Maurice A. Ramirez, DO, CNS, CMRO

The “Choke Point” is Management

One of the lessons learned early on in the disaster field office is referred to as “span of control”.  Span of control is a two-dimensional concept of personnel and project management.  Span of control dictates both the breadth and depth that an individual leader may effectively exert control and leadership.

Decades of experience have taught us that even the most experienced project manager, leader, CEO or company president can only effectively lead a breadth of three to seven subordinate divisions and ideally the number is five.

That same experience has also taught us that a leader becomes detached if the organization they oversee grows greater than five to seven layers deep with, again, the ideal number being five for efficacy.

But why does this occur?  Why should your organization be no more divisions wide under any one leader than the number of fingers on their hand and no more layers deep in that organization than the number of toes on one foot?

The answer in part lies in the functioning of the human brain.  Immediate memory, that portion of the brain capable of receiving information almost instantaneously, less than .037 milliseconds, and maintaining it until it can be written into permanent memory is only seven blocks wide; this is why your telephone number (excluding the area code) is seven digits long.

However, just like a telephone number, by grouping batches of numbers your brain treats each group of numbers as one block.  The area code becomes one block of information rather than three discreet numbers.  The prefix, another group of three numbers, is again considered a single block of digits.  Hence a ten-digit telephone number is now treated by the brain as only six blocks of information—the area code, the prefix and each of the last four individual digits.  Similarly your Social Security number is divided into the same sequence—three-digit prefix, a two-digit place code and the terminal four digits. 

Span of control pays attention to this same basic brain limitation.  You can most effectively pay attention to five simultaneous branches within your chain of command without becoming distracted because you have two “available” blocks of memory in which to store “distractions.” 

Depth in any one branch works the same way.  When you must pay attention to one branch with any degree of specificity, your brain turns your memory “sideways” and looks at the depth in blocks of information. Limiting depth to 5 layers leaves two “available” blocks for “distractions” or to share among the other branches of your organization.

But how does this impact actual management?

Taking these decades of experience from the disaster field office and combining them with the neurophysiologic knowledge of how the human brain works, we discovered that in any organization, the organization must be subdivided when the number of first-level subordinates exceeds five.  Therefore, if a CEO must run four divisions of a single company, he can do so with four vice-presidents, but when that number exceeds seven, the company must be in some fashion broken up, grouping each of those greater divisions under individual presidents who then report to the CEO. Thus the company becomes one layer deper, but the CEO has only 2 divisions under his span of control (each with a president).

Similarly, imagine we now have one CEO with two presidents, but the organization becomes greater than seven layers deep with the seventh layer being the customers.  The CEO is in danger of losing touch with those customers.  In this circumstance, a new division in the company reporting directly to the CEO can be established that provides for information to be disseminated directly by the CEO to customers and feedback directly from customers back to CEO.

A fine example of this is seen in Zales Corporation.  Zales Corporation operates multiple divisions under multiple jewelry sales brands.  Each of these brands is grouped according to their market.  Thus, they grouped brands with each group led by a senior vice-president.  The corporate president oversees senior vice-presidents and thus their groups and brands.  The problems for Zales Corporation came when in their corporate C suite, became embroiled in a personnel problem.  This highly publicized personnel problem impeded the ability of the higher echelon of leadership to exert their span of control and required that a lower level of leadership assume a dual role.

Dual roles are death!

Worse, the individuals in duel roles supervised the same people, creating two parallel chains of command. The company and its employees were literally shackled by conflicting instructions and expectations. In the disaster field office we know that when needs exceed resources it is a disaster, but when needs exceed all ability to respond it is a catastrophe. Zales became a wounded dog because management issues (needs) exceeded their ability to respond. Investors responded to the catastrophe and stock prices fell.

Span of control dictates that one person fills one role and that even like organizations not be combined, but that if one leader must supervise two separate divisions or organizations, that that leader do so through a subordinate to whom those organizations individually report.  In the disaster field office we call this “Unity of Command” and it ensures that each individual in the chain of command knows precisely what singular individual to whom they report and from whom they take direct instruction.  With this unity of command and span of control principles in place, management issues cease to be a choke point.

