00:00:00:00 - 00:00:35:23
Dr. Stuart Myers
I do not believe in U.S. centricity. I think that we need to find best practices and the models that I've developed and tested, even though they are principally based on U.S. practices. I have been able to adapt them based on culture based language, based on geographic region, based on territory that is around the world. And it's essential that this occurs for these models to work, because critical incident management, as you're well aware, is not one sided.
00:00:36:00 - 00:01:01:00
Kyle King
Welcome back to the Crisis Conflict Management podcast. My name is Kyle and I'll be your host. And in today's episode, we're going to delve into the critical role of crisis leadership in decision making in high threat situations. Our guest today is Mr. Stuart Myers, who is drawing from his extensive experience in SWAT operations and Incident Command and will share his insights on effective leadership strategies, decision making models and the psychological aspects of crisis response.
00:01:01:02 - 00:01:16:10
Kyle King
Now, in order to do, Mr. Myers, some good insights and sort of a good introduction, I have to turn it over to him to be able to give an introduction and sort of explain his career path and field and how he got into a position of where he is today. So Stuart, thanks for joining us today and welcome to the show.
00:01:16:11 - 00:01:40:00
Dr. Stuart Myers
Thank you. Carl. I just very briefly tell people I've lived multiple arcs, graduating my undergraduate degree. I started Auburn Mechanical, Auburn in Maryland got on our record. The Central was 14 and then our full time police central Line SWAT team. We were very operational team at the time running at an average of 3 to 5 high risk operations per week.
00:01:40:02 - 00:02:12:07
Dr. Stuart Myers
They range from serving high risk ward servants to going on murder suspects, holding hostages. So we had a very wide range of operations. On leaving the department. I started a company training a law enforcement of military personnel, primarily special operations, literally around the world. I've worked with agencies new and every cosmetic step in or Attica. It's been a learning experience for me because I tell people I'm never done learn a lifelong learner.
00:02:12:09 - 00:02:44:10
Dr. Stuart Myers
I was asked and accepted a position to be director of SWAT Operations and training and create an elite SWAT team in Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates. And upon completion of that tour, I came back and get my Masters degree at Harvard University, in which I focused on critical incident management, was very fortunate that the degree was in international relations, but my professors allowed me to take the situational existing track in critical incident management, reapply that inner international and content.
00:02:44:12 - 00:03:08:09
Dr. Stuart Myers
Upon doing that, they gave me additional information. I ruined courses in the private sector or both law enforcement or military personnel. And then I got hired as director of public Protection in Safety at Louisiana State University in Tunis and was an assistant professor there where I developed their emergency management program, as well as criminal justice law enforcement course.
00:03:08:11 - 00:03:33:02
Dr. Stuart Myers
Still not being done with being a lifelong learner. I went back to school. I got accepted into the Columbia University Teachers College doctoral program, where, again, I was very fortunate that I was allowed to focus my dissertation and my research in the doctoral program on high threat decisions. And that's kind of where we are today. A couple of books have come out.
00:03:33:04 - 00:03:55:09
Dr. Stuart Myers
One is high threat to the latest. One is hyper decisions when it's a matter of life and death. And then the preceding one was a SWOT operations in critical incidents Why people die, which I've been able to marry my operational experience, marry the contacts that I have made through decades of experience along with my academic. That's that's kind of the short version.
00:03:55:11 - 00:04:26:16
Kyle King
And that's quite a lot of experience. Thanks for sharing that. And it's really interesting to see how your career has evolved. And I want to pick up on that point specifically where you were on this unique degree track that's blending both international relations and critical asset management. And so what I wanted to pick up on that was what drove you in to look at that and from that specific perspective, because it's very rare to see people take the operational aspects and then put an international lens upon that mindset, something that I find to be very rare.
00:04:26:16 - 00:04:45:24
Kyle King
That's something that we do a lot at capacity international and sort of our boutique consultancy piece is we do a lot of international work and we're looking at emergency management as a mechanism to create stability, but that is very rare to find. And so what sort of brought you to that conclusion that that's what you wanted to focus on in that specific point in time and and degree program?
00:04:46:01 - 00:05:08:04
Dr. Stuart Myers
I had a good fortune to work with over a thousand different law enforcement agencies, not personnel, but agencies around the world. My initial background was principally in United States on the East Coast, but I learned very quickly that just because we do something in the U.S. doesn't mean it's applicable or even the best practices in other global context.
00:05:08:06 - 00:05:35:14
Dr. Stuart Myers
So having the chance to work with these law enforcement agencies while they bring me in to order from my background, I'm learning about their unique set of circumstances that occur in occasion could occur in Europe or occurred South America, where the Middle East that are Caribbean in how what we do in the U.S. can be adapted to their missions and how their responses, you know, also be potentially adapted to what we do in the U.S..
