Kyle King: [00:00:00] When a complex crisis strikes, leadership is tested. Decisions must be made in seconds. And the right call can mean the difference between disaster and resilience. So are you really ready for the moment when everything is on the line? Welcome to Season 4 of the Crisis Led Podcast, the show where we break down the toughest challenges in crisis management, emergency response, and risk leadership.
Kyle King: And with every episode, we go beyond the headlines, dissecting real world complex crisis with those who were on the front lines. That includes leaders, decision makers, and experts who've navigated unprecedented challenges and lived to tell the story. This season, we're pushing the boundaries. From cybersecurity threats that can cripple entire nations, to high stakes disaster response, and the unseen risks lurking in global supply chains.
Kyle King: Season 4 is all about new frontiers of complex crisis leadership. We're bringing you The exclusive interviews with top emergency planners, intelligence insiders, and world class strategists who will reveal what it really takes to prepare for, respond to, [00:01:00] and recover from a complex crisis. But that's not all.
Kyle King: So if you lead, manage risk, or simply want to understand how the world stays standing when everything falls apart, then this season is for you. So hit subscribe, follow us on your favorite podcast platform, and join us as we pull back the curtain on the world of complex crisis leadership. Because in a crisis, knowledge isn't just power, it's survival All right, everybody. Welcome to the Chrysler Lab Podcast. My name is Kyle and I'll be your host. And today we are going to explore the idea of design thinking and human centered design thinking. And in order to do that, we're bringing Rick Fernandez on the show today. And he's going to unpack this topic a little bit more for us and explain how this can help us improve our Planning processes, our community resilience and our overall organizational resilience. So rick, welcome to the show.
Rick Fernandez: Thank you so much. Great to be here.
Kyle King: So, As we start to unpack this topic a little bit more, by the time this podcast is out, we're gonna be launching your course on crisis lab.
Kyle King: And I would just like to maybe [00:02:00] start out 1st with. Who you are and your background, and then we can start unpacking this topic a little bit more.
Rick Fernandez: Yeah. The listening audience, I am Rick Fernandez. I'm currently based in D. C. My career has taken some twists and turns. I started my career working at the U.
Rick Fernandez: S. Department of justice. working on international police assistance programs. Then in what I like to refer to the core of my career, I did AmeriCorps and I had the wonderful opportunity to talk to New York City based faith communities to help them get better prepared for disasters. That led into a wonderful five years with the New York City Emergency Management Department where I was a planner with the human services team.
Rick Fernandez: Then I took a look at my career. And thought well, I've done interagency work when I was at the Department of Justice because our programs were international and therefore they were funded by the U. S. Agency for International Development or the State Department. At [00:03:00] the Justice Department, always working with people from the U.
Rick Fernandez: S. Agency for International Development or the State Department at my time at the New York City Emergency Management Department. I was. A public sector nonprofit sector partnership person, because I was from the government, the public sector, but I need to work with New York City, voluntary organizations, active in disaster member organizations.
Rick Fernandez: I had about 30 different nonprofit partners that I needed to interact with. So I knew from early on in my career, I knew government to government agency partnerships. At New York City EM, I knew government to nonprofit partnerships and I asked myself if I really want to have impact in the world. I really need to start looking at.
Rick Fernandez: The private sector, and then I thought who are the people that are easiest for me to start working with or thinking about how to work with? And it came to me, corporate social responsibility offices and corporations, social entrepreneurs [00:04:00] who blend.
Rick Fernandez: You know, Bringing market forces to bear on what we normally think, at least in the US is nonprofit sector problems, right? Social impact investing, social impact bonds. And I. took a certificate program on that led to a wonderful capstone project in Nairobi, Kenya, where I got to scout out social enterprises for possible investment that transitioned to some time at IBM where I worked on 1 of the largest international corporate volunteer programs in the world.
Rick Fernandez: And then after that, I missed. Response, so I did some international humanitarian time in South Sudan. So the main threads through that winding career is partnerships. Getting different types of people to work together and when you get interested in those things, you very quickly land on design thinking, because it's a process that brings together that focuses on bringing together people with different skill sets [00:05:00] and different minds in order to address common problems.