Zales ceased to be a wounded dog when they corrected their C suite personnel problems, reestablishing a unity of command and a manageable span of control. Investors rewarded them with a two-fold increase in stock price in two months.

(Excerpted from my seminar series and book, Wounded Dogs: Avoiding Business Disasters – Lessons Learned in the Disaster Field Office)

An Innovative Approach to Disaster Preparedness

I have been in the disaster response field for over 20 years and had thought I had seen or at least imagined every possible means of reaching the general public. We have had a "War on Terror," a disaster evacuation back packs sold on infomercials, catalog and Internet sales of every size, shape and description of preparedness tool and resource. Today I was introduced to a new and definitely different approach to the problem of getting the everyday person to be prepared, a multi-level marketing business (MLM).

Don;t worry gentle readers, I am not in the MLM business and there is no pitch coming.

MLM's have been around for over half a century. These highly regulated companies present everything from vitamins and supplements to industrial cleaning supplies,to information systems for MLM marketers. In my remote past, I was a motivational speaker for three different MLM companies, but I never thought I would see an MLM dedicated to disaster preparation products.

My introduction to the concept came as most MLM introductions do, by email from a colleague. She is an "independent representative" (the legal term is "independent distributor") and felt I establish a "business" through my network of disaster professionals, family and audiences. I will admit that the product line appears both reputable and useful. The marketing system will reach a lot of people and most that sign-up for MLM's do so for the networking, not the products so it will be a group otherwise unresponsive to the preparedness message.

The old adage: "There's nothing new under the sun," may be true, but there is always a new use for an old tool.

In The Kill Zone

Imagine arriving at work and two-thirds of your employees are out sick.  Now imagine that you are the manager of a large supermarket or a WalMart or a Super Target.  This is exactly the situation that America's retailers and manufacturers face with the coming avian flu pandemic.

The avian flu will be a novel virus, one never seen before by the human immune system.  The current disease of concern is the H5:N1 strain of avian flu.  However, any novel avian flu will have the same effect as was seen in 1918.  In 1918, one-third of the United States population fell ill.  Half of these sick individuals required some form of institutional care (hospital, infirmary, or quarantined home care).  Of those in institutional care, half developed severe pneumonia and half of those with pneumonia died. In short, 33% got of the total population sick and 8% of the total population died.

When these ominous numbers were scrutinized further, a far more dire picture evolved.  Research into the 1918 pandemic, as well as pandemics before and since 1918, have shown that the majority of illness and death occurred not in the very old or the very young, not in the sick and infirm, but in those who are in the "prime of life"; those age 18 to 40.

Because of the way that novel avian viruses (pandemics) attack the lungs and cause "immune system storms", the ultimate irony of a pandemic is that the younger and stronger you are the more likely you are to die.  In 1918 fully two-thirds of all those who became ill were in the age range of 18 to 40.  More distressing is the fact that 98 percent of all of those who died were age 18 to 40 years.  In fact, those over age 55 had no greater rate of illness or death during the pandemic of 1918 than they did in any other flu season in the years immediately before or after that great pandemic.  Similarly, those less than 18 years of age suffered no increase in death rate.

The implications for America's retailers and America's manufacturers are inescapable.  Fully two-thirds of the active workforce will fall ill during the 16 to 18 months of the disease throughout the pandemic.  Twenty-five percent of the young workforce (the 18 to 40 years) will die in that 18 months.  Who will replace them?  Where will American industry, America's retail sector, and American business find employees?

America's employers have become accustomed to a ready workforce.  If an employer finds that they have a job vacancy, no worries! They have become complacent knowing that they can readily replace an employee with the help of such services as Monster.com and other job-matching tools.  Take away 25 percent of the workforce due to death and two-thirds of workforce due to illness and you will see a dramatic shift in the balance of the employer-employee relationship.  When there are not enough employees, salaries will rise, prices will rise, and customer service will fall.

The solution?  Plan now. 

1. Those of us who have sought jobs are all too familiar with the refrain:  "I'll keep your resume on file." Now employers must do exactly that.  This is the time for employers to not only develop a ready pool of applicants, but to stay in touch with them in the same way that they stay in touch with their most valued customers.  Employees will find other jobs in the interim, but when employees become scarce, it is the employers who have shown a genuine interest in the person and the success of perspective employees who will prevail when the bidding wars begin.

