Calm in the Chaos: Mastering Wildfire Communications

Tim Conrad (00:13):

Welcome to the Wildfires, floods and Chaos Communications podcast. I'm Tim Conrad, president of Butterfly Effect Communications. Our team of information officers will now take you through our experiences navigating the ugly 2023 British Columbia wildfire season, along with lessons from past emergencies. I'm happy to introduce you to Brie Thorsteinson Ogle, MCM. In this episode, free was an information officer in the Columbia Shuswap Regional District Emergency Operations Center and supported the Pathways to Preparedness project with the Caribou Regional District. Let's learn more about Brie

Announcer (00:51):

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle is the woman behind Skipti Strategic Inc. A small strategic consultancy leading the evolution of behavioral communication. Brie works with organizations and individuals on strategies that influence action. One story at a time, her 20 year career in public relations, corporate communication, culture and change spans countless industries from airlines to energy and her approach to each new challenge incorporates elements of psychology, design thinking, data science, and the kind of informed instinct developed after years in trenches, always trying to stay a few steps ahead. Brie is constantly engaged in personal and professional development, plus recently completing a master's degree in communication management through McMaster and Syracuse University. At home, she's a jack of all trades from Ubering kids to training her bird dog to tuning guitars and fine tuning a book project on behavior-based PR practice. GTI is an Icelandic word for time and change. Two of the most consistent aspects of her shared experience. Chosen fort's connection to Brie's heritage and her deep respect for teaching through Story GTI represents our ability to ethically influence behavior through the oldest medium of all human relationships.

Tim Conrad (01:55):

So you arrived and you got to work on a very complex project Right off the go, you were capturing the building permit process into a simple, easy graphic that we could use to provide to hundreds of property owners who had unfortunately had lost their lost structures and needed to rebuild. So anyone who has been through the building permit process knows it has many steps and includes many people in organizations. So tell us how you walk the team at Columbia Shuswap through that process in the middle of an active emergency.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (02:30):

Yeah, I think that's just a terrific example of communications at work in general because everybody thinks, oh gosh, in the middle of a crisis everything's exploding. But there are some really important functional and process staff that we also have to help people wait through in particular when they've already had to deal with. It's really tough stuff. So our job is to make any kind of processes or actions easy for people, but at the same time, we have to make it easy, the experts to explain what that looks like. I often find we're very much in that media role as communicators, so jumping in with that in the middle of an active emergency, we don't have a lot of time. We have a lot of people counting on us and we have a lot of people who looking for this information as quickly as possible. So I mean we would in any situation, you have to build trust with the folks that you're trying to help.

(03:24):

They have information that has to go out. They need to understand that we're credible and that we're trustworthy. And that process starts with tell me about what we need to know. Share your expertise in the way that you need to share it, and that's okay because our job is to distill that and that trust and that credibility comes in that back and forth communication. Is this what you mean? Is this what you were saying? Is there any way that we can kind of distill that trust part, the credibility? Is this what you mean? And I understand what you're saying. The trust part is saying, if I simplify that for the people that need to do this, I can promise you we're not going to miss something and this is why. And there's a lot. You have to commit to that. I'm going to walk you through it.

(04:04):

I'm going to help you understand it. We're going to keep the process going, but I'm going to communicate often and I'm going to understand and listen to you. I commit to that. And with that, being able to tell them where they're going to end up at the end of this and how the audience is going to receive that information, then making sure that we're checking back on the audience what we know about them or what they need and checking the boxes. Is this going to be simple in an emergency, in a crisis, you don't need complexity. Is this going to be visually, is it easy for me to ingest? Is it easy for me to make? And at the end of the day, is the person communicating, the entity communicating and the people receiving the message on, are they going to be on the same page and can we get to the outcome we're looking for? And I find the best way to do that is a lot of that back and forth, A lot of demonstrating as we're building, this is what you were saying, this is kind of what it looked like. And reporting back at the end. That's something that gets missed a lot, especially when you're at emergency level speed. It's worth it. It's critical because it'll help prepare them for the next time.

