Disasters are now ubiquitous and inevitable. From pandemics to natural catastrophes to cyber-attacks, your business – and your employees – will be challenged to respond when disaster strikes.
And you won’t always be present to lead the initial response.
Patrick Hardy is leading a new approach to disaster management for small businesses and Fortune 500 companies. The Founder and CEO of Hytropy Disaster Management is also the first business owner ever to be selected as the national private-sector representative to FEMA.
A top-down response to workplace disasters is out of date and isn’t effective in mitigating damage. Patrick shares his empowerment approach with us that includes:
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Why frontline employees will be the most critical leaders in a disaster
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The three most important items to have in your disaster kit
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How a successful disaster response can have a strategic business impact
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And much, much more
When disaster strikes, we are all responsible to respond. Train and trust your employees to react.
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Patrick Hardy: Disaster Management can’t be top down. It has to be bottom up. So the leadership lesson here is not I’m going to take a dictatorial stand, and I’m going to do everything because that is an outdated paradigm. Well, it’s not about being a dictator. It’s about being a delegator.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Vibrant Leadership podcast with leadership speaker and consultant, Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Hey everybody, welcome to the Vibrant Leadership podcast. My name is Nicole Greer. They call me the Vibrant Coach, and I am here today with none other than Patrick Hardy. He is the founder and CEO of Hytropy Disaster Management, the largest full service disaster management company in the US. He is a certified emergency manager, a certified risk manager and a FEMA master of exercise.
He has extensive experience working in the public, private and nonprofit sectors in disaster management, from micro businesses to fortune 500 companies. In the summer of 2012, he became the youngest person and the first business owner ever to be selected as the National Private Sector Representative to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, otherwise known as FEMA. So Patrick is here to talk to us about how leaders need to be prepared, and they need to think about risk. So I’m so happy you’re here today.
Patrick: Thank you, Nicole. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Nicole: Yeah, we’re delighted to have you. So I start off every podcast Patrick, with the same question. And that question is, what’s your definition of leadership?
Patrick: Someone who’s prepared to go somewhere on their own and take others with them. So it is a common vision, that’s that someone has. And in disasters, that very commonly is you’re taking people to a place, and they have no idea where they’re going, but they trust in you because you have the ability to lead people successfully into those unknown areas.
Nicole: I love your definition. And so there have been all sorts of risks left and right. If we just go through the you know, the news, and the headlines that we’ve had over the last maybe even 24 months, we’ve got hurricanes and floods and COVID, and all sorts of things. So before we get into how a leader might, you know, navigate all these these crazy things that come our way, will you tell us a little bit like how did you get into the risk management and dealing with these kinds of things? How’d you how’d you get there?
Patrick: My father was actually a business continuity planner. My dad was the head of business continuity, which is the private sector equivalent of a recovery manager for the Cal State University system, which is a very large, I think it’s the largest in the world, actually. And before that, he worked at the Getty Museum, he worked at USC, he was, and he retired, and I decided when I was a working, I worked on an ambulance, I was a medic. And what I was doing, I was doing that all throughout college. And you know what happened?
When I was in college, I studied political science, and I studied economics. And everybody around me at school had something they were passionate about. They wanted to, you know, abolish nuclear weapons, they had some kind of ideological thing they were trying to reach. You know, you know, prevent genocide, or stop torture or whatever. And you know, what, I couldn’t find anything. I couldn’t think of anything, couldn’t find anything. And then, just when that’s when 911 occurred, and I was a freshman when that happened. And then Hurricane Katrina happened when I was just graduating.
And that’s when I realized, that is the public policy problem I want to tackle. It is the perfect synergy. It is the fusing of my vocational background and passions, which is being a medic, working the street, being in an ambulance, helping people every day, who call 911. And looking at it from a policy perspective of being a political scientist looking at these economic problems and saying, there’s a better way of doing things. And that was the project that I decided to take on throughout my career. Because you know what I said, I said, there has to be someone who’s willing to take leadership of this.
And there has to be a better way of doing it. We need young thinkers, we need new thinkers. We need groundbreaking kinds of kinds of thoughts and analysis and possibilities. And that’s how we’re going to dramatically improve emergency preparedness in the United States and around the world. And so that’s the project I decided to adopt, which happened to fit perfectly with my dad, who has at that point was beginning to retire. And so I said this is a great goal for me to pursue.
Nicole: I love that and every great leader has to have a great goal to pursue. I actually love what you said just there. Alright, so leaders are sitting around, you know, thinking about their future, but usually it’s like how do we make more money? How do we launch this new product? How do we hire the right people? Why is it, why is it so essential that a leader today think about risk and disaster management? What are you seeing out there? And and how might a leader start doing that more on purpose?