00:05:35:20 - 00:06:05:07
Dr. Stuart Myers
I do not believe in U.S. centricity. I think that we need to find best practices and the models that I've developed and tested, even though they are principally based on U.S. practices, I have been able to adapt them based on culture based language, based on geographic region, based on territory that is around the world. And it's essential that this occurs for these models to work.
00:06:05:13 - 00:06:10:04
Dr. Stuart Myers
As critical incident management, as you're well aware, is not one sided.
00:06:10:06 - 00:06:34:03
Kyle King
So I'm glad that you mentioned next. I'm now really curious about the experience of you then working overseas and working with all these different departments and agencies and then seeing how they operate and how they they function. What were some of your key takeaways? And when you reflect upon that, like where was it that we have been sort of indoctrinated, I guess I would say for lack of a better term and the US methodology?
00:06:34:05 - 00:06:44:19
Kyle King
And then what was a point in time where you reflected and said this is maybe better than or this is completely different than what we're doing in the U.S. And, and it sort of was a lightbulb moment for you.
00:06:44:21 - 00:07:11:20
Dr. Stuart Myers
Well, I think one of the advantages, if you can call it iterative bandage of working in the U.S. is and especially in my background, I was very operation, which means it was I cry people take it hostages high risk wards, servants or barricaded individuals. We don't want a lot of tension. And again, I don't have the statistics at all but anecdotally we could probably all and more accurate operations than anybody else around world except very operational team.
00:07:11:21 - 00:07:39:15
Dr. Stuart Myers
So going overseas and seeing how that plays out for teams that don't necessarily have the operations experience, but they have other advantages. For example, you know, I don't want to cast aspersions on union because as I come from union background, always unions manipulate and play a role in the way things are managed in response overseas. There's not that limitation or benefit depending on how you want to look at it.
00:07:39:15 - 00:08:01:24
Dr. Stuart Myers
When it comes to pay. One of the I guess you could say an epiphany was here is that bank they are operational overseas. Really? I haven't been on that many operations by comparison. They might trade or but they don't have the operations experience. And one of the things that was borne out of my last study is the importance of experience.
00:08:02:01 - 00:08:29:02
Dr. Stuart Myers
But experience can be good. An experience can be back if we learn from our experience inside, and it is adaptive experience that's a very good that helps form the basis for a decision. But there's also something called maladaptive experience, and that's where we might have done something. And we got really what, But because we did it and it had a positive outcome, we essentially validated our action.
00:08:29:04 - 00:08:57:15
Dr. Stuart Myers
And because we validate our actions, we're going to repeat it again then that. So there needs to be a clear distinction between valid experiences and adaptive experiences and maladaptive experiences and knowing the difference between the two and that was one of the things that I tried to bring to my time international to explain to them is a reason why I think we should do things that.
00:08:57:18 - 00:09:16:05
Dr. Stuart Myers
But we also need to adjust. When, for example, I lived and worked in a muslim country for two years, I had to adjust when we were going to train. When we work on a trade, when I could push back prayer time and when I said no, we're going to follow a culture where to follow our traditions and we're going to take a break.
00:09:16:07 - 00:09:41:18
Kyle King
So in those environments, when you're you're seeing that we have to be adaptable and amenable and work in these different cultural environments. What did you notice in terms of the decision making frameworks that people were using and how they were applying them within the context of their own operations? But I'm also curious in terms of your view of, say, setting up programs and setting up just the entire sort of public safety infrastructure and their approach to this based on their own communities and cultural aspects.
00:09:41:20 - 00:09:49:14
Kyle King
Can you tell us a little bit more about your research and then also sort of these decision making frameworks that what people are using and then how that sort of reflects upon what we do in the United States?
00:09:49:17 - 00:10:08:23
Dr. Stuart Myers
But I need to break down you asked me, like working in this segment, so we break it down a little overseas in the U.S. quite often the way we make decisions is based on what we did before, which could be a good thing, could be better, but quite often is, hey, this is what we had before. This is the way we did it.
00:10:08:23 - 00:10:32:17
Dr. Stuart Myers
So we're going to keep on doing it sometimes. That's right. Because you don't need to reinvent the wheel, but sometimes that's wrong, especially when we come up against speaking to law enforcement or military context with people who are serious there, want to challenge us that are committed, that want to kill. That's a very different environment than going up against somebody who is not is motivated and doesn't want to kill.
00:10:32:19 - 00:10:56:15
Dr. Stuart Myers
And just because we've done something and been successful in the past doesn't mean we're going to be successful in the future. So we need to have an eye on the present, but we need to look at what's coming in the future and what could happen. And part of adapting the takeaways from the research to adapt to these future questions is is asking some basic questions.
00:10:56:17 - 00:11:24:20
Dr. Stuart Myers
What is the suspect's most likely course of action that can apply in any environment? What is his or her most dangerous course of action? What do I need to know? We're in a how are we going to respond to. That's kind of a basic model that came out. And to take that even more so than to a general decision making it in anything, whether it's disaster in this reader or whether it is their words for a natural disaster.
