Ep 98: Crisis Communication Strategies
Episode 98
Published Dec 23, 2024
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 35:47
Episode Summary
Today’s podcast looks at crisis communication strategies for large-campus environments likes schools, hospitals, and malls. Our panel explores alert systems, the power of plain speak, and other strategies to keep people safe and informed during emergencies.
Episode Notes
Join us for a discussion on crisis communication strategies for large-campus environments. Our expert panel delves into the critical aspects of keeping people safe and informed during emergencies in schools, hospitals, malls, and other high-traffic venues.
Highlights include:
- The power of "plain speak" in emergency situations
- Cutting-edge alert systems and AI-powered surveillance
- Multi-channel communication strategies
- Preparation and training essentials
- Media management during crises
Learn why traditional coded messages are becoming obsolete and how modern technology is revolutionizing emergency response. Our experts share invaluable insights on balancing transparency with operational security and the importance of timely "all-clear" signals.
Whether you're a security professional, educator, or business leader, this episode offers crucial knowledge to enhance your crisis management skills. Don't miss this opportunity to stay ahead of the curve in keeping your community safe and informed.
View this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/SMdJsQFu5wA
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:If you're a business or operate a campus, like a school or a hospital, one of the questions that comes up is, "If I have an active shooter event in my location, how am I gonna communicate that to our visitors, to our staff? How are we gonna tell people?" That's today's topic, crisis communication strategies. Stick around. Welcome to the "Active Shooter Incident Management" podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I'm joined by three of my fellow instructors, here at the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response. Next to me is Billy Perry, the law enforcement side. Billy, good to have you back.
Billy Perry:
Glad to be here, thank you.
Bill Godfrey:
We got, across from you, Ron Otterbacher, also on the law enforcement side.
Ron Otterbacher:
Hi, Bill. How are you, sir?
Bill Godfrey:
Good. And sitting across from me, next to Ron, is Bruce Scott, like myself on the fire EMS side. Good to have you.
Bruce Scott:
Great to be here, Bill.
Bill Godfrey:
So we did appropriate integration this time. We got law enforcement, fire EMS, each on the same side of the table.
Billy Perry:
Exactly.
Ron Otterbacher:
It's planned.
Bill Godfrey:
Balanced, I like it.
Bruce Scott:
Billy didn't wanna sit next to me anymore.
Bill Godfrey:
Today's topic, we're gonna talk about crisis communication strategies. And the big one here is for, you know, businesses that are operating large-campus environments, such as schools, hospitals, large-campus businesses, malls, things like that, places where you're gonna have a PA system and people gathered. How are you going to communicate when there's a threat on the campus? And Billy, I'm gonna ask you to lead us off 'cause you're currently working in a security leadership place for a large school.
Billy Perry:
Right, large church and school.
Bill Godfrey:
So talk a little bit about what you're seeing currently in school practices, some of the good and some of the things that worry you.
Billy Perry:
Well, the majority of the schools that we're affiliated with have adopted plain speak. Just like we've gone to plain speak on the radios that we've adopted, plain speak. We don't have these codes and colors and everything else. It's, there is an intruder on campus, there is a shooter on campus, whatever, you know, whichever one it is or whichever school uses whichever. But they use one of those two, generally. There is an intruder on campus, lock down, there is an intruder on campus, lock down, there's a shooter on campus, lock down. They're interchangeable, whatever. But again, plain speak, don't leave room for misinterpretation. What's a code chart true, you know what I mean? I mean, just make sure you know what happens, you know? And I think part of the reason we've done that, we don't care if the bad guy knows we're coming 'cause we are coming. And, you know, we want people to heed the warning and take cover and let us go fix it.
Bill Godfrey:
Exactly. Ron, you're running security for a large healthcare system. Overseeing that, what are some of the challenges, the good and the bad that you're seeing in hospitals across the country and how they're handling their announcements, or are they?