Kyle King: Yeah, thanks for that overview. And it sounds, very much like a wide and diverse career and set of experiences that brought you to this point today, which is really focusing on design thinking and how we apply that to crisis and emergency management. So I would just start off because I, it probably helped us to clarify a couple of quick points.
Kyle King: So there's that design thinking aspect, which is really at least in my current understanding, associated more with sort of product innovation, tech innovation space as well. And then in the course, and also what your experience has been really centered around, human centered design thinking and its application towards a lot of your work.
Kyle King: So just a quick overview of your perspective on human centered design thinking. And how does this apply to a lot of the work that, we do and others do that are listening in terms of maybe emergency management and planning or if they're in the nonprofit space or whatever the case is.
Rick Fernandez: Right off the bat design thinking is always, writ large, design thinking is always focused on the end user. Like you said, it [00:06:00] comes out of, the private sector. It always thinking about the end user. So the customer that's going to receive your product human centered design, which is extremely related and very similar.
Rick Fernandez: And there's lots of overlap. Is following a similar process, but actively engaging those people a little bit more directly. In design thinking, you start with thinking about who you're trying to serve. And in human centered design, you're actively doing interviews and that type of thing. But for the most part, at least for this conversation, we can use those 2 things interchangeably.
Rick Fernandez: Now, how design thinking relates to military planning, humanitarian planning, development planning, and emergency management planning is that key word. Planning, right? In each one of those disciplines. If you're a planner, you need to think about who's affected by this problem. How are they affected by this problem?
Rick Fernandez: What can I do [00:07:00] to alleviate that problem? How do we get a simple version of that problem? To a point where we can test it. And then once we've tested it, how do we change it enough so that it's ready so that we can deliver that solution. And then once we deliver that solution. That's when the real work begins, because then you have real world feedback on that solution, because the people you're trying to serve have actually received your solution and they can say, this is our experience with the solution you developed.
Rick Fernandez: I like to think of design thinking as a secondary planning language that any planner can use. And that if all of us. Learn that 2nd language, then we'll be able to plan with each other without abandoning or replacing our structured planning processes that we've been trained on in each 1 of our disciplines.
Kyle King: That was actually addressing my next question as we continue this conversation, which is, it sounds at least on the surface, [00:08:00] people might confuse that as being okay. This needs to replace our planning process. And you're saying it's more of a an overlay or a type of supplemental process that we have along with the regular planning that we're doing.
Rick Fernandez: Yes, exactly right. The design thinking process has 5 steps. You empathize with the end user or the recipient of your product or service, you define what their problem is, right? Then you ideate. That's a fancy way of saying you come up with possible solutions. Then you prototype those solutions, right?
Rick Fernandez: And then you test those prototypes. In each 1 of our planning, in the planning disciplines that we mentioned before, everybody does it. You know, When a military planner or humanitarian planner, emergency management planner or development planner takes the jargon out of what they do to explain it to a family member at a gathering.
Rick Fernandez: It's going to sound a lot like design thinking. Right so [00:09:00] again, design thinking shouldn't replace your processes. Each field has developed those processes based on its subject matter expertise. The mission that each 1 of those institutions has. Leave it alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I think military professionals, development professionals, humanitarian professionals, and you could argue that emergency management professionals.
Rick Fernandez: Getting different types of experts to work together is emergency management, right? If that's the job, right? Then you need to find a way. To get them to work together. And design thinking can be one of those ways. In addition to just augmenting your already rigorous structured planning processes that you already have in your own institutions.
Kyle King: So that's interesting in the aspect. So I hear what you're saying. And I think that there's right or wrong in the world of emergency management. Today. [00:10:00] We do a lot of capability based planning. We look at how can we respond? There's a heavy emphasis on response, which tends to be fast, structured, decisive and things like that.
Kyle King: But design thinking on the other hand really emphasizes what you were saying, sort of these iterations, the plans, the discussions, and this all sounds contradictory to a fast moving response to a disaster or a crisis. How do these work together? At the end of the day, how are you selling somebody?
Kyle King: I guess I would say who is so focused on response we need to take a step back and look at how we integrate this human centered design thinking.
Rick Fernandez: So design thinking can be inserted into your planning process. So one, it doesn't replace it. As we said before, the other thing is that, you're not always doing response, even though your responder, response elements have planning cells.