Tim Conrad (05:03):

Yeah, absolutely. And I can remember as you've been saying this, just how you come back in and especially those first couple of times you came back in with the big sheets of paper that you hang up on the wall and the hair was a little frazzled. Oh my gosh, what am I going to do here? Just trying to figure that out. And we did a lot of that where we stretched paper, big paper, wrote along big walls and tried to figure out what we had to. And so yeah, pretty

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (05:33):

Crazy. Yeah, right. It's not all writing, sometimes it's just super visual blocking. I do a lot of work with design thinking and I found that was really helpful. There's a lot of inquiry, a lot of testing, but moving forward all the time, always forward, never straight. I have a mentor who'd often said that. And the other part is being able to get people to understand you can slow down a bit to speed up. That was probably our biggest challenge. You'll remember that part to say, can we just sit down for as long as it takes to understand the process end to end? And that will do us a world of good going through distance, meeting it up, so we got there, but you have to sell it at first. And that's that trust, that credibility, that relationship building that I think we become good at in our role.

Tim Conrad (06:17):

Yeah, there's a bit of a trust us in this moment when you're going through this and trying to do this. And I know it's hard for people, but it was interesting to watch that team sort of shift as they start to see that change happen. And so you work with this team of planners and engineers who are very comfortable with complexity. That's their specialty. They were a great group of people. They're very passionate about the work that they do. And did you find it was difficult to get them to see that value as the work appeared or was it starting to show up? I just mentioned it did show up eventually, but as you were going along, were there pinch points anywhere?

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (07:01):

Sure. I mean, this is a lot of what we do. So we go into these situations and we know we're going to face some of this. I go back to that trust and credibility. Here's why we're going to do this and here's how it's going to work. And absolutely there was a lot of back and forth. It requires a lot of bridging. Like, okay, this is something that I felt was really important as an expert in my field or as a person who's done this before. And they would come back and say, I also have expertise and it is critical that we have this. You really have to strike a balance. You have to respect the advice that you're being given, but you also have to respect the needs of the people, the audience that we so often represent. Again, it came back to communicating at the very beginning, allowing them to tell us what they need to share in their own words.

(07:49):

That's really important. They're experts in their field. They know what they're talking about. We are good at distilling really complex information into things that people can act on and understand, right? We're like the behavioral jugglers in an organization. So giving 'em space to tell us what they're trying to do in their words and being okay with it and acknowledging and giving them their credibility and then helping them understand along the way as we simplify and distill and link that really, really closely with the person sees this and they will likely do X. Do we need them to do that or can they miss this step or can they go through, is this your knowledge or their knowledge? So constant back and forth requires a really high degree of flexibility and analysis. And also maybe a bit of patients, maybe because you know where you need to get to, but that's what you need to do whether you like it or not. That's the job.

Tim Conrad (08:51):

So anybody listening or watching highly encourage you. If you have a building permit process and you don't have it visually drawn out, do it. This is a good time to do it. Do it today, please. Not fun to do it in the middle.

(09:03):

Yeah, we do not want to do it in the middle of an emergency, not the best time to do it, but everybody's very busy so

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (09:12):

You'll, you're all successfully filled out forms that actually can then go forward and we can laugh about it and everything, but they have to be complex. There's a lot of moving parts, and I deeply admire that. The folks that were taking me through this project in particular, in this piece, they were genius. They were brilliant, and they were also patient and flexible because this was a new process for them. They'd never had to do something like this before in a crisis in an emergency, you don't have the time and full kudos to them for flexing as well.

Tim Conrad (09:51):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, that was a really neat experience to go through. One, we had to make it simple for people to understand, knowing we had hundreds of structures to be rebuilt, so it was a big one. So you also play the lead role with Lloyd Peel on the team in getting outreach in place. Yeah, right.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (10:19):

He's fantastic. Yeah.

Tim Conrad (10:21):

And so we began that effort in Sorento at the farmer's market and eventually went into the fire zone and met with the community at central locations such as stores and restaurants throughout the whole stretch of we were on, it was kind of convenient to be honest. We have one road and everything was on that one road.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (10:43):

One in.

Tim Conrad (10:44):

Yeah, so you could go down that road and all the stores, all the restaurants, everything were on that one road. So we started at the far end and worked our way back and then did some repeat. So obviously disasters are often tense. This one included some very significant tension unlike anything I'd seen up until that point. So various reasons that there was significant concerns for the safety of our team as a result. So we had to think about that. And as we think about things to keep everybody safe while also allowing us to go into those communities, which took that direct hit, what sort of things were you preparing for?