00:11:24:21 - 00:11:50:22
Dr. Stuart Myers
Areas, things that are any type of crisis management, what's the worst that can happen? And our decisions need to take those two questions, answers to those two questions into account. And then when we ask the question, what do I need to know, we need to be prepared to ask these questions. Now we're taking this into the second part to which you asked in an international bar.
00:11:51:03 - 00:12:11:07
Dr. Stuart Myers
It really requires all the time. But a significant number of times a cultural change. When I went to the Middle East, my very presence meant that senior ranking government officials were doing their job if they were when they needed to bring me. So we're doing their job, which is why they wanted to approve and why they brought me.
00:12:11:07 - 00:12:33:16
Dr. Stuart Myers
And other people are. Well, what happens in countries, especially countries that have money, that are willing to commit the funds to improve, they might get a perspective for so they might get a perspective from Germany. They might get his perspective from England. They might get a U.S. perspective or Canadian perspective on some of these perspectives can be diametrically opposed when it comes to managing.
00:12:33:18 - 00:13:21:03
Dr. Stuart Myers
So at some point, somebody has got to say, we're going to learn from all, we're going to study all this, but this is the direction we're going to go in. Because of the position I was given when I was there, I was allowed to make that decision and I had to essentially create a cultural change over there. A lot is being talked about in business and government about effecting organizational cultural change that applies across the board and it is especially critical and critical and should have been to make sure that we're going to do what is not just going to result in a successful outcome, but what is going to result in a successful outcome,
00:13:21:05 - 00:13:28:11
Dr. Stuart Myers
or at the very least and statistically increase the likelihood of a successful outcome.
00:13:28:13 - 00:13:55:01
Kyle King
So based on that and based on sort of that cultural context background and then, you know, I think the willingness of many international partners to take this sort of global view of how, in your case, say, policing works and what's the best, how does that all factor in? And again, this is a large question. I'm sort of unpacking this as I talk to you, but how does that all sort of feed into the topic that you've been working with great extent, which is that decision making in high threat situations?
00:13:55:01 - 00:14:00:10
Kyle King
How does that influence and how does that impact the decision making for the incident manager on the ground?
00:14:00:14 - 00:14:29:24
Dr. Stuart Myers
I think there's probably two main answers. She gives a lot of answers for two principal answers to it. What is the successes that I had overseas? It was due to enlightened people of the door. It was due to motivating them, leading them, guiding them to make cultural changes, to make organizations change, that they actually believed that they did work and they not been willing to do the work I wouldn't have been able to do anyway.
00:14:29:24 - 00:15:04:17
Dr. Stuart Myers
So I speak across in the leader board in that if a leader wants to effect change, you need to get by. And there's different way. I don't know that we have time to talk about all the different leadership approaches because there are in many, many leadership approaches and I don't believe in adding what I believe. It's a combination ultimately situation, leadership and adaptive leadership are going to guide the way, but got to get the people that you were working with, the people who are going to be the owners of the change, who really want to change.
00:15:04:23 - 00:15:23:24
Dr. Stuart Myers
And then it goes back to, okay, this is what we know today. Why are we doing it this way? And how can we do it? And that's what motivated me to go back to school. Both were my master's degree, my doctoral degree there asked these questions and that's why I focused my doctoral dissertation toward high threat decision. What don't we know?
00:15:23:24 - 00:15:54:00
Dr. Stuart Myers
And it was interesting because the process for the dissertation required me to go through what's called triangulation, which means I need three actions. One, it was interviews, one was surveys and one was focus and trying your way with that. In the interviews I had one the at school incident commanders that I asked a series of questions to where all the same questions were consistency in order and IAB Institutional Review Board protocol.
00:15:54:02 - 00:16:29:16
Dr. Stuart Myers
And one of the interesting questions is I found it interesting because it caused everybody to pause for a second was how do you go about making a sound decision for your criticism? And a lot of them said, I don't know, and it caused them to reflect lot on the process that they knew. And to me I thought, Hey, if I'm making them think about answers to questions and keep in mind, these 20 commanders had between 79 and 113 years of critical incident management experience.
00:16:29:16 - 00:17:07:07
Dr. Stuart Myers
I'm not talking about experience. I'm talking about actual critical incident management experience and present this in ranges because I asked them as part of a demographic to work with this study to present their experience and range. They've also been incident managers, one between 704 and over 885 different critical incidents. So they had a wealth of information and I wanted to learn from them without interjecting my input and my thoughts.
00:17:07:07 - 00:17:39:13
Dr. Stuart Myers
You know, oftentimes because several of them knew me, they would share, they would answer the questions, and then they'd wait for me to validate or they'd wait for my opinion on what they did. And I couldn't do that. As a result. I had to be independent and unbiased. It's impossible for always to be completely unbiased, but I set up a series of assumptions that I had going into it, and then I revisited my selections again in order to obtain answers to these questions and create models and knowledge that would be replicated, because that's a key.
