeze or analysis paralysis, just can't conceptualize it, can't deal with it because your frame of reference isn't there. But I think that in terms of our sector, in that emergency crisis management, that it would fall into your planning role, thinking about contingencies, thinking about what ifs, because a consequence manager isn't an operator, a consequence manager isn't going to go out and solve problems.
00:14:47:11 - 00:15:06:16
Aaron Marks
A consequence manager is a backroom enabler. Who would be the devil's advocate with the what if voice, or what the concept that came out of a movie came out of World War Z, out of that book, out of that, we'd be talking about the 10th man, the one person at the table whose job is to disagree, whose job is to question and probe and move through there.
00:15:06:18 - 00:15:26:12
Aaron Marks
That's a cut in my approach. That's a consequence manager who's thinking about what are the consequences of our actions because like I mentioned in the response during the continuity role, as soon as we see the result that we want, a lot of times we stop the process. We stop thinking about, okay, what else is going to go on, what's got to be related?
00:15:26:14 - 00:15:35:14
Aaron Marks
Some people call that aggressive red teaming, but it's it all falls into the same pot, at least in my concept.
00:15:35:16 - 00:15:50:03
Kyle King
Hey there. Just a quick pause. No show for a second. Did you know that most of our guests on The Crisis That podcast have courses inside of Crisis Lab? If you're finding value in these conversations, or they pique your interest and you want to dive deeper into the topic, just head over to Crisis Lab. DiDio for more information.
00:15:50:05 - 00:16:18:18
Kyle King
Our courses, webinars, and resources are all designed to equip professionals like you with the knowledge needed to navigate complex and changing environments. And we recognize your time matters so everything we do is accredited. Don't forget to subscribe and join our community of over 70,000 professionals who follow Crisis Lab and are committed to enhancing preparedness and strategic thinking. Because a crisis lab, we believe in empowering you with a cross-domain knowledge and learning blended with international perspectives, ultimately to make you better every single day.
00:16:18:22 - 00:16:42:14
Kyle King
Now let's get back to the show. Yeah. That's interesting. That seems to be, at least on the surface for me. It seems to be like it's one of those sort of underserved things that we're not properly integrating into our workflows and the perspective that we're taking it. Ultimately, a lot of the things that we've had this conversation before in terms of governance, a lot of these things fall onto the responsibilities of not just emergency management, but it's really in the government functions at a city and state level.
00:16:42:14 - 00:17:12:07
Kyle King
And of course, FEMA is there, and FEMA as a lead coordinating agency for for many things. And other federal agencies are supporting as well, from environment to HHS and all that stuff. But to your point, I think traditional emergency management is focusing really on preparedness and response and then getting into sort of recovery pieces. But that longer term perspective, five, ten years impact of decisions and ramifications or even potentially cascading effects, I guess I would say in terms of what decisions are being taken generally in and is my understanding of me, I could be wrong.
00:17:12:08 - 00:17:34:11
Kyle King
I'm happy for your thoughts, but those are generally handed off once you get into that recovery phase and even possibly past that initial recovery into long term recovery, those are handed off to other departments. Different agencies become a portion of urban planning and governance again, and this becomes a normal daily function in terms of the way long term recovery from a disaster.
00:17:34:13 - 00:17:55:23
Kyle King
I know there's still a lot of assistance that's available long term, but at the same time, if the more it gets again and I guess this is where I'm going with this is, the more that it gets diluted into governance, regular construction projects, regular procurement procedures, not emergency procedures and things like that, not emergency declarations. It becomes more of a normal function of government than it seemed like to me.
00:17:55:23 - 00:18:13:21
Kyle King
That long term effect that we should have gets diluted by falling into just normal daily procedures of city administrations and state and things like that. Does that sound like that's a process that happens in terms of where did things lie and where do they fall? As we exit out of an immediate response and into recovery?
00:18:13:22 - 00:18:43:02
Aaron Marks
I think you're right in the responding to the consequences definitely gets passed off. That goes off to your NGOs. It goes off to various levels of government as a move through there. I think that consequence management in its purest form is more of a mitigation mindset in okay, if we identify that potential consequence before becomes real, we can either be prepared to deal with it, or there may be ways that we can minimize it or reduce it.
