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DECISION MAKING IN
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT

DECISION
MAKING IN
EMERGENCY
MANAGEMENT
Jan Glarum
Carl Adrianopoli

Butterworth-Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier
The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom
50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and
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with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency,
can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the
Publisher (other than as may be noted herein).
Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience
broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical
treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In
using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of
others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors,
assume any liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products
liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products,
instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.
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A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-12-815769-5
For information on all Butterworth-Heinemann publications
visit our website at https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals
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Cover Designer: Miles Hitchen
Typeset by SPi Global, India

ix
Jan Glarum has over 35 years of experience in the fields of EMS, Fire,
Law Enforcement, Hospital, Public Health, and Emergency Management,
including response to federally declared disasters. His experience includes
an extensive background in planning, training, education, and response at
the local, county, regional, state, and federal government levels, including
Department of Defense initiatives CONUS and OCONUS. In 1999 he be-
came a founding member of Oregon’s Disaster Medical Assistance Team
(DMAT) and continues his association with the team.
He has coauthored several books including, Hospital Emergency Response
Teams and Healthcare Emergency Incident Management Operations Guide.
Additionally, he has written numerous articles on emergency and disaster
planning and response. He serves as a subject matter expert and speaker on
emergency management, disaster planning, and has led hospital emergency
response team development for hazardous materials events. He has devel-
oped a number of Incident Command System courses for hospital personnel
to create operationally competent Incident Management Team members.
He is a Department of Defense validated medical CBRNE Subject
Matter Expert, HSEEP qualified, and an ICS 300-400 instructor. He is a
founding member of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and
has led new course development and provided instruction for hundreds
of students from around the United States at the Center for Domestic
Preparedness. Programs included Weapons of Mass Destruction Incident
Action Plan Development, Pandemic Planning and Response, EMS
Response to Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Hospital Emergency
Response Training courses.
Dr. Adrianopoli is an experienced pro-
fessional with over 26 years of respon-
sibility in preparing for, managing, and
responding to the public health and medi-
cal consequences of natural occurring and
man-made disasters including the CBRNE
uses of Weapons of Mass Destruction. For 21
years he was the Regional Administrator/
Regional Emergency Coordinator for fed-
eral Region V of the Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Preparedness and Response in
the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Service (in various previous locations in the
Author Biography

x Author Biography
federal government, including FEMA for 3 years). He managed, assisted,
or served at the Chicago Heat Wave of 1993, the Great Midwest Floods
of 1995, the WTC attacks in 1993 and at 911, at Hurricane Katrina and
at many other natural disasters to include serious floods, forest fires, ice
storms, tornadoes, and even an extended deployment massing and repo-
sitioning assets for a potential asteroid crash (which, fortunately, occurred
safely at sea) and many National Special Security Events. He co-managed
the national TOPOFF Exercise in 2002 and played in TOPOFF Three and
many others including a number of earthquake exercises coordinated by
the Central United States Earthquake Consortium. In his role as Regional
Emergency Coordinator he assisted in the development of three Disaster
Medical Assistance Teams and one Disaster Mortuary Team and had over-
all responsibility for, and assisted in the development (along with his staff)
of 24 Metropolitan Medical Response Systems.
In 2006 he was chosen by HHS as Co-Projector Manager to locate all
National Disaster Medical System and related assets that were then lo-
cated in FEMA and to arrange to bring them back to the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services. For nearly a decade he served on the Cook
County (Chicago) Medical Examiner Emergency Response Team and was
trained in forensic examination of deadly disaster scenes. All during this
period he wrote articles, one book, and a chapter in another, and gave
many presentations in the various aspects of emergency management pre-
paredness, response, and mitigation.

This emergency management decision making (EMDT) textbook was
born out of more than three decades of participating in and observing a
wide array of disasters. Helping to reduce victim/patient mortality to
as close to zero as possible remains our chief priority. Infrastructure, fis-
cal loss, and similar issues are important but remain secondary. As time
passed it became clear that decision making was at the heart of our ac-
tivities, in fact it was our major activity, sometimes managing significant
aspects of disasters, and sometimes working with others. These included
the nation’s major terrorist events (in 1993 and 2001), numerous floods,
serious winter storms (including ice storms), hurricanes, some huge tor-
nadoes, a few deadly heat events, serious auto-train accidents requiring
Disaster Mortuary Assistance Team participation, and even deaths at a
major bridge collapse. Participation has included many training and di-
sasters exercises (New Madrid, all the TOP Off exercises, the Y2K de-
ployment), and even a predeployment, staging of assets for a potential
hit by a significant meteor hit (avoided a populated area landfall), and
massive predeployments of staged assets in case there were difficulties
at some major professional sports events, many G-8, G-20, and similar
defensive predeployments. The authors have travelled across the country
many times to accomplish this all, and occasionally have gone out of the
country to Japan, Canada, and many other lands. In addition to partici-
pation in a wide variety of emergency management situations, we have
taught, researched, written books and articles, and presented papers in
this subject area.
As we progressed writing this text we saw a two-part approach to de-
veloping this EMDT textbook that Elsevier wanted us to produce. First,
we reviewed, summarized, and presented the study of decision making
starting with Confucius, Greco-Roman philosophers through today’s
now popularized concerns for improving decision making. This included
the century old Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP) a process
that must be done correctly, and quicker than the enemy, or unnecessary
deaths can result. Second, we saw that we could be most effective in re-
viewing the many situations that emergency managers will be called upon
to make quick and accurate decisions, for example, in floods, hurricanes,
and so on, and even terrorist events, where the results are often very
similar to what occurs in naturally occurring disasters, injured patients
needing treatment and transportation as quickly as possible, damaged
Preface
xi

xii Preface

infrastructure, even monetary issues regarding such complex concerns as
flood insurance, FEMA reimbursements, and related complex issues. And
of course there are decisions that must be made carefully within the public
information and media areas as well as in the political world, outside of
the agency structure, but often within it as well. Politics is a word that can
have many definitions, and most of them have to be master by the wise
emergency mangers at his or her peril.
We needed to weave all that we have learned, studied, and taught
about decision making emergency management in disaster situations into
a narrative that provided a perspective that was not the “normal or ex-
pected” way to address emergency management. This required adhering
to a few basic rules for our findings. The first of which is that most serious
emergency management errors occur at the higher levels of the command
chain. While we can have high levels of assurance that the paramedic in
the field or the emergency room physician or nurse will usually make cor-
rect lifesaving decisions, the same cannot be said with the same higher
level of assurance for the upper command levels, especially if they are po-
litically appointed. We also had to recognize that decision making at this
level is difficult and subject to so many, often severe limitations.
All of this led us to view our task as one that required addressing many,
often uncomfortable truths. We used obvious mistakes in decision making
as well as obvious successes in a wide variety of situations, always with
the intent of providing the coldest, most accurate take on situations we are
capable of. Most often we deleted names when categorizing “bad calls”
unless we dealt with public figures whose successes and failures have al-
ready been widely covered in the mass media. If we are successful with
this text book, emergency managers reading it will begin to view their
decision making as an important process that can be improved, but only
with a strong investment of time and attention. In other words, an emer-
gency manager cannot attain high levels of response and preparedness
skills just by practice, knowledge, and even talent; effective, self-aware
decision making is also required.

Decision Making in Emergency Management 1 © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-815769-5.00001-4
Introduction to decision making
for emergency managers in
perspective
This book was written by two, long time Emergency Managers to im-
prove emergency management decision making in order to improve out-
comes. To accomplish this mission the authors sometimes had to be coldly
candid, discussing the underlying truths of many situations in which
many believe there are no underlying truths, that what we see is mostly
all there is. We will present some facts and situations that are rarely, if ever
are openly addressed, but should be. In short, our many years in the field,
going to deployments, writing books and articles, teaching, conducting
or playing in exercises, and consulting give us the background to present
emergency management decision making through many screens. Either
or both of us have worked the first World Trade Center Bombing, in 1993,
the 911 World Trade Center Bombing, the anthrax attacks that same year,
the Great Midwestern Floods in 1995, the Chicago Heat Wave in 1995, and
various Democratic or Republican Conventions, G-8s, G-20s, Hurricane
Katrina in 2005 through Hurricane Sandy in 2013 and much of whatever
happened in between these events (Fig. 1).
As one of the basic opening thoughts, the authors have observed that
most serious organizational errors and problems come, in most instances,
from the upper levels of the agency or organization, be they state, local,
C H A P T E R
1
O U T L I N E
Some examples of FEMA staffing failures during
the Katrina Hurricane period 5

2 1. Introduction to decision making for emergency managers in perspective
or federal. But for those Emergency Managers who are sitting atop their
agencies or organizations, whether they are politically appointed or not,
the complexities are even more immediate, and always threaten to crowd
out the major missions and outcomes that are being sought. It should be
no surprise that this level experiences more “mistakes or bad outcomes”
than the paramedic, for example, who is conducting complex, but profes-
sional activities, with virtually no external constraints, political (partisan
or organizational) or otherwise. Decisions at the higher levels can involve
complex political decisions in situations for which the top manager has
little authority. Also, the higher up one goes, the more likely is the fact
that personal ego may play a stronger role in the decision-making process.
And it is clear that people are more complicated than physical things and
processes in virtually all instances.
For example, though a paramedic’s opening an airway or starting an intra-
venous line can save a life, the decision process is quite rational and the op-
tions for action are relatively limited. Compare this to a FEMAField Command
Officer (FCO) who needs to call for the US Comfort, a Medical Support Ship
FIG. 1 Making poor decisions at upper levels can have devastating impact to those in the
field.