00:17:39:19 - 00:17:47:10
Dr. Stuart Myers
You don't want to do something that's got to be one one. What's one sport? You want to have something that can be replicable in other environments.
00:17:47:12 - 00:17:49:04
Kyle King
So then if we are shaped by our.
00:17:49:04 - 00:17:50:18
Dr. Stuart Myers
Say, do that, answer your question.
00:17:50:20 - 00:18:13:05
Kyle King
Yes. Yes. And it's interesting because if we are shaped by our, you know, our experiences and sort of, you know, previous performance and everything else, all these other sort of factors that go into us making our decisions. I am curious then about two other points that you sort of raised, which is, you know, how are people making decisions, why they make those decisions, especially under duress or any sort of extreme environments?
00:18:13:05 - 00:18:40:13
Kyle King
And like you said, in a high threat environment, if somebody is in those positions today, what can they do? And this is getting to sort of what we always talk about is that future forecasting a little bit in terms of our discussions. What can we do now when we have an eye towards a future and we see things that are becoming more complex, more complicated and different risks presenting themselves in terms of being on the response side of the House and trying to manage events and incidents, What are we seeing in terms of what can leaders do today?
00:18:40:19 - 00:18:57:00
Kyle King
What can responders do today to sort of have that awareness, like you're mentioning? How do you make decisions and then improve on their decision making capability, given the fact that if our forecasting out, you know, that things can be ultimately more and more complex in the future.
00:18:57:03 - 00:19:22:05
Dr. Stuart Myers
Actually questioning that was really the focus of my book or one of the outputs of the book in the research that they got combined. When we make a decision, it is going to be conscious, subconscious or psychologists like you use the term unconscious. And there's still great debate about whether we actually make unconscious decisions, how the brain works unconscious, there's not as much debate about.
00:19:22:07 - 00:19:48:06
Dr. Stuart Myers
So if we are making conscious decisions, we create them up and the model becomes applied To give. An bar, for example, created a predictive analytics, high threat decision battle or critical decision making more critical since it focused on hostage rescue or barricaded suspect or suicidal. There was a general, but the jury model can be applied in any number.
00:19:48:09 - 00:20:12:11
Dr. Stuart Myers
It essentially consists of obtain and analyze data to comprehend the situation and then connect past experiences to potential outcomes through a conscious and or subconscious predictive analytics process. And by predictive analytics, oftentimes in answer to another part of your question, how do people make decisions? Oftentimes I'll hear what was a it was what gut decision. It was interesting.
00:20:12:12 - 00:20:42:19
Dr. Stuart Myers
I don't believe it comes from the gut. I believe it comes from what? And we predict the outcomes. Intuition is nothing more than what we predict the outcome to be based on a given decision. So I've applied the term predictive analytics to bits. We go through a conscious predictive analytics process. We also go through a subconscious system. We'll get to that in a minute because that goes towards how we can improve in forecasting for future insight.
00:20:42:21 - 00:21:12:04
Dr. Stuart Myers
So I talked about the first aspect or a general predictive analytics decision making model. The second one is observe and develop options based on an examination of data collected and decide on a specific course of action that are collected is a skill. I am not prepared to say that on every incident all intel is good or bad. We're all pretty Cold War in saying some aspect of the intel is going to be bad or we need to have infiltration.
00:21:12:04 - 00:21:37:24
Dr. Stuart Myers
Since I learned almost very hard what can happen with bad intel. When I was owner full time SWAT team, we got a call for a murder suspect. Told us you was also spec holding his family hostage. It was in a little older, very old neighborhood. World War two sounds. It was around 1230 1:00 in the morning. I just happened to be driving through that area of town.
00:21:38:01 - 00:21:55:00
Dr. Stuart Myers
Call goes out. SWAT caller I'm on my way up. I'm on my way. I'll be there momentarily. Nodal officer who was on all time SWAT team because we were working at we had already finished work and we were on our way out says, Hey, I'll be there in 5 minutes, wait for him. So I go to the scene.
00:21:55:00 - 00:22:13:17
Dr. Stuart Myers
Were unmarked cars, plainclothes. That was our typical attire. TV on scene supervisor who gives me a quick break. I get all the intel from him. He essentially says, gives me the address, tells me where to house is he set up a command post inside of the shopping center parking lot. This nobody was there was middle of the night.
00:22:13:21 - 00:22:34:06
Dr. Stuart Myers
He says, go out this driveway from the locker right, turn left, go up the hill. As you come down the hill, Target location is on the right side of route Coupe. Got another officer shows up two of us, or we knew the rest of the team was a ways away. So we were going to do a quick drive on, gather intel, and then set up the immediate action team.