00:18:43:08 - 00:19:08:00
Aaron Marks
So you talk about talk about decontamination after a CPR and or WMD element. And one of the and we look specifically at that decontamination. One of the tenants is you have to control your running and you control your runoff because that's just spreading contamination, which is what you're trying to fight through. The whole respondents controlling the runoff is an example of an active consequence management concept.
00:19:08:02 - 00:19:28:23
Aaron Marks
At some point, you know, before that came into place. And the practice is still depending on where you are in the world, you don't control the runoff. You just figure the solution to pollution is dilution. So you're going to dilute it and you don't have to worry about it. But the problem is that in 510 years, what used to be an empty field all of a sudden is a neighborhood.
00:19:29:01 - 00:19:53:14
Aaron Marks
And now you've got the Love Canal all over again out on the United States. You've got this cancer pod or cell that shows up because you didn't control your runoff ten years ago. 15 years ago, contamination got into the environment. Use of the property changed that consequence management mindset. You have to be future thinking. You can't only look at your immediate requirements.
00:19:53:16 - 00:20:11:22
Aaron Marks
And this is I think this is one of the reasons why consequences, where it kind of fell out of favor is because we're going, okay, I know you're going to save lives now. You may be costing lives ten, 15 years down the road. And the response from the incident commander is, I don't care about those lives 10 to 15 years down the road, you get told no a lot.
00:20:11:23 - 00:20:37:23
Aaron Marks
You get told we acknowledge the potential consequence, but it's not significant enough for us to think about. If you tell somebody no enough times, you go, why are they asking questions? If the answer's always no, why am I paying them to ask these questions? I can use those resources somewhere else. But goes away. The danger is you look at things like industrial contamination, Love Canal on the US, stuff like Superfund sites, things like that.
00:20:38:04 - 00:21:01:02
Aaron Marks
Look at look at the landmine problems in the Balkans. Think about the landmine, an UXO problem that's going to be in Ukraine after the conflict ends. Those are consequences of that saw. And there are people already thinking about how are we going to manage that. That's consequence management because there were decisions made for a tactical requirement for a now problem.
00:21:01:05 - 00:21:22:22
Aaron Marks
But now there are people thinking about that solution has created more problems in the future. We've got to think about that. In some places. The responses that someone else's problem, it's not my issue. The truth is that it's all of our issue where the argument if it saves one life, it's worthwhile to save one life now. But in five years it's going to cost ten.
00:21:23:01 - 00:21:47:17
Aaron Marks
How does that calculus come into play? Like I said, as a consequence, manager, when I'm in that role, I'm red teaming. I am the loyal opposition who's questioning the value of short term solutions, because I'm supposed to be thinking four or 5 or 6 steps into the future on on the way that could impact. And it's not popular because I ask questions that may that make people uncomfortable.
00:21:47:19 - 00:22:11:13
Aaron Marks
I poke holes in what seems like a really good short term solution. Like I said, where especially in the response mode, we're focused on immediate gratification. What's the immediate value? What's the immediate life saved lives say, property saved environment say, and somebody else can think about the future, but somebody else should start with a consequence manager. So you start to plan what are the resources we're going to need?
00:22:11:18 - 00:22:29:12
Aaron Marks
How many demining teams are we going to need? How many, how many EOD or UXO teams are we going to need? How many chemists are we going to need? Can we ever use this land for for civilian purposes or for other purposes? And in thinking about future restrictions, future actions?
00:22:29:14 - 00:23:06:03
Kyle King
When you mentioned the CBRE and Aspect consequence management makes a lot of sense for my limited understanding. Let's say that. So this was in terms of consequence management. And a lot of this seems to be really tied in its origins coming out of WMD. CBR in you start doing a lot of work with that, I think with the Joint Siberian Center, with NATO and others, and this very same topic, what is how much of this is still evolving around the ideas of cyber in and WMD and in how much needs to progress or is progressing, and to sort of exactly like what you're talking about now that the decisions we're making after an emergency or
00:23:06:03 - 00:23:10:02
Kyle King
disaster and being in this all hazards consequence management approach.