1. Introduction to decision making for emergency managers in perspective 1. Introduction to d
3
that can bring hundreds of beds and medical staff in a few days, but who faces
an outcry from local physicians who complain that their private medical prac-
tices soon will be wrecked by this massive provision of uncompensated (free)
medical care. And there is a conservative governor whose staff agrees with
the local doctors. There are no buses to bring the many patients to the USS
Comfort when and if it arrives, though there is a sole contractor available who
has a history of failed federal contracts with clear hints of incompetence. And
the FEMA Regional Director is a powerful political actor of a different political
party than the governor, who tends to be a bit of a micromanager where the
FCOs are concerned (Fig. 2).
These last decades have seen a flurry of scientific interest in the fields of
behavioral economics, psychology, business, and political science related
to decision making. There has been strong mass media coverage focusing
on the power of the “Gut” or instinctive aspects of decision making, par-
ticularly in areas in which we have knowledge and experience. Attention
has also focused on the many cognitive biases, emotional and extraneous
conditions that frequently degrade our otherwise “logical” decision mak-
ing. These recent findings and insights will be summarized and applied to
emergency management along with lessons from what the authors have
experienced and learned in their cumulative decades in emergency pre-
paredness, response, training, teaching, and research. The authors hope to
convey that improving our decision making through “smart” procedures,
FIG. 2 Decision making can benefit from adopting methods to ease the effort. Much like
using a roller system to move patients through a decontamination corridor.

knowledge, and strong efforts is still a difficult task, but one well worth
mastering at any level. FEMA lessons learned, courses and administrative
processes will be referenced when helpful but have, as we will discuss, of-
ten presented impediments to effective emergency management decision
making because of the frequent and often disruptive changes in funding,
restructurings, and priorities.
An attempt has been made to write somewhere between everyday
language and disaster jargon, so that students as well as those familiar
with emergency management can absorb the materials and avoid being
bored. This will include a background consideration of community stake-
holders, both as individuals and as representatives of governmental and
corporate interests, along with the various linguistic, racial, economic,
and cultural groups that may be affected by local disasters. This outside
perspective seems opposed to the “can do,” often judgment-based per-
spective of Emergency Managers and responders. The discussions will
borrow from various fields to describe and analyze decision making from
outside the emergency management “stovepipe.” These findings and
insights will be applied to help sharpen the decision-making process of
Emergency Managers in everyday situations, as well as to gain deeper
insights into the decision-making processes of those they must deal con-
tend with, inside as well as and outside of the emergency management
field. The fact that much of the research done in each field overlaps only
testifies to the relevance and usefulness of what has been and continues
to be learned across the world. The intent of the following pages is not to
make an Emergency Manager an expert in psychology or any of the other
fields that will be borrowed from, but to introduce them to these fields
and to get them in the habit of looking at decision making as an import-
ant process they must master. To this end, the authors will include many
references to assist both the practitioners of emergency management and
students of the field, with the wide exposure to sources both within and
outside of the emergency management field as well as to an inclusion of
many examples from around the world. We know there is no worldwide
emergency management and mutual aid system, but we are moving faster
toward that end then most will ever notice.
And finally, before a discussion of some barriers to effective decision
making as well as some potential guides to avoiding these constraints
(when that is possible), it needs to be recognized that the complexity, the
circumstances, and the procedures that surround emergency management
decision making vary considerably, depending on the physical and orga-
nizational location of the decision making. As always, where a decision
maker sits will have a strong effect on where a decision maker stands on
an issue, or a problem.
If we are successful the book shelves of Emergency Managers having
read this book won’t just contain the latest Federal Emergency Management

Some examples of FEMA staffing failures during the Katrina Hurricane period 5
Agency policies, some literature on various Weapons of Mass Destruction,
floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters and a few, worn copies of
International City/County Management Association “green books” their
second editions or similar background books. It will also eventually con-
tain such books as Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow; Alan Jacobs’
How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds; Sidney Finkelstein, Jo
Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell’s Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make
Bad Decisions and How to Keep It From Happening to You; and Atul Gawande’s
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right and perhaps even an older
classic such as Herbert Simon’s Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-
Making in Administrative Organizations. This implies that to derive the most
from these outside perspectives, the Emergency Manager must step out-
side his/her comfort zone and accept that while they may know disasters
and emergency situations very well, others studying decision making have
valuable lessons to share. Col. David Boyd, the brilliant Military analyst,
whose decision-making theories anchor much of chapter two believed that
to improve individual decision making, individuals have to develop and
use as many different models of thinking as they can absorb. The authors
have followed Col. Boyd’s wise advice.
Chapter 2 opens with a discussion of wisdom and insights from
over one century’s thought and experience in military decision making,
a body of knowledge too extensive and useful to ignore. Some of the key
themes in the overall study of decision making, such as the value and
the pitfalls of emotionally based, instinctive decision making, group de-
cision making, potential problems with extremely high status or highly
intelligent individuals, and personal biases in decision making will be
covered more than once, in different perspectives. The constant theme of
this book is that the Emergency Manager should be aware of his or her
decision-making process, the difficulties in improving it, but the real ben-
efits to improved outcomes of doing that. Without improved outcomes,
there can be no improved decision-making process. The benefits of the
improved decision-making processes should be in the improved benefits
for the impacted/survivor populations.
In the following few paragraphs, some of the other major themes of
this book will be addressed in summary, by using FEMA’s failures during
Hurricane Katrina response and recovery.
Some examples of FEMA staffing failures during the Katrina
Hurricane period
We’ll start with a brief Hurricane Katrina case study demonstrating
how difficult it can be for high officials, especially those just appointed
to their new roles or positions to avoid overconfidence leading to poor

decisions. Our Katrina case study of failure by federal, state, and local de-
cision makers begins when an experienced Regional Director (SES level)
was contacted by then FEMA Director Michael Brown to immediately go
to New Orleans and serve as FEMA’s key manager on the ground. (Out
of a concern for fairness, and in light of the complex and low staffing/
information spot this FEMA manager was put into, we see no benefits in
being name specific.) When the FEMA Regional Manager arrived, he im-
mediately was bombarded with hundreds of emails a day, most from the
White House. The Regional Manager was sent with no additional staffing,
and later complained that the email burden alone was crowding out time
to respond to the actual events they were witnessing, but not influencing
to the extent that they otherwise could have. This Regional Manager had
a long and distinguished career in FEMA as well as at the State emergency
management level. Their reputations for knowledge were earned and well
deserved and they were, no doubt, a wise selection by FEMA Director
Michael Brown. However, despite having a huge and experienced re-
gional office staff, none were requested to assist, save one GS 15, for a few
days’ service (Fig. 3).221
NIMS core curriculum:
Incident complexity determines
training
Incident
complexity
Baseline
Advanced
Position-
Specific
ICS-400
High
Types 1,
Type 4
Type 5
Low
2,3
ICS-300
IS-800
ICS-200
ICS-100
IS-700
FIG. 3 Jurisdictions and agencies at risk from NIMS Type 1, 2, and 3 events, regardless
if they are large or small require not just operational competency, but management compe-
tency as well.

Some examples of FEMA staffing failures during the Katrina Hurricane period 7
Another senior manager was hired in the Katrina period to manage
logistical missions. Again, this manager had a long and distinguished
career, but was not yet “up to speed” in the existence and the location
of many key, FEMA assets. It is quite possible that the “original sin” of
widespread, short staffing at the senior and middle levels left FEMA in a
position that its responses to Katrina would have been severely limited no
matter what these recently hired senior officials did. Poor local and state
responses only compounded the damage to the development of timely
and well-resourced missions.
Under normal conditions, a high-level manager would have been well
staffed, well briefed, and well resourced for this important and high-status
assignment. Unfortunately, neither Michael Brown, nor Joseph Albaugh,
the FEMA Director who preceded Michael Brown, were skilled or experi-
enced in emergency management, though Albaugh had high level political
experience, never a bad thing for an upper level manager to have acquired.
Understaffing and resourcing were not just apparent in Brown’s selection of
a Regional Director to manage FEMA assets “on the ground” but in Brown
and Albaugh’s overall FEMA tenures. For example, after most of the high
quality “Southern Senior managers” and others selected by James Lee Witt,
President Clinton’s FEMA Director, left their appointments during the
year after Witt left FEMA, there is evidence that many SES, Headquarters
Directorate slots remained unfilled. Research by Adamski et al.5
found that
after FEMA was placed in the new Department of Homeland Security (in
2003) that many response indicators had significantly deteriorated. The 17
FEMA Headquarters Directorates (However defined) were allowed to re-
main severely understaffed, limiting FEMA itself to compensate for weak
state and local emergency management experience and staffing. But, if you
don’t have sufficient experience and knowledge in emergency manage-
ment to understand the crucial value of SES and GS 15 leaders staffing the
Directorates, and yet are confident in your own success (After all, Michael
Brown and James Albaugh, in this instance, have been appointed FEMA
Director) a disconnect may have appeared that was not going to be effec-
tively addressed until personnel were changed.
Hindsight is an often cruel and inaccurate tool, if not used in a thought-
ful and empathetic manner. But the Emergency Manager, at whatever
level he or she is occupying has but two major requirements: (1) Gather
information to analyze, define, and prioritize the missions, this includes
reading relevant Government Accounting Office (or other) reports as well
as FEMA’s own, usually excellent, After-Action Reports, if they are avail-
able and (2) act to accomplish those missions. Just viewing the federal,
mainly FEMA perspective of the Katrina missions, these were not done.
The evacuation buses and other ground transportation, boats, rotary
wing, the secured shelter facilities, medical care, and the massive supplies
necessary were not provided, coordinated, and requested in a reasonable

time perspective by FEMA, state or local authorities, but were, in fact of-
ten addressed by external leaders and organizations such as mutual aid
(formally requested or not).
In fairness, an emergency management decision maker can have a
huge and complex problem thrust at him or her almost “out of nowhere,”
can have little knowledge of what should be known about the problem
and what others actually know and are doing about the problems. And
if these constraints were not enough, the Emergency Manager may have
little time to ponder the problems presented, save for an hour or two on
a plane, without the ability to communicate effectively, ask questions, and
receive information and advice. (Hopefully, though far from assured, from
those qualified and experienced to do so effectively.) Overconfidence, as
we will constantly stress, especially at the Senior Executive Service (SES)
and G.S. 15 levels, can easily be a major enemy of effective decision mak-
ing. For most SES and GS 15s, the routes to their grades have been long
and hard. For the most part they’ve avoided most career-ending or dam-
aging mistakes, they’ve had good mentors, usually worked diligently
and justifiably feel proud of their accomplishments. And they are mostly
pretty good at what they do in their areas of expertise.
Research findings by US Marine Scholars Stallard and Sanger (2014)
can be applied to some aspects of both FEMA Directors (Albaugh and
Brown) and even to the FEMARegional decision making in not “Screaming
for help,” as soon as the catastrophic nature of Hurricane Katrina and his
lack of adequate staffing assistance became evident. Stallard and Sanger
point out that top managers, particularly those newly appointed to their
positions, often fail at good decision making because of a “lack of hu-
mility” related to their own successes in attaining their own leadership
positions. Hubris can also enable them to disregard wise advice by those
charged with doing so. Their research found:
• Success can inflate a leader’s belief in his ability to manipulate or
control outcomes
• Success often leads to unrestrained control of organizational resources
and,
• Success often leads to privileged access to information, people, and objects
In the first case study, unfortunately demonstrating these failures of
decision making:
• Success can allow leaders to become complacent and lose strategic
focus, diverting attention to things other than the management of their
organizations.6
This introduction has demonstrated the many weaknesses with the
rational choice theory in its many forms. As Herbert Simon has stated
decades ago, there is no practical way for an individual to have all the
knowledge about a potential decision.

