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Leadership in Routine Emergencies and Crises: the Deepwater Horizon

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Leadership in Routine Emergencies and Crises: the Deepwater Horizon Leadership in Routine Emergencies and Crises The Deepwater Horizon incident by DR. ARNOLD M. HOWITT Faculty Co-Director, Program on Crisis Leadership Harvard Kennedy School DR. HERMAN B. LEONARD MR. DAVID W. GILES Faculty Co-Director, Program on Crisis Leadership Associate Director, Program on Crisis Leadership Harvard Kennedy School Harvard Kennedy School Leadership in emergencies is a crucial element of becom- Most importantly, leaders prepare by framing plans to ing a high-performing Coast Guard officer. In this article, avert, minimize, or respond to routine emergency events. we argue that emergency leadership is not a single skill They train, equip, and exercise individual responders so or uniform set of organizational competences. Instead, we they will be ready when needed. They devise coordination identify a spectrum of emergency situations, ranging from methods and practice implementation of response tactics. what we will call “routine emergencies” through “crises,” They also strategically station critical resources—people, differentiated by increasing degrees of novelty in the emer- equipment, supplies—in appropriate places so a response gency challenge.1 Leaders and their organizations must can be launched rapidly. In turn, when an emergency actu- develop capacities for managing in both types of situations. ally arises, responders can deploy resources effectively. Over time, societies have developed specialized orga- Ideally, over time and through repeated occurrences, orga- nizations to deal with emergencies, including emergency nizations, leaders, and individual responders develop expe- management, police, firefighters, emergency medical tech- rience with many types of emergencies and become highly nicians, and emergency medicine. By far the most common proficient in handling them. form of emergency they face is what we have elsewhere termed “routine” emergencies. 2 These situations are not Excellence in Routine Emergencies necessarily small in any sense. In fact, they may be quite What constitutes excellence in responding to routine emer- large and dangerous. We call them routine because these gencies? hazards can be anticipated, even when their timing, scale, Effective preparedness includes a robust set of con- and precise location cannot be predicted. Routine emergen- tingency plans for anticipated scenarios, combined with cies occur frequently enough that organizations can frame people who have strong training, skills, practice, and actual and inform expectations about future incidents. operational experience. Coordination methods are well It is this degree of predictability that allows society to established and drilled. When routine emergencies occur, prepare in advance and thereby reduce the harm that such responders know what factors matter and therefore what emergencies might otherwise cause. This is highly impor- to look for. As they determine what they are facing, they tant because the vast majority of emergencies that arise are typically trigger standard operating procedures that all routine in this sense. experienced personnel have practiced, and often employed, The professionalization of emergency services over the before. Of course, any emergency has distinctive features, past century and more has made life safer and protected and these are accommodated through real-time custom- property and other values in ways that earlier generations ization of standard operating procedures. But the basic could only dream of. It also has resulted, in large part, approach to routine emergencies has been set in advance. because organizational leaders anticipate emergencies by When well prepared for routine emergencies—even very type and have prepared responses. large or dangerous ones—response organizations can act 108 Proceedings May–December 2017 www.dco.uscg.mil/Proceedings/ Workers from the BP contracted company SWS offload boom to pre-positioned areas along Lake Powell, May 11, 2010. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Renee C. Aiello. with confidence, discipline, a sense of purpose, clarity about capacities that enable them to deal with potentially tragic what needs to be accomplished, and well-honed skills. or costly occurrences. In fact, the histories of each type of emergency response profession can be told as narratives Expertise and Hierarchy in which increasing numbers of previously unmanageable Leadership in routine emergencies is expertise-driven and hazards were turned into tractable—routine—response usually hierarchical. Leaders know what to do because problems. they’ve trained for such situations and performed well before. Ideally, they are chosen for their knowledge, effec- Routine Emergencies in the tiveness during prior events, and demonstrated capacity to Deepwater Horizon Response function under pressure. They exercise authority directly From this perspective, the Coast Guard can be regarded and expect compliance from their subordinates, who follow as an organization whose missions, in very important ele- them because they have confidence in their leaders’ proven ments, require preparation for a wide range of maritime judgment. emergencies, many of which can be anticipated in general Following events, leaders are accountable for results. type and are therefore routine in the manner that we use They are evaluated by how those results compare to what that term in this article. has been achieved in similar events. At their best, response The Deepwater Horizon incident illustrates this in a num- organizations can aim for operational precision and high ber of ways. 3 The oil drilling platform explosion, fire, and efficiency in routine emergencies. sinking were extremely dangerous and terrifying to the To say an emergency is routine does not mean it may people affected. The long-lived, uncontrolled outpouring not be hazardous and have substantial scale. Nor does from the undersea oil well created unprecedented costs and this terminology imply the organizational capabilities that serious effects for individuals, businesses, communities, enable effective response are in some sense ordinary. To the and governments in the region. But for many in the Coast contrary, it is a huge achievement for response organiza- Guard, the response was not unprecedented. It called for tions to develop, refine, and keep well-honed the multiple skills and practices developed well in advance. www.dco.uscg.mil/Proceedings/ May–December 2017 Proceedings 109 In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, teams much more complex and novel than it had first appeared. deployed for search and rescue operations that drew on Even then, in many respects, the massive response efforts fundamental Coast Guard practices and experience. As that took place over several months involved capacities and the extent of the disaster and the immediate consequences practices of oil spill cleanup and mitigation, regulating sea were perceived, the Obama administration organized its traffic, and safety that the Coast Guard had developed and overall response under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA) institutionalized long before. and the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Fortunately, the Coast Guard was able to reap the many Contingency Plan (NCP). Under OPA, which gives the fed- benefits of having turned significant aspects of the prob- eral government authority to direct responses to large-scale lems it had faced into routine emergencies rather than cri- oil spills, the Coast Guard is the lead federal agency for ses. That these accomplishments in the Deepwater Horizon coastal spills. aftermath were sometimes given less than deserved politi- Two days after the fire, when the Deepwater Horizon cal and public recognition does nothing to diminish the sank to the ocean floor, the administration expanded its achievement resulting from years of organizational devel- response, still pursuant to protocols articulated in OPA and opment. the NCP. It established a unified area command, in which representatives of the affected states, the federal govern- The Distinguishing Features of Crisis Leadership ment, and BP, as the responsible party, could coordinate a On the spectrum of emergencies, we differentiate a “crisis” multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency, multi-sector, and inter- from a “routine emergency” by one key trait that has many governmental response. A very experienced commander, consequences. By contrast with routine emergencies, crises involve substantial novelty—characteristics of the emergency that have not been previously encountered by the organizations or people involved. 4 Novelty may stem from several differ- ent sources. The most common is an event that, while anticipated by type, is so large in scale that it exceeds the planning frame and the resources ready to deploy in response. A second source of novelty is an event that is truly unprecedented—a “new under the sun” event—for which no plan has been pre- pared and that may require improvising in response. Or, third, novelty may arise from a combination of emergencies that occur at the same time or close together. Each of these U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen meets with Rear Admiral Mary Landry, may have been prepared for separately, but the the federal on-scene coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon incident, and other local, state, conjoined occurrence may confuse previous and federal members participating in the unified command to discuss leveraging every avail- able resource to respond to the British Petroleum oil spill and minimize the associated envi-
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