00:23:10:04 - 00:23:37:18
Aaron Marks
I think to that from a hard science standpoint, the point physics, chemistry, biology that it's maturing, I almost want to say maturing nicely, but that sounds arrogant. It's that we're learning from past mistakes, we're learning from each other's mistakes. And there's the mindset is shifting and we're thinking about, okay, what are the ripple sweater? The complications down the road from the softer sciences, from social sciences, sociology, psychology, from the cultural angle?
00:23:37:21 - 00:24:04:04
Aaron Marks
I think that's where our big challenges still are, because it's almost like the were so afraid to offend somebody that we're not willing to question beliefs, that we're not willing to challenge beliefs. And from a Cbrn framework, the biggest place we see that is in the bio threat window, because biological threat of that set, at least in my mind, that's the one that keeps me up at night.
00:24:04:04 - 00:24:31:14
Aaron Marks
That's the one that scares me the most, because that's the one that we have the least amount of understanding of. And at least ability to really control what most of the horror stories that, that I've collected come out of that bio response talking about from responders, small Western culture coming into an African culture or come into an Asian culture and we're going the science says, the science says you can't have the remains of somebody who died.
00:24:31:14 - 00:25:07:22
Aaron Marks
You can't touch them, you can't clean them, you can't claim them. We're going to incinerate them. And you can't even have the ashes because it's that dangerous that consequence of that action is now we just disrespected or disrupted. Choose your word. Funerary rites, religious rights, tribal patterns, all those cultural incidents. I've talked to physicians and medical teams that responded for multiple of the Ebola outbreaks in Africa, and every single one of them basically said all of the people that we were interacting with were fine.
00:25:07:22 - 00:25:35:14
Aaron Marks
They loved our support. They loved our help until we told them they couldn't have a relative's body until we told them the remains were contaminated. And as soon as you disrupted that social element, that's when we started seeing violence against medical providers. That's when we saw it start seeing people were bringing sick people to the clinics anymore. They were hiding them because the the devils were stealing their family members, their hard science behind it.
00:25:35:14 - 00:25:59:13
Aaron Marks
There was a reason for it, but we weren't dealing with the potential social or cultural consequences. I worked with some peers in in Muslim nations during Covid, and one of the big elements that they were worried about, they were doing some active consequence management was okay. In Islam, you have to bury your friend with your relatives within a certain timeframe.
00:25:59:15 - 00:26:27:09
Aaron Marks
I think it's 48 hours. I can't remember exactly. And if you don't, then that's a religious issue. And these the the physicians, the epidemiologists, the scientists, the emergency managers were going we don't know if it's safe to release remains. What are we going to do if we have a religious uprising because of this violation, especially with NATO? And I have the most insight into that, because that's where I've done most of my work on the hard sciences.
00:26:27:09 - 00:26:51:06
Aaron Marks
We've got a pretty good grasp of consequence management. It's figuring out the soft sciences, the social side of it. And as NATO moves more into the concept of civil resilience, there are a lot more conversations around that. Because just because a soldier comes in and says, we're doing this is how I manage the consequence. A civilian isn't necessarily going to acquiesce, and it's that civil military interaction.
00:26:51:08 - 00:26:58:17
Aaron Marks
It's the hard science and the soft science interaction, which is where I think a lot of the growth and consequence management is going to happen.
00:26:58:19 - 00:27:26:19
Kyle King
Yeah, it's interesting, and I'm glad to differentiate between the hard science of things where you can demonstrate, where you can prove coming out of that Siberian world and WMD world where it's now we can measure things. We know the effects of our decisions. We can actively mitigate and measure what we're what we're working on and implement solutions. And it's interesting in terms of that because obviously in in today's climate, it's interesting to think about the use of science for justification of things.
00:27:26:19 - 00:27:49:21
Kyle King
So I have two thoughts really about this whole discussion, which is really so I completely agree. Moving from a hard science and like data backed consequence management process to trying to just convey people like this may not be the best decision because a number of one of these courses of action could happen. It's not scientific, it's more of having to convince people that something might happen, and you should maybe think about it and make a better decision.