Rick Fernandez: That are developing plans prior to crisis. So you can certainly and that's when you are deliberate planning process is used in your own [00:11:00] agency. So any deliberate planning process pre crisis, however you want to define it, the planning that you do before the bad thing you're planning against actually occurs.
Rick Fernandez: Whenever you're doing that, you have time to insert design elements of design thinking into your process immediately upon a crisis occurring. There is, of course, a period of time where rapid decisions need to be made. Right? Life safety issues need to be addressed. Critical life survival needs need to be met.
Rick Fernandez: Right? After that point,
Rick Fernandez: responses, not recovery yet, but responses stabilized to a point where today looks a lot like yesterday and you're pretty sure tomorrow is going to look a lot like today. That's when you have time to use design thinking within your own planning to iterate on your ongoing operations. And then for, when [00:12:00] you starting for recovery, and you have to answer the question when you know, when you start recovery planning, you have to start by answering the question, what does fixed look like? Everybody agrees everything's broken or a significant amount of things were broken. Otherwise, it wouldn't be an emergency. What is fixed look like? And you better have a wide stakeholder base. In order to define that. Otherwise, you're going to have several problems.
Rick Fernandez: You're going to have political problems. You're going to have implementation problems. You're going to have continual discussions over about resource allocations. I think only in that narrow initial parts of a crisis where life safety operations need to be adapted and life sustaining operations that meet survival needs are ongoing.
Rick Fernandez: Only in that sliver of time, which I think we give a little bit too much of mental headspace to, because I think it's shorter in [00:13:00] reality than we, like to think it is only in that space. Maybe, maybe you don't use design thinking, but in that sliver of time, there is, emergency action planning.
there are planning cycles, And you do need to talk to people in order to do that specific type of rapid planning. So. You know, and I, I Do know of an organization that's operating in the Ukraine that is using human centered design that is even more collaborative, more deliberate than.
Rick Fernandez: Pure design thinking, so in the context of a war, human centered design, the more. Interactive the more time consuming form of design thinking is being applied. So. There's always going to be a need for haste. There's always going to be a need for decisive operations, but. To the extent that we have time to plan and plan rationally and deliberately with a lot of different partners.
Rick Fernandez: When, you have space to [00:14:00] plan that way, you have space to. Incorporate design thinking elements into your already existing planning processes.
Kyle King: I think you hit the nail on the head when you're saying, what is right actually look like what is fixed? I think you said, right?
Kyle King: So what is fixed? And that you need to have a wide stakeholder base in order to be fixed, quote unquote, right? Whatever fixed looks like and I think it's interesting because you can't force fixed solutions, right? Because they're not sustainable either. So there has to be an engagement with your base, your communities, your people that you're taking care of if you are in that response phase and what I see is.
Kyle King: As I listen to you explaining this and the methodology behind human centered design thinking is that really I could see 2 sort of critical areas where there's some friction. I'll just put it that way. 1 is really in probably organizational culture. And then I think also in terms of organizational structures and so organizational culture saying this is just too slow and, it'll take so much of our time to go [00:15:00] talk to people.
Kyle King: I can just immediately feel that sort of reaction from having been in this space for a while. And then on the organizational culture side, I could see that, you know, especially if we're talking about military aspects and, or humanitarian operations with the military, it's a very.
Kyle King: Fixed structure, hierarchical and very structured in its environment. So where design thinking, generally Thrives in more open collaborative settings. I guess I would say so. How do you Navigate both of these tensions one in the culture side of like don't want to wait sort of spend my time engaging and listening to a thousand people, which, that's not necessarily what you would do, but, okay. We'll just use that as an example for this purposes of this discussion. But then, and then also the organizational hierarchy sort of restrictions and structure.
Rick Fernandez: So, the military emergency management, right there are deliberate.
Rick Fernandez: Planning processes that already, as an intrinsic part of those processes brings different experts [00:16:00] together, right? The only difference is, how are we defining who's in and who's out, right?
Rick Fernandez: They wear uniforms, even though it's slightly different from mine, right? In the military case, is it joint, branches of the same national military or combined, elements of, Different national militaries, right? That's That's their only question.
Rick Fernandez: Maybe their operations officers has responsibilities that are plans officer does, you know, I'm talking about, military staff. Maybe that's different, but we can get it right. The reason why they don't think of those people as other is because the processes are similar.
