Planning

I am heavily involved in search and rescue (SAR), I’m a leader on my county team and an educator for state level search and rescue. My work in SAR education is mostly focused on search management. We teach the theory and practice of planning searches for lost and missing persons; the search areas can be huge, the weather can be challenging and the pressure from family and the media can be intense. How do we teach people to plan searches and maintain a clear direction under these pressures and external forces? How do we keep resources on track late at night when everyone is exhausted? You have got to have a plan, the structure we use is called the Incident Command System or ICS for short. It’s designed to be flexible and adapt to any scenario yet still keep leadership laser focused. The key tenet of ICS from my perspective is, Leadership by Objectives.

 The objectives determine the strategies which will inform your tactics and finally determine the resources you need. The objectives are similar to goals, not identical but for this purpose it’s close enough. Objectives should be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic & timely) so that you can actually evaluate whether or not you’ve completed them. The strategies start to drill down into how you’re going to meet your objectives, think who, what, where, when & why. The tactics are the exact details of each part of the strategy; “who?” becomes how many people and in what structure; “what?” becomes the exact steps that need to occur; and “where?” becomes the exact location and setting… you get the idea. Finally, we select the resources that are specified by the tactics. Why do we do it in this order? Why not start with the resources? In search manager classes we all too often see students who start with “well, I’ve got 6 team members standing here in front of me so I guess we can make 3 teams of 2. What 3 search assignments should we make?” whoa, whoa, whoa. What actually needs to happen in this search (enter your organization here)? Where do we need to search (what programs does your organization need to fund, enhance or create)? If you start with the resources you automatically box in your thinking to what is “standing in front of you”. Don’t chase every grant opportunity that comes into your inbox. Rather, spend some quality time to sit down and think about the objectives for your organization. Where do you need to go? How are you going to get there? What programs need to be nurtured? Are you adequately staffed? What staff training is needed? These strategies and tactics will inform your resource (grant) requests. The Objectives > Strategies > Tactics > Resources become the guiding document, a strategic plan if you will, that keeps yourself, your leadership team, staff and board focused throughout the year when distractions arise and external forces drive decision making. Let the plan guide where you invest your time, rather than opening the door for every opportunity that comes your way. Which opportunities bring you close to achieving your SMART objectives?

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