MissionMode Corporate Blog

Welcome to the MissionMode blog

We want to make sure you have the best, first-hand knowledge of crisis management, incident management and emergency notification news. We welcome any comments or feedback that you may have.

Don't let the crisis take control of your business. Take control of the crisis with Missionmode.

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ebrary - Natural disaster and extreme weather information center

We have located a valuable resource that we at MissionMode want to share with our readers. The National Disaster and Extreme Weather website is a searchable information center that provided public domain PDF documents from government websites.

The categories or topics now available are:  droughts, earthquakes, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, land/mud slides, lightning, medicine, tornados, tsunamis, volcanoes, wildfires and winter storms.

The material on this website is informative and educational for anyone -- business or individual -- facing one of these natural disasters, helping them to be prepared for the crisis resulting from the natural disaster in question.

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Business Continuity, not data breaches, among top concerns for tech firms

Through research based on SEC filing, Joan Goodchild has discovered that data security and breach prevention rank fairly low as a risk factor for most big technical firms.  This research examined the risk factors listed in the FY 2009 10-K SEC filings of the largest 100 US public technology companies.

Among security risk, natural disasters, wars, conflicts and terrorist attacks were identified by 55% of respondents as a risk concern and #16 on the list and much higher than breaches of technology security, privacy and theft, which was cited by 44% of the companies, making it 23rd on the list.

This was a surprising result since it had been thought that data security and breach prevention were the focus of risk management; but rather business continuity seems to be driving the majority of worries about natural disasters and conflicts risks.

Aftab Jamil, leader of the Technology Practice at BDO Seidman, the consulting firm that released this research, expresses this concern, "Can they get back on their feet relatively quickly?  If you are in the path of a hurricane or an oil pill, can you keep your business going?"

For more details on this business risk and crisis management research, read the full business continuity article.

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Explosive activity increases slightly at Icelandic volcano

Explosive activity has increased, but not significantly, at Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. The eruption column has grown higher while the volcano continues to throw out more ash and rocks as well as larger chunks of material with no signs that the volcanic eruption is about to end.

Ashfall is evident in considerable amount in Icelandic towns as far away as 40 miles. Commercial pilots note that the ash plumes are as high as 30,000 feet while Icelandic helicopter pilots report the height to be an altitude from 20,000 to 22,000 feet.

Regardless of which figures are correct, airlines are being affected daily.

Read more about the Icelandic volcanic eruption ....

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Toyota Warned in Employee Letter to Company Four Years Ago

CNN's Deborah Feyerick reports on a group of Toyota assembly line workers who voiced concerns about the company in a video addresses some key communication failures.

Key timely information sharing and management, a problem for Toyota, is voiced in this video. The problems with sharing of key information critical to effective response, prioritization confusion, over-emphasized tactics vs strategy, key stake holders, operational units/leads left in the dark is at the heart of this problem.  The US was kept in the dark last September with recalls in UK and Toyota didn’t share the experience in Europe with NA counterparts either.

This is a formula for disaster as the world watches Toyota struggle with it image and reputation, much of which could have been avoided with a better communication strategy enabling a more sure path toward business continuity.

Go to CNN to view the video on Toyota employees' letter.

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NATO Jets Damaged by Ashes, Mixed Reports on Flight Safety Puzzle the Passengers

While the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland continues to erupt, the ash is not as dense as it was. As already reported, certain major European air carriers, including Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways, and KLM performed flight tests and concluded that the flight conditions were safe. Other news reports, however, several NATO jets (F-16 fighters) experienced engine damage after flying through the volcanic ash cloud. Glass-like coatings found inside the planes’ engines after a technical inspection are believed to result in engine failure. The NATO jets did land safely, but this incident creates the caution that the flight conditions are not as safe as reported by domestic carriers.

For more information on the volcanic effects on airplanes, read more...

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Flunking crisis management

As reported in JoongAng Daily, the statement, "The first rule in corporate risk management is thata those at the top are in charge.  Entrepreneurs are warned not to take the backseat and let the chief risk officer take command at times of crisis," proves to be true over and over.

An example of this rule is when then-CEO of Johnson and Johnson, James Burke, quickly responded with sincerity and urgency to the company's crisis when seven people died after bottle of Tylenol were found to be laced with cyanide. Their disaster recovery was successful with this approach.

An ineffective response by Exxon Chairman Lawrence Rawl to a company tanker's spill of millions of gallons of oil off the shores of Alaska proved shatter the company's image.

The second rule mentioned in this article is that risk management is all about honesty.  Again, Exxon broke this rule when they tried to dodge responsibility by finger-pointing at coastal guards and public officials.  Countering this approach, Ashland Oil in 1988 took full responsibility when one of their oil tanks collapsed and sent millions of gallons of diesel into the Ohio river.  This response afforded the company forgiveness and praise for a cool-headed management team.