The military decision making
process
We begin coverage of the overall decision-making process with a review
of the Military Decision-Making Process (MDMP) because the military
has developed models of decision making under stressful if not deadly
conditions, under which information is difficult to quickly gather, under-
stand, and use. Faced with these limitations, use of the MDMPs provides
structures that can focus and improve decision making in both warfare
and serious disaster situations. MDMPs have, for centuries, been “field
tested,” researched, and improved to work under stressful and limited
information conditions to solve field problems quickly and comprehen-
sively (Fig. 1).
This is particularly appropriate to the field of Emergency Management
where decision making is also often done under high stress, low-
information conditions that allow little time for thoughtful consid-
eration of a mission and the alternative methods of meeting mission
requirements. To this extent the procedures that surround the MDMP
can be particularly helpful in avoiding the many cognitive biases, such
C H A P T E R
2
O U T L I N E
The simple O.O.D.A Loop 12
A more complex diagram of the OODA Loop 13
Observation 13
Orientation 14
Decide (hypothesis) 17
Action 18

10 2. The military decision making process
as
unwarranted overconfidence that can hinder effective decision mak-
ing. For example, the highly structured decision-making environment of
a bank teller, a widow employee at a fast food outlet, or even a state
driver’s license inspector, all conduct their activities under tightly struc-
tured circumstances where human biases and inappropriate emotional
reactions and frailties, and the lack of information necessary for making
good decisions have been tightly controlled. The MDMP certainly can-
not reproduce such structured circumstances but provides educated and
trained structures to minimize human decision-making frailties, while
maximizing human decision-making strengths and potential strengths.
Some of the language and background materials used here are military
and sometimes “clipped” but have been presented with much of the ex-
act verbiage to protect the overall meanings.
The MDMP is a continuously iterative planning methodology to under-
stand the situation and the mission in order to quickly develop a course
of action, much in point for emergency management decision making.
The MDMP is generally a 7-step process that is constantly being reeval-
uated and retailored to changing circumstances. Recall that it is oriented
to the military and the battlefield. It starts with (1) Receive Mission, (2)
Analyze Mission, (3) Develop Concept of Operations (COA), (4) Analyze
COA (through War Games), (5) Refine the COA, (6) Approval Final COA,
and (7) Produce Battlefield Orders and Their Dissemination.7
MDMP sys-
tems have been designed to provide a uniform, widely shared structure
to overcome individual weakness in decision making (e.g., from stress,
emotions, inherent cognitive biases, incomplete information, changing
FIG. 1 Military mission underway.

2. The military decision-making process 11

circumstances, etc.) to assist in the making of quick and wise decisions
leading to effective problem solving. The formal MDMP is applicable not
only to the military but to the Homeland Defense Cooperative Agency
(worldwide security through international partnerships) and to the field
of Disaster Response.8
The Lightning Press has developed a series of
“Smart Books” in MDMP, many of which touch on areas such as leader-
ship and related areas relevant to emergency management.
There have been recent attempts to incorporate up-to-date instinctive
decision making into the MDMP (covered in this Chapter later), Col.
William Boyd among them. Boyd made perhaps the wisest, and well-
thought-out improvements of the MDMP in what he called the OODA
Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) (Fig. 2). Boyd has been described by
some as the “greatest military strategist that no one knows.” Boyd served
in the Second World War, in Korea and in Viet Nam as a much-awarded
fighter pilot. At age 31, in 1961 he wrote “Aerial Attack Study,” codifying
the best dog fighting tactics for the first time, becoming the bible of air
combat, revolutionizing the methods of every air force in the world. His
Energy-Maneuverability (EM) Theory helped give birth to the F-15, F-16,
and A-10 aircraft, working to improve his OODA Loop until the day he
died in 1997. Some of the reasons that Boyd’s findings had not been in-
corporated earlier into the wider MDMP were his unfortunate tendency
to push back hard at anyone, regardless of rank or venue, who disagreed
with or questioned his findings. Moreover, during his long involvement
in the Military Reform Movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s he
openly attacked the military bureaucracy with the support of Congress,
leaving an open wound with the Air Force and Navy, limiting the accep-
tance of his other ideas, regardless of merit.9
This was also unfortunate
since modern research was recognizing the value of “Trained and ed-
ucated” intuition, as summarized, for example, in Malcolm Gladwell’s
Blink.10
Gladwell who observed, closely tracking Boyd’s thoughts: “The
A
C
T
DECID
E
O
R
I
E
N
T
O
BSERVE
FIG. 2 Simple OODA loop.

very best and most successful…organizations of any kind are the ones
that understand how to combine rational analysis and instinctive judge-
ment,” And, further:
What was the magical thing? It’s wisdom that someone acquires after a life-
time of learning and watching and doing. Its judgment…. what all the stories
and studies and arguments add up to…is an attempt to understand this magical
and mysterious thing called judgment…Judgment matters: It is what separates
winners from losers…The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is
understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in
the later.10
A representation of the simplified OODA Loop appears later, with a
more detailed representation following. Notice the feedback loops and
the detailed explanations that accompany the more complex version of
the basic OODA Loop. The basic OODA Loop is an explicit representa-
tion of the process that all human beings and organizations use to learn,
grow, and thrive in a rapidly changing environment—be it in war, busi-
ness, emergency management, or in life, but Boyd had a much grander
vision for it; it was to be the explicit representations of the always evolv-
ing, open-ended, far from equilibrium process of self-organization, emer-
gence, and expanding mental perspectives (Ref. 11, p. 5). It was far from
simple.
The Simple O.O.D.A Loop
As Boyd studied and expanded his OODA Loop concept, he made ref-
erence to Göedel’s Incompleteness Theorems, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and even some explanatory
theories of natural selection. We needn’t be more specific, but these are
mentioned to reference the depth of Boyd’s thought. Ambiguity is central
to Boyd’s vision and not something to be feared, but to recognize that we
never have complete and perfect information. (This theme will also be
introduced by Herbert Simon, in this Chapter later.) Ambiguity and un-
certainty surround us. While the randomness of the outside world plays
a huge role in that uncertainty, Boyd argued that our inability to properly
make sense of our changing reality is the bigger hindrance. When circum-
stances change, we often do not shift perspective and instead continue
to try and see the world as we feel it should be. We need to shift what
Boyd calls our existing “mental concept” in order to deal with the new
reality. The crux of Boyd’s case for why uncertainty abounds is that indi-
viduals and organizations often look inward and apply familiar mental
models that have worked well in the past to try and solve new problems;

A more complex diagram of the OODA Loop 13
when the old models don’t work, they will often keep using them and
trying to make them work. Charlie Munger (Associate of Warren Buffett
at Berkshire Hathaway) calls this tendency to stay with the familiar even
in the face of change the “man with a hammer syndrome.” From the old
saying “to the man with only a hammer, everything is a nail.” So it is with
folks with few mental models to work with; every problem can’t be solved
with their current thinking, so they keep hammering away, confused and
disillusioned their work isn’t producing expected results (Bret and Kate
McKay, pp. 3, 4):
It is a state of mind, a learning of the oneness of things, an appreciation for fun-
damental insights known in Eastern philosophy and religions as simply the Way [or
Tao]. The Way is not an end but a process, a journey.…(with) the connections, the
insights that flow from examining the world in different ways, from different perspec-
tives, from routines examining the opposite proposition, were what were important.
The key is mental agility.12
A more complex diagram of the OODA Loop
Observation
A discussion of the detailed OODA Loop follows and starts with the
first term of the OODA Loop, “Observation.” Some of this is quite complex
and may take a few rereadings but should be worth the effort. To observe,
from a tactical standpoint, to effectively observe, you need to have good
situation awareness. For example, if you are a security professional, start
keying in on where all exits are whenever you enter a public building, how
rooms and floors are connected, and begin to visualize how an armed in-
truder would be confronted, in each location. This is especially important
as recent Homeland Directives recommend directly and quickly confront-
ing a shooter, robbing his initiative, upsetting his plans and expectations by
having him adjust to an attacker, as opposed to fleeing victims posing no
threats to his plans or self. By observing, taking into account new informa-
tion about changing environments, our minds become open systems rather
than closed ones. We gain the knowledge and understanding that’s critical
in forming new mental models; placing ourselves in Condition Yellow, best
described as relaxed alert. As an open system, we’re now positioned to over-
come confusion-inducing mental entropy (Fig. 3).
In his presentation of the OODA Loop Boyd noted that we’ll encounter
two problems in the Observation Phase. (1) We often observe imperfect
information and (2) we don’t necessarily understand the information we
are seeing.13
These two pitfalls are solved by developing our judgment—our prac-
tical wisdom. Even if one has perfect information it is of no value if it is