Patrick: Disasters are now ubiquitous, meaning they’re gonna be everywhere, everyone is affected by COVID, in some way or another. In fact, just yesterday, I found out that a close friend passed away from COVID. And these are the kinds of things yeah, it’s very sad. He was a very distinguished Toastmaster, in fact, so he was someone who was a public speaking leader. And he was someone who had done a lot for young presenters like me, who were transitioning out of college, and were trying to move into more of the professional realm. He was a great mentor and friend. But it has woken up business leaders, public policymakers, families, organizations, and institutions of all types, that disasters are not this theoretical abstract. It’s real. It’s going to affect you.
And it’s going to impact your employees and simply saying, we’re going to wing it, we’re just going to figure it out as it happened. That was a lesson that now has been very hard for people to learn, but it’s one they had to learn. And now that they realize that, they’ve come to a point where they say, how can we move this forward so that we are being more proactive rather than reactive? So to answer the second plank of your question, it’s what do they need to do to prepare? This is what I tell every business. And I write disaster plans for restaurants, bars, nursing homes, beekeeping operations, alligator farms, you know, campgrounds, RV parks, every kind of small business.
I say the most important thing about that red binder that sits in the corner of your office, or that red backpack that you bought, and you’ve put in a corner, because you just want to be prepared, you want to have the necessary equipment, it all boils down to one thing. empowerment. If you can empower your employees, if you can empower people from the C suite, all the way down to the line employees, the people who are working day to day interacting with your customers and clients, people who are working the street. Those are the people that are the most important. And that’s the dramatic change. That’s the message I want business leaders to take away and others that run organizations of all types. Disaster Management can’t be top down. It has to be bottom up.
So the leadership lesson here is not I’m going to take, you know, a dictatorial stand, and I’m going to do everything because that is an outdated paradigm. So the better way to do it, is to empower people from the bottom up saying to them, I trust you to use the disaster plan. I trust you to activate the equipment. I trust you because you’re my employee, and I want you to be successful. It’s not about being a dictator. It’s about being a delegator. That’s what will make you a successful leader in any type of disaster event.
Nicole: Fantastic. Alright, so I love what you’re saying about this disaster plan that you write. So I’m wondering, can you kind of walk us through what’s exactly in my red binder? You know, if I had tabs in my red binder, what would they be?
Patrick: Your first, your first tab on your very first page should give some immediate steps of what you want people to do. It’s what I call an empowerment statement. I don’t know of any other disaster planner that puts that in there. I think we invented it. It’s a statement that essentially says, if this is a disaster, and you’re an employee, you are now in charge. If the CEO isn’t there, that’s fine, you are in charge. Then I have different tabs for lots of different subsequent plans you have to have because these are tools, right for how to deal with different situations.
So I have a tab for evacuation. I have a tab for sheltering people in place. I have a tab for locking people down. I have a tab for crisis communication, how to deal with the insurance company, how to deal with law enforcement, how to deal with the utilities. Do you have to turn the power on and off? How do you handle these situations? Then we go into specific threat plans, things like earthquake plan or hurricane plan, any one of those things becomes really, really important. And that’s the reason why when I write these plans, I say, the most important thing, because you can’t think of every threat.
You can’t think of every possible threat to your business, right? No one nobody, for example, anticipated COVID, really? So what happened was, you have people who said, well don’t have a disaster plan for that. I said, well, if you had a basic disaster plan, it gives you the tools you need to deal with lots of different kinds of hazards. And that is what true empowerment is about, is giving you the tools to be successful, even when you have no idea of the threat you’re going to be facing.
Nicole: Yeah, I love what you’re saying. And so immediately, the first thing in there is an empowerment statement, you know, that you’re immediately saying,no, you need to take charge of the situation. I’m not there. Which is fantastic. And then you gave us lots of good examples. So you said that you can’t anticipate every single one. So let’s say we put the binder together. And we’ve got the binder and like you said, it’s sitting in the corner on the desk or in the on the, on the shelf. What else do leaders need to do to make sure people you know, get the binder, they know that know it’s there? How do you get people trained? What do you think the right protocol to get everybody up on this and delegated to, to your point.
Patrick: You need to train them. That’s the first step. So you need to train everybody on the plan, you need to train every person when I say every person, I mean every person. And I will tell you this, I did some consulting work with fortune 500 companies. So these are companies, big tech companies, you know, large tentacles around the world. And I would turn to them and say you need to train all your employees. And they would say, no, we’re not going to do that we’re not going to train everybody, we’re only going to train the top level managers are not going to look at the people at the bottom, I said, why not? And they they said, well, their job is to you know, they’re a software engineer, or they’re a telecom specialist, or they’re this or they’re that.