Ron Otterbacher:
See unlike Billy, right now, we're not using open communication. We're using hospital codes and stuff like that, but getting people to understand those codes, and again, are the right people to understand, we may put out a code saying, there's an active shooter on campus, but then again, are they misconstruing that code and saying, "Oh, we're looking for elderly people that are missing," which is an actual incident that happened, you know? So it's something that we need to address, but we're also addressing it through our communications on the radio system. We're in the process switching over from codes to open dispatch. I think it's just trying to catch up with time to make sure we put out the right information. Again, we may have a code that everyone in the hospital knows.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Ron Otterbacher:
But half the people inside the hospital that aren't team members have no clue what it means. And they don't know what to do when that happens. So that's something we've gotta address.
Bill Godfrey:
Bruce, what are your thoughts?
Bruce Scott:
Well interestingly enough, I kind of have two different opinions. One, my daughter works in a large healthcare service center, in a large healthcare organization in the emergency room. And some of the things that they were taught on their orientation, they didn't remember that when they actually needed to, and one of them was code silver, which is a person with a gun, right?
Bill Godfrey:
Which, not to be confused with a silver alert.
Bruce Scott:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
Where we're looking for an elderly person that's missing.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bruce Scott:
So I think that, and she said to me, she goes, "Dad, I never thought we'd ever use that, right? So I never really paid attention to it until it happened." So even the staff may not be aware of what certain things mean at certain times. The other problem is, is if you use codes and you need to get that information to people that are not part of your team or part of your organization, why plain text may be better. The downside of that is, plain text is gonna put people in there into a panic potentially, because now they know that there's an active shooter on campus, there's an active intruder on campus. So was the thought process early on that using codes would lessen the panic? And, you know, obviously that's up for debate. So I could be convinced either way, I think.
Bill Godfrey:
From my perspective, I think codes are a ginormous mistake.
Billy Perry:
A hundred percent.
Bill Godfrey:
And I'll tell you why. And you just said it, the reason for the codes was to avoid the possibility of causing panic. Yet we have a certainty,
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
That we're going to introduce confusion and not everybody is gonna understand the code. I remember a school nearby that used the term "Dr. Green to the front office," and that meant that there was an active threat on the campus and that they should go in lockdown. And of course, the one time they did it, everybody kind of looked around and said.
Billy Perry:
"Who's Dr. Green?"
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. So you got visitors on it. I mean, it didn't go well and they've now switched to plain talk. Yet I also know school districts across the country continue to use codes, so you've got the possibility of some people panicking when they hear, you know, shooter on campus, shooter in the building, lock down, versus the certainty of people being confused. And here's the other thing that I think applies to both of the settings that you guys operate in, both at schools and certainly in hospitals. The turnover of staff, especially the lower level staff, the support staff, the custodians and things like that, the turnover of staff and then the language barriers that are gonna come in, you are not going to get a hundred percent of your staff trained in those codes, and they're not gonna hear 'em. So I'm a very, very strong believer that it needs to be absolutely plain speak and it needs to announce what you expect people to do.
Ron Otterbacher:
Exactly.
Billy Perry:
Right. And if I can piggyback on that, Bill, for me it's not so much the turnover as it is one thing that both of our organizations have in common. The inordinate number of visitors.
Bill Godfrey:
Yes.
Billy Perry:
I mean, because I have a huge, just like you've been involved in an organization like mine and the number of visitors that are there every hour of every day, and they got no idea what a code manila is. I mean, so, you know, plain speak telling them, there's an intruder on campus, take shelter, you know what I mean?
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Billy Perry:
Tells you what to do.
Bill Godfrey:
So the I Love You Guys foundation, and for those of you that are regular listeners, you know very well who they are. For those of you that aren't, the I Love You Guys Foundation is a group that advocates some programs and systems to improve safety in schools, to keep kids safe. But they have a standard response protocol, and part of that in their lockdown is, they announce lockdown, lockdown, locks, lights outta sight. And then you repeat it, lockdown, lockdown, locks, lights outta sight. And that kind of simple messaging is really, really important. But to the reality, what operator is going to get the call that's supposed to put that out over the hospital PA system? And what if it's a massive campus that's got five, six different buildings? Are we announcing it in one? And so all of those things are things I think have to be discussed ahead of time, no?