not coupled to a penetrating understanding of its meaning, if one does not
see the patterns. Judgment is key. “Without judgment, data meant noth-
ing. It is not necessarily the one with the more information will come out
victorious, it is the one with better judgment, who is better at discerning
patterns.” This theme of developing and using our instinctive powers will
be much more fully developed later.
Observe” means more than just “see,” it’s something more like “actively absorb
the entire situation.” Observation includes your own situation…and the environment
more broadly; It includes all the dimensions of that environment: the physical, men-
tal, and moral dimensions. The observation phase is data gathering in the broadest
possible sense…. You are not just looking at your own numbers on the screen you
are looking at the emotional context, industry trends …Imagine you were a percep-
tive financial trader that understood the OODA Loop in the run-up to the 2008 fi-
nancial collapse. In the observation phase, you saw that the market was on its way
towards record-highs. You felt the mental dimension. Many people felt the market
could only go up. You saw there was a huge increase in financial instruments includ-
ing
mortgage-backed derivatives. You saw that many…people who were taking out
mortgages had…lower incomes than people taking out mortgages… earlier.14
Orientation
Orientation is the critical OODA Loop step, but it is most often over-
looked (Ref. 11, p. 7); it includes understanding one’s heritage and previous
experiences, then analyzing and synthesizing that with the observations
you’ve made. The goal is to find mismatches: errors in your or others’ pre-
vious judgments. A general rule: bad news is the best kind as long as you
THE OODA
LOOP
OUTSIDE
WORLD
OBSERVE
ORIENT
ACT
DECIDE
IMPLICIT GUIDANCE
CONTROL
FIG. 3 More complex OODA loop.

Orientation 15
catch it in time when it can be turned to your advantage (Ref. 14, p. 11).
Orientation is where our mental models exist, and it is our mental models
that shape how everything in the OODA Loop works. Osinga13
writes,
“Orientation shapes the way we interact with the environment…it shapes
the way we observe, the way we decide, the way we act. In this sense,
orientation shapes the character of present OODA Loops, while the pres-
ent loop shapes the character of future orientation” (Jim and Ret McKay,
2014, p. 7 citing Orsinga). Two factors that affect your OODA Loop during
Orientation are Denial and Emotional Filter. Denial is when you refuse to
accept or deny that this is happening to you. Emotional Filter is a similar
to Denial except that it emphasizes the emotional aspect, as in “Oh man,
please don’t let this happen to me.” Both of these response can and will
affect reaction time but fortunately they can be overcome with training.15
Also see https://www.facebook.com/DoctrineMan/ a military manage-
ment and decision-making site that continually features such scholars and
practical experts as Col. Boyd and those who still follow and use his bril-
liant analysis.
So how do you orient yourself in rapidly changing circumstances? You
constantly have to break apart your old paradigms and put the result-
ing pieces back together to create a new perspective that better matches
your current reality. Boyd has called this “creative destruction,” and when
we do this we analyze and pull apart our mental concepts into discrete
parts. Once we have constituted these basic elements, we can start what
Boyd calls “creative induction,” using these old fragments to form new
mental concepts that more closely align with what we have observed is
really happening around us (Ref. 11, p. 7, 8). Lubitz et al.16
(p. 571) stress,
speaking directly to Emergency Managers, that Boyd’s Orientation stage
is when actors begin to reassert his/her control over the environment into
a cohesive, predisaster configuration. This is nothing less than the act of
“getting one’s bearings” in the postdisaster chaos by groupings of the
disorganized structure of the disaster environment into a cohesive reality
of easily recognizable blocks, and then aligning blocks into even larger
and better organized mental assemblies (cognitive maps of the disaster
environment). Providing buses at the Superdome during Katrina for the
purpose of evacuating survivors from a now dangerous, filthy, and over-
crowded place instead of evacuating survivors to the Superdome, was an
example of changing a response based on a changed cognitive map. The
lack of adequate security was one of the factors that changed the cognitive
map of the Superdome though the news stories about violence, rape, and
mass lawlessness were overblown.
Again, citing Charlie Munger, stressing the value of a varied library
of mental knowledge and models: “…you’ve got to have models in your
head. And you’ve got to array your experiences… vicarious and direct—
on this lattice of models…the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple

models—because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature
of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your
models, or at least you’ll think it does…So you‘ve got to have multiple
models. And the models must come from multiple disciplines—because
all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic
department (Bold emphasis by the McKays). Boyd believed and acted on
this principle, as he began investigating theories seemingly as far afield as
natural selection as another model that explained parts of human behav-
ior (but he showed wisdom and courage in doing so as military experts do
not seem, at first blush, as individuals who have much of a stake in evolu-
tionary biological principles). Boyd left military thinkers (and Emergency
Managers) with helpful ideas about the value of learning multiple theo-
ries or models of human behavior Boyd fostered (Ref. 9, p. 23 in Ref. 11,
pp. 8–12).
As an important part of his Orientation mode, Boyd recommended that
the more mental models you have at your disposal the more you have to
work with in creating new, more useful ones. Boyd warned his audience
of the way in which strict operational doctrines can stifle cultivation of a
robust tool of mental models. He noted that the Army had its doctrine, the
Navy had its doctrine, and the Air Force had its doctrine. He felt doctrines
have a tendency to harden into dogmas, and dogmas have the tendency
to create folks with “man with a hammer syndrome.” He said “…read my
work, ‘doctrine does not appear in their once. You can’t find it. You know
why I don’t have it in there? Because it’s doctrine on one day, and every
day after it becomes dogma…” It was for this reason that Boyd advocated
for familiarizing yourself with as many theories and fields of knowledge
as possible, and continuing to challenge your beliefs, even when you think
you have them figured out.
Boyd and Munger gave suggestions of thought models a wise follower
of the OODA Loop would study: Boyd’s list included Mathematical,
Logic, Physics, Thermodynamics, Biology, Psychology, Anthropology,
Conflict (Game Theory). Munger’s surprisingly similar list includes:
Math Accounting (and its limits), Engineering, Economics, Probability,
Psychology (specifically the cognitive biases that cause us to make terrible
decisions—covered in detail in the next section of this Chapter), Chemistry,
Evolutionary Biology (can provide insights into economics, history, and
statistics). Boyd stressed the value of destroying and creating mental mod-
els, maybe even starting a journal covering concepts in the various new
mental models you have begun to learn. He also stressed that the wise fol-
lower of the OODA Loop needs to constantly be orienting his/her ideas,
because the world around you is constantly changing, and the models that
best explain and even predict it will have to be changing too, if they are
to remain relevant. And finally, before an operation (a disaster situation),
Boyd stresses that you want to be fairly confident that your mental models

Decide (hypothesis) 17
or concepts will work before you actually need to use them. To do this you
train, exercise externally, but internally you study what mental concepts
have and haven’t worked in similar situations and then practice, train,
and visualize using those mental concepts. For example, if TV messages
before and right after a hurricane have worked poorly in the past, com-
munications plans to alert citizens regarding evacuation routes, shelters,
and related items, perhaps it is time to add newer social media methods
to augment the older, never fully satisfactory models. Perhaps reaching
disadvantaged, minority citizens through their churches, or other citizens
through organizations such as the American Legion of the Veterans of
Foreign Wars should now be major, not minor parts of an effective com-
munications plan.
Decide (hypothesis)
Boyd didn’t spend much time articulating the Decide step except that
it’s the component in which actors decide among the best alternatives gen-
erated in the Orientation phase. For Boyd it is impossible to select a perfect
matching mental model because we often have imperfect models to use, so
we’re forced to settle for ones that aren’t perfect, but good enough. Finally,
Boyd felt that decision making was essentially moving forward with our
best hypothesis, our best educated guess about which mental model will
work (Ref. 11, p. 12). Contrary to this, decision making will receive exten-
sive coverage as its own process, below. But there is a logical reason for
this. For example, a fast food restaurant clerk or an accountant often make
cold, accurate decisions where an individual’s cognitive biases, emotions
perspectives, and related potential decision-making difficulties are not ap-
parent and certainly not needed. The wider MDMP and the OODA Loop
follow like strategies in attempting to orient the decision process to one
totally directed at the mission, thereby avoiding potential human foibles,
with one major exception—when intuition (alternately called judgment or
even wisdom) has been developed by experience and knowledge to work
quickly in discerning patterns and finding appropriate solutions to utilize
to the maximum extent possible.
It is here where Boyd’s primary feeling to have the warrior (and cer-
tainly the Emergency Manager) constantly develop new mental models,
new information, and new experiences in order to meld perfectly with
the types of knowledgeable and experienced intuition that Malcolm
Gladwell praised in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking and
the researchers into thinking and decision making he was summarizing.
Gladwell wrote of the powerful, instinctive ability of the mind, without
conscious thought, to review huge amounts of existing information to
discern patterns and make quick, instinctive decision “in a blink,” the so

called “gut” or “instinctive” based decision making. But Gladwell also
wrote that these decisions made in a blink can only be useful when they
are accompanied by thousands of hours of work and thought in a specific
area. A chess player, a great surgeon, even a highly skilled Emergency
Manager, when viewing situations well within their various fields of ex-
pertise, are examples of individuals who can likely make accurate deci-
sions about what to do next, in a “blink.” Unfortunately, when individuals
have not prepared their minds with thousands of hours of practiced ac-
tions in a specific area, the gut or instinct-based decisions they may have
such confidence in are usually wrong, because they are based on noth-
ing but their own biases, desires, and choices. These are the uninformed
types of decisions that Boyd (and Gladwell) are attempting to train our
minds to avoid. And being the fallible creatures that we are, those who
are highly skilled and trained in one decision-making area too often as-
sume that their highly skilled and trained decision-making process, often
done in a “blink” will work in different areas. It usually will not.
Action
The fourth and final step of the OODA Loop is putting the COA into
action, testing it, receiving feedback and testing it again as a continuing
process. We should all be constantly experimenting and gaining new data
that improves how we operate in every facet of our lives. As Osinga notes
in Science, Strategy and War, actions “feed back into the systems as validity
checks on the correctness and adequacy of the existing orientation pat-
terns.” Action is how we encounter it if our mental models are correct,
for example in the next serious flood in New Orleans, if levees in the
Ninth Ward breach, are people still on roofs after a few hours, not having
been rescued, and directed to shelters without adequate police support.
Summarizing his OODA Loop, Boyd wrote:
We gotta get an image or picture in our head, which we call orientation, Then we
have to make a decision as to what we’re going to do, and then implement the deci-
sion…Then we look at the (resulting) action, plus our observations, and we drag in
new data, new orientation, new decision, new action, ad infinitum….11
Boyd almost seems to have been writing specifically for emergency
managers whose must make quick decisions based on imperfect infor-
mation in rapidly changing circumstances where their previous thought
models may no longer be relevant. In a direct application of the OODA
Loop to emergency management, von Lubitz et al.16
(p. 567) wrote, as they
stressed their categorization of Boyd’s OODA Loop as the development,
testing, retesting and application of “Actionable Knowledge”:

Action 19
Every disaster introduces a dramatic change in the affected environment. The
informational content is massively increased by a number of new, often poorly un-
derstood elements (decreased environmental transparency). The orderly nature of
original information that the environment contained and by which it was character-
ized prior to the disaster (granularity) is not disrupted, and the granularity of the
environment increases…However, new information continuously generated during
the entire time course of the critical events obscures situational awareness and im-
pairs disaster-mitigation efforts. Actionable knowledge derived through the process of
effective, real-time management and fusion of new, disaster-generated information
with equally, efficient use of pre-existing knowledge provides the essential tool with
which to increase transparency and reduce the granularity of the disaster environ-
ment (improving…the ability to respond to sudden and unpredictable challenges that
the disaster environment may generate….
In addition to the MDMP items that we have discussed, there is an-
other military “thought and action asset” that all Emergency Managers
need access to. For decades the US Department of Defense has sup-
ported the development of the kinds of information and data required
to develop enhanced situation awareness (“Ground truth” as most
Emergency Managers refer to it) all across the disaster spectrum across
the nation. To accomplish this mission 5 or 6 highly skilled and cre-
dentialed officers, serving as Joint Regional Medical Planning Officers
(JRMPOs) are continually deployed across the nation, also serving at
significant disasters and NSSEs. Each JRMPO carries a highly detailed,
constantly updated electronic file (called a “Smart Book”) addressing
regional demographics, public health, and medical assets across the
nation, and a complete listing of Department of Defense medical as-
sets, many of which are available to support disaster preparedness,
response, recovery, and mitigation missions. The wise local, state or
federal Emergency Manager knows his or her JRMP and is never much
farther than a text message or a call away. The JRMPOs are key sup-
port to FEMA Regional Offices, members of the Regional Advisory
Council (RAC) attend monthly meetings of the Regional Interagency
Support Committees (RISC), assist in training and exercise missions
and are frequently not only called upon by ESF-8 but by virtually all of
the ESFs. The Defense Coordinating Officers (DCO) are also assigned
regionally and are members of the FEMA RAC, and though they have
the widest wealth of Department of Defense assets, they do not travel
as much as the JRMPOs and generally operate at a higher organiza-
tional level across all of the ESFs, as opposed the JRMPOs who focus
on ESF#8.
As a final observation on the MDMP. There is a Facebook website on
military decision making which may be the most read and popular of the
MDMP sites. For those interested in this rich and constantly relevant issue,
the following Doctrine Man website is attached (https://www.facebook.
com/DoctrineMan/). Also, the extensive War Room websites address

MDMP topics and a wide variety of other related topics, among them
many interfaces with antiterrorism, especially of interest to Emergency
Managers who have strong concerns in these areas. The website can be
accessed through warroomeditors@gmail.com.

A short history of the study of
decision making
C H A P T E R
3
O U T L I N E
Incrementalism 23
Thinking fast and slow in decision making 27
Barriers to effective decision making and some methods
to try to avoid them 31
The framing effect 31
The familiarity effect 32
The confirmation bias 32
The halo effect 33
Group think 34
The true believers 36
The “smart person” problem 37
Simple mathematical formulas often make better predictions than
professionals 38
The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable 39
Thoughts on how to think well from Allan Jacobs 41
Governmental effects and constraints on good decision making 43
Model I: Rational policy 44
Model II: Organizational process 45
Model III: Bureaucratic politics 46
The emergency manager as bureaucrat 47

22 3. A short history of the study of decision making
Before moving to more modern findings on decision making, it
is
valuable to put decision making in a historical perspective. Leigh
Buchanan and Andrew O'Connell writing in the 2006 issue of the Harvard
Business Review conduct an exhaustive review of thoughts on decision
making since prehistory.17
For millennia human decision making had been
guided by interpretations of entrails, smoke, dreams, and the like. Even
the Greeks consulted the Oracle of Delphi and various seers, who con-
tinued to have strong influences through the Middle Ages; though even
earlier Confucius said that decisions should be informed by benevolence,
ritual, reciprocity, and filial piety, quite an improvement it would seem.
Plato described the interplay between emotions and reason as two horses
pulling in opposite direction, a view that has persisted in some form or an-
other, to this day. Remarkably, Aristotle foreshadowed the intensive future
research covering reason, emotions, external physical circumstances, and
internal biases affecting decision making. He was seeking shaped and in-
formed thinking and decision making to develop individuals who would
live virtuous lives. Of course, Aristotle was not discussing effective think-
ing in response to disasters. But as we will see, he could have been. What
we need, he stated, in order to live well, is proper appreciation of ways
in which such goods as friendship, pleasure, virtue, honor, and wealth fit
together as a whole:
In order to apply that general understanding to particular cases, we must acquire,
through proper upbringing and habits, the ability to see, on each occasion, which
course of action is best supported by reason. Therefore practical wisdom, as he con-
ceives it, cannot be acquired solely by learning general rules. We must also acquire,
through practice, those deliberative, emotional, and social skills that enable us to put
our general understanding of well-being into practice in ways that are suitable to each
occasion.19
Can we improve our decision making? 50
Improving decision making by attempting to avoid some of our
brain’s limitations 52
Using simple mathematical formulas to improve decision
making 52
Applying some of the wisdom of Allan Jacob’s to improve
decision making 54
Applying Finkelstein, Whitehead, and Campbell (FWC) methods
to improve decision making 55
The value of checklists in decision making 56
Evolutionary approaches and game theory 58

Incrementalism 23
Darwin would argue that the influence of emotions on decision mak-
ing has survived the rigors of natural selection so must have some intrin-
sic merit. Darwin’s thoughts are valid because emotions give us useful
guidance whenever the environment we are in fails to provide us with all
the information needed for thoughtful analysis and can also make us act
quickly and decisively when necessary.19
It was not until the Renaissance
introduced the beginnings of a science-based approach to the world, in
the West at least, that theories on decision making start to substitute facts
for fears and myths. More modern theories of decision making began with
the classical economic assumptions that people make generally rational
choices about scarce resources, based on their own self-interests. Since at
least the mid-1950s this has been referred to as the rational choice model
and is the most widely known decision making model—based as it is, on
an idealized, self-interested and nonemotional “Economic Man,” who, in
the act of being “economic” is also “rational.” By the 1970s there were two
broadly accepted ideas about human nature. First, people are generally
rational, and their thinking is normally sound. Second, emotions such as
fear, affection, and hatred explain most of the occasions on which people
depart from rationality. But just as many political scientists were almost
universal in their accepting the economically derived, rational choice
model, and using it as the basis of thousands of research studies, Herbert
Simon, and soon, many others began challenging the validity of the ratio-
nal choice model as being unrealistic if not actually irrational. He stated:
The social sciences suffer from acute schizophrenia in their treatment of rational-
ity. At one extreme, economists attribute to economic man a preposterous omniscient
rationality. Economic man has a complete and consistent system of preferences that
allow him to always choose among the alternatives open to him; he is always com-
pletely aware of what those alternatives are; there are no limits on the complexity of
the computations he can perform in order to determine which alternatives are best;
probability calculations are neither frightening nor mysterious to him.4
Another early critic of the rational choice model,21
found the model
limited, and frequently wrong, and that often decision makers are altruis-
tic, and not just totally self-centered rationalists. She argued convincingly
for a more complex interpretation of behavioral motivations that also in-
cluded duty, honor, public spirit, respect, and love.
Incrementalism
While the rational choice model was being almost universally rejected,
some fields, particularly urban planning, a field closely allied to emergency
management, were finding some aspects of rational choice worth saving.
What was being proposed was not to accept the “rational”
definition of
the decision maker, but to salvage at least some of the “perfectly ratio-
nal process” as worth reviewing and holding as an ideal, albeit one that

was not attainable. The “old” and mostly rejected rational model follows,
using emergency management as the field using the model:
1. Define the problem (many injured, many homeless, damaged housing,
communications, transportation, mass power outages, health and
medical systems severely damaged).
2. Clarify values (e.g., Fairness, how important is it to open shelters and
roads for the homeless poor, clear roadways using local contractor
who may be slower to organize than external contractors; is it less
expensive and effective to bring patients to newly opened facilities as
opposed to reopening existing but severely damaged hospitals).
3. Select goals. Having gone through Steps 1 and 2, we are now in a
position to choose one or more goals relative to the problems initially
defined by the interplay of both data/information and values.
4. Formulate alternative response plans or programs.
5. Forecast the consequences of the alternatives developed in the previous step.
6. Evaluate and select one or more courses of action (alternatives).
7. Develop detailed response plans.
8. Review and evaluate. Once response or recovery has begun it is
necessary periodically to review the process and results to date with a
view to deciding whether the original response and recovery should be
modified or left as developed.22
Critics of the “ideal” rational decision process contend that few prob-
lems are so easily categorized so that they can be easily be solved by using
the logical process described. They also contend that value clarification
sounds easy, but that that it often cannot be done because there is so lit-
tle unanimity regarding commonly accepted values. A final point critics
make is that practical matters, such as time, cost complexity, or inability to
reach agreement on values and goals are practical problems not likely to
be solved as decisions are made.22
Responding to the challenge of a clearly unrealistic, decision making
process based on rational choice, as well as the fact that the decision mak-
ers themselves were often not rational in their decision making process,
political scientists Charles E. Lindblom and David Braybrooke decided
to try and find a way between outright rejection of all that the rational
decision making model stood for, and saving some aspects of the model,
especially those that left it in place as an ideal, albeit one that could never
be attained. They summarize the problem:
It seemed plausible to suggest that what economists, other social scientists, policy
analysts, and decision-makers generally do in the face of complex problems, even
when they try to be rational, does not at all approximate rational decision making.
The clue to how they normally do achieve defensible analyses of their policy prob-
lems seemed to be in further development of the incremental concept‑leading to an
account of analytic practices that focus on alternatives differing only incrementally, in
a political system that normally offers only that range of alternatives.23