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (11:37):

Well, I mean there's a number of practical concerns to get the real information that we need from those experiences. And this kind of process is something I believe so deeply, and it is a core, I think, of what we do and definitely why I mentioned earlier things like design thinking and human-centered design. At the end of the day, you can give them a fancy title, but we need to meet people where they are and allow them to really inform us and help us understand where we're at before we start creating solutions. And before we start co-creating solutions and before we start moving forward and helping people get where they need to go, the behavior they need to enact all of those pieces. But even before that, even before we can get to a place where we can have those one-on-one conversations and face-to-face interactions, we need to make sure that we're safe so that doesn't become the story and that doesn't become up a part of the wider emergency response.

(12:35):

And with this one, I think again, goes back to the core of what we do at communicate. You're communicating with community organizations that may be good assets for us to refer to and making sure that we know what the process is before we go in and they know we're going out there in case they see an uptick in access by the community communicating with law enforcement, not as a negative thing as a support and a positive opportunity for them to also be able to listen and interact with the community, but to be there because it's a fluctuating and very tense situation to do our job, we need to know that we can do that safely and that we can interact. So communicating with those different community partners and also taking a team approach. You can't go out and really effectively listen alone. And so it's not just for safety, but for effectiveness.

(13:30):

We need to go out as a group and we need to be on the same page. We've got the same message and we've got the same approach. And that approach is not to inform that approach is not to tell. It is to listen and to take in information that will help us get to that next step where we can start creating solutions so that team cohesiveness, not just as a safety measure to be out there together, but to make sure that we are all speaking the same language. We've got the same approach. And that approach is its service, right? We are there to serve and to listen. We are not there to inform at that time. And then making sure that the public that we are looking to engage with, going back to trust and credibility and those components, they understand our purpose for being there, the service, the need to serve them at that time, the purpose and why we're out there and asking them for information, what we'll do with that information, what they can expect to hear from us after we collect that information.

(14:28):

A really clear end-to-end understanding of this process. Why are you coming and asking me to share some very raw emotions or some very important feedback if I don't know what you're going to do with it or why you're asking for it or who's going to have it, I'm not going to show up or I'm not going to be honest, or I'm not going to give you the kind of content you need. So I think those kind of three areas really important for not just setting up a safe exchange on both sides of the equation, but also an effective first step toward getting the community back on its feet listening before we even start framing the problem before we create solution and doing it together.

Tim Conrad (15:10):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was incredibly effective in so many ways. We're going to talk a little bit about some of that coming up here, but so outreach during crisis and emergencies is often forgotten or minimized to having a public meeting or an open host open mic. Even worse, they rarely achieve effective public participation when we do them in that way. So how important is outreach in a disaster to support community healing?

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (15:48):

Does it sound professional if you say infinity percent important? Does that sound

Tim Conrad (15:53):

Yeah. Great.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (15:54):

But

Tim Conrad (15:55):

We're not mathematicians here, so it's

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (15:56):

Okay. We're not, no one hires me for my math skills. But again, this is a component part of what we do that is so incredibly, it's a core of my values and what I believe in. You can't effectively solve a problem as a group if you don't effectively, if you don't know what that problem looks like and you cannot understand what that looks like until you start listening. And that when I was saying earlier, you're not there to inform or push information. You're there to listen because people, they need to still get right in their head with what's happening and they don't have a clear picture of what happened or what is going to happen. We can't expect that to be a polite conversation. These are not fireside chats. This is an opportunity for people to voice emotion. So we need to prepare ourselves mentally to go into that.

(16:51):

I think often in our role in communications, whether it be within an organization within a crisis or whatever that looks like we're needing to tell people or coach people or listen to people about things that are not going to be a popular either decision or approach. And our job is to say, it's not about popular approaches or people aren't going to like this. It's not, our job right now is people to like something. Our job is for an understanding of where people are at. Our job is to take that. It's not our fault that something happened. We can go in there in a fairly neutral position where we know that there's, even if they are directing criticism toward us, it's not ours. It it's really good data problems. They're in the direct path to the opportunities that we may miss as we go forward and try and solve the solution.