Billy Perry:
Ours is prerecorded.
Bill Godfrey:
Prerecorded. Talk a little bit about that.
Billy Perry:
Ours is prerecorded, and what you do is you enter in a simple code on the phone system and announces it over the PA and sets off a klaxon.
Bruce Scott:
So any phone?
Billy Perry:
Any phone that's tied in.
Bruce Scott:
'Cause one of the instances that Billy and I responded to years ago was, the shooting happened in the same room where the PA microphone was.
Bill Godfrey:
Talk a little bit about that.
Bruce Scott:
And Episcopal High School.
Billy Perry:
Right, right.
Bruce Scott:
And again, now that's a crime scene. It's locked down. The principal was the one that was shot. She was the only one authorized to put out messages on the PA. And so that limited the amount of information that went out to visitors and employees because it happened in that space. And I was glad to hear that now any phone tied to the system-
Billy Perry:
Right, any phone that's tied into the system and all the administrators, like we have a principal and assistant principals for the lower, middle, and upper school, and then a headmaster and then there's other administrators that are involved in there that have access to initiate the code.
Bruce Scott:
That's good.
Bill Godfrey:
Now do the kids know the codes?
Billy Perry:
No.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay. And how often do you have false alarms with that?
Billy Perry:
Zero percent of the time. Never.It's never happened. I mean, because it's an intentional act, you know, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, symbol and then it initiates. And I mean it's a very, there's not enough zeros on your pocket calculator for you to come up with an inadvertent activation.
Bruce Scott:
Are there other codes for other things?
Billy Perry:
Yeah. And there's a turnoff. There's a disable code.
Bill Godfrey:
Wow. It's pretty fascinating stuff.
Bruce Scott:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
Ron, what are some of the challenges, in your position, because you're overseeing, actually, several hospital campuses. The one where your office is is a ginormous campus, but you've got some also, you know, what I'll call community sized hospitals, some smaller sized hospitals. What are some of the challenges that are differences between those venues?
Ron Otterbacher:
Each hospital's got its own autonomy. We've got now to where our emergency phone number is consistent through all of 'em. And it wasn't that way, if you talked to me a year and a half ago, they each had their own, emergency phone number where that created an issue because if you had a clinical person that normally works at this facility working at another to help them out and the emergency number was needed, they may dial the wrong number and go to a wrong PBX operator. So those are some of the things we've dealt with. The other thing is, now we've expanded beyond that. We've got hospitals in Alabama, we've got hospitals on the space coast. And so getting everyone caught up with what the organization's doing and bringing everyone, you know, without trying to shove it down everyone's throat that, you know, this is the way we wanna go to bring consistency and standardization across the organization. It's a safety issue, you know, and how can we do it? How can we be most effective? I like the fact where the notice comes out and then you tell 'em what to do. You know, that's the biggest thing is we may put out, you know, just for an example, no one would have to do anything, but our code coppers, our computer systems are down, we may put out that announcement, but everyone that doesn't know what it is, is sitting there saying, "What is this? Does that mean something bad's going on?" So that creates as much problem as it does, so if this is the case, then put out what your expectations are and then it eliminates that fact.
Billy Perry:
And let me hasten to add, we are going away from what I just described. We're actually going away from that. We're going to a new system that's being implemented very soon, like by the first of the year, early part of the year where every alarm is on an ID card type platform. And you push it three times and it sets off an I need help alarm, geolocates where it is, comes up on every desktop computer and sends it to all the selected administrators' phones, even sends it to dispatch, police and fire get exactly where it is on their CAD. And if it's a shooter, you push it eight times, there is an active shooter on campus, or push it until it goes off that way. And it does the exact same thing, sets off the same alarm. There is a intruder on campus, lock down, take cover, automatically flashing strobe lights everywhere and it geolocates, shows you exactly where the thing was reported, puts it on every desktop computer screen and texts it to all the prearranged SMS text phones and sends it to dispatch.