Rick Fernandez: So that's why I'm advocating for design thinking being a separate secondary planning language that can be common to all different types of planners. No one's asking any professional to not be an exemplar of their profession. Just saying, okay, for the people that are outside of the boundaries of who I consider the people I can work with, how do I create a secondary perimeter?[00:17:00]
Rick Fernandez: Where I can meet that person and from another profession and work with them, right? So what's the middle ground? The common planning space that we can work together and what's the common language that we can use when we're working together, even though we're from different professions and are fluent in our own jargons, but maybe only speak Jargon from the other professions, right? But your question does hint on something you know, things move at the speed of trust, right? So it does take time. I hate this term, but the time suck is developing the relationships so that you can call somebody and bring them into a meeting so that you can plan together.
Rick Fernandez: You can't cold call somebody and expect them to do that. You can hope, but you can't expect them to do it in any sort of mechanistic way. One of the first emergency management outages the old salty dogs Tommy was. This is when we also had business cards because everything was hard copy.
Rick Fernandez: You don't want to be exchanging business cards for the first time during the response, [00:18:00] right? If you're at an incident site and there's somebody that you can work with that you need to work with in order to, conduct the response and you're just meeting them for the first time and you need to, exchange business cards, chances are, you didn't plan well enough.
Rick Fernandez: You gotta develop those relationships. Maybe if not the people in theater, at least, my home office has talked to your home office. And now that we're in the host nation, we can work together. So I think that speaks to the culture side on the organization side, inter organization inter. Entity collaboration does take place, right? It takes place in Simics. It takes place in emergency operations centers. It takes place in, the context of a peacekeeping mission where there's military police, civilian and humanitarian elements, all part of the same organizational structures.
Rick Fernandez: On the organization side, if your boss creates a structure [00:19:00] for you to interrelate with people from other organizations. That collaboration can take place. So I think your question points to the two stumbling blocks. And I think your question also points to the fact that, we figured out how to have different types of organization talk to each other and work together at speed, right?
Rick Fernandez: Because, each one of the communities that we're talking about has learned how to do that. If not hosting, then at least collaborating in those spaces. The biggest limiting factor to collaboration is the trust, is the, how do we trust people enough to view them in a way that they can help us with our planning and we can help them with theirs and we can work on solutions that maybe not fully integrated, but do support each other.
Kyle King: Hey, just a quick break to remind you that the toughest decisions don't come with a warning. The people who handle them best are the ones who prepare in advance. At Crisis Lab, we explore how professionals across the various different sectors [00:20:00] think ahead, manage risk, and make sound decisions under pressure.
Kyle King: Get ahead of the next challenge. Check out crisislab. io today.
Kyle King: I think you hit on a good point, which was that, you know, if they plan like us then we're more familiar with them. And then we probably have an accelerated rate of trust with them because we understand their planning process and that trust, the speed of trust is obviously, I think, critically important.
Kyle King: We've been seeing more of this trust factor coming up, post hurricane Milton and other sort of more complex disasters that have happened recently in the US where trust has become a question. Regardless of perspective on it, it's just it's now been introduced as a factor that we have to plan for.
Kyle King: I guess I'll just put it that way. But, this is where. I can also see there's a bit of a comment, or I think there's a perspective that would exist when I hear you explain the process and how we. Layer this into our existing planning and our day to day operations and have community engagement and working with a lot of partners.
Kyle King: And you [00:21:00] ultimately will get to a point of where you say, okay, I've done that. And what I have identified is that they all have different priorities. They all have different processes, just like we were talking about. So how do I balance, you know, in this process? Everybody's different organizational needs.
Kyle King: You mentioned that you were working with different organizations and coordinating the largest donor sort of. sectors within the private sector. How are you balancing? Or what are the insights you have about balancing priorities across multiple organizations to try and achieve, a certain common outcomes when everybody has their own limitations at the end of the day and their own processes that you have to contend with?
Rick Fernandez: That question points to a very large scale, but I think the dynamics are, true of even a small scale, right? Those dynamics. Between, how do we get, the African Union to collaborate with different elements of the United Nations and the international humanitarian sector?