(17:47):

So yeah, there's a lot of tension. There's a lot of difficulty. You get into that, you get into that situation, a lot of diffusing that situation is shutting your mouth. Just shut your mouth. Listen, be careful about when you're, I'm listening to you right now. I think you're making some really important point. Is it okay with you if I write something down? I think this is an important thing to do. Rather than that wall between, oh, I'm going to take your information. I'm going to put talk to me. Is it okay if I think this is really important for people to know as we go forward? This part of your experience is really powerful. And also coming that appreciative side of things to say, I know this takes a lot. I know this is really hard. This initial exchange haven't processed everything. Thank you for trusting me with your information.

(18:40):

We go back to that whole setup where we're saying, this is the purpose of why we're here. This is what we're doing, and this is what you can expect. You have got to, we need to know too that any entity is going to deliver on that. And we try and set them up for success that way, and that's part of our plan. But connecting with people in that way, allowing them to express what they need to express. We don't need to correct information or cast blame or anything. We take it in and allow that part and report it back to them and say, this is what we think you were saying. Did we hear you correctly? I don't know if there's a more effective way to move from that really kind of contentious period of time into being able to set up something like an engagement or a town hall where the emotion part has been shared, the experiential part has been shared.

(19:28):

We've framed the problem more significantly and more thoroughly together instead of it being told or interpreted. And then that next phase is problem solving. Now we can start with, this is what we heard from you first. Where we write is this, right? But now, okay, so now we think we can create some framework for solving some of our problems. You open that mic up before any of that emotion has had a chance to be expressed or before it's reflected back, the outcome is zero. You don't have a way to frame a problem if people still just need to get things off their chest. Yeah, absolutely. I get so excited and so passionate talking. Did I actually answer your question?

Tim Conrad (20:13):

I think so. I think so.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (20:14):

Even if I didn't, maybe

Tim Conrad (20:15):

A few times

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (20:16):

Over. I'm glad I got to say it. Listen, rose, that was very important to debris. Clearly she was gesturing wildly and dumping the table, but it is, I really we're the only advocate times for the audience for the experience, not always, but often. So I think we have to take that role very seriously.

Tim Conrad (20:38):

Yeah, it is. It's extremely important to listen to people. And I go back to this public meeting. Of all the disasters I've done, I can think of probably half of the meetings that have happened in an emergency. Generally they're gone in, they're public town halls sort of thing. Half of them have gone bad, really bad, brutally bad in some cases. And one of the things I've heard often when I certainly earlier my career when that was more the norm, we have moved away from them because there's better ways to do things. But one of the things I used to hear from people in those meetings was they would still be angry when they left, even though that really a lot of times only five to 10 people stood up at a mic and screamed and got that emotion out. The rest of the room got no chance at all.

(21:38):

And so the emotion was still there, and then there was all that negative piled on top of it that they just experienced. So having the outreach is just so much more powerful and it empowers the people to be able to get out what they need to get out. And you really do discover a lot, right up until the last moment, we were discovering people that had not accessed services that needed services. We found people that were in mental wellbeing crisis and needed support. So those things you will discover when you do outreach versus in a public meeting, you probably won't find those. So there was lots of gaps. Gaps and opportunities there. So any thoughts on other gaps and opportunities we kind of uncovered there?

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (22:32):

And again, this is another component that I think is so critical, and sometimes people are really afraid to lean in. People are afraid to lean into what are the gaps? Because they think it's a reflection on their performance or their reflection on their response. And it's not at all, we can't know all things. We can't know how one event is going to affect one kind of audience group of people who have had to go through this as opposed to another one. So first of all, getting the people that we represent or we're trying to help engage, getting them to understand the value of gaps, like the direct correlation to opportunities and allowing them to go and start exploring that. But if you don't listen first, if you don't allow for that kind of emotive feedback, you miss miss the deepest and most impactful opportunities to help people get back on their feet.

(23:28):

And in particular, if you've opened it up and there's five vocal people and 150 who never had a chance to have their say, not only have you left a lot on the table, that could really help the people who have been so deeply affected and so traumatized often by what's heard, you are then really setting up a situation that nobody ever wants to set up where it becomes a resentful thing. I'm just going to keep this to myself. We're going to break off and we're going to do this on our own, or we're never going to trust this group again. Or you don't want to encourage that kind of thing. Every single gap that's uncovered is an opportunity. I don't want to sound like Ted lasso here with the rose colored glasses. It's a real thing. Every single gap is an opportunity for an organization or a community or whoever that is to say, hang on, I think we can help work.

