About our Guests
Brent Chapman is an expert in incident management; every year he hones that expertise as a member of the Burning Man emergency services team, and he has introduced or formalized incident management at Google, Slack, and other tech companies. In this episode, he explains why incident management practices are so flexible and useful, and how they can be applied to situations in our personal lives, such as the high stakes problem of preparing a holiday meal for your family. You can find him on LinkedIn.
Main Takeaways from this Episode
Applying incident management ideas to personal situations: Incident Management relies on structured practices, roles, and responsibilities to maximize outcomes in high stress and high stakes situations. Not sure if the ideas make sense to apply to your case? Here are some criteria to consider:
Are coordination needs complex? Could there be conflicting demands on scarce resources, such as the oven for baking?
Could emotions be running high, resulting in poorer communication or decision making than usual? Are there complicating factors such as complex family histories, new relationships, or previous dramatic or disappointing results?
Is there a higher than usual chance of an unexpected event impacting the success or failure of the experience?
Adapting to Different Contexts: While the formal structure of incident management may not always be appropriate for personal settings, many of its underlying principles could be adapted to help. For instance, instead of formally designating an "incident commander," a family member might naturally take on a leadership role during a move or event, facilitating communication and task delegation in a less structured manner, or establishing special rules for a particular space or timeframe in your situation.
Setting the stage for a successful experience: One tip that can help start the experience off on the right foot is a pre-event briefing, where the group takes a moment to outline the road ahead, the contingency plans, the expected communication, and the roles. This is also an opportunity for the participants to share what they hope to get out of the experience. This could be a successful experiment of a new recipe, or a closer connection with a distant relative.
Make room for learning: Increase enjoyment and successful outcomes by encouraging participants to take on new roles and giving them support and training in learning the ropes. Few are experts at a craft right away, so allow people to take on new challenges in a safe way, through dry-runs, shadowing, or demonstrating skills with narration.
Links
https://esd.burningman.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_Command_System
Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
LuBudingJoy Blank Recipe Notebook
Contact
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