Putting Out Fires

Now that the immediate threat of the wildfires has passed, it’s time to get back to “business as usual.” Or is it? Understanding that we (people and institutions) are in our present place as a result of the paths we have traveled, I believe that the trails we blazed through the firestorm have put us in a very different place than we otherwise would be.

In the heat of moment, we were forced into a tenuous situation – forced to trust each other to perform our individual roles to the highest level possible; forced to be honest with each other when we didn’t have information, when we did have information, when we could provide help, and when we needed help; forced to communicate frankly, openly, directly, and as quickly as possible; forced to be committed to the institution …and each other. And the trickiest part is that it worked…better.

Trust, honesty, communication, and commitment – these are the elements of any relationship, professional or personal. The measure of our success that we enjoy in those relationships is a matter of the degree to which those elements exist. When faced with an emergency, when time is of the essence, they become even more critical. Cal State San Marcos survived and thrived when surviving and thriving was most at risk. Faculty, staff, students, and administration worked together in the best interests of the institution – we still had the requisite push and pull from each other that provides broad (enough) input and results in better outcomes – we didn’t lose anything by working together in this way.

So why not do this in our everyday work lives (and personal lives) such that we display this same level of trust and honesty, the same degree of communication and commitment? Could it be that we don’t know how? No, we just did it, so we know how to do it – we “know what the picture looks like fixed.” Maybe we’re taking our good fortune for granted and don’t feel a sense of urgency. Maybe we’re comfortable “playing old tapes” of how life used to be and we just don’t want to change. Maybe it’s the trust thing, upon which the honesty, the communication, and the commitment depend.

How do we get there? Perhaps we can work from the one thing that we all have in common – our commitment to the university. That can be our anchor that helps us to develop the trust we need with each other (and even give each other the benefit of the doubt occasionally). From that foundation of trust we can grow the honesty, grow the communication, and grow the commitment to each other.

In emergency operations, we plan for the emergency that we hope will never happen. We use our everyday work lives to train ourselves for the emergency. I believe that instead, we should use the emergency to train ourselves for our everyday work lives – that one week in October (our best week) can prepare us for the other 51 weeks of the year.

This storm of fire has changed us – what we thought of as “usual” or “normal” will never be the same – and that just might be a good thing.