the value of institutional knowledge and relationships

As emergency managers we know that one, if not the key factor, in being successful in our career and profession is gaining and maintaining strong interpersonal relationships. Those are numerous with a wide variety of people representing a plethora of organizations that range from government to business and the nonprofit sectors. I’d also add the “Fourth Estate” with that being the media.

One of the key factors in having these relationships in place is building trust between the people, which brings along a trusted relationship with the organization. I call this “relationship building” the emergency manager’s curse, because it is never ending as people rotate out of jobs due to retirement, changing jobs, death, etc. Then, you must start all over again.

I call your attention to this because of this article from the Washington Post, Trump’s Justice Dept. ousts national security officials in latest purge  These are not the political positions that do rotate between presidential administrations, but career civil servants. There are 18 different national intelligence agencies. The personnel who have been reassigned out of DOJ positions are some people who have held them for decades. This puts a serious dent in the institutional knowledge in the Justice Department and then can also impact the “relationship” aspect that I discussed briefly above.

Time and again we have seen these various intelligence agencies not sharing information across departments and functions. Having those trusted relationships in place and a combined institutional knowledge on roles and responsibilities cannot be replaced by just putting another person in the empty slot. I suspect that long-term damage will be done. Rome was not built in a day and the cooperation and trust between people and organizations takes years to build.