00:27:49:23 - 00:28:17:01
Kyle King
So it's going to be extremely hard and I think that, to your point, is something that it has to be overcome in the future in order to ingrain in our cities and states and emergency management procedures like that being part of the process. These days, instead of just something after disaster. But I'm also thinking that at the same time, we have to also get early data, early access to data, and start looking at these, the data that we are getting, you know, if we are implementing a solution, let's take that.
00:28:17:01 - 00:28:35:14
Kyle King
Was it the Baltimore bridge that collapsed and that was you know, that's an issue obviously. What are the solutions we're implementing? How can we get the data early on to see if something's working, measure the impacts, and actually try and incorporate some of this data to see if, if we've made the right decision or can we pivot, take another decision.
00:28:35:16 - 00:29:00:03
Kyle King
And so the end integration of data into that whole process and that decision making process, I think is going to help us tremendously. And in some cases, to your point about the social sciences, like overcoming in high risk, high severity areas, like with Ebola, things like that, trying to find ways to overcome the cultural sort of limitations, to be able to convince people that there's better practices and or just finding solutions that meet both needs.
00:29:00:03 - 00:29:06:16
Kyle King
I guess I would say. But the data aspect, I think, is going to be a key point to pivot to this and integrate this into the future.
00:29:06:18 - 00:29:32:23
Aaron Marks
I definitely agree we're in a data driven world. Even if people don't realize it, the data is there. I will call it information because you have to process it and actually make it usable to get to that point. But every I mean, everything is tracked, everything's collected for for the most part, the challenge will be to really be effective if we have to get people with power, people who are in influence, to stop being defensive about the data.
00:29:33:00 - 00:29:54:07
Aaron Marks
They're so worried it's gonna make them look bad. They're so worried that it's going to allow people to challenge them that we're stifling or compartmentalizing that data. We're classifying it all, we're restricting it, but that means we're not learning from it. Or if we learn from it, we're keeping that lesson close because it gives us more power or gives us more influence.
00:29:54:09 - 00:30:12:21
Aaron Marks
And because we are sharing those lessons, because we are sharing the the data, our neighbors are making the same mistakes. Our neighbors are dealing with the same consequences. And while they're doing that because we had an answer we didn't share, we get this feeling of superiority. This we're smarter, we're better, but we're not realizing that. Wait a minute.
00:30:12:21 - 00:30:33:06
Aaron Marks
If we had shared this, then they wouldn't be having this problem. And I think that it's going to be a mind shift of looking at it from a position of benefit or to that sense of community, that sense of just global prevention. You know, in order for me to be more, I don't have to force you to be less.
00:30:33:11 - 00:30:56:21
Aaron Marks
And that attitude isn't as common as, as a lot of people would wish it would be. But by not sharing our lessons, by not sharing our knowledge or understanding, we're potentially making our consequences worse from a geopolitical standpoint. Okay, the neighboring nation is a competitor, so I'm not going to play nice. I'm not going to share information I learned from a disaster that I survived, and now they're going through it.
00:30:56:21 - 00:31:19:08
Aaron Marks
If they don't survive, what are the consequences on me? The economics, migration issues, which is the big the big focus point now, but also socially and politically for politicians to remain in power. There's a set of theories out there that says they need an enemy to keep your country focused. You need to have an opponent. You need to have a challenge to defend against or work against.
00:31:19:10 - 00:31:38:13
Aaron Marks
If that enemy disappears, what happens to your dynamic? So it in that frame, it makes sense to share certain information with your enemy just so that they can stay your enemy. Because if they disappear, that's a whole nother cascade of consequences that you have to think about to go with it. And I call it a self licking ice cream cone.
00:31:38:15 - 00:31:58:08
Aaron Marks
It's an argument that kind of keeps itself going. There's no real way to work around it, and it can challenge your philosophy. It can challenge your worldview. But in in an oversimplified way, it all comes down to consequence management. What are the consequences of your decisions? Are you aware of them? Are you able to respond to them, or are you just reacting to them?
00:31:58:08 - 00:32:05:00
Aaron Marks
And that that boils down, as I said in my mind, just a consequence management, that contingency consideration.
