"During an emergency is NOT the time to be exchanging business cards". I first heard this piece of advice from then Commissioner of Emergency Management (Ontario), Julian Fantino. While this is certainly sage advice and I wholeheartedly agree, I have also noted an adverse effect of the business card exchange, or rather it has highlighted a dangerous fallacy among practitioners.
I hear this phrase now at almost every other conference, workshop or seminar I attend on the subject of emergency management. It is a plea of the moderator for the audience to get out and meet the other attendees. "NOW is the time to exchange business cards", they say. "Well that's just great", I say. But there are problems with this.
Firstly, I now have a drawer full of business cards. We live in an electronic information age, at least I do. It's better to send an email so I can electronically catalogue your information, place into my contacts folder and blast you an email from time to time. It's much easier as I have a genetic disposition for instantly forgetting names. But that's not the problem, that's just me.
The problem is that we are connecting ourselves through chance meetings at various events, meeting those of the same interest and the same abilities to attend. It's a skewed audience. I will have to hope that in the midst of an emergency, I have previously met the person I now desperately need to contact.
Our contacts are based on personal relationships, chance meetings and imperfect memberships. How many meetings have you attended where some (many) of the members are no-shows, or send a 'designate'? This problem looms large for the emergency manager, or anyone who needs to coordinate vast and varied persons / organizations / industries and needs them to 'play nicely together in the sandbox'.
What still has to occur in emergency management, risk management, business continuity and any other discipline that stretches across an organization or public body is to operationalize the process. That is to pull the function away from the individual (the 'champion') and push it to the position, connecting with every other position.
We shouldn't need to exchange business cards. We should have to rely on happenstance to meet the right people. We should have the networks set out in all of our operations so contacts are known, exercised and maintained. So if so-and-so from such-and-such retires, I would know immediately, would know his/her replacement and would not lose continuity.
Imagine during an emergency I pull out a business card and "...the number you have dialled is no longer in service..."
Subscribe to this blog's feed
Agreed, my card caddy is way overstocked and rarely used. When I see business cards exchanged I feel like it is some social club for the prestigious where names are handed out of expectation rather than actual desire to connect. I think social networks like Linked In and Facebook may work to some degree in connecting people with some regularity in a digital fashion, but better would be online community groups or forums where people can connect and collaborate on emergency management issues. Collaboration is the key to build our relationships over time.