Coordinate and act
The Incident Command System
One person runs the response, whatever their rank
A temporary command structure, agreed in advance, that one person runs when a crisis hits.
Borrowed from the Incident Command System, developed by California wildland firefighters in the 1970s and now used across US emergency response. Read the original source.
Changes a rule or role · An hour or more to set up · Needs senior backing
Try this first
Agree one thing. Who runs the response when something goes seriously wrong, and that everyone follows them until it is over.
Use it when
Crises dissolve into confusion about who's in charge.
Skip it when
Reserve it for real crises. Invoking a command structure over everyday problems is heavy-handed. And it is temporary, so it dissolves when the crisis ends.
How to introduce it
Agree the crisis structure before you need it. When something goes seriously wrong, one named person runs the response, whatever the usual hierarchy says, and the structure scales to the size of the problem. Wildland crews run this way, with a clear commander and everyone knowing their role. Because it is settled beforehand, nobody spends the crisis arguing about who is in charge.
How to show up
Design it while everyone is calm. Who commands, who does what, how it scales. Make sure people understand it before it is needed, and that they accept in advance that it overrides normal rank for the duration.
How long it takes
A session to design the structure. It stays ready for when it's needed.
What makes it hard
People struggle to agree in advance that rank gets set aside, senior people most of all when they are not the commander. Get that settled while everyone is calm. Teams also forget to invoke it and revert to chaos, so practice the trigger.
What it looks like when it's working
A real crisis hits and the team moves under a clear commander, then stands the structure down cleanly. Continued confusion about who is in charge means the agreement did not hold.
How long until it sticks
Ideally a drill or two before a real crisis, so invoking it is practiced, not theoretical.
How you know it stuck
The team invokes the structure the moment a crisis starts and stands it down after.
The idea behind it
A crisis is the worst moment to work out who leads. Settle it in advance and the team acts instead of negotiating while things burn.
Where it comes from
Wildland firefighting. For a crisis, a pre-agreed temporary command structure that overrides the usual org chart. A scalable command structure where one incident commander runs the response regardless of everyone's home rank.
Why it matters for senior teams
Only a senior team can install it