(24:19):

This is part of that problem framing that we are there to start doing a massive part of the problem solving. So I think in that case, so many of the individualized one-on-one conversations we had had consistent themes, different experience, consistent themes, and that allowed us, Hey, we missed this part. Awesome. We missed it, but we got it. Now let's take this back to the table and let's see what we can do with it. I find incredibly energizing. I think it's the best. And because you go in there with that neutral, I know it's not me. The emotion that's being directed at me isn't me. I want to hear it. And the more you hear it that the less they feel like they have to yell it or say it, and then it's there and it's recorded, and now we're going to work with it. So again, I'm a huge, huge fan of the gaps.

Tim Conrad (25:12):

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I'll just finish up this part of the conversation was saying that I have very thick skin when I'm in those moments. Obviously in this case, I was the spokesperson for that part of the emergency. So my face was out there widely. And so I had people come up to me and threatened my life. They also came up to me, walked right up to me and told me they hated me right away. And I go, I just come back and say, okay, well, how can we help? You don't in a disaster. I don't take anything personal from the public because that's very natural for them to act in the way that they're acting. There's lots of people that I've worked with in the past in the public, they've acted in ways that they didn't anticipate that they would. And later on, they've come back, and I've actually just had this happen this summer with somebody from several years ago approached me and came up and apologized for how they acted. And I said, you know what? You don't even have to apologize. It's fine, because that's what the disaster gave you. And I don't hold that. So it's like you kind of let it got to bounce off quite a bit, but at the same time, it does help you get a barometer of where the community's at. And you do

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (26:43):

Have to meet people where they are not where you think they should be. And I love that, and I love the emphasis on that because at the end of the day, it's another relationship. They are giving you information in a really vulnerable state often, and if you don't respect that and take that, and that's really good information to help in the future, you're disrespecting the experience and the process that you need to get to together to the other end. So it also goes back though to the team part when you're prepping, when you're getting ready for these kinds of situations, your purpose, but at the same time as a team, it's really important for us to hold each other up as well and say, oh, that must've been a rough one. Don't take that personally. It's coming. Tell us a bit about, I'll take the next one. That team safety piece plays back into that too. Remember, it's not you, it's the situation.

Tim Conrad (27:43):

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, we certainly were looking over each other and rotating around. So that fantastic tool, there was somebody else getting that first hit if it came in and somebody else to back them up. So we were constantly rotating. It was a really fantastic group to work with.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (28:00):

I called them the dream team for a reason, and it was an incredible sense of, you hear this thrown around a lot now, but I think it's thrown a lot for a reason. But when people talk about psychological safety, we were trying to set that we were set that environment for people to come and engage with us. At the same time, I could not believe how quickly that kind of an environment was formed with the team. I think it's a wonderful example of how impactful and how useful that exercise can be, and full credit to that full team. It was one of the best experiences with that kind of thing I've ever had.

Announcer (28:35):

Here are some quick stats, butterfly effect communications activities during 2023 season of emergency preparedness and response, 10,000 kilometers traveled the equivalent of 24 weeks, worked in emergency operation centers, 12,000 residents evacuated 49 public engagement events where we had over a thousand conversations with residents, 9,000 knn, 95 masks given to residents, nearly a mask for every person in that region, 2,600 videos and photos. 1,300 spokesperson mentions in one month reverse media coverage from significantly negative to positive in just two weeks. Over 1 million words written or reviewed, zero lives lost. Now back to the podcast. So it's

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (29:36):

Interesting, earlier when we were talking about the experience that we often have when we're brought into a situation and we have to create complexity or we have to take complexity and create simplicity and understanding and everything else, I parachuted in Midway. You have been coming into these emergency responses and crisis situations for a long time. Many, the numbers are astonishing. I commend you. So I'd just be interested to hear more about your approach when it comes to building, getting in there initially and building that of credibility, establishing really good relationships, effective relationships as chaos literally rains down. Yeah,

Tim Conrad (30:22):