Rick Fernandez: And oh, by the way, in the [00:22:00] place that they're trying to operate together is seen as a frontier market by some of the major corporations on the planet. So they want to get their corporate social responsibility programming involved somehow. Right. Like, how do we get all these people to work together? Because they sort of want similar things. They're going to be operating in the same space and everything they do affects everything everybody else does. Right. That's true at that level, but it's also true at. You know, The Sunday Church potluck special event, right?
Rick Fernandez: Collaboration is hard. I don't think you can have too many modes, modalities, strategies for collaboration. The more the merrier. I think what design thinking offers as far as trust building, people trust you if they know you've Not only heard them, but listen to them.
Rick Fernandez: That doesn't necessarily mean do what they say, but you've [00:23:00] internalized how they are defining their problem to enough where you can repeat your conceptualization of their problem to them and their eyes open up and say, yes, you've heard me.
Rick Fernandez: That can get you a long way towards collaboration. And then, once you have enough of a defined big problem, right, then you can start steering towards it. You're not going to get the level of details of 2 blocks, make a right then make a left and then look up.
Rick Fernandez: You're going to see X. You're going to get, we're all generally heading east together for this survey for the foreseeable future. And you've all defined ways where we don't get in each other's way. And we all help each other as necessary along the way as well. 1 part of, or let me put it this way.
Rick Fernandez: 1 of the things that I like to think about this stuff is. That, partnership is never easy. It's a [00:24:00] practice. But you need to know what you want out of a partnership, what your specific needs are, right? And then you need to be sensitive to your potential partners interests, needs, and boundaries.
Rick Fernandez: What are they trying to achieve? What do they need to achieve it? And what are the lines, if crossed, will kill the partnership? So you stay within their boundaries, right? You try to be sensitive to what they need. And you try to develop, a partnership that's mutually beneficial.
Rick Fernandez: And, doing that between two partners is challenging. Doing that between multiple partners in the same room can get very complex, but it takes a lot of facilitation and a lot of nurturing, but it can be done. And, like I said before, are the different fields that we're discussing have created structures where we can at least have a space to do that.
Rick Fernandez: If the EOC is the physical or virtual space where all agencies can pile into and start talking to each other. Design thinking is the [00:25:00] intellectual space where different experts can talk to each other and come up with. Joint solutions.
Kyle King: Okay. So we've. Dived into sort of the human aspect a bit. I want to shift the conversation a little bit over towards the integration of technology, because I don't think we can just dismiss technology overall in terms of the impact it's going to have and really, all that we do. So evolution of AI, analytics, predictive analytics, digital sort of crisis management tools.
Kyle King: You mentioned EOCs and how the use of technology is enhancing all of that. So how do you see, you design thinking evolving with the integration of technology.
Rick Fernandez: Well, design thinking, design generally and design thinking specifically, is always evolving because creative minds flock to things like design thinking, right?
Rick Fernandez: Designers are creative types. So they're always bringing in new elements or rediscovering [00:26:00] things that were used in the past that maybe have fallen out of fashion. So design and design think that's always going to evolve naturally. I think there's a big overlap between, the types of people we're talking about and pure designers, just, the way they operate intellectually.
Rick Fernandez: I think I'm going to be entering some dangerous waters because it's a civilian quoting Clausewitz, but I think in Clausewitz on war, he says command resides within the domain of the creative or something like that, right? Design is going to evolve because creative people like to Add to what they do and how they do it planners are the same way.
Rick Fernandez: I think junior emergency managers, they love emergency management. They love the emergency of emergency management, right? But they get older and they get more experienced. And then they realize emergency management is rooted in the 2nd, part of it, the management.
Rick Fernandez: On their bookshelf early on in their career, [00:27:00] it's mostly after action reviews and different reports on different capabilities that are coming down the line and ICS this and FEMA that. And then more and more, management consulters like Jim Collins, or books what was a kind of cult classic in an emergency managers was the checklist manifesto, you start seeing books like that.
Rick Fernandez: Stuff's going to evolve, right? Because. Designers and planners are rapidly evolutionary beings, right? They're always looking for the new thing. What's the new thing that, can help me do my job better? And how do I apply it? And how do I read your grid?
Rick Fernandez: How do I translate it? They're both doing that. So whether it's AI or another tool, they're going to be doing that, right? I'm going to tip my hat to the younger generations. I just slam them for it. Maybe not evolving quick enough to the point where they start studying management books more and after actions, but 1 of the things that they are light years ahead of me on is, the adaptation of new types of technology, whether it's or anything else.
