#40 - Operational Learning and Command (Part 2)

What About The Firefighters In The Field?

In Post #39 we looked at how Operational Learning by managers averted a mass casualty event. When the Pagami Creek Fire blew up, nearly a hundred members of the public had already been moved out of the path of fire. This happened even though nobody saw the blow up coming in advance. The public was safe, it turned out, due to Operational Learning on the part of managers.

But one group of people was not out of harm’s way: Eight firefighters (in canoes) were working on Lake Insula, directly in the path of the fire when it blew up. They lost communication with incident command, and could not get updates on fire behavior or even contact aircraft. It was an extremely DARC situation (Dynamic, Ambiguous, Risky, and Complex). Those firefighters had to maneuver on their own and they found their way to safety.

In one sense, they had to fend for themselves.

But there’s more to the story.

It turns out, to truly understand the causes of their survival, we need to go a little deeper.

What If…

Imagine for a moment what would have happened if the leaders had not learned from Saturday’s events. Imagine if there were still visitors scattered throughout the area when the blow up happened on Monday. In that case, firefighters would have been pulled into more dangerous areas, trying to conduct emergency evacuations.¹ Remember, the firefighters barely had enough margin to survive with only themselves to worry about. So if there had been visitors out on the lake, the story would have ended differently.

So, yes it’s true that the firefighters survived due to their own resilience and maneuvering, as we have seen in prior posts.

But it’s also true, in order to maneuver, they needed the space and margin to do so.

And managers created that margin.

Keep pulling this thread and you see: Managers only created that margin because they learned from the mess they faced a couple days earlier.

This is another example of how Operational Learning saves lives.

Takeaway For Leaders

Hard truth: When your people are in a DARC situation (Dynamic, Ambiguous, Risky, Complex), you may not be able to help. They might have to fend for themselves.

Your own Operational Learning is one of the best things you can do to set them up for success.

1. For example, some likely would have been on Lake Hudson. That would have been more dangerous than Lake Insula (Hudson is narrower, so it would have been harder to get away from the flaming shore. Also, Hudson is oriented east/west, and they needed to head north to get away from the fire). Moreover, they would have been trying to evacuate people, instead of racing against the fire for their own lives.

A single concrete proof: Recall that at one point [link], a firefighter was about to paddle east into Lake Insula to get away from the fire, but she second guessed her decision. Her camping gear was staged over on Lake Hudson (to the west). She considered returning for her gear, but decided to leave it and flee. She barely made it to safety. Now imagine — what if she knew there were people back on Lake Hudson, people she was responsible to? She likely would have made a different decision and gotten a different outcome. This is one concrete example of how the decision to clear certain lakes on Sunday, ended up saving firefighter lives on Monday. Or rather, it set up firefighters to save their own lives.