It's a very difficult thing to do and sometimes you don't get it right. Yeah, I'm often called in when things are at their worst, and it's not like coming in partway through a disaster. It's when things aren't going so well. So it's even more difficult from that perspective. In fact, as you were saying this question, I was like, I think the only disaster I've been there for the first person was the very first one I did. So every other one after that has been coming in to help out afterwards. So it's really challenging. One of the things I think it's really important that to help the whole thing is that we have the structure within NEOC. The information officer is part of the EOC management team, and information ends and goes out with the information officer. So it's really important right off the go to be included in decisions that are being made as an information officer that's very helpful to making sure that we're successful. And you'll find working with me, I'm really passionate about what I do. I'm passionate about helping people not It shows up. Yeah,

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (31:46):

I get, yeah, maybe that's how we relate. Yeah, but you are. Yeah, I see that.

Tim Conrad (31:52):

And so I really want to make sure that everybody's safe and nobody's forgotten. So I work from the community up and sometimes that's difficult for people to understand that. So I do work hard with different personalities within the ooc to get to know them a little bit in that little bit of time that you have, you really don't have much time to get to know people, but looking at how we can support people. And I'm always listening in the room for problems that are arising in other areas so that it's like I'll go over and I'll say, Hey, I heard you saying this. It's like, if we did this, I think that will help alleviate that problem. So trying to in some of those gaps that exist and And it is very challenging sometimes though, to work with all of the different people that you have in there because it is a very high stress environment. And I think for me, I think everybody comes in there wanting to help. And so that's something we all share. And so I really worked from that space forward and I want to help people in that room to not have as much stress and not have as much on their plate. So I am trying to do things that are going to make life a little bit better in the ooc so that if people are yelling at us that they're not yelling at us anymore. Those sorts of things.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (33:28):

I think that speaks to that reciprocal, we're helping, we're serving both sides of the conversation.

Tim Conrad (33:35):

And it's a tough balance. It is very tough because there's not another natural role in the EOC that does that, that's at the management table. So ESS coordinator would be one of the other ones that does certainly come with that people focused thing. All the other rules are getting things done, so they're really focused on that. So yeah, I'm a battle tested guy, so yes, you are right. And I do want to make sure it's the best it can be. So that's the most important thing for me. So I just want to go out and do the best I can and know that I'll be there and I'll be looking at things all the time and saying, Hey, if we did this this way, because I've seen so much in all the operation centers I've been in, and I've seen what fails and what and successful, and I also keep a close eye on all the people in the room and how they're doing. I can pick off when somebody's reaching their burnout stage days before they'll realize it themselves. So I'm always watching for that too. So yeah,

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (34:48):

I think we talked about that quite a bit. Then a really strong acumen in saying, oh, look over here in this corner, I really found that you were very adept at reading people, which is so critical. Again, it goes back to how functional can we be? We need to make sure that that's embraced. And I just want to call it that whole package that you just talked about is such a compelling argument, not just within crisis and emergency response, but really sums up. So often you hear communicators saying, look, we need a seat at the table, not because it's not for the sake of having a seat at the table, but sitting at that level where decisions are being made and strategy is taking place, is to be able to go, hang on in my role as the kind of relationship builder and the bridge builder between this and this, I have something to add. Have we considered how might we, et cetera, et cetera. It's such a great example of why you will hear people in communication saying, we need to be at that table.

Tim Conrad (35:55):

Yeah, absolutely. It's so key to be at the table. It's something that communications has slowly worked themselves into being at the leadership table in many organizations, and that applies very much in an e oc. That role of information officer should be sitting right next to the director and keeping an eye on things at all times and making them aware of what's going on. So it's that

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (36:20):

Environmental scan, the function of scanning that environment and picking out that relevant information. So I love how you framed that because I think that speaks to the value of communication

Tim Conrad (36:32):

And just one more piece to it. We're watching political, we're watching media, social media, what's going on in the community, what's going on in the room? All of the team, we have a really unique role in how we interact with all of the different individuals that are part of the response, and we liaise a lot with other organizations that are part of the response. So there's a lot that comes into the table, and we offer a lot to the management of the emergency. So yeah, happy to do that wherever we can. So I mentioned at the start, we both have a DHD, that lovely condition that can be a curse or a gift depending on the moment.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (37:18):

Sorry, I wasn't paying attention.