Incrementalism 25
Looking even further into actual practices in evaluating and deciding
on alternative public policies, Lindblom found that they succeed, where
conventionally conceived decision making does not, in taking intelligent
account of the cost in time, energy, and other resources—of analysis, as
well as of the impossibility, for those sufficiently complex problems, of
bringing an analysis period to an end. In other words, he suggested start
searching for the most effective decision, by searching for those that have
already been decided, and making only incremental changes in those. He
called this process “disjointed incrementalism.” They based this theory on
their contention that in the actual practice of public decision making, there
are existing choices, they referred to as “adaptations” that were used by
decision makers, which then conventional rational choice theories could
not account for. In other words, public decision makers were holding ra-
tional choice up as their model process, but not following it at all. Instead
they would go back to previous decisions in an area that worked and
make small changes to the process as times and circumstances changed23
(Fig. 1).
Needless to say, this process of disjointed incrementalism is what the
wise Emergency Manager does when faced with an allocation of resources
(regarding timing, amount, cost, etc.) should first talk to others and look
at existing after-action reports, news accounts, and so on, of how the re-
sources issue was addressed in previous disasters. It is valuable to review
disjointed incrementalism, not just because of its inherent insights and
wisdom, but also because urban planners still study the concept, and ur-
ban planning is a key foundation of FEMA thinking. Critics of the incre-
mental decision making model observe that the model cannot work on
new problems because there are no past decisions to view and change
FIG. 1 Complex incidents will test any emergency manger's ability to make decisions.

incrementally. Critics of the approach might also argue that excessive reli-
ance on the incremental approach can make a decision maker excessively
dependent on precedent and past experience and thus blind to worthwhile
new ideas or to avoid old mistakes. This means that excessive reliance on
incrementalism can lead to excessive caution and missed opportunities.22
Even as Allison was a realistic counterpoint to the too often unrealistic
rational thinking model, sociologist Amitai Etzioni suggested a “mixed
scanning” model that fit between each. The idea was simple, Etzioni advo-
cates a two-step decision process. The first step being a general scanning
process that is conducted to get an overall picture and to decide which el-
ements merit more detailed examination and analysis. He used the exam-
ple of weather monitoring systems using space satellites and stressed that
the mixed scanning might have a few parts, when a large field is scanned
down to a smaller one, and perhaps even a smaller one again. Etzioni
argue that his model avoids the excessive commitment to precedent and
past experience inherent in the incremental model, while avoiding the
assumptions of “complete information” that the rational model almost
assumes. In fact, this mixed scanning approach mirrors the practical ap-
proach that many Emergency Managers take when faced with the huge
array of facts and players that must be addressed almost all at once in
some large disasters. Some have criticized this mixed scanning approach
by saying that it is little more than what “sensible and no dogmatic” plan-
ners or Emergency Managers would do anyway; most of whom cannot
afford to take either the strict rations approach or the incremental ap-
proach and will necessarily use some synthesis of both. Etzioni simply
formalized and made explicit what most actually do (Ref. 22, pp. 278–81
citing “Mixed scanning: A ‘Third Approach to Decision Making,’ based on
Ref. 222), Andreas Faludi, ed. pp. 217–30). People running agencies share
power, and often differ about what should be done, and the differences
do matter.
In the 1990s critics of the rational choice model were being reinforced
and supported by findings in social psychology, behavioral economics,
and business/management that found that decision making was subject
to many irrational faults, but there was strength, in many situations, in
the instinctive, emotionally based aspect of decision making. Emergency
Managers who claim to make many decisions not so much on facts but on
their instincts, their “guts,” may not have been all wrong. But, as it turns
out, much more is involved.
Classical, rationally based economics was being quickly replaced by a
behavioral economic model demonstrating the power of the pull of small
amounts of evidence was such that even those who knew about it should
resist being succumbed. “People’s intuitive expectations are governed by
a consistent misrepresentation of the world.” By expanding this concept
researchers found that intuitive human expectations were often governed

by a consistently erroneous model of the world. In 2002, Kahneman and
later, Thaler in 2017, received Nobel Prizes in economics and psychology
borrowing from the two with their evolving concepts of decision making.
Previously, instinctive thinking making had neither been fully under-
stood nor valued enough in previous “scientific” approaches to decision
making. And now the biases inherent in both intuitive System 1 thinking
as well as more rational System 2 thinking were being recognized.
Thinking fast and slow in decision making
Most Emergency Managers make decisions quickly, often under stress,
while facing serious distractions. They base their decisions on a combi-
nation of instincts and knowledge, with advice or criticism from others.
Frequently, Emergency Managers’ decisions are made without their pay-
ing much attention to the process of decision making itself, and of their
own limitations and strengths. Fortunately, in recent years, decision mak-
ing, particularly instinctive (“gut level” or “sixth sense”) decision making,
increasingly has been studied, written about, and discussed across this
nation and much of the world. Popular and very useful books and articles
have included (1) Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink which stressed the value of
quick, emotionally based, intuitive decision making, done in a “blink,” as
well as situations when this powerful tool fails spectacularly; (2) a whole
issue of the Harvard Business Review (2006) that discussed decision mak-
ing in the widest perspective; and (3) psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s
landmark work, Thinking, Fast and Slow, which compared and contrasted
slower, more rational thinking, which he named System 2 thinking with
faster, emotionally and instinctively based System 1 thinking; Kahneman
and Tversky, two psychologists who, along with Thaler formed the newer
field of behavioral economics (as opposed to the classical “rational eco-
nomics” which was not really rational at all) also considered cognitive
biases and predispositions that can hinder as well as facilitate intuitive
decision making, and the “noise” that can cloud effective decision mak-
ing. Decision making biases are systematic errors such as overoptimism
or harmful stereotypes that can damage our decision making, but other
biases and predispositions can also provide shorthand rules of thumb
that can save time rarely available for thoughtful pondering of issues.
Decision making noise, such as current mood, the time since the last meal,
the weather, or even a toothache also can affect judgment in even the most
serious of circumstances. These researchers along with extensive media
coverage have emphasized how complex, often irrational, but none the
less powerful instinctual capacities affect, often dominating, both rational
and instinctive decision making. In short, we are rarely as effective at de-
cision making as we believe (Fig. 2).

According to Alan Jacobs,27
System 1 provides us with a repertoire of
useful biases and predispositions that reduce the decision making load on
our conscious brains. These biases aren’t infallible, but they provide help-
ful rules of thumb; they’re right often enough that it makes sense to follow
them and not try to override them without some good reason. Again, ac-
cording to Alan Jacobs,27
we simply would not be able to navigate through
life without these biases, these prejudices—the cognitive demands of hav-
ing to assess every single situation would be so great as to paralyze us. So
we need the biases, the emotional predispositions, to relieve the cognitive
load. We just want them to be the right ones. We pass through life mainly
depending on Kahneman and Tversky’s intuitive System 2; the more
rational, System 1 kicks in only when we perceive a problem, inconsis-
tencies, or anomalies that need to be addressed. Jonathan Haidt, another
psychologist, uses different terms. He thinks of intuitive thinking as an
elephant and conscious decision making as the rider. The point is that our
intuitive decision thinking is immensely powerful and has a mind of its
own but can be gently steered by the rider who is skillful and understands
the elephant’s inclinations. Or as Jonathan Haidt28
summarized very suc-
cinctly, “Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second…. or, the mind
is divided, like a rider on an elephant and the rider’s job is to serve the
elephant.” He concludes by stating his feeling that the elephant is 99% of
FIG. 2 Odd as it may sound, decision making regarding the dead is more straight forward
that dealing with survivors.