00:32:05:02 - 00:32:33:24
Kyle King
Yeah, that's very interesting. And I think if anybody's listening to the podcast and they have ideas or have examples of where they've integrated consequence management into their work, that's love to hear. And just to see what models people are using and how they're implementing consequence management into their workflows and city state levels where those authorities remain. And I think it to to to your point, also on authorities and we've come back to this is overall for the most part, like the emergency management community is good about sharing information, right?
00:32:34:01 - 00:32:54:12
Kyle King
But at the same time that the real challenge is that exactly what you're saying? If we use it, if we share that information, it goes up to somebody of authority or the decision makers, then do they want to share the information? That's an entirely different question, right? So in the emergency management community amongst peers, people share information. They talk about lessons learned like that's well known.
00:32:54:12 - 00:33:15:07
Kyle King
But to your point exactly. The authority issue comes into play. Who has the authority to release information or who has the authority to convey things immediately after a disaster? We don't always have? Just to support your point. It was like those people that are making those decisions have their own motivations for what they do sometimes are not the most humane motivations.
00:33:15:07 - 00:33:31:01
Kyle King
They do have their motivations. And that's one of the key things that we have to work on is on the information sharing and understanding that there are exactly what we're talking about. There's going to be fallout from our decisions. There's going to be there's going to be cascading effects from the decisions that we take in the solutions we implement.
00:33:31:03 - 00:34:04:03
Kyle King
So I think one of the things I want to ask you is really throughout your career, because we've talked a lot about the international work, about with NATO, about working with local actors and even examples from different fields of practice, from medicine like Ebola and, and emergency management and CPR in but throughout your sort of career. So thus far in working in this field of consequence management or what has been like one of the most unexpected lessons that you've learned or that you've seen and identified in terms of effectively managing consequences from our decisions?
00:34:04:05 - 00:34:43:03
Aaron Marks
I think the most dramatic one that I've learned is that if the responders don't actively predict and manage the consequences, the people that they're helping will step in and do it for themselves. In an emergency management or first response, we're told that we're coming in and we're rescuing people. We're saving people that need our help. And consequence management has disproven that for me, because I've seen in several conditions there situations, people that we thought were going to be victims or who needed to be rescued if it took too long, or if it wasn't done in the way that they were comfortable with.
00:34:43:04 - 00:35:05:20
Aaron Marks
They basically said, to hell with it, we're going to do it ourselves. And they stepped in and and addressed the immediate threat that that created a whole nother cascade of consequences afterwards. But it's that immediate focus. If you get into the mindset that, hey, I'm a superhero, I'm going to save everybody, but it's going to take me ten days because I need to get all the pieces in place.
00:35:06:00 - 00:35:45:07
Aaron Marks
After three days, the people who you think you're going to be saving are going to save themselves because they don't want to wait anymore. They've gotten to the point where they're willing to take the risk, or they're willing to accept the cost of self-motivation, of self activation. And I've seen that in terms of physical threats, we saw that with hurricanes and floods, I've seen that in terms of debris management and recovery concerns, I've seen it in terms of businesses, in terms of market share and revenue and brand that basically, if you take too long, if you take too long to start managing the consequences actively, then the people you think you're supporting are going to
00:35:45:07 - 00:36:07:06
Aaron Marks
do it themselves. They're not going to they're not just going to wait and let you get there. And that's resulted in some amazing organizations, at least here in the United States, that the Cajun Navy team Rubicon, which is now an international organization, they came out of a place where people said something needs to be done. We have resources.
00:36:07:06 - 00:36:26:10
Aaron Marks
We are being asked to do it by the powers that be. So we're going to do it ourselves and take care of our neighbors. And it's just growing from there. So yeah, consequence management has taught me that people won't wait to be people will only wait so long to be rescued or to be saved. And it's a it's a pretty surprise mindset change.
00:36:26:10 - 00:36:32:18
Aaron Marks
Or at least it was when I first experienced it. But I think it's going to be true pretty much wherever you go.
00:36:32:20 - 00:36:59:21
Kyle King
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because that actually supports on the points. And I'm speaking about next week, which is, I guess, the best way I could frame it is the managed retreat of public service and public service being provided during a crisis. So you're seeing that manager retreat of the insurance industry saying that we it's too much for us the way it's too expensive, we can't insure California and whatever the cases, and you're seeing the managed retreat of setting expectations from the government level.