2. Hire now across a spectrum of ages.  Many employers concentrate their workforce in certain demographic age groups because they believe that their customers will identify better with these demographics or because of an age-based bias that convinces the employer that certain employees are better suited to certain work, certain work environments, or represent greater or lesser degrees of reliability.  The coming pandemic lends a new variable to which employers must adapt.  Employees less than 18 years of age and greater than 55 years of age are less likely to be ill during the pandemic and less likely to die.  Providing a more homogonous mix of employee ages will statistically decrease the impacts of the pandemic on the wise employer's workplace.

3. Finally, workplace health promotion programs and health benefits, as well as a strict adherence to hygiene and clean workplaces will decrease the impact of the pandemic on the employees, the workforce, the employer and ultimately the place of business.

We cannot avoid the coming pandemic.  We cannot avoid the coming impact on men and women alike, old and young alike, rich and poor alike.  But we can prepare now, we can make our jobs and our workforces resilient.

007 - Is the Stock Market “Disaster Drop” Really Inevitable?

The newest James Bond movie “Casino Royale” is in part based on the theory that Osama Ben Laden and other terrorist groups profited from the down turn in the stock market following September 11, 2001 and other disasters. The movie suggests that a terrorist organization heavily invested in puts could cause a wholesale sell of stocks in an entire industry and profit from the ensuing options rush.

History certainly support the viability of this approach. The stock market and airline stocks dropped after 9/11. When a private plane strayed over the nation’s capital in 2005, the stock market fell as America held it’s collective breath and the tragic crash of a private plane into an apartment building in New York City was followed by another drop in the market that only reversed when it became clear that the crash was merely an over publicized accident.

While the drop in the stock market after 9/11 was unavoidable, the drops following these non-terrorism events was NOT inevitable. All these events resulted in a business and stock market panic that many "experts" have called both unpredictable and unavoidable.

These "experts" are wrong. To avoid being part of that statistic, you must “Be D.I.S.A.S.T.E.R.  R.E.A.D.Y. & P.L.A.N. Each letter in the mnemonic stands for a key item in your disaster preparation checklist.

Go through each letter and take the necessary action. While this is not something you will complete in an hour, you do need to start now—long before any disaster. When you can check all these items off your list, you will be as prepared as possible for any disaster that may come your way and your business will survive.

Let’s start with D.I.S.A.S.T.E.R.:

D is Detect
Detect your own vulnerabilities and those of your community. You have geographic vulnerabilities and competitive vulnerabilities. You also have emotional vulnerabilities. The stock market dropped after the capital sirens sounded because those making the trades failed to detect their own fear of terrorist attack. If you identify your fear and prepare to respond calmly and effectively, you now have a competitive advantage.

Detect your community’s needs too. Consider how your business can help. If so, you’ve just detected a unique advantage you can offer to the community in the event of an emergency. 

I is In Charge
Every community has one person in command in case of a disaster. That person, the “incident commander,” has a set of responsibilities to delegate that filters down through an established structure. Find out who is in that incident command position now and ask how you could help become a part of that structure. If you wait until disaster strikes, your offers of help may be too late. Do it now. The use of the Incident Command model also helps prevent “panic selling” by filtering all decisions through one person.

S is Safety
Know where your safety vulnerabilities are. Will the potential terrorist attack directly affect you or your place of business? If you were to lose power or cellular phone service, how will that affect your business? Be prepared. If you own stock, you will feel vulnerable. But are you? Ask yourself, would a successful attack really affect the stock price in the long term.

A is Assess
Assess your situation—either your current one or the potential one during a disaster. If keeping your business open is not safe, or if your employees have urgent personal or family needs during a crisis, you need to take responsibility for that and be realistic. Assess whether it is safe to continue to be open and ask yourself if your employees have needs that are outside of the business. If so, make allowances for those. You don’t have to stay open 24/7 or put yourself or your employees at risk. Letting your employees know that their personal needs are important will gain you their trust and loyalty. Track the effect the event has had on your portfolio and the companies in which you invest.

