"Quiet in the TOC!”
If you've ever worked in a Tactical Operations Center (TOC) in the military, you've probably heard the phrase, "Quiet in the TOC." It's usually shouted and has the effect of immediately silencing everyone present. This is typically followed by a high-ranking officer asking questions or delivering a vital message.
This practice is common in the military, where shouting at a subordinate, maybe even throwing in a mild dressing-down, comes without repercussions from HR. However, this is difficult to implement in a commercial setting. Yelling at employees might lead to many complaints, hurt feelings, and misunderstandings that no leader wants to deal with.
During a crisis, clear communication and the ability to identify critical information is of utmost importance. This is why the military has standardized the practice of subtly telling everyone to 'shut up' in all of their TOCs. Analysts and leaders have to sift through a vast amount of data to find what is relevant for decision-making, which can potentially impact lives or deaths. Therefore, the need for a clear and concise flow of information is crucial in such situations.
As a consultant who has dealt with various crises in the past, I can confirm that the amount of data that comes up during a crisis can be overwhelming. Based on my experience, most of the information that comes up during and before an event, like a country-wide evacuation, is irrelevant. The decision points that are identified as crucial often require a very specific piece of information, which can be hard to find if you are not prepared.
To make decisions rapidly, it is crucial for leaders to do a few things prior to a crisis:
Filter your feeds: When making critical decisions, it is important to monitor and sort through relevant information. Analysts and watch officers can achieve this by creating data streams from various sources, such as social media feeds based on a particular location, paid data streams from professional firms, or internal collaborations where employees can report their observations. It is important to vet and filter these feeds to ensure that the information received is credible and useful.
It is essential to identify filters for data streams before any event. If an event occurs, the data feed will quickly become full. With the increase in data sources and platforms for viewing that data, it is easy to become sidetracked by irrelevant and false information, often purposely introduced to distract. Therefore, it is important to filter the data stream accurately to ensure that only relevant and accurate information is received.
Develop a clear communications plan: A systematic process for delivering vetted and relevant data is crucial for any organization, regardless of size. Often, during an incident, everyone in the company seems to become an expert analyst, identifying a piece of information they believe is critical for the leaders to know.
However, analysts and leaders might waste their precious time chasing down false leads without a clear vetting and communication process. This could lead to making decisions that may put people in danger instead of mitigating the risk.
Create a source vetting process and stick to it: Never rely on information from a single source when making important decisions, even if the source is generally trustworthy. Everyone has biases and can make mistakes, including the creators of AI-powered sources. Therefore, it's important to use multiple intelligence sources from different fields when making decisions that could impact life safety. To ensure accuracy, identify the specific indicators you are looking for and verify them through as many sources as possible.
Pro tip: Many mainstream news outlets receive their news stories from freelance journalists at the event's location and then disseminate that story to affiliate media outlets worldwide. It's worth noting that a news story shared on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, or any other news channel can still come from a single source and may not be thoroughly verified (as we have seen recently with the increase in retractions).
Check your personal and organizational bias: If you tend to accept new information without questioning it, it's important to seek out a different perspective and carefully consider it. The prevalence of biases in decision-making processes has led many organizations to make poor choices. When it comes to safety decisions, there's no room for ambiguity. Making the wrong decision can have devastating consequences.
Our organization has been using the formula mentioned above for many years, which has helped us avoid emergency evacuations for our clients, although our competitors and new customers reach out to us often for help in getting their people out during a crisis. We have successfully identified potential threats ahead of time and given early warnings to our clients. Our clients trust us because we have a high success rate and consistently follow our process.
It's important not to lose sight of your objectives due to information overload. Always verify your sources, clearly communicate through established lines, and check your biases to avoid potential crises and ensure your clients' or employees' safety and productivity.