And I turned them and I said, you’re treating these people like they’re a tool in a toolbox that you pull out, use it, and then you throw it back in the toolbox, and you forget about it. That’s not the way it works. That is a easy way to get an unpredictable situation and make it worse. What you need to do is you need to by training them, you are saying I’m investing in you. And I’m telling you that as a management team, we want you to be successful in a disaster response, and you need to know how we do things. The same way people have to learn, you know how you’re going to get their paychecks, or how they deal with becoming ill.
So let’s see employee assistance programs, you know, make sure they have their key card to get the building, this needs to be part of one of those things that you do. And then the second thing you’ve got to do after you train everyone is you got to run a drill. You’ve got to actually put people under the baptism of fire, you need to actually try it out. And I can’t tell you the number of times, it’s if I had a if I had a nickel for every time someone told me this, I would be a multi millionaire. Every person who says we don’t need to drill it, everybody knows the plans. And I’ll tell you what I’ve done. I have a check for $10,000 that I take with me and I challenge people at trade shows. I challenge companies at trade shows who tell me all the time, my disaster plan will absolutely work.
So what I dramatically do is I pull it out of my pocket and I say this is a $10,000 check. I will give you $10,000 if you invite me to your property, and I run a drill, which and I will I will I’m not going to be random, it’s going to be on a hazard that you are well aware of. And we’re going to actually do an evacuation or a shelter in place for a lockdown or whatever. And here’s the rub. Management can’t be involved at all. The employees have to be totally on their own. And if your employees are able to follow your plan, and they meet your timelines, I will give you $10,000 right here, right right now. I’ve been challenged about 20 times.
And I still have that check in my pocket, because people forget that you have to actually try the plan out and make sure that people understand that. Because if management says I’m always going to be in charge, I can I can give you three dozen examples of real life examples, real situations where leadership was not present. They were gone, they evacuated, they had something wrong, something happened to them, they were casualties. And then they didn’t know what to do. Employees had no clue because nobody had ever empowered them, Nicole. Nobody had ever turned to them and said, If I’m the CEO, and I’m not here, this is what I want you to do in a disaster response.
And I’m trusting you to do this because you are an employee and I’m telling you, I trust you enough that I’m actually going to train you on it. This is not some theoretical abstract. This is an actual situation. And by doing that, it puts people in a position where they feel like they can be trusted. That’s genuine empowerment. Because you know what you instantly do. You make everybody a leader. You say, in a disaster, you can lead the disaster, you can do that. And I tell that to people all the time. I look them right in the eyes, and I say, you know, that job you recently just started? I don’t care that you were just the person who works the graveyard shift or just works, the overnights, you can do this too, you can be part of the disaster response.
Let me teach you how to do that. And then that forces management to see wow, there are a lot more leaders in this organization than I really realized. I said, that’s right. When you stop treating people like the hammer, and you treat people like the one who’s meant to swing the hammer, all of a sudden, you will be amazed at how many nails, you can pound into those boards.
Nicole: I love it, I love it. So the first thing we need to do is train you said, and so I heard in what you were saying because you know I have a big human resource emphasis in what I do. And I love leadership development. But what I heard, is this needs to be in the onboarding process. Like you get your your access card, you have a day that we talk about, everybody is in charge, if they’re at the scene, and there’s an emergency going down, and that maybe even in that onboarding process, the drill takes place, or within their first, you know, 90 days of work, there’s a drill every 90 days, you have a drill you have everybody go through it, I love it. And that you turn everybody into a leader in this process.
Patrick: You absolutely do. And it shows the employees that you’re invested in them, right, because at HR, I’m sure that’s a big challenge with people with morale, and otherwise. That’s why I tell HR leaders all the time, don’t show videos, please, on disaster, I mean on other things fine. On disasters, don’t do that. Look them in the eyeballs and say, this is something that is important as part of our company culture. This is something important to us, you are important to us. And we rely on you. I do health care facilities all the time. I actually will run a drill, because they have to run a disaster drill once a year.
And I played this trick on them all the time. I love it. I walk into the room, it’s maybe 50, 60 people in the room, because this will be a skilled nursing facility or assisted living or something. And I’ll go in and I’ll say, okay, guys, we’re gonna run your annual drill. All right, so who do you guys think ought to be in charge. And the manager raises her hand, you know, she’s the administrator or whatever. And she she raises her hand, I said, you know what, it’s not going to be you. So I say, um, who’s here, who’s the newest employee here. And I find somebody who’s only been on the job inevitably, you know, 10 days, two weeks. And I said, and I always say to them come up front.
