You Can't PowerPoint Your Way to Preparedness
A few weeks ago, I was wandering through a neighborhood yard sale when a faded concert poster caught my eye. Instantly, it unleashed a flood of memories about a concert I had never actually attended.
Growing up in a small rural town, I attended a tiny Catholic school where everyone knew everyone. One year, a handful of the older students who had siblings old enough to drive made the twelve-hour, one-way trip to see some of the biggest names in music perform live. For kids in our little town, it was the event of the year.
The rest of us couldn't wait for them to get back. For days, they gave us the play-by-play, every song, every costume change, every funny moment, and every detail they could remember. It was as if they had returned from another world. Looking back, it's funny that I never actually went to the concert, yet here I am, more than forty years later, still remembering the stories they told.
That's the funny thing about experiences. Even when they aren't our own, they have a way of staying with us. And that reminded me of something I've learned over the course of my career: people don't remember information. They remember experiences.
I've spent more than twenty-five years helping organizations prepare for crises, and one lesson has become abundantly clear: people don't build preparedness by reading plans. They build preparedness by participating in experiences they remember. An emergency operations plan sitting on a shelf has very little value if the people responsible for carrying it out don't understand it, haven't practiced it, or can't recall what they're supposed to do when the pressure is on.
One of my favorite examples came while I was working at The Walt Disney Company. The Studio Fire Chief and I wanted employees to think differently about emergency preparedness. Instead of another mandatory presentation, we transformed a section of the studio into a 1950s-style diner and hosted a pancake breakfast. Between flipping pancakes and pouring coffee, servers shouted preparedness messages instead of food orders. Employees laughed, had fun, and most importantly, they talked about it long after breakfast was over. Weeks later, people still remembered the preparedness lessons because they had experienced them firsthand rather than simply heard about them.
That lesson has followed me everywhere, from FEMA and Walmart to The Resiliency Initiative. The organizations with the strongest cultures of resilience don't treat preparedness as a once-a-year compliance requirement. They understand that preparedness is something you cultivate every day. As we often say in our Resiliency Academy, "You cannot buy preparedness; you can only rent it." Every day the rent is due.
When leaders ask me how to build a true culture of preparedness, my advice usually comes back to five simple ideas.
First, make preparedness personal. Help people understand how resilience protects not only the organization, but also their coworkers, families, and communities. When people see themselves in the mission, they become invested.
Second, know your audience. A message that resonates with frontline employees may not connect with executives. Meet people where they are, use language they understand, and make preparedness relevant to the work they do every day.
Third, create memorable experiences instead of simply delivering information. Tabletop exercises, friendly competitions, storytelling, and creative events will always leave a bigger impression than another slide deck. If people enjoy learning, they'll remember what they learned.
Fourth, make preparedness part of your organization's everyday culture. Talk about it during onboarding, staff meetings, leadership updates, and even company celebrations. Preparedness shouldn't be something employees think about once a year during an exercise. It should become part of how the organization operates.
Finally, lead by example. Employees pay far more attention to what leaders do than what leaders say. When executives participate in exercises, ask thoughtful questions, and visibly prioritize preparedness, they send a clear message that resilience matters.
People rarely remember the fiftieth PowerPoint presentation they attended. They remember the experiences that made them think, laugh, participate, and tell others about them afterward. Somehow, a concert I never attended has stayed with me for more than forty years because of the stories that surrounded it. That's exactly what great preparedness programs should strive to create: experiences that people remember, conversations they continue, and a culture where resilience becomes part of everyday life.
Because, honestly, you can't PowerPoint your way to preparedness.
-Andrea