00:36:59:22 - 00:37:19:00
Kyle King
Okay, we go from 48 hours to 72 hours to, who knows, a week, ten days, two weeks before somebody shows up. And to your point exactly, if we're making these decisions that we're communicating that, then what is the population do then obviously then the effects of that decision, the consequences of that decision are that people will just do things themselves.
00:37:19:02 - 00:37:47:13
Kyle King
So then alternatively, like you're saying, if you're red teaming, you can't come back and be mad about that because your decision led to that action, which led to further on cascading, cascading effects. And so it is quite interesting, and I think a prime example of exactly what you're talking about is as long as we're starting to set expectations about what the government will provide in terms of service delivery and and public safety and things like that before, during and after a disaster that shapes the nature of our relationship.
00:37:47:13 - 00:37:52:24
Kyle King
And we have to give that serious consideration in terms of what are the impacts of these decisions?
00:37:53:01 - 00:38:23:01
Aaron Marks
Absolutely. If what what we're seeing and with your example of the insurance companies, that's a prime argument around this. If you choose to live in a high risk area where you have accepted that level of risk, the insurance company isn't forced to accept it. It's not a right. It's not something that's guaranteed to you and the government or the powers to be are enabling that by through building codes or zoning regulations, by allowing people to behave in risky manner, in a risky way.
00:38:23:03 - 00:38:50:23
Aaron Marks
And the insurance companies are going just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it. And we're not going to or we're not going to finance it. And that's a whole nother that's a whole nother. Yeah, I call it an adult beverage conversation because that goes all the way through people taking responsibility for their own decisions and acknowledging the potential consequences of those decisions, and recognizing that other people aren't going to take responsibility for.
00:38:51:00 - 00:39:11:01
Kyle King
Yeah, definitely. And we've just really been talking about institutional responsibility, not necessarily personal responsibility. And you're right, that's a whole nother sort of conversation as well as we talk about preparedness and civilian readiness to be able to prepare and respond and recover from disasters. But anyway, that's a whole nother conversation. But anyway, Aaron, I just want to thank you again for joining us on the Crisis Lab podcast.
00:39:11:01 - 00:39:32:22
Kyle King
Been an interesting discussion. I'd like to see a lot more conversations about how we are actually managing the effects of our decisions, and looking at the consequences of these decisions, and identifying cascade effects. If anybody is listening and you're out there and you just want to give us some ideas and let us know how you're addressing these things, certainly reach out and let me know, and we'll certainly carry on the conversation.
00:39:32:24 - 00:39:34:24
Kyle King
Aaron, thanks a lot for joining us today.
00:39:35:01 - 00:39:42:13
Aaron Marks
I thank you, sir. And absolutely, I would love to hear how other people are looking at the same challenges. And that could be a fun panel somewhere.
00:39:42:15 - 00:40:01:15
Kyle King
Absolutely looking forward to it. That's all the time we have for today. Again, huge thanks to our guest, Mr. Aaron Marks, for sharing his knowledge and experience as we discuss consequence management and to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to the Chrysler Podcast. We hope that today's episode has provided you with some new insights and perspectives to better navigate the challenges of your field.
00:40:01:15 - 00:40:25:18
Kyle King
Remember, each episode is a step towards mastering the complexities of crisis management, and we're here to share that knowledge and support you along the way. If you're not subscribed already, however, head over to your preferred platform, hit subscribe and keep up to date with our latest episodes or more resources. And to become part of the 17,000 professionals following Crisis Lab, head over to Crisis Lab DiDio and make sure that you follow us on social media such as LinkedIn and YouTube.
00:40:25:20 - 00:40:45:16
Kyle King
And lastly, have you heard about the All Access Pass? It's the opportunity to lock in your pricing for 2024. You'll get 20 accredited courses released during the year, along with ten Siu's and a NATO Certificate in Crisis Management and Disaster Response. If you attend our NATO course. So lock in your costs now and the prices go up every single year.
00:40:45:18 - 00:40:59:18
Kyle King
So until next time, stay prepared, stay resilient and let's continue to make a difference together. Thanks for listening.
