First Response Strategy: The Golden Hour (Jim Lukaszewski's Strategy Newsletter)

The most challenging aspect of readiness for urgent situations is the strategy for first response; literally, what you do first, second, third, etc. Problems become emergencies, crises, or disasters due to the hesitation, timidity, and confusion that occurs as the threatening nature of a situation is recognized. A successful first response is the activation of appropriate counter measures and proactive decision making that were pre-authorized during the crisis response planning process. THE GOLDEN HOUR: Perhaps the most useful and appropriate model for first response strategy is “The Golden Hour” concept, which comes to us from wartime battlefield medicine. It was probably the Korean War that taught us the benefit of bringing medical care to the front lines rather than dragging the wounded behind the lines for medical treatment. The lesson was that the severely wounded who received medical treatment within minutes of injury had a survival rate enormously higher than the soldier who was treated outside the first 60 minutes of injury. Time and again, major problems turn into crises or worse due to lack of initial momentum to do something, to make decisions, and to begin grinding down on the problem. When people or organizations fail to promptly address a problem and resolve it, the resulting crisis creates victims who are left untreated and situations left unresolved. In the minds of the public, the victims, and survivors, delay equals denial. Refusal to promptly commit to a course of counteraction is equivalent to arrogance, which is the lack of empathy. THE FIRST RESPONSE CHECKLIST: An appropriate, scenario-based first response checklist will help deal with the most urgent, crucial matters and decisions as early as possible. This is possible because crisis managers considered a wide variety of decision points during the planning and testing phases of readiness preparation, and pre-authorized many of those decisions to achieve a more prompt response.