Tim Conrad (37:19):

Yeah. One of my favorite moments through the summer was either Mike or Michelle going to one of us yell to one of us to pay attention or to eyes on calm down or slow down or

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (37:34):

Never calm down. That's the one thing we could do very well. Yeah,

Tim Conrad (37:37):

Great. So a comment that I've heard about me in emergency situation as I kind of went along was I become more calm as it becomes more chaotic, so much so that people don't realize how bad the situation is sometimes. So this summer I really realized how important A DHD is during that chaos and the complexity of a large scale emergency, and I'm curious where you found A DHD to be a gift.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (38:11):

I like that question. I think it served me well in my career. I can tell you that, but for every gift, there's always that negative side, but I couldn't agree more with that calm in the center of chaos. And I think particularly in the work that we do, because there are many moving parts and it's really, really complex, and typically not always, I don't want to paint this a broad brush, but a lot of times one of those superpowers behind neurodiverse professionals is discerning patterns, critical patterns, important patterns, and being able to make sense of them and being able to distill that and help other people use those patterns to their advantage. I think that if that's what a DHD has provided me, then thank you. I'm good. I'll take it. That's great. And in ability, because you can see the pattern within a lot of moving parts are happening and you can see the pattern, you can see the way out, you can see it all the way through and maybe a little more intuitively seeing how people are handling or comprehending or contributing, being able to intuitively see where people sit.

(39:26):

I don't know a situation where that becomes more important than in a crisis. Early in my career, I would hear that. I would hear why you're so calm, you just me. You take it on and then off you go. And I was thinking, well, should I be less calm? I what? Should I throw my hands up in the ear? Should I be jumping or sweating? Am I not dancing? As you grow in your career and as you start to see what works and what doesn't, I deeply valued that, and I know it was valued, I think a lot by colleagues and by clients to say, we don't need to fuss here. We can just, let's start processing and working with it. And I think also multiple deadlines, tasks, information issues, all that kind of stuff. I really love a fire hose. It is the best thing for me.

(40:20):

And that is all a crisis is that is all emergency responses, complete fire hose, and it becomes incredibly simple to prioritize and to manage and to get a lot of work done in a very short period of time with a high level of energy. So I often feel like I'm at my best in those situations, and I'm glad because that's often when it's needed, when it's one thing at a time, back in the day when I was a waitress and I had to remember to bring a fork to somebody. Yeah, I wasn't so good at that, but thank goodness that's not kind of where I directed my energy.

Tim Conrad (41:01):

Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, one of the things I've found over the years is like you said, you kind of got it figured out and you got the path out already, and one of the tricky parts is convincing people that you actually do have it figured out and what the path is. So sometimes I'll be like, I got it, it's fine. And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, no, no, it's good. It's good. I'll just get it all figured out. And you have to document sometimes for people, and it's like, well, that's a 12 page document if you really want, I

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (41:33):

Feel I could do it and I could have it. We

Tim Conrad (41:34):

Could do it, but we just get it done too. Yeah.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (41:37):

We could also just, could you just let me go? Let me go. But I think that's also where a lot of the skill development when it comes to serving clients and helping get to the end of a project, even if it's a process for permitting, whatever that looks like I had to learn, or whether it was elementary school math, I had to document my thought process and help others understand where I was going to get them on board. So it could be very, very frustrating. Early in my career, I found it frustrating. It became a very good it to develop some skills that are needed out there. As communicators, we need to build that consensus and that comes and we're perfectly capable of doing it. It's just sometimes we just might be like, please just let me go. I'll be back in 15 minutes though. The grownup me, the grownup me tries to kind of tamp down that part of it and say, okay, you know what? I want people on board. I want to help them see what I see. So here's how it's going to go. And I'm just lucky that I can get that stuff out

(42:49):

If I have to.