Rick Fernandez: [00:28:00] Right. What you have is, digital natives coming into fields that require design and planning. So those 2 things. Are not going to be separate. They're going to be braided because they're already integrated inside those people. In the same way that I can't say to 1 of those people say, how does your right arm work for you work with your left.
Rick Fernandez: The question is absurd to that person, right? They're like, you know. above a certain age. That question, like, how are you integrating technology into what you do that? That question only makes sense for a person above a certain age below a certain age. So, like, I use technology fluidly.
Rick Fernandez: And without thinking in everything I do so. planning and. You know, My job is part of the everything I do. So I don't understand your question. So those folks will inherit more of our jobs and rightfully so. and I'm glad because I don't have to answer.
Rick Fernandez: I won't have to answer that [00:29:00] specific question and how I do things. They'll help me.
Kyle King: Yeah, I think that's hilarious. I think you hit a lot of really good points there. especially on the. Being digitally integrated by the time you get to a field and practice emergency management.
Kyle King: It is hilarious though. You're talking about you're in love with the emergency of emergency management, and you still see it's pretty still. It is pretty pervasive throughout the community and recently we had a lot of discussions around the idea of what would the world look like if response wasn't even necessary.
Kyle King: And it just it's complete reframing of what you do focus on when you first start your career because I came out of the emergency services and was, was in love with the idea of response and getting a call and then now that you're at a point in your career, when you grow into different ideas and get more exposure and more experience, you start to say, maybe we don't even need to respond at all.
Kyle King: What would that world look like?
Kyle King: With better design, better communities, better architecture, better codes and standards, is response itself. Just a indication of failure.
Kyle King: Right, [00:30:00] right.
Rick Fernandez: Right.
Kyle King: And so this is where it starts to become more interesting to what you're talking about.
Rick Fernandez: And, the, true professionals know how to do things with grace and without a lot of energy expenditure, right? That's the highest level of mastery when you can have the same effects with minimal, energy expenditure and reduce, level of activity, right?
Rick Fernandez: That's what true mastery is. And I think that's what You know, at their heart, emergency managers and military planners and certainly humanitarians and development professionals want, right? We want these impacts, right? And we want to have a positive impact because each one of those people are service minded folks.
Rick Fernandez: I think you're really insightful saying that, Do we want to serve, or do we want to be of service? Because if it's about our serving, maybe we're not being as much service as possible, right? Because if our serving means you're suffering, then maybe I'm not going to explore solutions where I'm not needed, right?
Rick Fernandez: If that's truly [00:31:00] what I'm about the act of serving, then maybe I'm waiting for that bell to ring, right? And maybe I'm not pushing, Things not to happen. So the bell doesn't ring, right? But that, oddly enough, looks like you're not doing anything when you make things that way, right?
Rick Fernandez: But that's the highest form of service because, then people aren't affected. I think that's a wonderful quality. I think that's the most human quality that any human being can have.
Rick Fernandez: But we can't get addicted to it. And we can't be afraid of working ourselves out of a role. If that means a better outcome and better impact for the communities we care about.
Kyle King: That's a great way to wrap up the show today. Thanks, Rick, for joining us. I think it was very insightful, very sort of poignant conversation that we're having today, especially around human centered design thinking.
Kyle King: And really appreciate you being here. And thanks a lot. And if anybody is interested, you can check out Rick's course on Crisis Lab. It's launching pretty soon. And then, how can anybody get in touch LinkedIn the best way?
Rick Fernandez: [00:32:00] Yeah, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best way. And, just reach out. I have grown to not be a fan of the unsolicited.
Rick Fernandez: Please let's connect. Please put a like linkedin says itself. You get more connection requests favorably responded to if you actually put a note. So please put a note. And I think from our time together, you can sense that I love to talk. So if you're chatting with me, I'll be chatting with you.
Rick Fernandez: And if you think I can help you in any way serve others or as we've just landed on be of service to each other not just serve Then i'll certainly do my best to help out
Kyle King: All right, that sounds great rick and thanks again for joining us and to everybody else Have a great day, and we'll see you on the next podcast.
Rick Fernandez: Thanks so much
