Breaking Down Silos: Enhancing Collaboration for Effective Incident Response

Joe Moudy, Director of Emergency Management, City of Lubbock

Joe Moudy, Director of Emergency Management, City of Lubbock

Joe Moudy brings a wealth of expertise in crisis management, disaster response and public safety to the role. With extensive experience in emergency services, Moudy has been instrumental in developing and implementing comprehensive emergency plans for the city. He is known for his ability to coordinate effective multi-agency responses and foster strong interdepartmental collaboration.

Through this article, Joe Moudy shares his insights on breaking down "silos of excellence" within organizations to enhance communication and collaboration during major incidents and disasters. He emphasizes the importance of identifying stakeholders, sharing information, building trust, maintaining confidentiality and conducting after-action reviews to improve overall preparedness and response.

Each of our organizations is made up of different departments with specialties in how we operate. These departments often form “silos of excellence” in which they excel within their own environment and group and isolate themselves and others from considerable factors, possibilities and the communications of the organization. The challenge becomes how to turn these “silos of excellence” into a collaborative and collective response during major incidents and disasters while maintaining the “silos of excellence”. While this may be suitable for day-to-day operations, when an incident occurs, cascading effects often impact multiple operations. This quickly turns a small incident into a much larger one. An example of cascading effects is how a small water leak may require a school to shut down for a day or for hospital services to be suspended.

“Our teams and organizations are stronger when we communicate and share information between departments, becoming better prepared to respond to cascading effects as a result of an incident.”

These silos can occur within a department where one group is not communicating with other groups in their department. Information is often restricted under the pretense or excuse of security restrictions. These communication gaps further strengthen the formation of “silos of excellence” and restrict collaboration between groups.

Here are some ideas on how we can bridge the gap without sacrificing the excellence and specialties in each department.

Identify what stakeholders your operations impact:

● Think outside the box and identify both internally and externally who relies on your operations or information to function.

● Water departments might have stakeholders such as the streets department, residences, schools, hospitals or businesses in the affected areas, public health departments, transportation companies, public safety agencies and others.

● Information technology departments have stakeholders such as every employee in the organization and external agencies that communicate and share information with internal departments and the public.

Identify what information can be shared on an ongoing basis:

● While specific information regarding the type of incident may be restricted, identify what information can be shared broadly.

● Basic incident information such as dates, times, incident summary and systems impacted can strengthen another department’s preparedness and response for cascading effects.

● Get in the habit of sharing information such as maintenance times, duration and systems impacted.

Build trust in your operations:

● Meet regularly with your stakeholders.

● Communicate upcoming changes and other activities that may impact other organizations and provide opportunities for stakeholders to ask questions.

● Answer questions by providing facts and information that is known.

● If you do not know what caused the issue, provide a time when you can provide more information.

● Provide consistent information and work with your team to provide the same.

Maintain confidentiality and provide feedback:

● Know what information needs to be shared within your department, while protecting confidential information.

● Provide feedback to the originating department, on how that information is beneficial to you and helps you prepare.

Conduct after-action reviews:

● While a department may internally review where things could be accomplished better or where failures occurred, an organization-wide review needs to be conducted.

● Listen to how the incident impacted other operations.

● If the cause of the incident was your department, identify why the incident occurred, not necessarily who caused the incident.

● Share your lessons learned and what steps were taken to reduce the incident from re-occurring.

● Implement the lessons learned, do not continue to identify the same improvement time after time.

None of our departments truly operate in a “siloed” manner and are all interconnected to one another. The days of being isolated and insulated from other departments have been long gone. Our teams and organizations are stronger when we communicate and share information between departments and become better prepared to respond to those cascading effects as a result of an incident.

Engage your emergency management team to provide ideas on how to build an information-sharing and analysis system within your organization. They often see how departments may impact one another and may have insight into how a small incident can rapidly turn into a large one. If your emergency management team is seeking accreditation through the Emergency Management Accreditation Program, they may be in the process or may have developed an information-sharing process. This is an excellent opportunity for your department to engage in those processes to ensure that your confidential data is secure, while the individuals are provided with the information, they need to be properly prepared and respond.