Tim Conrad (42:51):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, definitely. I see it as a gift in an e ooc and in crisis especially because I've had many times where somebody's come to me with the crisis of the time or an issue and be like, this is it. And then I'll go sitting there and I'm typing and they're going, well, what do we do now? I was like, well, here's your three messages right off the go. And then

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (43:17):

They're literally start sitting right here, the absorbing as they're talking. Yeah,

Tim Conrad (43:22):

Already there. And then, yeah, it's quite a gift in those moments. So yeah, it's hard to give trust to some folks sometimes. I know, and you're a little bit more of the like to think about things before you go ahead where you have a mind that's flown through it already. I know that's difficult, but a little trust goes a long way, and we can do lots of neat things with that. A DHD, and I just happened to see this summer, not just yourself, but there was others in other roles in the EOC that were similar, and it was cool to watch that them excel in different roles that it fit well for. So yeah,

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (44:10):

Thanks for talking about that. I do like to talk about it. I think we've talked about this before. You're like, do you want to have these conversations publicly? But I think the recognition of that value of neurodiversity in general, and when I'm saying that, I'm not just saying specific to anybody who would have, I mean, everybody's brain is different. Everybody's works in different ways, but I think there's often, in the past, there's been a way of talking about different ways that brains work and everything in a way that almost was framed it in a negative context or in, and that's shifting now, and I think that's really important to say. There are some across the spectrum. Problem solving over here is that's the strength. Let's work with that strength. Or over here it's more about the linear thing, whatever that might look like. There's room, there's room in the professional sphere to use and access a lot of different perspectives. And so this is just a great opportunity to demonstrate from a place of usefulness and impact the value of a neurodiverse workforce or team.

Tim Conrad (45:29):

Yeah, absolutely. I always believed when I was in the fire service, there's a spot for everybody in the fire service, and it's the same in an EOC. There's a spot for everybody in every personality that's out there. You can find a spot in a home there. Well, Brie, thank you again for being part of the Butterfly Effect communications team. Last summer, you were the final piece of our team, and you fit in immediately where you joined a team that was grinding through a disaster. That was a pretty big one. And you also popped over to help out in Squamish Ettes and as well with the Pathways to Preparedness project with the Caribou region. So it was a busy, once we got working together, we worked together quite a bit, and I really think that Pathways to Preparedness project is going to really change how people prepare for emergencies. I've been doing a little bit of work with that project today as we get towards the end of that. So I wanted to thank each of you in a unique way. So I had a friend do an illustration, and here it is. What do you think?

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (46:38):

Hey. Oh my goodness. Do you know what? This is lovely as a mom of three, I don't know if there is actually a picture of me anywhere in the world, but this is insane. This is so thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. That speaks tore. Welcome my creative brain. That's

Tim Conrad (47:00):

Really cool. That's awesome. I really appreciate it. That's

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (47:02):

Great. Yeah, let me say, I've been incredibly lucky in my career to work with some really, really good, really smart crack people in various aspects of our industry. And this team was no different. It was so easy to jump in and just do what I knew how to do and to take the space to do that, and the collaboration and the support. And like I said before, the psychological safety in a really kind of intense situation with it was just second to none. So it was my pleasure on all of the projects.

Tim Conrad (47:43):

Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, it's been great. And yeah, thanks again for joining the Butterfly Effect Communications team. Brie, check out other episodes in this series and keep an eye out for additional podcasts, which we are working on. Thanks again, Brie. Have a great day.

Brie Thorsteinson Ogle (47:57):

Thank you. Take care.

Tim Conrad (47:59):

I am so lucky to have been able to work with such wonderful people who bring their creativity, dedication, skill, and ethics to the Butterfly Effect Communications team. I was so proud of the work we did, listening to residents, responders, and clients, and creating strategies to improve communications during and after the wildfires. You can reach Brie Thorsteinson Ogle on LinkedIn or through her contact info in the show notes.

When doom and gloom strikes, you want Butterfly effect communications in your favorite contacts. We bring calm to chaos through effective communications. We believe ethical communications can guide populations and organizations to prepare, respond to, and recover from crises, emergencies, and disasters. But hey, we're not all doom and gloom. We do fun things too. We can help with projects like stopping glass from going in a blue card or grease, going down a drain, writing a report, or understanding how a community feels about something new. Maybe those aren't all that fun, but they are to us. When you are looking to engage, educate, or expand, put Butterfly effect communications in your favorites. Find us at www.butterflyeffectcommunications.ca. The Wildfires, Floods and Chaos Communications podcast is a 2024 production of Butterfly Effect Communications Incorporated. Make sure you share it with someone and go back and listen to another episode. Okay, thanks.