Here's how you can foster collaboration between different disciplines as an emergency manager.

For the Emergency Management community, even this can be a challenge as the field is very broad. Regardless, we have to understand our roles and responsibilities and the role our organizations have in all phases of EM. Effective collaboration begins with clear role definitions. Organize meetings where team members explain their roles and contributions to the overall effort. Develop a document that outlines each discipline’s responsibilities and share it with the team, even if the document is just for familiarization.

I think that the ICS is a great place to start; lots of room for 'scalability' as the emergency changes with lots of ways to address evolving threats.

Open communication is important and really begins with our own ability to listen and reflect. The EM community is always pursuing effective collaboration but we need to concious of our own organization and personal bias ("we've always done it this way"). In many cases, we have to differentiate between the authorities responsible for communication (and coordination) and a community effort designed to build and maintain open communication. One question to ask is how often we engage outside of an emergency or disaster and how much is enough? Every week may be too much and once a month or quarter is to little. It varies by organization and authority, but should be defined.

I can't stress enough how important it is for redundancy in communication loops; at some point something will happen where you will have problems communicating - what are you going to do then?

In terms of joint training, I've found value in just attending other training events and see how other organizations conduct their training. The EM community is often organized around exercises, and there's real value in not organizing or leading the training or exercise initiative, but attending. Taking a different perspective and see how other agencies, departments, or cities train and exercise. There's real value in gaining perspective and learning about what assumptions we're making about other actors in our community. I would encourage others to break out of their silos of information and comfort zones, and see how others view the world, training, and their responsibilities.

I have always been of the opinion that JT should occur only after you have addressed all the operational problems in your particular function. Last thing you want is to be part of JT and not have your own procedures worked out!

Make sure that you're sharing your lessons identified (and hopefully learned) with your stakeholders and making them available for others to read and learn from. A lesson in one place may be important for somewhere else to see and learn from - continuous improvement can be driven by external learning, not just from your own incidents. When you're doing reviews and debriefings, create a culture of openness and honesty - one that encourages people to speak freely without threat of reprisal. Otherwise you end up with people who aren't willing to share their opinions and input - a major barrier to continuous improvement.

One of my primary Kuhrisms is that “Everyone Has a Seat at the Table”. In my experience everyone wants to play with the cool kids. Emergency Managers are the cool kids. Not to get too wonky, but I believe Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs applies here under “Belonging” which states “… belongingness refers to a human emotional need for interpersonal relationships, affiliating, connectedness, and being part of a group”. I’ve experienced situations where stakeholders express desire to “belong” to a group in part because other “cool kids” are part of it. As it would have it, everyone that does have a seat at the table also has something to contribute, be it an asset, personnel, expertise, experience, whatever. Simply put, make your programs cool. 😎