Our Approach

Checklists and job aids are not new to the crisis management field. Focusing the planning process around them is.

Firms like Decision Aid are hired every day to create emergency & continuity plans for government and business. A contract is signed, the firm pulls out a plan template, fills in the blanks, and delivers a binder to the customer. The binder sits on the shelf until the next required regulatory update. Sure, Decision Aid will create the binder to document the planning process. But wouldn't you also prefer us to leave something useful behind after we're gone?

Our experience shows that your organization is:

1. More likely to maintain and update checklists and other decision aids over the long term
2. More likely to brief new employees on emergency procedures using decision aids
3. More likely to use decision aids to assist with preparation and deployment of personnel & resources during unfamiliar and infrequent incidents

No organization is immune to employee turnover. There's nothing preventing a disruption or crisis the week after orientation. The new employee's best chance is a simple and intuitive decision aid.

Bolting on sample checklists from another business or jurisdiction to your plan is only a bandage. Decision Aid focuses each customer's planning process around the design and intended use of the tools and aids that will be utilized far more often than the binder.

Inquiry-based learning is a student-centered approach which starts by posing questions, problems, or scenarios instead of presenting established facts or depicting a smooth path to knowledge. Decision Aid has taken a spin on this learning approach by utilizing it in plan development.

We feel the role of a consulting firm in the development of an emergency plan is frequently misunderstood. While Decision Aid is expected to develop a quality product that meets regulatory requirements and customer expectations, we must first be a student to improve your existing operations. We don't live in your community or work for your business, and we weren't there the last time something bad happened.

The only way to develop a comprehensive plan, training, or exercise for your organization is to adapt our experience based on what we learn from your team. Asking some of the most seemingly obvious questions has highlighted significant gaps in emergency and continuity plans—simply because they were thought to be too obvious to plan for.

Finally, we use inquiry-based planning to ensure all stakeholders are included in the process, no matter how difficult to get to the table. We understand that some necessary Departments and Agencies will not be able to participate in structured planning meetings. Prior to starting any project, we work with you to identify challenging partners and appropriate engagement strategies. Our approach is unique in that it ensures even the most time-constrained stakeholders provide input towards the final product.

Far too often, the focus of our organization's preparedness programs center around compliance rather than competence. Whether it's a Federal regulation, state license, or a requirement from an accreditation agency, the number one priority is to check the checkboxes, and get through an audit.

Compliance is not enough to get through an incident. Every organization is different and it becomes challenging to ensure your organization has a competent response team while not consuming every hour of the day preparing for an infrequent hazard. How can we build competence with limited financial and human resources?

The US Department of Homeland Security developed the “POETE” framework (planning, organization, equipment, training, and exercises) as a way to measure preparedness in organizations. While the framework is fairly intuitive, it is rarely executed in its intended format—a cycle.

Preparedness is not built overnight and you cannot build competence by setting people up to fail. We regularly see organizations attempt to throw their teams directly into a full-scale exercise without properly equipping them or offering the necessary training.

Even if you are only utilizing Decision Aid for one specific project, we always work to ensure integration in a longer range preparedness cycle. Every project includes an POETE Executive Brief overviewing potential next steps and future phases that can continue to build competence.