S is Support
Support works both ways. The easiest way to get support during an emergency situation is to give it as part of the support team. All emergency response managers are taught to reach in their community and make pre-arrangements for the resources they need. These are called mutual aid agreements. Approach the emergency response manager and say, “I can provide you the following things. Will that be of help?” You will most likely get a yes, especially if you do this ahead of time. You will be written into the county’s plan. Be prepared to deliver whatever you promise. An advantage to you is that when you have a need, you are already known to the people with the power. And since you’ve already detected what kind of support you’ll need, you can ask for it in advance.

T is Triage
Triage means to do the most good for the most people with limited resources. Even if you’ve been the best person and the most helpful to your community, if your needs are minor you will have to wait longer than someone whose needs are greater. The person with the greatest need will get help first—no matter when they ask. Adopt the same principle with your business resources. If you own stock, see how the businesses they represent have been effect by the completed attack. Once you have made this analysis, repeat your standard due diligence for each stock. Then and only then will you know what to keep, what to buy and what to sell. Even though it may be a hard decision to make, you are really benefiting your portfolio.

E is Exit Strategy
If you are called to evacuate, go. Orders to evacuate usually come in stages. When they tell the group you belong to that it’s time to evacuate, heed the warning—it’s unsafe to stay. Rest assured that businesses that are prepared and forced to evacuate in most cases will reopen when it’s safe to do so.

R is for Recovery
Recovery begins with your disaster planning—long before the event occurs. Deal with your fear, get counseling, do what it takes to recover.

And now for R.E.A.D.Y:

R is for Rely
Now that you’ve been through the disaster plan, you need to be ready within your own business. What do you rely on? What do the companies in your portfolio rely on? Are there key employees or key procedures that only exist in employees’ heads? Write them down now. You and the companies you invest in must keep a copy at business and another off-site at a safe location. Those processes are important. Are you heavily invested in a particular business, geographic area or business sector?

E is for Educate
If you become part of your community response, you will need to know how to access people and how they can access you. How are they going to identify themselves? How do you collect payment? Cash or a trust system? Develop a written procedure. Make sure your staff knows exactly what they should do. They’ll take comfort in knowing what procedures to follow in the event of an emergency. Do the companies in your portfolio have a written plan? Learn what that plan entails.

A is for Appreciate
Appreciate your employees every day. Not only will you experience a more pleasant workplace, but in a time of crisis your employees will pay you back with their loyalty. In the face of a disaster, continue to appreciate your employees—particularly the ones who came back. But still appreciate the ones who couldn’t come back. Some people will have more pressing personal responsibilities than others. Find out if the companies you invest in appreciate their employees’ efforts.

D is for Drill
You have dry runs of your disaster plan. Just as you have a routine procedure for a fire drill, the companies you invest in should perform disaster drills. If they don’t, panic will set in and their mind will shut down and your portfolio will suffer. When the mind shuts down, people revert to what is familiar—the day-to-day routine they’ve always done—not what they should be doing in a disaster. The companies in your portfolio must dedicate themselves to the entire process and drill.

Y is for You
For businesses, it comes down to you—each individual and each employer. Take responsibility for all your actions and your investments. Don’t be part of the selling panic. Plan ahead and be part of the recovery solution.

Finally, let’s P.L.A.N.

P is for People
The first step in making your plan is to take an inventory of who will be participating. If you are making a plan for your family, consider who will be with you and how to prepare each person for the disaster. If you have small children, you may need to talk to them about what is happening, and reassure them that everything will be all right.

Also, what tasks will each person perform? If you’re facing a hurricane, who will board up the windows? Who will make sure the dog gets into the car if you evacuate? Each person should have a function in ensuring the safety and security of everyone else. Even children can participate. A small task might make a child feel more purposeful, like a critical part of the plan, rather than a helpless bystander. So if your children are old enough to take part, put them in charge of the extra batteries or have them fill the water bottles.

Likewise, if you are making a plan for your business, consider who will participate and what role each person will fill. If you plan to close, you need to know who will be involved in the closing decision, and how you will secure the premises. If you decide to stay open, your plan is even more important because you will be responsible for the safety of your employees.

