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What’s on our minds
We share what we learn and what we’re doing so that others can learn from us and we can learn from others. Comments welcome!
12 Days of Thanks, Giving and Disaster!
Photo from Wikimedia Foundation.
To celebrate the giving of Thanksgiving and Giving Tuesday, we give to you … twelve days of disaster! Well, maybe just some insights into disaster and community response.
Disaster has gone mainstream. From fire to flood, pandemic to power outage, community crises increasingly affect larger numbers of people. Summer hail storms in Mexico City, massive flash floods in Germany, mass shootings in Oslo, torrential monsoons in Pakistan, megafires in California, Australia, … The list of communities that “never thought it would happen here” grows every day.
That means that you should take disaster seriously. That means that you need to prepare to be unprepared. Because, together, you and your community are essential to overcoming disaster.
We believe that being ready starts with social resilience: having the skills and mindsets needed to improvise with the people and resources at hand when a crisis happens. Because individuals and communities who help themselves recover from crisis faster and better.
Our 2021 Advent Calendar focused on wildfire, the disaster most affecting our home, California.
In our 2022 Year’s End Calendar, Twelve Days of Thanks and Giving, we offer a broader view. We share 12 short posts about how disaster management works and a fresh perspective on disaster response – a perspective in which social resilience, community, and improvisation are central.
Please join us!
To celebrate the thanks of Thanksgiving and Giving Tuesday, today, we give special thanks to our advisors, Leland Franklin, Zeno Franco, Thomas Lahnthaler, Claus Raasted, and Luke Beckman: Thank you for giving so generously of your time and expertise.
If you take disaster seriously, please
support our work.
We thank you for all that you give.
7 Tips visual challenge results!
We recently presented the amazingly creative Verbal to Visual community — led by the inspired and inspiring Doug Neill — with a challenge: Create a one-page sketchnote to make the “7 Tips for Being Effective in a Crisis” we identified in our research easy to remember.
(Sketchnoting combines doodles, sketches, and words to enhance learning, problem-solving and communication through visual thinking.)
Here is some of what these very talented people came up with. Feel free to print, frame and share!
Lai Chee Chiu
When Lai Chee Chiu was looking for an outing for her team, she found a workshop where you could ‘draw for work’ while having drinks and pizza, discovered sketchnoting, and reignited her love for drawing. Today she uses her skills to design workshops and bring them alive through visual storytelling and facilitation.
Her work is characterized by bold lines, strong characters, confident use of color, and playful humor. She is available to support your work, but beware, she only accepts projects “with the purpose to convey a message”!
Coralie Rozenblum
Coralie “Coco” Rozenblum is a sketchnoting novice, and is less confident in her skills than they deserve. She wants to use sketchnotes to capture notes and to facilitate conversations with clients in her coaching practice.
Her work is characterized by deep empathy, charming storytelling, and a simplicity and elegance of line.
Coach Jason
“Coach Jason” is a bit of an enigma in the community. We know he/she/they lives in Atlanta, works digitally, and always offers positive and constructive comments, but that’s about it.
What we can see is that his work is characterized by strong visual storylines and delightful humor.
Benoit Leclair
Benoit Leclair is relatively new to sketchnoting, but you wouldn’t know it from his work! Given that he has a degree in architecture, a career in steel construction management, and is a business analyst, it’s not surprising that he excels in bringing visual clarity to complex processes.
His work is characterized by lyric flows, rich information content, well-balanced layouts and exquisite details. Benoit is available to help you with your special projects.
2021: Not an Annual Report
Thanks to Social Good Fund, our fiscal sponsor, we don’t have to prepare a formal annual report. We do, however, have to report on our accomplishments and talk about our plans for the upcoming year. But we don’t have the trials of preparing financials and making it pretty. Yet.
Here is our 2021 activity report (with an “formal annual report”-type section added because we believe in gratitude). In retrospect, we are grappling with a mission that is neither obvious nor easy. I’m proud to say that we got a good grip on it in 2021.
2021 Activity Report
What did your project accomplish in 2021? What were your primary activities?
2021 was a year of developing a clearer understanding of the gap we are trying to fill, what it will take to fill it, and how we propose to do so. And of building toward an organization that has the necessary skills and knowledge.
To begin to fill the gap by sharing our knowledge, and to lay a foundation of skills, we
- Synthesized our COVID-19 findings into “Advice from the front lines,” 7 tips that successful spontaneous leaders would give to others who want to do something.
- Completed a promotional video, “Ready, Set, Earthquake!” that illustrates the live training approach that we bring to community disaster preparedness.
- Published a “Wildfire Advent Calendar,” sharing 24 pieces of information related to wildfire (one each day Dec 1-24) on our blog and LinkedIn.
- Initiated our social media presence by establishing a YouTube channel where we shared our promotional video, Roundtable recordings, and other products of our activities, and a LinkedIn page where we shared information about the materials we are making available.
In our endeavor to understand the gap and what it will take to fill it, we
- Completed the in-depth report of our study of spontaneous leaders in COVID-19.
- Convened two Research Roundtable discussions bringing together crisis response researchers with interests in citizen response and social networks, respectively.
- Started our Wildfire project by gathering background research on wildfire, interviewing individuals who had been through a wildfire, and gathering knowledge of the best practices and training as promoted by professional agencies.