00:22:34:06 - 00:22:54:12
Dr. Stuart Myers
After we got in. So we get in a car, we drop down, we're like to think were high speed live track guys. We follow the instructions instead of going up the hill and blowing off to the right. We said at the bottom of it and we all on the left side where it was dark. There were some street lights with the mailboxes in this older residential neighborhood.
00:22:54:18 - 00:23:13:19
Dr. Stuart Myers
We're up against the house. Since they weren't your typical mailbox and sits on the side. So we get out of the car, we got to see where we're at, how many houses down, You know, it's the opposite side of route. No, it's the opposite side of the hill. So we go to the first house, we see there's a porch light on, There's a guy standing on the porch.
00:23:13:19 - 00:23:35:13
Dr. Stuart Myers
We don't pay any attention to him. We're looking for the numbers. One AML. We walk up to the porch. Not a word was spoken. We looked at the numbers on the mailbox. We looked at each other. We made eye contact and we jumped on the guy's standard report. This week it came down, a gun comes out of his back, waistband comes flying out on the pavement.
00:23:35:13 - 00:23:57:15
Dr. Stuart Myers
We're able to take him into custody. That was the target location. I don't know where the police were set up, but they weren't set up at to to search and took him into custody. I will repeat exactly what I said to you on scene supervisor when when I got back. But I said, why did you only. Hey, go down, follow the street.
00:23:57:15 - 00:24:17:01
Dr. Stuart Myers
It's on the opposite side of the hill and on the right side of the road. And he tells me a critical piece of intel that you're going to be valuable to me. When I went went there, he says, Well, I never actually went to the park and said, I got this information from somebody who got it from somebody else who told me that's where it was.
00:24:17:02 - 00:24:41:23
Dr. Stuart Myers
So when we go back to obtain and develop options based on an examination of data, we need to have infiltration system to determine and validate this. Yeah, we were almost killed on this operation. He could have killed both. Or had he taken a gun and shot. Fortunately, we reacted best. He was probably just as surprised to see two guys walking up open the middle and out to his porch and plainclothes as we were to seeing him there.
00:24:42:00 - 00:25:02:06
Dr. Stuart Myers
But he was armed. And yet people were held hostage inside. He just so happened to be standing on the porch with a third option as part of the motto is analyze and evaluate short and long term goals, then decided on a plan that can achieve this goal. We're always going to want to have short term goals, but the long term goal is going to be successful resolution and then apply it are critical.
00:25:02:06 - 00:25:31:07
Dr. Stuart Myers
Part Bronson's to achieve the ultimate goal of a successful resolution based on new information changing rare or real data at the beginning of every plans that to be in evidence and go on change. As you're well aware, crisis incidents are not static. They are constantly evolving and we need to implement a critical and inter critical thought process as things change with the ultimate goal of successful resolve.
00:25:31:09 - 00:25:56:02
Dr. Stuart Myers
So that's going to be a model that can be applied to any insight. What I did was I applied this model to hostage rescue, arm barricaded suspects and armed suicide on the bridge, and I broke down every option that a hostage rescue suspect, every every conceivable I risk the immigration was will come up with something in the future on this.
00:25:56:04 - 00:26:20:17
Dr. Stuart Myers
And then I came up with what are police responses to these. So we've got all these options. What are our options? What are suspect options? And then I applied the same methodology to arms and we saw individuals, armed, barricaded individuals as part of an operations phase, as part of a recovery phase and part of a post incident resilience.
00:26:20:23 - 00:26:42:09
Dr. Stuart Myers
So going back, if we look at this plan, we can arduously study what are our options and how they can be applied in the kind of plug and play until we have a significant amount of operations expert, then it becomes starts to become subconscious that, hey, this is what we've done in the past, This is how we draw from.
00:26:42:09 - 00:26:52:15
Dr. Stuart Myers
No, this is a bad idea. Yes, this is a good idea. And apply that to given circumstances. And I believe these models can apply to any high threat decision making.
00:26:52:17 - 00:27:15:05
Kyle King
And it's a very sort of interesting discussion because the first thing that I was thinking about when you were telling that sort of story is it made me wonder, especially in the context of this conversation, if the decision that the supervisor had made at that time was going to be a conscious or non conscious decision. Right. In terms of that type of perspective, which would have changed your entire process in your approach?
00:27:15:07 - 00:27:52:05
Kyle King
And so it's interesting to think in terms of everything you've mentioned is operational experience and sort of is environmental experience and everything else that he's been exposed to or she's been exposed to. And really that piece of information, had it been filtered, had it been vetted and verified, would have been critical to the outcomes. So I'm just you think in that moment in time, obviously you've evolved well beyond that now in terms of your frameworks and decision making models, but do you think at that point in time when people are standing as an incident manager or as a supervisor on a policing, I'm just genuinely curious if we're making decisions based on our own sort
00:27:52:05 - 00:28:04:04
Kyle King
of instincts and if or if we need to really have this sort of detached framework like you're talking about to sort of take away the gut reaction, quote unquote, so to speak, that you're mentioning?