Bill Godfrey:
You know, it's really fascinating, what is possible today with some of the technological solutions from not just video camera systems, but from video camera systems that AI can monitor and recognize threats that AI can detect the motion on. It can detect violence, can detect fights.
Billy Perry:
The shapes.
Bill Godfrey:
The shapes, the alarm systems, you know, a lot of the detectors that we have, the sound stuff. I mean there are a lot of technical solutions that can be brought to bear to improve preparedness. But let's talk a little bit about, how do you balance the need within organizations to get timely information out to your staff, both in the alerting.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
But then also in the follow-up alert with the accuracy of communicating what's going on? Because as we all know, it ain't always real clear what's going on, right, you know, five minutes in, 10 minutes in, 15 minutes in. Bruce, any thoughts on that? How do you balance those two?
Bruce Scott:
I think that the first thing is you have to have multiple ways. You can't be dependent on one, right? And then everybody needs to be trained on that. So in the communications world, we use PACE, primary, alternative, contingency and emergency, right? So you really just need to go down four different avenues to share information and everybody be trained to that standard and then practice that standard. It's irrelevant to say something that folks don't understand, right, or have the ability to understand that. So I think really however your communication is decided within that agency or that organization that everybody understands what that is and have more than one, what you're gonna default to next if that first one doesn't work.
Billy Perry:
We call it the Department of Redundancy department.
Bill Godfrey:
I like it. Ron, what are your thoughts on this? How do you balance that need to try to protect everybody and keep them informed with the confusion and chaos that's gonna unfold and trying to provide updates?
Ron Otterbacher:
I think first off is you gotta make notifications so they understand, you know, I can put out a code rainbow, doesn't matter 'cause no one knows what the heck it is.
Bill Godfrey:
That's Irish, right?
Ron Otterbacher:
Yes.
Bill Godfrey:
Code rainbow.
Ron Otterbacher:
Right at the end of the rainbow is a pot of gold. But they've gotta understand what it is. And then we have to follow it up with an all clear to let everyone know that the crisis is over with. And sometimes we forget that we do good at responding to the situation, but then we never tell everyone, oh yeah, we took care of that an hour ago because we got caught up in our own situation where we're trying to handle the situation at hand and we forget it's handled and we didn't tell everyone else that it was done. So everyone else for three hours are still on edge and we've been done for two and a half hours.
Billy Perry:
40 minutes trying.
Bill Godfrey:
Billy, is there a little bit of expectation management that goes with this? And the context for my question is, when we're doing training with schools and specifically teachers and administrators, they're often expecting if it's a real lockdown, that it's going to be cleared and they're gonna get updates pretty quickly, like 10 or 15 minutes in and then that they see what all is involved in the public safety response and they're like, "We could be sitting a while." And I'm like, "Yeah, you might be sitting there an hour or an hour and a half before you get any update." And that shouldn't necessarily be alarming. Is that expectation management part of the pre-training of this? How do you factor that?
Billy Perry:
The preparation for it, you just do it. You factor it in and you explain, this is what's gonna happen, just like we've talked ad nauseum about, giving them a timeline of what's gonna happen and that's part of it, giving it a realistic timeline. And honestly, I'm an over shooter guy. I'm like, you're gonna be there several hours. That way if you're there two hours, it's better. That make sense? So you're gonna be there several hours. You're gonna own some real estate with a bunch of, you know, young'uns for a hot minute, you know, several hours. So again, if it's two hours, it's better. Then we're gonna move to the reunification side where we do the movies and the snacks and everything else we're preparing to move them, you know. And just build that in and just keep them apprised of what is probably gonna happen in a rough timeline because no situation's the same. You know, and in the words of Travis, it depends.