To strengthen our operations, we
- Decided on a strategy for a coherent digital infrastructure (based on our systematic examination of available tools), and adopted Zoho Projects for project and task management.
- Held our first strategic planning meeting.
Describe the most pressing challenges and threats to your ability to advance your mission
Our most pressing challenges are a shortage of time, and failure to get the right people in the right places. To address them, we are working on making our value story more clear, improving volunteer recruiting and management, and instituting a targeted fundraising approach.
What are your plans for 2022?
We start 2022 with plans for advancing on 3 strategic goals:
- Grow our impact
- Mature the organization
- Expand our network
We plan on pursuing these goals in the context of developing a minimum viable product in the form of a Wildfire Learning Experience. We are currently designing the learning experience with the aim of conducting pilot events in May and June, followed by more general distribution starting late summer. In the course of developing community partnerships to support pilot events, we hope to attract the interest of potential board members, advisors, donors and funders, and to hone our storytelling.
How has fiscal sponsorship impacted your ability to achieve your mission?
Fiscal sponsorship has allowed us to concentrate our efforts on developing program vision and products, while giving us the credibility needed to be taken seriously, and enabling us to collect enough funds that we aren’t paying expenses out of our own pockets.
With Gratitude
If this were a formal annual report, it would include a mission statement, “success” statistics, and “accounting of major contributors.” In practice for the not-too-distant day when we will be preparing a formal annual report, I’d like to add the last section.
My personal thanks to everyone who has helped Creative Crisis Leadership move closer to making the world more socially resilient in 2021:
The core team:
- Garett Dworman: My eternal thanks for your unstinting enthusiasm, and for continually refreshing my belief in the importance of what we are doing.
- Zach Pipkin: For your stabilizing influence, loyalty, and always keeping us grounded.
Our first official advisor:
- Leland Franklin: For your insight, shining example, and quiet guidance.
Our other invaluable volunteers.
And, our major and staunch donors.
- Maurita Holland
- Kat Chadwick
- George Furnas
- Kyle Brown
Without your encouragement and support, it would be all too easy to lose sight of the light.
— Susanne Jul, PhD
Founder & Driving Force, Creative Crisis Leadership
Learning from COVID-19 grassroots leaders: 7 Tips to be Effective in a Crisis (part 3 of 2)
At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we set out to learn from Spontaneous Leaders — people who had started a grassroots response to help their community. We gained a clear understanding of what support they need (Learning from grassroots leaders in COVID-19, Part 1), and about what services we might offer to help them (Learning from grassroots leaders in COVID-19, Part 2). We also identified seven behaviors that they consistently identified as being critical to their success.
Here is their collective advice.
7 Tips for Being Effective in a Crisis
- Just start
Take a step. Take another. Keep going. Don’t let not knowing hold you back. - Don’t be afraid to fail
If you do something, you may succeed. If you do nothing, you’ve already failed. - Don’t go it alone
Get others to help. Collaboration will make it easier, and help you do more. - Build on what you have
Use the skills, resources, and relationships that are available to you. Develop new ones as you go along. - Focus
Tackle one problem at a time. Don’t try to do everything at once. - Iterate
Get it out there. Get feedback. Adapt. Don’t polish it too much. - Don’t be afraid to lead
Leadership is about helping the group to succeed. You don’t have to be a boss to lead.
2021 Wildfire Advent Calendar complete!
If you didn’t have a chance to follow our very successful 2021 Wildfire Advent Calendar, here is the full list:
- How do wildfires get their names?
Learn how wildfires are named in California. - Fire tornadoes
See the drama of how large fires create their own weather events. - Wildfire, it affects EVERYONE
Understand the staggering impact of wildfires. - Don’t inhale!
Even an N95 mask isn’t adequate protection from wildfire smoke. - “My God, it’s so simple!”
The basics of “hardening” your house against wildfire. - Change the odds, save your house
Discover the two main steps to protecting your urban house against wildfire. - Don’t drone near a wildfire
Find out how unauthorized drones near a wildfire threaten lives. - How do you fight a wildfire?
Learn the basic strategy of wildfire fighting. - Do not hesitate, evacuate early!
There are many benefits to leaving early. - Who causes more wildfires? Humans vs Nature!
The data for Smokey the Bear’s admonition are pretty compelling. - Community programs: Firewise and CERT
Two national programs that you can work with in your own community. - The 5 phases of disaster management
The framework professionals use to organize their thoughts and actions. - How are wildfires measured?
Understand how do scientists and professional talk about the size of a fire. - Can Mary get arrested?
Learn what different evacuation orders really mean. - It ain’t over till it’s over
The effects of a wildfire can linger long after the flames are out. - 17,325 gardens and a scrapie thingie
Fighting a wildfire takes a lot of people and a lot of hard physical work. - Embers happen!
Understand what your concerns should be when there’s a wildfire in your area. - Prescription Rx for our forests?
Prescribed burns are both an old and a new approach to forest management. - Wildfires run faster
See the data for your chances of outrunning a wildfire. - Getting Ready to Evacuate
Get clear on what your priorities should be when you might have to evacuate because of a wildfire. - When in doubt, throw it out!
Learn some things about evacuating that you might not have thought about. - Your greatest asset
The people around you are likely to be the most important to you in getting through a wildfire. - Please help us to set some fires!
We need your support to develop a new approach to helping communities to prepare for wildfire. - Wildfire tribute
A salute to all the people who help get us through wildfires.