00:28:04:06 - 00:28:44:02
Dr. Stuart Myers
Well, I need to qualify the answer. I don't like the term gut reaction. I like the term predictive analytics. And sometimes that can be set up so it's not there. I think we need to get rid of our instincts into wishing right. We have better work when it comes to making decisions, but we need to make sure they are grounded in having a window of a general window opportunity and not the illusion overnight to they are grounded in reality, they're grounded in experience, adapted experience, not valid that oftentimes instead of managers haven't been properly trained or they don't have the experience.
00:28:44:04 - 00:29:01:19
Dr. Stuart Myers
That's how we learn things. None of us aren't. We all grew through a learning process to be able to do so. That was one of the motivating factors for me to come up with these models so the people can use it as a guide. It's not better answer. It's not going to be the end all. Hey, all it is, what are you going to do?
00:29:01:20 - 00:29:25:11
Dr. Stuart Myers
That's why I wish it would work that way. But it does. It puts people on the right track so that they can predict. If I do this, that's going to happen, if I do that and this is going to happen. So they understand what are the consequences of their decisions and they are prepared. What also goes on with this and is often underestimated is asking questions.
00:29:25:13 - 00:30:04:10
Dr. Stuart Myers
And that was also one of the things that I developed for these types of incidents. What questions need to be asked, and oftentimes that I said we don't get the right information, If we don't get the information we need to ask the right questions. And if we don't ask the right questions, it's all on us. Again, I mentioned this at the beginning, back to a police incident - what is the suspect's most likely course of action if we're looking at it from a disaster management type, what is most likely course of action if we do X, what is the suspect's most dangerous course of action here?
00:30:04:10 - 00:30:27:03
Dr. Stuart Myers
Again, applying it to disaster management. Crisis management. What's the worst thing that can happen if we do X? What do I need to know and how are we going to respond to it? Oftentimes, incident managers don't respond to it because they never had this before. For me, no decision is a decision. It's a decision not to make a decision.
00:30:27:05 - 00:30:55:02
Dr. Stuart Myers
And people think that if they don't make a decision, they can't be wrong. I said, if I don't tell people what to do, I can't make a wrong decision. Well, in my mind, no decision is the decision. And that does not absolve boards from actually making a decision. That's our position. We need to make the best decision whether it's the best decision that we can with the information that we have or should have had at the time we make the decision.
00:30:55:04 - 00:31:19:14
Dr. Stuart Myers
That's why, you know, casting dispersions, all attorneys and judges and courts and litigation. But oftentimes what second decisions are litigated over once years when people have had an abundance of time to not we make these decisions. We need to make these decisions based upon information we have at that split second, it could change a second later or change or mitigate or change in our.
00:31:19:19 - 00:31:40:03
Dr. Stuart Myers
But the second part to this is information that we were should have had. In other words, if we don't ask the right questions, we don't get the back. Just because somebody didn't share this with us. It's incumbent upon us as incident managers to ask the questions to get that information or find somebody who can get that information.
00:31:40:05 - 00:32:00:16
Kyle King
So that makes me think about the culture of leadership and leadership style in these organizations. So if it's incumbent upon everybody to ask questions, where do you find the balance and leadership then? And so obviously, being comfortable with leadership positions and having people ask questions, especially in high threat situations and in high stress situations like what you're normally dealing with.
00:32:00:18 - 00:32:08:23
Kyle King
So what is sort of leadership style is that then for people when they have to be comfortable with asking questions especially and really structure or organization.
00:32:09:00 - 00:32:29:22
Dr. Stuart Myers
Again, I try to blend adaptive leadership with situational viewership. And this specifically speaks to situational leadership because oftentimes there is there's a little bit of doubt even in recruitment. So I want to hear from as many different people as possible. I want to hear, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? And the same was borne from the study that commanders articulated the same thing.
00:32:30:03 - 00:32:52:16
Dr. Stuart Myers
It was almost a collective decision making where, hey, it's we're going to do we're not going to do this because I say we're going to do more to the collective decision making. Give me your what do you think about this? Again, going back to what did go wrong, if we make these decisions, but when it comes time to a actually making a decision or B, having to make a split second decision, this is what we're going to do.
00:32:52:21 - 00:33:26:07
Dr. Stuart Myers
I will explain my decision later. Lots of people are going because oftentimes leaders, they might make a decision and say, this is what we're going to do, but never explain why, why they did it later. And there's also speaks to the importance of critical incident people so everyone can learn from that. So if leaders don't have the opportunity due to time constraints to explain what they're doing, their team, the people who are participating in the incident needs to understand and needs to trust that leader.