our mental processes and goes on to demonstrate the strength and logic
of his position.
A classic example of powerful and effective System 1 thinking was pre-
sented by psychologist Gary Klein20
who tells the story of a team of firefighters
that entered a house in which the kitchen was on fire. Soon after they started
hosing down the kitchen the commander heard himself shout, “Let’s get out
of here!” without realizing why. The floor collapsed almost immediately after
the firefighter’s escape. Only after the fact did the commander realize that the
fire had been unusually quiet, and his ears had been unusually hot. Together,
these impressions prompted what he called a “sixth sense” of danger. He had
no idea what was wrong, but he knew something was wrong. It turned out
that the heart of the fire had not been in the kitchen but in the basement be-
neath where the men had stood. We have all heard such stories of expert intu-
ition: the chess master who walks past a street game and announced, “White
mates in three,” without stopping.
Expert intuition strikes us as magical, with the typical example of a
skilled physician just looking at a patient and diagnosing her almost im-
mediately, but it is not magical. Each of us performs feats of intuitive ex-
pertise many times each day. Most of us have absolutely no difficulty in
detecting anger in the first words of a telephone call or that a driver acting
erratically in the lane next to ours is dangerous. Our everyday intuitive
abilities are not less marvelous than the string of thoughts of an expe-
rienced firefighter or physician-only more common. Despite all of these
constraints and limitations, Emergency Managers can never forget that
“every success, every mishap, every opportunity seized or missed is the
result of a decision that someone made or failed to make.”25
Before there
is disaster preparedness, response, or recovery there is a set of decisions
made, good or bad, wise or unwise, that once made are difficult, some-
times impossible to modify or rescind.
Effective instinctive decision making doesn’t just appear. In many re-
spects this capacity must be developed. Good intuitive judgment, for ex-
ample, an art expert working at the Museum of Art in New York, taking
one look at a fraudulent masterpiece and knowing at a glance that it is a
forgery, developed his instinct by spending evening after evening taking
things out of cases and putting them on a table. “There were thousands of
things. I mean we were there every night until ten o’clock, and it wasn’t
just a routine glance. It was really poring and poring and poring over
things.” What he was building, in those nights in the storerooms, was a
kind of database in his unconscious. This type of effort is expended by
experts who have learned to recognize familiar elements in a new situa-
tion and to act in a manner that is appropriate to it.10
But we don’t have

to be experts to have developed these strong instincts in certain circum-
stances, whenever we have something that we are good at—something
we care about—experience and passion fundamentally change our first
impressions. This does not mean that when we are outside our areas of
passion and experience, our reactions are invariably wrong. It just means
that they are shallow. They aren’t grounded in real experiences. It would
be like taking an experienced Emergency Manager and placing him in an
art gallery and having that manager decide on whether or not a piece of
art work was real or not, or in having that art expert sit in an Emergency
Operations Center and begin making decisions of resource deployment
with little objective information to guide her. T.S. Eliot reminds us, “When
we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to sub-
stitute emotions for thoughts.”27
As Kahneman observes, “Unfortunately,
professional’s intuitions do not all arise from true expertise,”20
almost like
getting stock market advice from your physician or a cab driver.
In the past, most courses or trainings in emergency management and
many other fields that focused on decision making included the admonition,
“Honestly confronting your individual biases, and doing your best to work
around them, is the first step to improved decision making.” This old rule
still applies, but what has been learned in recent years teaches us that this is
much harder than once thought, because to a great extent, we are our biases.
Not surprisingly, improving individual decision making will be diffi-
cult. Thinking is hard, as Allan Jacobs reminds us, and many of our own
instincts will try and pull us back to what is comfortable, if not effective.
The same powerful, emotionally based intuition that can size up a situa-
tion in an instant can also present strong biases that rob other decisions of
any semblance of common sense or accuracy. Timothy D. Wilson30
writes
in Strangers to Ourselves: “The mind operates most efficiently by relegating
a good deal of high-level, sophisticated thinking to the conscious, just as a
modern jetliner is able to fly on automatic pilot with little or no input from
a human ‘conscious’ pilot. The adaptive unconscious does an excellent
job of sizing up the world, warning people of danger, setting goals, and
initiating action in a sophisticated and efficient manner.” Humans have
limited time and brainpower and as a result they use simple “rules of
thumb” to help them make judgments. This is all further complicated, as
Jonathan Haidt reminds us “One of the greatest truths in psychology is
that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict.” He quotes the
Roman poet Ovid, “I am dragged along by a strange new force. Desire and
reason are pulling in different directions. I see the right way and approve
it but follow the wrong.227
So much has been learned about decision making in recent years
(though some streams date back to antiquity) that an investment here can
pay off in better, wiser decision making for Emergency Managers during
disasters as well in the other parts of their lives. Again, improving our de-
cision making will not be easy, it requires an investment, but the outcomes

Barriers to effective decision making and some methods to try to avoid them 31
are well worth that investment. The types of people that run toward disas-
ters when most others are fleeing them are among those that will benefit
most by improved decision making.
The emergency management decision making perspective here is ac-
tion and outcomes, not policy oriented and it will encompass decision
making across the field. To realistically address decision making in emer-
gency management it will be necessary to adopt the widest agency and
stakeholder perspective, starting at the higher levels of emergency man-
agement and stakeholder organizations, where political appointees or top,
nonpolitical managers operate, as well as down the pyramid to the lower
levels of organizational decision making. It will also be necessary to ad-
dress the external conditions and individuals whose own decision making
affects the Emergency Managers, to whom this book it directed.
These next sections expand on System 1 intuitive decision making abil-
ity and how it both helps and hinders System 2, rational decision making.
Simply put, our brains are well suited for some tasks, but ill-suited for
others. The consequences of this reality can be wide ranging: from sim-
ple illusions, to annoying memory glitches, to irrational decisions whose
effects can just as likely be innocuous as fatal. We will discuss over and
over the difficulties involved with overcoming cognitive biases, noise and
situations leading to bad decisions and bad outcomes.
We will present some of the key findings to Emergency Managers as
well as a number of experts and websites to help them get deeper into
areas that interest them. The purpose is to have Emergency Managers and
students view their own decision making with a bit more knowledge and
insight, but also with a heightened skepticism about their own decision
making and that of those they must work with.
Barriers to effective decision making and some methods to try
to avoid them
The framing effect
Framing effects are different ways of presenting the same information
to evoke different emotions, resulting in different decisions based on that
same information. Saying “the odds of survival one month after surgery
are 90%” is more reassuring than making an equivalent statement “mor-
tality within one month of surgery is 10%.” Similarly, describing cold cuts
as “90% fat free” is more attractive than describing them as “10% fat.”
Jumping to conclusions, the wrong ones, is much more likely depending
on how information is framed. Evidence that our brains can be so easily
eluded also comes from situations where bad decisions can lead to horrible
outcomes. For example, people’s views about something as important as
child custody cases can yield different outcomes depending on whether

they are asked, “Which parent should have custody of the child?” or
“Which parent should be denied custody of the child?” In this instance
Parent A had a modestly good listing of attributes including good income,
health, working hours, and a rapport with the child. Parent B had an above
average income, a very close relationship with the child, an extremely ac-
tive and work social life, a good deal of work-related travel, and minor
health problems. When the questions were phrased regarding positive at-
tributes, parent B’s impressive credentials with regard to income and rela-
tionship with the child won over parent A’s more modest abilities on these
fronts. Ask who should be denied custody, however, and a very different
picture surfaced. The strategy yielded evidence of parent B’s inadequacies
as a guardian regarding the busy social and work life and health issues.
The familiarity effect
Dozens of studies have demonstrated that merely having been exposed
to something, whether it’s a face, image, word, or sound, makes it more
likely that people will later find it more appealing. This is the same famil-
iarity bias that is exploited in advertising and that can also be exploited in
politics. Telling the same facts or even distortions of facts over and over
again, “The other party is against Medicare” or “….these tax cuts are ac-
tually for you and have worked over and over again in the past” seem
to keep appearing in American politics and working again and again.
When Nazi propagandist Goebbels stated that by telling the same emo-
tionally oriented, group-centered lie repeatedly, it would eventually be
accepted as truth by most people, he used what many researchers have
since demonstrated.
This bias is also a relatively “hidden” source of concern because it
can easily strike the professional who has built up a career long cache of
“things and ideas” that remain firmly in the memory, for better or worse.
While it is true that experience does help build up intuitive decision mak-
ing in some key areas, it is also true that a history of bad habits, if not fail-
ures in an area can also have its effects, and separating these two types of
experiences may not be that easy. The Emergency Manager must always
fight this tendency by attempting to overcome these effects, but it is not
easy. Having some skeptical management or staff colleagues willing to
“tell the cold truth” to anyone can help as long as the truth is not wielded
as a sharp object.
The confirmation bias
People have a tendency to seek answers and make decisions that tend
to confirm their existing beliefs and positions on issues. When they seek
additional information often they don’t seek neutral information, but they

tend to seek only confirmatory information. Two existing mental biases
contribute to the Confirmation Bias: people overestimate the probabilities
of unlikely events and this leads to them overweighting unlikely events in
their decision making. The probability of a rare event will often (often, but
not always) be overestimated, because of the confirmatory bias of mem-
ory. Thinking about that event, you try to make it truer in your mind. A
rare event will be overweighed if it specifically attracts attention.
This presents some interesting situations for Emergency Managers, on
one hand each successive emergency deployment builds a cache of cir-
cumstances, decisions, and outcomes that can clearly be judged and that
tend to enhance his intuitive, fast thinking decision making. But when
the Emergency Manager is challenged to pull out certain aspects of that
response from memory, the tendency will be to assume they were good
response memories, and to assume they are still valid as guidance. Of
course, those memories may not have been examples of the best response.
Perhaps a good solution to this problem is, again, to have individuals sur-
rounding the Manager with a track record of successful response activi-
ties. And what had been noted more than a few times, it is usually easier
to judge the value of other’s decision making abilities, than one’s own. In
this respect a later section, on Group Think, addresses some of the weak-
nesses as well as the real strengths of that group approach (Fig. 3).
The halo effect
If you like a president’s politics, you usually like his voice and his ap-
pearance as well. The tendency to like everything about a person, includ-
ing things you have not observed, known as the “halo effect,” has been
FIG. 3 Team work is essential in making good decisions.

