A field-tested mindset for when the sirens go quiet
In a moment of crisis, the first voice over the radio isn’t always the emergency services - it’s often a local. A teacher, a business owner, a community leader. When the pressure’s on and institutional support lags behind the speed of events, these everyday leaders become the backbone of a community’s response.
Emergency management isn't just about having a plan in a binder - it’s about applying the right principles at the right time. The military knows this well, having spent decades refining what works when it matters most. And while the scale and stakes may differ, many of the lessons apply just as strongly to local communities facing bushfires, floods, or other sudden crises.
The Core Principles
1. Clarity of Command
The most efficient emergency response systems rely on clearly defined leadership roles. Whether formal or informal, someone needs to own the decision-making. This doesn’t mean barking orders - it means coordinating inputs, issuing clear directives, and adapting rapidly to new information.
In practice, this often falls to the person who steps forward early and stays calm. Community leaders can prepare now by understanding their local response chains, building relationships with agencies, and rehearsing what role they’d play if phones went down and power went out.
2. The Five Functions of Health Protection
Effective response isn’t just about surviving the moment - it’s about sustaining your people. From Defence doctrine comes a model built around five essential pillars of force health protection, which can be repurposed for civil use:
Preventive Care – Access to clean water, shelter from elements, and hygiene measures.
Health Promotion – Managing stress, sleep, nutrition, and morale.
Health Surveillance – Tracking who’s unwell, missing, or deteriorating.
Performance Support – Ensuring rest, rotation, and mental resilience among volunteers.
Material Support – Protective gear, medical kits, and reliable comms.
Together, these keep your “force” - volunteers, responders, and residents - functional under duress.
3. Adaptable Planning: Not Just One Plan, But Many
Emergency planning is often approached as a single document. But in real operations, planners are taught to develop multiple courses of action (COAs), stress-test them under time pressure, and adapt fluidly. This is called the Military Appreciation Process - but its civilian equivalent is simple: always have Plan B and Plan C.
At the community level, this might mean knowing several evacuation routes, pre-establishing alternate muster points, and understanding how to split responsibilities if half your core volunteers are unreachable.
4. Civil–Military Logic in Civilian Hands
In Defence-led humanitarian missions, civilian needs often exceed available resources. The solution? Triage and prioritisation based on critical infrastructure and population risk. Local leaders can adopt the same logic:
Who’s most vulnerable? (e.g. isolated elderly, disabled)
What infrastructure is critical? (water pumps, pharmacies)
What tasks are mission-essential versus merely helpful?
Being ruthless about priorities during a crisis can be the most compassionate thing you do.
5. Unity of Effort
Coordination isn’t just polite - it’s life-saving. In field operations, military doctrine stresses unity of effort even when there is no unity of command. This means that even disparate groups - SES, volunteer brigades, local businesses - must be brought into a shared understanding of what’s happening and what’s needed.
A simple community operations centre (even one run via WhatsApp or whiteboards) can keep everyone in the loop. Transparency avoids duplication, prevents turf wars, and lets people self-deploy more effectively.
Mindsets that Matter
Military and emergency field leaders alike cultivate certain mental postures:
Anticipate Second-Order Effects – A flood isn’t just about water - it’s about road closures, supply chain cutoffs, and rising mould a week later.
Task not Time – Assign by objective (“clear this street”) not by shift length. Time-based orders break down when conditions change.
Mission Command – Trust your people. Give them the ‘what’ and ‘why’ - let them work out the ‘how’ on the ground.
These mindsets work because they’re scalable. Whether you’re coordinating five volunteers or fifty, they help maintain momentum under uncertainty.
Preparing Now, Not Later
There’s a temptation to view crisis preparedness as someone else’s job. But every community has latent capacity: truck drivers, school teachers, sports club organisers. These aren’t just roles - they’re assets in a crisis.
Some simple steps community leaders can take right now:
Map your networks – Who has skills, radios, equipment?
Identify safe points – Secure locations with backup power, supplies, and comms.
Run a drill – Walk through a scenario. Make it real enough to expose weak points.
You won’t get a second to read a manual when the pressure hits. Practise now, reflect later.
A Call to Keep Learning
Emergency response doesn’t end when the fire burns out or the waters recede. In fact, that’s when the most important phase begins: recovery and resilience-building. This is where community leadership shifts from reactive to proactive - from survival to future-proofing.
If you’re reading this, chances are you already feel the pull of responsibility. Good. The world needs more local leaders willing to step up before they’re asked.
So, keep learning. Study incident command systems. Join your local emergency planning committee. And train others. Because when the next one hits, it won’t be a stranger who holds the line - it’ll be someone like you.