Level 3 Crises Addressed as Level 1 Crises

The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations-The Mann Gulch Fire

submitted by "Anonymous"

This is a useful thread.  Several of you might be interested in the link to the famous article "The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations:The Mann Gulch Disaster," by Karl E. Weick (http://www.cs.unibo.it/~ruffino/Letture%20TDPC/K.%20Weick%20-%20The%20collapse%20of%20sensemaking.pdf) about the 1949 Mann Gulf fire in Montana where 13 firefghters died in a wildfire.   The section beginning on p. 11 "From Vulnerability to Resilience" and from pp 17-23 on "Structures for Resilience" may be particularly applicable.

Some of the comments in the thread also are worthwhile, like input on "Community Involvement."

this would be a good blog discussion,,,,to me community is a multifaceted construct...communities could be defined by boundaries ie  physical, virtual ,interest, other if you let your mind expand...in reviewing some work on communities I think that the qualities of tolerance, reciprocity and trust weave into the social interaction fabric often found within the different boundary conditions,,,we hear of communities of interest, communties of practice, etc...but community management seems to fly in the face of  emergent social interactions that require a sense of leadership rather than an adherence to management traits and principles...but communities are interesting as phenomena especially as applied to emergency management during crisis or catastrophic events ...see Karl Weick's classic article about the collapse of sensemaking in organizations using the Mann Gulch disaster as the case study....it nicely articulates roles, role structures and the nature of virtual roles....

The key to surviving and thriving through community crisis is Community Involvement.

Community Involvement requires two things:

1.       Good Leadership

a.       Before crisis by ensuring good planning - defining key roles, technology and processes

b.      During crisis by ensuring key roles prioritize and take timely triage-type action

c.       After crisis by ensuring everyone help lift up someone worse off than themselves

2.       Good Communications

a.       Employing multiple means

b.      Employing multiple methods

c.       Employing food facilitation (many or may not be “The Leader” to elicit

                                                               i.      Community involvement

                                                             ii.      Community ideas

                                                            iii.      Community action

Community Involvement will be proportional to:

1.       The level of danger people are exposed to

2.       The quality of leadership

3.       The quality of facilitated community elicitations

4.       The extent (% coverage) of community communications

5.       The timeliness of community communication (tools).