Other people in your plan include contacts outside the disaster zone. You need someone to serve as a message board for communication. Then everyone involved in your plan can call in and let the centralized person know they are safe and their location. If you decide to leave, you need someone out of state whom you can stay with.

Finally, consider what outside facilities you are going to rely on. If you have unanticipated emergencies, who are you going to call? Are they going to be able to get to you? If your entire plan is to call 911 and get assistance, you need to realize that in a disaster situation they probably won’t be able to assist you for seventy-two hours. In this case, you will need to reassess your plan.

L is for Leave
Next, consider leaving the disaster zone. When and how will you leave (evacuate)? Where will you go and how will you get there? Will your family or fellow evacuees meet before you leave or when you arrive at your destination? The decision to leave makes communication and your contacts outside the disaster zone critically important. How will you communicate while you evacuate and after you arrive at your destination? What are you going to do if you get separated? Operate on a buddy system; no one should be left alone. When you and your family or business associates become mobile, make sure everyone knows the plan. Then, if your plan fails, you need an alternative.

If you are not leaving, consider where will you stay and how will you stay safe. Will you all stay together or shelter in the place you are when the disaster strikes? Will you send some of your family to your evacuation destination while others stay? All these factors need careful consideration and planning.

A is for Anticipate / Adapt
Unfortunately, in a disaster situation, nothing always goes as planned. So anticipate plan failures and plan for the “what ifs.” This is a chance to brainstorm. Make a list of all the possible failures. What if the phone lines go down? What if your basement floods? What if you get caught in traffic? No “what if” is too extreme to consider. The only possibility that you can’t plan for is the one you didn’t think of.

Once you’ve brainstormed possible failures, you need to adapt to each one with an alternate plan. If the phone lines go down, can you use your cell phone? If your basement floods, can you seek shelter with a neighbor or in some other nearby location? If you get caught in traffic, will you have enough gas to evacuate successfully?
What if something happens that you didn’t anticipate? If you go through this process enough times and really work on your plan, then you will be able to adapt to the failure. You’re mind will be primed and you’ll be ready to think of alternatives, even if the failure isn’t anticipated beforehand. Anticipate that events will not unfold as planned. Be flexible. Adapt to the unexpected.

Remember: “Sempier Gumby” – “Always Flexible”

N is for Needs
In any disaster situation, you must be ready to go for seventy-two hours without assistance. Those first seventy-two hours are critical because emergency relief will be overwhelmed during that time. Fire departments, police, and medical personnel won’t have the resources to get to everyone.

After hurricane Katrina, many people died simply because they ran out of food and water in those critical three days. However, four days before Rita hit Texas, the community leaders were on the television warning people that if they decided to stay, they needed to be prepared for seventy-two hours because no one would be able to help them.

When working on your plan, make sure you account for all your needs for seventy-two hours. Be prepared to be self-sufficient during this time. Each one of your family members must have personal identification and photos of all others in your plan, two quarts (liters) of drinking water, seventy-two hours of food, seventy-two hours of clothes, two weeks of medications, two weeks of toiletries, a supply of cash (credit/debit cards can’t be verified if phone lines go down), a flashlight, a portable radio, batteries, a signal whistle, white/silver duct tape, a first aid kit, prepaid calling card, and a list of emergency phone numbers.

These needs should be kept in a rolling backpack that stays with the owner. Keep this bag, your Disaster Pack, readily accessible. And if a disaster is imminent, keep the Disaster Pack with you at all times.

Are You Ready?
Once you have taken an inventory of your family, made arrangements for evacuation, anticipated and accommodated failures, and gathered all your needs for seventy-two hours, you need to review and practice your plan each year.

Hurricane situations are timely because of what happened on the gulf coast, but regardless of what disaster situation you face you must have a plan. In a tornado, tsunami, terrorist attack, or whatever, you can use these steps to make your disaster plan and ensure the safety of your family and your business.

Take Action
Nothing you do can prevent a disaster. With proper planning, however, your healthcare facility can become “D.I.S.A.S.T.E.R. R.E.A.D.Y.” and “P.L.A.N.” Identify your strengths and weaknesses. If the worst happens, don’t panic. You already know the drill and what is expected of you. Be ready to do your best and activate your plan at the drop of a hat, ready to help those with the greatest need.