Read the full crisis management article...

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Airbus asks airlines for spare Koito seats for tests

Business Week reports on March 4, 2010 that Airbus SAS has asked airline operators to help in gathering spare Koito seats for their destructive testing.  After Koito confessed in February 2010 that they had produced flawed seats for years, Airbus and Boeing decided to run more tests.  

Investigating the cause of the faults by Koito results in the delay of repair plans for the seats. While the European aerospace regulator EASA said that there is no "immediate threat to safety of flight for aircraft equipped with Koito seats," they will continue to monitor the results of testing.  the US FAA is also conducting a similar review in relation to Boeing Aircraft.

Business is being redirected potentially to other seat makers, including Geven SpA, an Italian seat manufacturer.

Read more...

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Airbus, Boeing begin testing Koito seats

According to an article by Michael Mecham in Aviationweek.com, both Airbus and Boeing expect an update by late February on the safety of Koito Industries' seats after Koito confirmed that it breached safety rules over several years.  As a result, Koito had their license withdrawn because of unregistered product changes and potential safety issues.

Tests by Koito include crashworthiness and flammability testing on all classes of seat.  If the test turn out to be negative, as many as 150,000 on 1,000 aircraft could be affected.

The first indication that there might be problems with Koito's seats was last year when Koito was accused of falsifying records on its flammability tests -- problems that both Airbus and Boeing had investigated and led to believe was corrected.

Although a suspension of production rights was not mandated by the FAA, the European Aviation Safety Agency did so in September 2009.  Only in February 2010 did Koito admit that it had falsified test results and made unauthorized design changes to its airline seats.

Delays in new aircraft delivery are already becoming evident as a result of this deception.  

Read more...

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How a Crisis Management Team Works

In an article on the website Security Beyond Borders, author Francisco Mateo begins with a good quote:

 The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger – but recognize the opportunity 

-John F. Kennedy

Mateo also emphasizes that there are ideal factors that have to be in place for an ideal crisis management team to exist.  Those factors would be:

• Crisis Preparedness
• Crisis Management
• Post Crisis & Post Mortem

To begin with, the strategy has to be formulated with clear and distinct elements where the "guiding star" for the organization needs to be crisis prevention.  Especially important is the all-encompassing nature of this strategy.  That is, a holistic approach should cover all the bases from R&D to the very end of the company's supply chain.

The next step involves the company's communication strategy and is perhaps the greatest area of weakness when a communication plan is not in full force and effect.  According to Mateo, the first step for the crisis team is to "gain influence over the message communicated to the general public regarding the event..."  How this message will be delivered can include everything from the standard media approach to the new social media opportunities.

There are several other important points related to formulating a good crisis management team and implementing the corporate strategy under pressure.  He concludes by saying that how the team performs during a crisis event is commensurate with the quality of training done prior to the crisis. 

Read the full article...

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Why emergency managers need to answer the call to be terror-ready

Jim Rush posted to Big Medicine about how the need for us to become a true readiness culture is so important.  Some of the forces at work that prevent this readiness include:

• Refusal to accept reality - Many in positions of leadership hold to the belief that this terrorism phenomenon is limited in both size and scope.  Rush states, "Catastrophic events are listed int he Federal Planning Scenarios for planning activities at the state, local and federal levels, but there is little evidence that there could be an effective response and recovery for any catastrophic event.  There seems to be good progress int he prevention of large scale disasters, but almost no capabilities for 'consequence management.'  A National Healthcare Capabilities Plan to manage hundreds of thousands of casualties and millions of affected human being has yet to be developed."
• Prejudice - There seems to be a prejudgement that people who would engage in terrorism are just thugs and that any deviation from this pre-determined image would be people who are influenced by thugs.  Rather, Rush suggests that "We have pre-judged that terrorists are criminals and not soldiers in a war against us."  We are also taking precautions based on what happened in the past and not taking steps to thwart the next attack.
• Need for normalcy - Rush indicates that, in general, society will shifts from a very high level of anxiety about security and well-being and then right back to complacency.  Not indicating that people are stupid but rather the need for normalcy is so great that vigilance is released.
• Optimistic Bias - Too many emergency workers show a tendency to resist maintaining vigilance and "somewhere deep in their psyche" these professionals -- even in the face of the Hazard Vulnerability Assessment (HVA) depicting catastrophic events -- think of the planning for those events as optional.

Finally, Rush asks these questions:  Would a crisis planner or emergency manager be guilty of dereliction of duty if they chose to ignore a horrific HVA planning scenario?  Do we have to wait for a catastrophe to occur before we define dereliction of duty?

Read the full article...

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