And they always avert my gaze, because they don’t want to be picked. They don’t want to be pulled up there. And I always say, this is like a magic show. And I bring them up front, I hand them the disaster plan. And I say, you’re in charge. And they say, oh, I can’t do that. I can’t be put in charge. You can’t put me in charge. I said, no no, you’re in charge. And they said, but I don’t know how to do this. I go, I know you don’t. That’s why you have a disaster plan. That’s what I’m here to do. But if you don’t use the plan, this is a waste of time. And they they they said, oh, I’ve never opened it. I’ve never used that. I go, that’s what this is for. This is meant to do that for you. That’s why I’ve developed this the way I have.
And inevitably, they open the plan up and they start using it and voila, things start to happen. They realize they can lead in an emergency. Now I act as like a coach and a mentor for them. And I help them so I don’t leave them totally at sea. I mean, I sit there and I say, now you want to be thinking about this. Now you want to be thinking about that. But I always pose it as questions. I never give them answers. I always say, now, if you’ve sent these people over here, do you think it might be a big deal to think about safety? Or communication? Or what would happen if they ran into an employee who had no idea what was going on?
I think you’d want to know that right? And they think in their head, I need to give those people a walkie talkie before they leave. You know, and that helps them and so that we’re constantly helping them when they hit roadblocks because I don’t want people to fail. I don’t want people to do that. I want people to see the plan and say, this is a document that’s going to genuinely help me and make me successful. Because otherwise I’m not going to be because the disaster is going to be so large that there’s no way that it’s actually going to work. It’s gonna be very overwhelming for them.
Nicole: All right. I love your story and the power of questions continues to amaze me. I think that you know, that’s one of the greatest skills a leader can have is asking the right questions to teach people what they need to do. So I love what you just said there. Well, what other skills does a leader need in order to get their team where it needs to be in terms of disaster readiness? What skills do they need? What do they need to do?
Patrick: I hate disaster movies. I can’t stand the vast majority of them. Because what they depict is they depict people in almost apocalyptic situations. And what they do is they say to people, well, the firemen are going to come pick you up. Law enforcement will handle it. There’s a superhero, there are some group of people that will do everything for you. What I tell leaders is, is I do the converse, I say, if you want to be a genuinely effective leader in a disaster, this is what you have to do. Assume that no one is going to help you. Assume you are going to be totally alone. Assume that there’s gonna be no superheroes.
There’s no firemen, there’s no law enforcement, there’s no ambulance, there’s no nothing. You folks are on your own. Now, if they end up helping you, that’s great. But you know, what, assume that they won’t help you. And that gives you the greatest amount of independence, you need to maintain control. Where most movies try to depict it as well, the military has to take over, they have to do everything, we have to be like shaped, right? I don’t want leaders to get that idea at all. I want them to turn that on their head and say, if you want to do that, you need to delegate and empower the people around you.
You can’t run the disaster response by yourself. I do this with principals at schools all the time. They have traditional disaster plans that say, well, the principal is going to do this, the principal is going to do that. I literally take those disaster plans, and I rip it up in front of them. And I say you’re not going to do these things. It’s whoever is in charge is going to do those things. And you’re going to delegate everything else. Everything else is going to be delegated. I actually get to the point where I actually say to the person in charge, you should actually be doing not much, except to standing around and waiting for reports and moving everything forward.
If you get to that point, you’re better off. That’s how I know you been and effective, because you’ve delegated everything. Because you don’t have time to turn the power off. You don’t have time to turn the water off. You don’t have time to deal with the media. You don’t have time to deal with parents, you don’t have time to deal with that child that fell and hurt their ankle. Is it sad? Sure. But we have people to help them. You can’t do that. Right? So you have to delegate those things in a disaster.
But if you assume that there’s going to be a bunch of people coming out to help you all the time, then you’re never going to be truly independent. You’re never going to put yourself in a position to be successful, and your employees won’t either. Because you’re just gonna say in your plan, well, we have a few things we have to do. But reality is the military will handle it, or the police will handle it. And that’s not the way it is.
Nicole: Yeah, and I’m thinking about a police chief that I work with here in Charlotte, North Carolina, in a municipality near Charlotte, North Carolina. And he says, you know, when I when I go to the scene, right, which is disaster happening, crime scene. When I go to the crime scene, I just hang back, and I watch.
Patrick: Wonderful.
Nicole: Yeah. And that’s how I figure out what needs to be done. He says then I might whisper in somebody’s ear who’s doing this, or this needs to be done.
