A senior leader does not need to perform every operational task to be essential to an emergency response. The more useful preparation question is: Which decisions will depend on this leadership team, and what will it need in order to make them? Answering that question before a disruption gives a workshop a practical purpose beyond reviewing terminology.
FEMA’s NIMS command-and-coordination guidance distinguishes tactical activities, incident support, senior-level policy decisions and public information. The five decisions below translate that distinction into an executive discussion framework. Roles and authorities must still be tailored to the organization’s plans, governance and applicable requirements.
1. Who has authority to decide and who provides support?
Identify which decisions belong to incident command, an emergency operations center, department leadership and executive leadership. Clarify succession and delegation when the usual decision-maker is unavailable. Do not assume that a familiar reporting relationship explains how emergency decision-making will work.
Use a hypothetical scenario to test the boundary. For example, a prolonged facility outage creates operational, staffing and financial decisions at the same time. Which questions can the operational team resolve? Which require an executive decision? How will that request reach the right person without producing several competing directions?
2. What priorities will guide tradeoffs?
Discuss life safety, essential services, employee needs and other mission-specific priorities before teams face simultaneous demands. Do not turn a general priority statement into an assumption that every resource conflict is already resolved. Ask what happens when two important functions need the same staff, facility or equipment.
The leader’s responsibility is to make the tradeoff clear. The subordinate’s responsibility is to describe the consequence of each option and identify constraints. Both need permission to surface new information when the agreed priority no longer fits the situation.
3. What information is needed for a useful decision?
Define a short executive briefing structure: current situation, impacts, actions underway, decisions requested, uncertainties and the next update. Distinguish a request for awareness from a request for authority. A long situation report is not necessarily a decision-ready briefing.
Agree on update intervals and on the conditions that require immediate escalation. Ask leaders to identify what information would change their decision. Ask the teams preparing briefings which information they can reasonably verify, and how they should communicate estimates or gaps without presenting them as confirmed facts.
4. How will resources and continuity decisions be authorized?
Review decision pathways for urgent procurement, temporary staffing, alternate facilities, service reductions and restoration priorities with the appropriate organizational specialists. Identify who approves, who documents and who carries out each decision. This is a governance exercise, not permission to bypass financial, contractual or other controls.
Include the people who will implement the decision. An executive may approve an alternate location while a department still lacks access, equipment or staffing to operate there. A practical workshop follows the decision far enough to reveal those dependencies before treating the option as ready.
5. Who communicates what, to whom and when?
Clarify internal and external communication responsibilities, review and approval pathways, spokesperson roles and coordination with partners. Employees, governing bodies, clients and the public may need different information. Plan for accessible communications and for people who cannot use the usual channel during the disruption.
Executives should practice communicating what is known, what remains uncertain and what happens next without making commitments the operational team cannot support. Teams need a clear way to correct an assumption or raise a concern before it becomes a public promise.
Turn the workshop into a usable readiness product
Close the session with a short record of decisions, unresolved questions and assigned follow-up actions. Capture decision boundaries, briefing expectations, succession questions and dependencies that need attention. Where appropriate, test the resulting approach in a later exercise rather than assuming discussion alone has established capability.
HSS develops tailored executive preparedness training and facilitates leadership discussions that connect emergency management concepts to the decisions people actually face. The work can begin with a focused workshop and lead to a practical roadmap for strengthening plans, coordination and leadership readiness.