One of the challenges of governing in the 21st century is that crisis-situations appear to have become the norm as opposed to the exception.
There is hardly a day goes by without another crisis for politicians to attend to - mad cows, avian flu, fuel blockades, climate change, predatory paedophiles, feral hoodies, economic collapse, terrorist plots, volcanic eruptions - and as Chris Mullin laconically acknowledges in his diaries, even in periods of relative calm politicians know, 'It can only be a question of time before a new crisis is organised'.
Although the term 'crisis' is possibly the most over-used term in any journalists' lexicon it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that politicians and their officials are generally ill-equipped for dealing with the non-routine challenges, threats and even opportunities provided by crises. This reflects a dominant belief that crises are by their very nature so extreme and unpredictable that it is impossible to prepare for them.
Frontline services
This is a dangerous myth because all crises tend to exhibit common characteristics in terms of uncertainty, threats and urgency. Emergency and frontline services have been forced to develop their skills in relation to crisis and contingency planning in recent years, but the same cannot be said for politicians and senior officials.
Beyond the UK, by contrast, there are a host of centres of excellence, like the European crisis management agency and the Australian and New Zealand School of Government, that specialises in preparing politicians and officials from all levels of government for the challenges of governing under pressure.
It is in exactly this context that one council has broken new ground by running world-class crisis simulation exercises for its councillors and officers. This authority has just run an exercise based around the planting of bomb by a militant terrorist group just days before the opening of the 2012 Olympics.
Participants are placed in a central control room and fed snippets of information from a variety of sources using live video streams, email, faxes and a variety of other real-time tools. As the pressure builds and the information becomes more complex the group is instructed to prepare a number of briefings for the council leader. As the information coming into the control room changes so do the demands placed upon the teams.
Information management
What is unique about this exercise, however, is not just that it is bringing together politicians and senior officials but also that each team is being observed by a panel of experts who are scrutinising how information is being managed and filtered, how the group dynamics are changing and whether some members of the group are wilting under the strain. What is also unique is that just as the participants are coming to terms with the exercise the rules of the game change – just like the way they do in all crisis situations.
A fleet of cars arrives and the teams are told that the leader of the council has decided that they should present the public face of the council in front of the media.
Ten minutes later, and after a brief session with a media specialist, the teams are led into a full press conference in which they feel the full force of a media feeding frenzy. The recordings of their performances then form the focus of an incredibly powerful lesson-learning session.
The most significant and valuable element of this exercise is the manner in which it provides a fairly raw but incredibly valuable insight into how crisis leadership demands a quite different set of skills and assumptions than are commonly honed in day-to-day 'normal' politics.
There's a paradox here the frequency of major emergencies is set to increase because public services are under greater pressures, but we still fail to train decision-makers in the art of governing in a crisis.
There is a huge difference between 'coping behaviour' and 'crisis leadership' and it is exactly this fact that makes this kind of project so important.
Professor Matthew Flinders, University of Sheffield
From Bubb's Blog
From Flip Chart Fairy Tales
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