Patrick: Yeah, you know what, and that’s a beautiful take, because he’s completely right. And that is the way to do it. Because the other thing, one of the things that used to annoy me as a medic, is I’d be working a scene and then I’d have a supervisor who had no who had not been there didn’t know what was going on.
Nicole: Right. Didn’t know the history.
Patrick: Yeah, exactly. Didn’t know the history didn’t know where we were at. I didn’t know where my crews were, would walk up and say, I’m in charge now. Okay, I’m fine. I have this. I have this whole thing handled. And you’d say, no, I’ve got it handled. You know, because these people are trying to be dictators and they’re trying to show it’s a matter of fact, I’m gonna be speaking in Raleigh, North Carolina, in about a month, in front of the largest campgrounds and RV Association in the country that probably about 500 people in the room. And each one of these people have some of these people have resorts, some of them have huge parks.
And I turn to them all the time. And I say, you know, that seasonal person you hired right after Memorial Day, guess what? They got to know how to handle the disaster. They have to know how to do that stuff. It may be that you’re not going to be in charge of everything. I know you’ve run your park for 25 years. They’re going to have to be there and they’re going to have to do X, Y& Z so those are the kinds of things that I do that and I say that not because I want to emasculate anybody. I do it because I say that’s better for you.
Because like the chief said, I hang back, I whisper in people’s ear, he didn’t say, I show up, you know, I puff out my chest, I show my stars on my collar, and I take over, because that’s not an effective way of doing it. And from an HR perspective, that’s the fastest way to lower morale. That’s the fastest way to do that. Because you know what, that tells people? I don’t trust you. I don’t trust you to do anything right. So I will do it all myself. And as soon as that happens, things begin to fall apart very, very quickly.
Nicole: Yeah, and I’m putting together what you’re saying, I mean, when you show up, and you puff your chest out, and you show your stars, you know, you’re, you’re taking on that superhero, that you said, is not really coming to help. So don’t, don’t do that.
Patrick: Right, because you don’t want people to rely on that, right? Because then people become too reliant you know, you’ve got you actually have it absolute right. Which is people become victims and say, I’m just gonna hang back, like I’m in a Hollywood movie, I’m experiencing the movie around me and, and, and, and, and you know, The Rock is gonna show up, and rescue me and pull me out of here and pull them right at the last moment, just before the building is blown up or whatever.
That’s not gonna happen, right? You need to be able to do this stuff on your own. Just like I talked to people who live in high rises. And I say, you know, one of the things you have to recognize is that, you know, you can’t run to the roof and jump on a helicopter, that only happens in the movies. That does not happen in real life for a reason. It’s dangerous, and it’s illegal. So you need to realize that you are responsible for evacuating yourself. No one’s gonna come help you, not because they don’t want to. It’s just they can’t do it.
You know, especially in large, high rises, where you’re at, you know, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 floors. You know, firefighters will do their best, but you have to be responsible for your own evacuation. And if you do that, now you’re empowered. Now you’re empowered. If the fire guys show up, great, but you know, what, if they don’t have to worry about you, now, that’s awesome, because that makes their job easier. Because now you can worry about Mrs. Jones, who is non ambulatory and really needs help versus you who really didn’t need it. And you could actually do everything totally on your own.
Nicole: Right, right. I love it. Okay, well, you made a comment earlier. Well, actually two comments. One, you said, we talked about the red binder and the tabs in there and I think that’s a good start for everybody. Then the second thing you said there’s a red backpack in the corner. And then earlier you said you’ve got to have the right equipment. So if there’s a leader sitting here listening right now, and you know, let’s say they own for example, I have a client who owns convenience stores, many of them. Client that owns who is a credit union that has several credit union locations. What what would these people have in their backpack? And what is like the minimal equipment you should have, so that you’re ready for the most common emergencies?
Patrick: Sure, there is some basic equipment that every single backpack should have, regardless of the industry vertical, right? So whether you’re a mobile home park or you’re or you’re a grocery store, or you’re convenience store or you’re a credit union, you should always have it. And there’s a few things like I tell people this you know, what is the best piece of equipment that you could possibly imagine in a real disaster? Is tape. Duct tape. Duct tape, has some amazing uses. You could turn it into.
Nicole: Well there you go. It’s proven. Duct tape is the ultimate.