00:33:26:12 - 00:33:45:07
Dr. Stuart Myers
And that's where everything leading up to that incident that is going to form that leadership model. Do I trust that leader? Do they trust their leader? If the answer is no, Yes. What if that critical incident, that critical moment in not going to be followed, if they trust it and they might see it, a weapon, use that in the world.
00:33:45:09 - 00:34:19:00
Dr. Stuart Myers
We worked well, Of course, they have a good reason for doing for saying that we're going to Well, so it goes back to situational leadership, adaptive leadership, being willing to listen to others. Hey, another story speaks to leadership and how everything leadership isn't about leading one. It it's it's about we do prior to that and in the study that I did of the not the last will readers will blood sweat operations are critical and why people die there are organizational conditions in pre incident organizational conditions that help guide us.
00:34:19:02 - 00:34:40:24
Dr. Stuart Myers
So what we do before an incident is just as important as what we do the day or and so I was leading a team. We were in a middle East suspect who was under surveillance from a narcotics made the narcotics undercover. He pulled a gun on and threatened to kill an individual or habitual drug user threatened to kill them.
00:34:41:01 - 00:35:03:07
Dr. Stuart Myers
They ended up talking deep down, diffusing the situation a little bit so they didn't get killed. But suspect got I get a call. My team gets a call. We show up about 2 hours where we're based and long story short, they got a search warrant required search warrants for the shots. It just so happened when I was there for the initial briefing, I was there were two captains of the team leader and I.
00:35:03:07 - 00:35:24:02
Dr. Stuart Myers
We were the ones that really wanted to call one or two captains knew somebody in a neighborhood because while they were larger homes, they were all almost identical. So we had the opportunity to actually go into a identical floor plan to start devising or plan, call the team out. In the meantime, again, I believe in do a drive bys governance.
00:35:24:02 - 00:35:49:00
Dr. Stuart Myers
What you can tell is possible. I don't want to just rely on intel, but something tells me I want intel from my team for making commanders one team leaders, the people that I trust. So the team were the captains and the team leader. They get my clothes on my car. They do a drive. When they drive by, they see the shop you standing outside close to the road playing with this truck.
00:35:49:04 - 00:36:07:09
Dr. Stuart Myers
The team leader who is one of the best SWAT officers I've ever found anywhere, work, which is why I actually made him team leader, even though he was the junior. He was a senior officer, but jaw swat, he had all the qualities you would ever want in a SWAT officers or culture. Culturally, I believe in the best person for the job I made him.
00:36:07:13 - 00:36:30:22
Dr. Stuart Myers
He opens the door to jump out, to grab the suspect, but at the last second closes the door. We do a drive by to come back. The plan was to bring the team out and make this a team effort. There was no exigency or it wasn't for or the hostages. She wasn't actively shooting with everybody. There's no urgency in your back and says, Well, I could have ended the instant I was going to jump out.
00:36:30:22 - 00:36:49:18
Dr. Stuart Myers
I was good at grabbing. I go, I could have done. The only reason I didn't do it was because if I did it and I was successful, I knew you would not be happy and you would not be pleased. We are winning the greatest leadership compliments I ever got. And he was right. He'd have been in a penalty box for a while.
00:36:49:18 - 00:37:16:18
Dr. Stuart Myers
I'd have probably removed him from the team leader position because he took that unilateral action. Now I need to qualify because I firmly believe in looking for a window of opportunity. But there needs to be distinction between a window of opportunity and real version of it up to. And that's where goes back to the questions and what is going to consist that will lead to the increased likelihood of a successful outcome.
00:37:16:20 - 00:37:30:13
Dr. Stuart Myers
And yeah, maybe you could have done it. Maybe you could have got shot, maybe you could have been been killed, maybe two kids could have got hurt. Well, I'm not as concerned about the self specter of we we don't have to hurt to suspect. We don't want to hurt suspect. But you know what? It put people's lives at undue risk.
00:37:30:13 - 00:37:40:00
Dr. Stuart Myers
Adding even a few to work would be unsuccessful. So going back to your question about leadership, it all started well before the day of and.
00:37:40:02 - 00:37:56:11
Kyle King
It was very interesting. I like these sort of decision making discussions and sort of diving into why we do what we do. To a certain extent. I do want to talk about briefly is is we're sort of almost running out of time here, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on sort of the increasing complexity of future incidents.
00:37:56:13 - 00:38:18:19
Kyle King
So in your decision making framework, in your model, you're talking about how what is the worst outcomes? Can we and then sort of start align the outcomes, But what happens when we don't? It's not that we don't know, but let's just say we're getting increasingly complex crisis things that are happening, increasingly complex incidents that are occurring. There's probably a scale there or we see them increasing and we can probably predict to a certain extent some of the things that are going to happen.
00:38:18:19 - 00:38:28:11
Kyle King
But I would just like to hear your thoughts about how we wrap our heads around just the increasingly complex and sort of even multiple threat environments that we're getting into these days.