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Billy Perry:
And you know, so give 'em an idea of what's gonna happen and let 'em know what is gonna play out and what is gonna happen 'cause again, and it depends on the organization because even if they treat you like a quaint anachronism and they don't really listen to what you say or they place great value in what you say, your job is to let 'em know what it is as a first responder, no matter what it is or your job is, and give 'em the best information that you've gotten, and they can do with it what they want.
Bruce Scott:
I was just gonna ask, what are the options when that school staff doesn't hear anything, right? At what point, when the lack of instruction comes to them, they don't get any instruction, what's their alternative to find out information? I mean is it a text message? Is it in-house phone?
Billy Perry:
You talking about after an alarm is initiated?
Bruce Scott:
Yeah, I mean my daughter-in-law is a teacher, right?
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bruce Scott:
And she knows all the things, what to do up until she doesn't have any direction, now what to do.
Billy Perry:
Right, right. Or until this one happens in this situation. Right.
Bruce Scott:
Absolutely.
Billy Perry:
All I can speak to is what our system is going to have, what we have now. If they don't know, they're not gonna know until it's over. We do have training, we explain what to do. Do people get it? You don't know. You don't know until it happens. But with the new system that we have, like I said, it comes up on every desktop computer, comes up and says, this is what it is, take cover. Comes across on an SMS text, everybody that's getting it, and it initiates the alarm and any of the administrators can disable it. Also, you were talking about it, you can go to an app on your phone, pull it up and just say, but you have to give a reason why you're disabling it. And it records who did it.
Bill Godfrey:
This brings me to my next question, which is related to this, I think. What role, if any, does social media, and I'm gonna expand the term social media beyond its typical term to include text messaging, email, reverse 911 calls, you know, some tools that may not be immediately available to a business but are available to public safety. What role, if any, does social media play in how we communicate, both an alert, the progress or the update from the alert and then as you mentioned, Ron, ultimately the all clear?
Billy Perry:
It 100% plays a role. Whether you want it to or not, it does. And I'm a firm believer that you need to put the information out that you want out 'cause if you don't, the information that you don't want to go out is gonna go out. So I would say steer and get ahead of it. Now the challenge is, and again referring to the Department of Redundancy department, like what Bruce was saying, you can't just have one person who's gonna be your social media person 'cause what if they're involved, you know? You need to have backups to the backups and put it out and state, it can be clipped, you know? It doesn't have to be verbose. But such and such organization is on lockdown, we will keep you apprised.
Bill Godfrey:
And Ron, from an incident management perspective, at what point does it become really important for a facility to coordinate what they want to do or messagings or update ideas that they have with the incident management that is controlling the scene?
Ron Otterbacher:
Immediate. Again, like Billy said, what I used to teach, an active shooter, if you don't control the media, the media controls you. If you don't control the parents, the parents will control you. If you don't control social media, it will control you.
Billy Perry:
A hundred percent.
Ron Otterbacher:
Not only do you need to make sure you're putting out the information, but you also need to make sure someone's monitoring the information that's going out on social media so you know what's being said and you know, 'cause it could affect your tactical decision making. It could affect a lot of things. But if you don't know what's being said because you're only focused on what you wanna put out, then you sell yourself short and you can't make the best determination as you move forward.
Billy Perry:
'Cause it's definitely gonna alter your battle space at a minimum. Like if more people are showing up, it's gonna alter that.
Bill Godfrey:
So Bruce, one of the things that we talk about in our active shooter incident management training is, the role and importance of the public information officer and the lead PIO, who is gonna set up a joint information center, something that we advocate happening much earlier than would typically happen on incidents. That's something that typically happens a little bit later. We advocate for it to happen very early on. Talk about what that is and how somebody from the company, the hospital, the school administration can plug in to become part of that, to get their voice heard in the messaging.