Patrick: MacGyver. I grew up on MacGyver, and MacGyver, he always used duct tape. He brought that with him. And as a disaster planner forgotten all about it. And then I’d been in a few disasters, I’ve been some hurricanes have been some tornadoes. I braved some earthquakes and I realized tape is actually especially really good. It doesn’t have to be duct tape. It could be gorilla tape, see I use gorilla tape. But those are the kinds of just really strong high tensile strength tape can do a tremendous amount, it can make a big difference for you. Because you can use it to close things, seal things, you can pull things it has a tensile strength you I mean, you actually could you know, tie something at the end pull it you know, along or whatever.
I mean, there’s so many things you can, you know, pull up against cracks, lots of stuff. You could actually take the tape, and you could actually roll it up. And it’s like a it’s like a minor rope you could actually use it’s sort of like a rope. And speaking of, you should always have rope, you should always have rope. Rope is another thing that is tremendously useful. It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t, doesn’t matter what the industry is, as long as you have a piece of rope, you can tie things. There’s a lot you can do with rope. And the the people always say flashlights. I say you know what, flashlights are good and flashlights are important, but you should have what we call a miner’s headlight.
Meaning a light that you can actually strapped to your head. The reason is because if you really want to challenge your yourself in a real disaster, do this. When you run your next drill, whether your credit union or your consumers, or whatever, turn all the lights off, and then pull your disaster plan and plan out and try to use it in the dark. Then you will discover that it’s hard to hold a flashlight, and use the plan. And by the way, cell phones will eventually burn out, right. So you don’t want to keep having to use your cell phone flashlight, it’s a nice headlamp will make a big difference.
So should you have flashlights? Sure, that’s the other thing. If you don’t have walkie talkies that you regularly use, you should have walkie talkies in there. So because that is how people are going to need to communicate. There are areas especially if you’re near a military installation, or if you’re in an area of town, where there are a lot of tall buildings, there are chances that cell phones will not work. That is very, very possible. So that’s also really important. Couple of other things that I say should be everyone is chalk. And I say get a really good kind of chalk. There’s a construction chalk, which is a yellow chalk, it works very well, even if you even if there’s a little bit of water on it, it will not wash away like children’s chalk will, or what we call recreational chalk. That’s, that’s always very helpful. Always have gloves always have masks.
So those are things that I tend to allow people to use at businesses, of course, I would otherwise say have something like a knife to use. But we of course, don’t generally allow those and a lot of companies won’t put those in their kits. So instead, what we say is have something else where you can actually cut the ends off of tape. So it just depends on whatever you want to have in place. So each one of those. The rest of the kit should be customized based on your disaster plan. Based on your plan, what does your plan, say? And that’s what I challenge companies to do. I always say, what is your plan supposed to do? What do you want employees to do?
I’ll give you a great example. I was I had a school once that I was doing a plan early in my career. And that school had this disaster plan that said, we’re going to get kids off the site within eight hours. That’s our goal. That’s the plan said. We’re not going to keep kids overnight. I said fine, that’s pretty straight. That’s pretty streamlined. This was in a very affluent area of town, actually. And so I said, that’s makes sense. Then I went into their storage bin. And they had chemical toilets and showers and gallons and gallons and gallons of non potable water for use in showers and different things.
They had shovels and picks and all kinds of stuff I said, you guys could practically you know, go on the Lewis and Clark Expedition with all this stuff. You don’t need any of these things. They had stuff that didn’t matter. And I said, you know what, you don’t need any of this stuff. And it’s cluttering your, cluttering your storage bins, so get rid of it. Only use things you need. Because if you put things in there you don’t need, then it’s going to be something that you’re going to spend a lot of extra money that you don’t have to use. The other thing, if appropriate, is have a tool to turn the utilities on and off.
If you have that, that’s something that will be very helpful for you. So and then just one last thing is safety glasses and protecting. And potentially if you work in the industry, maybe a helmet of some kind, but you don’t have to have one. So, but glasses are really good because there’s just pieces, especially in earthquakes and seismic activity, but the rest of it should be based on your plan. So your plan goes first, then buy the equipment second. Don’t buy things straight out of the box, customize it specifically for your situation.
Nicole: All right, so um, you know, if a leader doesn’t have this particular plan in place, they don’t have adapt disaster preparedness plan. They don’t have they don’t have this on their radar. How do they introduce it to their organization without creating extra anxiety or worry or fear? Because it’s like, you know, if we say we need to be prepared. You said evacuation for lockdown for you know,
Patrick: Shelter in place.
Nicole: Yeah, shelter in place, all of those different things. Thank you for helping me. Yeah. And I actually I took the course Patrick, through the Monroe, police department on when you have an, when you have an active shooter. And I’m going to tell you that was that was a very enlightening wonderful thing. I didn’t know I was going to be taught that that day I was at like a chamber event. And they said and our speaker today is the, you know, the these gentlemen from the police department, they’re going to talk about active, an active shooter. You know, we learned so many things you can do in that situation.
