new year Resolutions

It is that time of year again when we look to improve our lives. Certainly, the gyms will be packed come January with people telling themselves that they need to exercise more—I’ll be one of those wanting to finally start using weights. For emergency managers and others, we may be looking for ways to improve our program performance. I thought that this piece was a thoughtful discussion of throttling back your list of things to get done and make “reasonable” changes and improvements, Emergency Management Resolutions

Here’s my one suggestion for 2026. Ditch the idea of five-year plans. Over my 30-year plus tenure as an emergency manager there is too much external turmoil to plan out five years in advance of today. Federal grants, mega disasters, and technology breakthroughs keep disrupting what we thought we should be working on in the future. Yes, you should have a “strategic plan” for the future. Perhaps it is an outline for what you want to achieve. However, if progress is to be made it is more likely at the tactical level. Going for short-term wins that improve the disaster resilience of your community and your ability to support people and systems when bad things happen.

Lastly, in the short-term, you will likely have to look for new ways to implement mitigation strategies since the federal dollars to do that work may be very scarce.