Bruce Scott:
Yeah, and I think first off is to realize the importance of it. The downside or the worst thing can happen is, disparate information coming out from one agency, different from what another agency puts out, right? So I think that's the biggest thing is to make sure that you understand, disparate information is potentially deadly. And here's my story 'cause, you know, I like to tell stories, right? So we had this gentleman in another jurisdiction, decided that he was going to do terrible things to his grandkids and daughter. It went out over social media that it was a school shooting, very small community. And what do you think happened then, right? So there was nobody to correct the disinformation, right? So every parent, every law enforcement agency in the region's all going to the school where it was really a contained issue. So correcting disinformation is huge. The importance of getting together, I think, is where you're trying to get to. The only way you're ever gonna do that is train to it and talk to it, adopt it as a policy and then practice it because typically, correct me if I'm wrong, fellas, our public information officers are going to say things that do not embarrass their agency. That's their primary job. It's not necessarily to put out relevant information. It's not to paint your agency in a bad light along the way, right? So we gotta redo the focus and say this is what we're trying to accomplish. We're trying to put out good information, right information. And lastly, what's the official information source, right? If you're gonna expect me to monitor social media and look at social media, which is the right one? Is it the school, is it public safety? Is it the PIO on the scene that's monitoring social media? What is the official social media source that we should be monitoring?
Bill Godfrey:
You know, that's a really interesting perspective and I'm not sure, the one statement you made about, you know, the focus being not to embarrass the agency, I'm not sure that that's the primary motivator there. And I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with you, but I probably would phrase that a little bit differently or say it a little bit differently because I think, you know, obviously if you're a spokesman for the mayor or you're a spokesman for county government or the state government, you don't wanna say something dumb that's gonna just invite more challenges. But the whole reason to be there is to communicate what is happening, communicate the facts as we know 'em, what actions, if any, are needed by the receiving audience, who that audience is, to communicate the official messaging, which in some cases, and let's acknowledge this upfront. On the law enforcement side, sometimes PIOs are called upon to not acknowledge things that they know because the law enforcement, as part of the investigation, has indicated, "We don't wanna release that information."
Billy Perry:
Correct, correct.
Bill Godfrey:
You know, we are not gonna talk about that. You use the frame battle space, and I think that's appropriate. Certainly you don't want information that can affect your realtime battle space before the thing is resolved. For example, let's say that you have something that turns into a standoff or a hostage barricade, you're gonna be somewhat sensitive about what information you're putting out because you don't wanna adversely impact that unfolding situation. Likewise, after the fact, you're not going to want to contaminate the investigation component and the ability to potentially prosecute people.
Billy Perry:
Right?
Bill Godfrey:
And so sometimes PIOs, they're called upon to withhold information.
Billy Perry:
They're walking a line.
Bill Godfrey:
They're walking a line.
Bruce Scott:
Right, but early on in an incident, you have to balance that by putting out combined joint information together that's the right information, that's not necessarily to protect my organization or not make yours bad. But conversely, you have an opportunity to talk about the positives. "Hey, fire and law enforcement, we've been training for this for a long time. We work together, we do this a lot." So you have an opportunity to potentially turn a terrible thing to a certain extent into a positive thing by the way you talk to the public, whether it's via social media or, you know, doing a press briefing or whatever. You have an opportunity there to spin to a certain extent, how the work you've done up to this point to be able to work together.
Bill Godfrey:
I agree with that. I would also add, I think it is incumbent upon the system. You know, the PIO is largely the representative of the agency, the agencies plural, the leadership team, that incident management team, they have crafted the message that the PIO is delivering. I also think it's incumbent upon them to acknowledge when things haven't gone well, to be transparent. Now obviously that can be challenging when you're trying not to contaminate an investigation and things like that. And I know, you know, not all responses to these events go well, right? And we need to make sure that in the process, we're not trying to cover that up and we need to learn from it and try to make sure that whatever was suboptimal, this time, is not in the way next time.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
Would you agree with that, Ron?
Ron Otterbacher:
It's a delicate dance. It actually is, because if they contaminate what they're saying here, I go back to, if you remember during the Iraq war, you had Baghdad Bob say "No, everything's fine." Well, everyone knew anything he said was a lie. That can affect your agency too. So not only in this situation, but every situation you have in the future, everyone's gonna be sitting back saying, "I can't believe anything these people say. We've lost our transparency." So it's important to put out the information that can affect lives, affect how they operate around us right now. We don't want you to come into this area. This is why, instead of just saying don't come, you know, it's that to get the information out, get it out in a professional fashion, but make sure it's truthful information. Make sure it's accurate and timely.