And I did, I felt what you’re saying over and over, I felt empowered. I was like, oh, my gosh, I know what to do now. I got some good advice today. But I imagine, I imagine that if a leader goes into back, you know, back to his organization, he’s like, I really need to do this, because this is a liability. I’ve got to have this in place. I got to make sure my people are safe. It should show I care. But I don’t want to get everybody alarmed and upset, worried. How do you handle that, like emotional intelligence piece of this whole thing.
Patrick: I don’t do doom and gloom, period. I never do doom and gloom. When it comes to emergencies, I turn to people and instead of approaching it as a fear based approach, which tends to turn people off, I turn to them and say, look, disasters are inevitable. They’re going to happen here, we had something last week or, I’m jut making this up, you know, whatever. Then I turn them and say, we should have the tools to make sure that we are empowered to do what we have to do to be successful, so that we’re not recovering from some emergency, we’re actually being proactive to support everybody, so that we can minimize injury, minimize property destruction, minimize a communications problem, whatever it is, and I keep it very positive.
And I turn to them and say, if we do this, then we are going to be in a position where we can gain on competitors. When they are closed, we can go forward. I’ll give you a perfect example. Everybody knows about, there were plenty of different kinds of ways of conducting online meetings. Zoom was the most prepared of everybody, because they were the most prepared for everybody, when the pandemic occurred, they pounced. They were prepared, they knew what to do. That’s why they’ve been so successful. And that’s what I tell companies that are highly competitive.
I say, you know what, instead of viewing the disaster as something bad, you know what, think of it is a wonderful opportunity to gain on all in all those competitors, you never had a chance to, because now you can do it, just be prepared in advance. Just put together a small small plan and have things done, then you can recover faster. And then you’re going to be in a position to actually make money during the emergency and move forward and take it as an opportunity to be strengthening. To actually strengthen your infrastructure and your people. Design the disaster to make yourself successful. That’s what I always tell people. Design the disaster so it makes you successful.
Nicole: I love it. So this is really a way to have a revenue generating strategy, if you think about it that way. So I think almost every leader on listening to this podcast definitely wants to have another avenue for increasing their revenue. Absolutely. All right, so you had told me that you have a book and you have a book in the works. Will you talk a little bit about your two books, and let us know where we might find them and how they might help us with all this?
Patrick: Yes, I have a book that is coming out in early 2022. And it is the very first disaster book that is genuinely made for just regular people. So it’s not a prepper book, where we teach you how to, you know, fish, you know, using your shoelaces and stuff. This is a book where it’s like, given the modern age, given social media, given the technologies we currently enjoy, given our modern lifestyles, how do we need to think about disasters? And you know what, it’s all about empowering you. And I can’t reveal the title of the book just yet. But I will tell you that it is going to be a book that is going to revolutionize the way we do disaster preparedness.
So everyone, business leaders, it talks about how to prepare your families, your pets, your, anything you have in your life, even valuable pieces of artwork. I’ve done disaster plans where I’ve written plans for how to evacuate your artwork, or how to do this or that and each and so I walk them through how when you empower yourself through each phase of the disaster, the reaction phase, which would be immediate moments after a disaster, responding to the disaster, which is the days and weeks afterwards. And then the recovery phase. If you do that, the message is this. When you design the disaster in that way, you actually turn yourself from a victim to an empowered leader. It turns you into something different. It makes it so that you never fear disasters, you simply look at them as obstacles that you can overcome.
And I think Americans are prepared for that. And during COVID, I saw too many people who just didn’t see the potential like I do. And so I walk them through and show them a realistic way. Why doesn’t your current disaster plans work? Why doesn’t anyone have the right equipment? Why doesn’t the red backpacks really do anything? Why do they always just gather cobwebs? I answer those questions. And then I say, here’s a better way to think about it, to design it so that it actually works for you. So that’s the first book and where it’s going to be. And that’s gonna be available for everyone.
And we’re really excited. The other book is going to be a technical book about how governments can better create relationships with small businesses, and with other companies. Because currently, small businesses and others, they don’t have as much participation in emergency management as I think they should. So I’m designing a brand new framework for how governments can approach companies in their jurisdictions and say, here’s how we can make you better, here’s how we can support you.
And I’ve actually designed a complete, literally a plug and play framework for them to actually use no matter if they’re a large jurisdiction, like in Charlotte, or if they’re just a really small town or county. So where where they can actually interact, they know everybody. So no matter what I want to make, it’s like government’s interfacing better with the people that they serve. So those are going to be the two books, both will be coming out in 2022. One will be coming out in the first months, and the other will be coming out in the fall.