00:38:28:13 - 00:38:44:17
Dr. Stuart Myers
The simple answer is we break it down. We don't look at this, Hey, this is an overwhelming problem. This is too complex. We break it down. There are certain common fact that happen almost every instance that was part of the study. But I think what are some of the common factors you see on a regular basis? And they play out.
00:38:44:19 - 00:39:11:14
Dr. Stuart Myers
So regardless of the complexity, probably the most complex incident for a police or military or response is going to be a terrorist incident, and this could be a multiple terrorist incident. Break them down. Good communication and coordinated. What are the common factors we see to look at? This is an incidents within one look at it is one incident occurring times and how were they interconnect?
00:39:11:16 - 00:39:32:19
Dr. Stuart Myers
That's the other question. What is the interconnect? Let's say, for example, I opt to kill two suspects in this one incident. How is that going to play out in the other? We need to try to develop a concerted response, but don't get overwhelmed because it is complex. Try to play these things out, be prepared. And part of this goes speaks to training.
00:39:32:19 - 00:39:55:04
Dr. Stuart Myers
You've got a wealth of experience and people who are real watchers of wealth, of experience aboard of training should be scenario based. Not everything should be scenario based, but part of it should be. So I would strongly recommend coming up with the most complex situation in credential run it as an actual scenario. Ian Howard plays out. Remember, what did we do well, what do we do?
00:39:55:04 - 00:40:17:19
Dr. Stuart Myers
Not so well and how we play this out. And that's one of the reasons there's a lot of reasons in the recent book, not the last one to do it. And SWAT operations, one of the case studies was the Discovery Communications incident, which so far has been the only incident in the history of U.S. law enforcement that a suicidal bomber took hostages.
00:40:17:24 - 00:40:42:16
Dr. Stuart Myers
Interestingly enough, that was my old SWAT team. So I was at firsthand access to all the commanders involved, all the information. I was retired. What was it about the incident? Right. First hand information and what are contributing factors to their success was they ran that actual scenario in a similar building as a entry or department call out or a couple of months prior to the actual incident.
00:40:42:18 - 00:41:07:19
Dr. Stuart Myers
So I think that goes a long way to realizing. What we don't know is it goes back to the old saying, We know, we know, but we don't know what we don't know. So trying to understand what we don't know and then planning for that, but don't get overwhelmed with these things. Trust other people, delegated authority. You are the crisis manager, delegation of authority is not abdication of responsibility.
00:41:07:23 - 00:41:28:18
Dr. Stuart Myers
Make sure people are trained for process of that process. Go back to leadership or grooming your successor, making sure you have people in a position you can make the decision and just really break it down. It goes back to pre incident organization position, being prepared for these types of complexities and not just say them, We never had this.
00:41:28:18 - 00:41:40:14
Dr. Stuart Myers
What are we going to do today? That's a problem. It's not a problem until it's a problem. That's one of the favorite. And I came up with if you never it. So it's never going to be a problem. But the one time you have to be not prepared or problem to solved.
00:41:40:16 - 00:41:58:04
Kyle King
That's exactly right. Well Dr. Stuart Myers, thank you for your time being here today and sharing your insights and thoughts. Really interesting discussion and breaking down how we can manage the decision making high threat situations. Really appreciate it. If somebody wants to reach out and talk to you or find out more information, where can they reach you? What's the best way.
00:41:58:05 - 00:42:25:05
Dr. Stuart Myers
Globally can profile you? Can we up there or they can send it to my email address. Same with your address. Underscore Myers and White Earth and so on. Zero overcome. That's the fastest way to get it. To be happy to answer any questions that I can. I get a lot of e-mails. Trust me, I will answer if you don't get an answer in in a week or so, it's because it goes in a black hole wherever those e-mails go.
00:42:25:11 - 00:42:35:08
Dr. Stuart Myers
But I'll try to be as respond. Again, I want to thank you for having me on the show. That's what this is about. Nobody's got a lock on it. So it's about sharing knowledge and doing the best we can to help others.
00:42:35:10 - 00:42:39:17
Kyle King
All right. Thank you very much. And the name of your book, again, if just so everybody can go and pick up a copy.
00:42:39:17 - 00:42:51:00
Dr. Stuart Myers
The last one is I'd written decisions. Wait, It's a matter of life and death. It was published by Springer. It's available with pretty much any one line anywhere from Springer to Amazon, Barnes and Noble.
00:42:51:05 - 00:43:09:06
Kyle King
All right. Appreciate it. Thank you very much for that. And we will certainly be in touch. So thank you, everyone, for listening to another episode of Crisis Conflict Emergency Management podcast. If you like what we've been talking about, be so kind to go. Leave us a review on any of your podcast platforms from Google to Spotify to Apple Podcasts.
00:43:09:06 - 00:43:24:02
Kyle King
Just go ahead and leave a review and we very much appreciate it. Until next time, stay safe and keep learning.