Bruce Scott:
So I wanted to clarify a remark I made or comment I made earlier. I said embarrass your organization. What I found realistically is that oftentimes, PIOs that work for elected or appointed officials want to run information through those people before they release it, right, to make sure it's not embarrassing to that sheriff or that mayor, that city manager, which can delay the ability to put out relevant, important information early.
Bill Godfrey:
And it is going to vary. And certainly when you bring the PIOs, a PIO for an elected official is different than a PIO for the police department. There just is a difference. And I'm not saying it's good or bad. It's just a difference.
Bruce Scott:
Definitely
Bill Godfrey:
And they can end up at cross purposes. That's the whole point of having a joint information center. You know, I always describe it, much to the chagrin of people that don't like the way I describe it, the joint information center is the room in which you shove all the PIOs and you lock the door behind them until they all get on the same page about what they are and are not going to release and discuss and talk about. You know, it is a delicate dance. I think that's a good way to say it. I think that's a good way to say it. All right, final thoughts. I'm gonna go around the room. Billy, any final thoughts on what are the key, in fact, and lemme change that, instead of final thoughts, gimme like the top two or three items in your list that you think if somebody is running a school, they're running a hospital, a hotel, a mall, a place where there's a large number of people gathered, what's the top two or three items that you think they should be working on right now?
Billy Perry:
The top three items. Number one, a way to plain speak. Put the information out that there is a problem in what to do. Number two, a way to efficiently do that, and multiple people that can do it. Multiple people. And number three, a way to address it physically if it does happen.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, Ron, top two or three things on your list.
Ron Otterbacher:
The biggest thing I see from our perspective, and I say it all the time, is number one, don't let 'em see you sweat. If you as a leader become excited, then everyone else downrange is gonna become excited, even at a higher level. The other thing is, understand what you're gonna say and the mechanism you're gonna say it. If you just think you're gonna only talk to your team members, then you're serving yourself a disservice because you got everyone else that's involved. They need to have the same information. So how we put the information out and to who we put it out, you know, is equally as important.
Bill Godfrey:
Bruce, how about you?
Bruce Scott:
Really the same thing, right? So whatever mechanism you're gonna use, have a backup plan, right? And then make sure that everybody that comes, or at least your employees that are working there, your team understands, what those methods are, that you figure out, you know, I say it every time, every agency's gonna be different, every organization's gonna be different. What the solutions they come up with may be different than the solutions somebody else comes up with. So work it today, work through your problems, work through the issue, have those conversations when there are not bad things happening to good people, and then train everybody on it and then practice it, just like we do everything else. I think that the crisis communications, if you will, are very important. And I think they often get overlooked in active shooter response.
Bill Godfrey:
And I think for me, I would say to leaders, don't be afraid of this and don't be afraid of the conversation. Plain speak, like Billy said, is critical. Come up with the scripting that you want to use and say, this is what's going on, this is the action we want to take. And don't worry about people panicking. I think far fewer people panic than people assume do. And for everyone that panics, there's another one that's going to react heroically. And that information that you put out may allow those people who are capable of acting under stress to do so and save lives and make a difference. I think if you give people the chance, they'll surprise you. I think they'll surprise you. We have a long history in this country of people acting very, very heroically and together when things go wrong. And so I would say to leaders, don't be afraid to have a conversation.
Billy Perry:
I agree.
Bill Godfrey:
Don't be afraid. Gentlemen, thank you very much for this exciting topic. For those of you that are listening, if you haven't liked or subscribe to the podcast, please do so and don't miss some of our other content that we've got out as well. You can see it through our website. And thank you to our producer, Karla Torres, for always making us look and sound good and until next time, stay safe.