Nicole: Oh, that’s fantastic. Congratulations. That’s exciting for you. And for us to get our hands on this information. And we want our small businesses and our municipalities and counties to, you know, have that relationship that you’re talking about. Like I said, I work with a lot of firefighters and police, and anything that helps those wonderful civil servants get their job done easier, I think there’s going to be fantastic. Well, are there any trends out there, or things that you’re kind of seeing on the horizon that we should also be aware of?
Patrick: The biggest trend I’m seeing right now is cyber security. Obviously, there have been some massive IT attacks. There was a targeted attack. For those of you who who are here who have a iPhone, you probably got a security update in the last couple weeks, that was probably very unusual. And that’s because Apple hadn’t really done that before. And it was because there was an attack from an Israeli hacker firm. And so that was a big deal. The T Mobile attack, also compromised a lot of data. So the trend we are now seeing is that there has to be plans and positions for dealing with cyber attacks as well. And thankfully, in the book, I discussed that too. Because obviously, IT is so important to us.
But one of the things I tell people is, is this, don’t be too reliant on IT. Don’t let it be everything. If you are too reliant on it, that’s a weakness. So you need to balance it out. Yes, you’re going to have to learn how to do hard copies of things from time to time. Because if you have a massive cyber attack, it’s going to close you. If you don’t know how to do things manually, you don’t have manual backups, you’re going to go out of business. There is just no nice way of saying it. So we’ve seen it time and time again. That’s why being proactive and looking at the disaster as an empowerment, if you see you’re only relying on one thing, you are disempowering yourself.
You are saying, okay, I’m just going to I’m going to hand off my business functions to these technology platforms that may or may not be available even during hurricanes, right? Where the power’s out, where, where there’s no way to access things. It provides you with something at least to be able to do these backups, which will ultimately help you in the long run. But it has to be that is really the newest trends in what we are seeing and so that’s the clear clarion call that I’ve been kind of providing to everybody. And when the book comes out, Nicole I will happily send you a copy and we’d love to talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. Sure.
Nicole: Yeah, let’s do a phase two and then we can go like you know through the chapters and get the highlights for everybody.
Patrick: You’ll love it.
Nicole: Cliff Notes version. Yeah, I will love it. Awesome. Okay, everybody. So you’ve heard from Patrick. He’s like he’s got three stages. You’ve got to work through, reaction, responding and recovery. And you’ve got to have your red binder, you got to have your red backpack and you got to have a manual backup. I think that is solid advice that you’ve been given today. Let me let me finish with one last question. If you were mentoring a leader right now, and you thought, here’s one last piece of advice. What piece of advice would you give that leader?
Patrick: The one piece of advice I would give to that leader is this, I want you to conduct the training for all of your employees. So all of the people, regardless of their position, top or bottom, and I want you to look each of them in the eye, and I want you to say this to them. If there is a disaster, we are all responsible for that. We’re all responsible for responding to it. And I’m trusting you to work with us. By doing that, and actually having that interpersonal interaction versus you know, I tell leaders, please don’t send an email. Don’t just send some mass email to everybody. Don’t just text people, look them right in the eye and say, this is a commitment I’m making to you. Because I promise each leader who hears this, if you commit to them, they will commit to you when you need them the most.
Nicole: I love it. I love it. Well, Patrick Hardy, it has been a delight to have you on the Vibrant Leadership podcast and everybody out there, here’s here’s where you can find Patrick. You’re probably thinking, I just need to call him so he’ll come and do me a plan and help me get my act together. So you can reach him at www.americasdisasterplanner.com. Did I get it right, Patrick?
Patrick: You got it.
Nicole: Okay, fantastic. And he’s also you know, he’s user friendly, you can reach out to him on LinkedIn. So he’s at LinkedIn.com/in/americasdisasterplanner. So just look up Patrick Hardy, he’ll be glad to link in with you. And he’d be glad to give you some advice and talk to you about how you might make your company empowered to do the right thing in the middle of a disaster. All right, Patrick, thank you so much for being on the Vibrant Leadership podcast.
Patrick: Thank you so much for having me today.
Voiceover: Ready to up your leadership game? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her unique SHINE method to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Email speaking@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com/TEDTalk.
So awesome to hear two fellow Podcasters Directory members connect and record a podcast!!
Nicole Greer
https://www.podcastersdirectory.com/nicolegreer
Interviewing
Patrick Hardy
https://www.podcastersdirectory.com/patrickhardy