known about for over a century, though knowledge of it has not reached
the general public, and “This is a pity,” as Kahneman20
observes, because
the “Halo Effect” is a good name for a common bias that plays a large role
in shaping our view of people and situations. It is one of the ways that
System 1 decision making generates a simpler and more coherent view
than the real thing. Presumably this works in the opposite direction with
people you don’t like, and all of whose views you will tend to dismiss.
To avoid this common error in decision making, Kahneman recommends
deriving useful information from multiple sources of evidence, always
trying to make these sources independent of each other as possible.
The principle of independent judgements…has immediate applications for
the conduct of meetings, and activity which executives in organizations spend
a great deal of their working days. A simple rule can help: before an issue is
discussed, all members of the committee should be asked to write a very brief
summary of their positions. This procedure makes good use of the value of di-
versity of knowledge and opinion in the group. The standard practice of open
discussion gives too much weight to the opinions of those who speak early
and assertively, causing others to line up behind them.20
For the Emergency Manager who depends on a few, tried and true staff
members for information sources, it would appear best to keep these, but
to gather a few more, perhaps farther away from the “trusted veterans,”
perhaps even from without the inner circle of Emergency Management.
Group think
Nearly 50years ago, Irving L. Janis44
changed how agencies and cor-
porations thought about the effectiveness of decision making in groups.
Unfortunately, too often those using the term “Groupthink” are not guided
by what he found, leaping to the wrong conclusion that it was the nature
of groups themselves, usually committees, to make bad decisions (e.g., the
old joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee). Janis wondered
why powerful, otherwise knowledge leaders acting in small groups made
such disastrous decisions (The Bay of Pigs, The Invasion of North Korea
that started the Korean War, and the Vietnam War) when some were in-
volved in such brilliant and long-standing decisions such as the develop-
ment of the Marshall Plan. Janis sought the answer in the psychology of
group dynamics. Of course, he knew that groups could be subject to dis-
torted thinking by fear, anger, elation, even irrational prejudices. But Janis
felt that these reasons for human failure, though accurate, were missing
something. It was not enough to say the bad decisions were made because
people are fallible or “To Err is Human.” History is full of instances where

group participation has brought forth noble instincts in people, we have
to look no further than selfless citizens risking their lives to help others
in the aftermath to Katrina, or any recent disaster. On the other hand, the
powerful, unconscious actions of crowds have perpetrated massive evil
from the terror after the French Revolution, the Nazi depredations, and
the Holocaust to the roving bands of ethnic murders in the dissolution of
Yugoslavia in the 1990s. An experienced Emergency Manager knows that
serious disasters are accompanied by potentially destructive group activ-
ities (frequent looting and vandalism), as well as positive group activities
including many examples of citizens placing themselves in danger to help
others. Janis narrowed his focus to very powerful, small groups tending
to make worse decisions in significant areas than they would if they were
acting as individuals, away from the group.
Studies of industrial organizations indicate that while some groups
fostered higher productivity and conscientiousness, some similar groups
fostered slowdowns and socializing activities that reduced productiv-
ity. The same type of variations in groups’ outputs may be found among

policy-making groups in large organizations. Janis found that in studies of
social clubs and other small, powerful groups, conformity pressures have
frequently been observed. Members who voiced views contrary to those
held by the group were eventually driven from the group or were ignored.
This drive for uniformity of beliefs damaged decision making. Janis also
found the tendency of groups to develop stereotyped images that de-
humanized out-groups against whom they are engaged in competitive
struggles, so that group discussions become polarized, sometimes shifting
toward extreme conservatism and sometimes toward riskier courses of
action than the individual members would otherwise be prepared to take.
In short, we can summarize Janis’ findings, which fit nicely with more
modern findings on decision making members of powerful, high status
groups value their continued participation in such groups more highly
than breaking with conformity, even when the decisions being made are
disastrous. Does this mean the Emergency Manager must dispense with
the small group decision making process that is reflected all across FEMA’s
National Incident Response System? Of course not, but it should serve to
make Emergency Managers skeptical of their group decision making as
well as the decision making in groups that will affect their roles. Using the
wisdom imparted by what has been learned, it is always sensible to view
a committee regarding members that are too “chummy” and cooperative,
too dominated by one or two dominant voices, either too lacking in sub-
ject matter expertise or short of it, and all of the other potential pitfalls.
As a final perspective on group decision making, Cohen, March, and
Olsen40
give us the Garbage Theory and the surprising truths they un-
covered. In their histories in academia they found a few keys to commit-
tee activities that seemed to hold up regardless of the type of committee,

where the committee meetings were being held, and who was attending
them. They called organizations “organized anarchies,” that were subject
to three decision making problems:
(1) Problematic preferences, which meant people did not define their
preferences very clearly that much as political actors often fail to
(or refuse to) define their goals. Yet as some argue, people act in the
absence of clearly defined goals and action is often precipitated by
fuzzing over what one is trying to accomplish.
(2) Unclear technology: Many committee members did not know
organizational processes, their own jobs, and had only a modest
knowledge of why they were doing what they were doing. They
operate a lot by trial and error, by learning from experience, and by
pragmatic invention in crisis.
(3) Fluid participation: Participants drift in and out of decision making,
so the boundaries of such an organizations are more fluid than
settled. The time and effort of individuals differ greatly, who shows
up for or is invited to a given critical meeting, and their degree
of activity at the meeting can make a huge difference. As Woody
Allen observe, “Just showing up is 90% of success.” Despite all
of this, March, Cohen, and Olsen remind us that the participants
made decisions, adapted, and survived, at least after a fashion and
sometimes quite well.
In perspective, are these “organized anarchies” all that different from
participants from FEMA, the Department of Defense, and the Emergency
Support Functions, some on their first missions, some gnarled veterans,
often attempting to balance field work with attendance at a state, local, or
county emergency office, attend meetings and still be under the direction
of their agency supervisors, with the FCO and possibly even the FEMA
Regional Director added to the mix. And sometimes, when the stan-
dard 12-h shifts stretch out considerably longer during the first week or
two, so that exhaustion and too many colds and coughs are added to the
potential restraints on good decision making. And it all seems to work out
fairly well, most of the time.
The true believers
Eric Hoffer41
reminds us that those who have surrendered their beliefs
to a mass movement or cause that promises to immediately and drastically
improve the lives of the “true” believers as well as their belief in improv-
ing the world by adherence to the cause, which can be religiously, socially,
or politically based, and can be very difficult individuals to sway with
anything as small as logical arguments. Hoffer also reminds us that strict

The “smart person” problem 37
adherence to such movements, the doctrines they preach, and the pro-
grams they project also can breed fanaticism, strong enthusiasm, fervent
hope, and even hatred and intolerance, for those not in the group. It is not
likely that Emergency Managers will often encounter full-throated true
believers espousing their cause while responding to a disaster. But it can
happen. Nonetheless, each of us, those we interface within the Emergency
Management System, as well as those external to it have elements of the
True Believer. It is not unwise to classify strong 2nd Amendment advo-
cates as well as strong gun regulation advocates, intensely political con-
servatives or liberals, or even intensely patriotic Americans as opposed
to those who consider themselves to be more “world citizens” to have
at least some aspects of the True Believer within themselves. Emergency
Managers must contend with many shades of True Believer that may sur-
face during the tense emotional circumstances that accompany each disas-
ter they are called upon to address.
The “smart person” problem
Unfortunately, professional’s intuition do not all arise from true exper-
tise. As noted, a physician’s effective and even impressive diagnostic abili-
ties do not necessarily qualify him/her to give useful and expert opinions,
say, on financial obligations and a condominium’s due diligence regard-
ing its narrow range of borrowing and investment choices. An individual
who had developed professional intuition in the finance area would likely
be a more appropriate guide. But after years of being “the smartest guy
in the room,” it is not surprising to see that confidence moves into areas
where it is not warranted. And, as cognitive psychologists have found,
most of us are already more optimistic about our decision making abilities
than our experience and our knowledge supports. Tali Sharot50
observes
that when intelligent people are presented with accurate, factual chal-
lenges to their deeply held beliefs they just come up with even more clever
rationalizations regarding why their beliefs are accurate. Jacobs51
quotes
Avery Pennarun, an engineer at Google, “Smart people have a problem,
especially (although not only) when you put them in large groups. That
problem is an ability to convincingly rationalize nearly anything….What I
have learned, working here, that smart, successful people are cursed. The
curse is confidence. It’s confidence that comes from a lifetime of success
after real success, an objectively great salary….” Of course intelligence
is useful in disaster response, as the complexity of decision making and
the power of those involved only grows, the further up the management
chain an Emergency Manager ventures. But without knowledge or even
insight into a particular area, unsupported, but confident “expertise” can
be a severely limiting factor. And this weaknesses can affect us all.

The irony is that although people may or may not equate high intel-
ligence with competence, they do judge competence by combining their
perceptions of two dimensions of strength and trustworthiness. It should
not be surprising that Hemant Kakkar and Niro Sivanathan writing in the
Harvard Business Review51
observe that during uncertain times, and disas-
ters qualify, we prefer dominant leaders who are confident, controlling,
and strongly hierarchical. Many of these traits are positive, but dominant
leaders have also been known to exhibit negative transits such as narcis-
sism, aggression, and uncooperativeness. They are prototypical “alpha
male” in the group, and they frequently claim leadership positions instead
of waiting to have leadership responsibility conferred upon them as they
develop talent to deserve that leadership role.
Though no research of which we are aware confirms it, it appears likely
that a good number of FEMA’s top managers as well as top Emergency
Managers at state and local level, powerful corporate stakeholders, and
politicians at all levels are reflective of this intelligence “confidence trap.”
Some strategies for addressing this as well as other restraints on good
decision making will be addressed later, but, as always, being aware of
the issue and some of its consequences is at least a start in dealing effec-
tively with some of the most intelligent or credentialed that are involved
with decision making in disaster situations, “normal” as well as the black
swan variety. The prestige pathway to leadership, on the other hand, is
associated with individuals who are respected, admired, and held up as
examples. As a counterbalance to these points, Roy Armstrong, a senior
manager in the “old” US Department of Health, Education and Welfare,
before it was truncated to the US Department of Health and Human
Services made the wise observation (to one of the authors as a student
intern) that it was much better to “fight a smart guy instead of a dumb
guy.” Pardon the vernacular of the day, no disrespect was meant to any-
one. “Fighting the smart guy was easy, all you had to do was make a cou-
ple of smart, but illogical, even contradictory moves. The “smart” guy will
be tied up for days reading so much into even your simplest bureaucratic
moves. And the more false starts the more confused will the smart guy
with your “illogical” moves. The dumber guy will just keep coming after
you, directly, straight on until he kills you or you nail him.”
Simple mathematical formulas often make better predictions
than professionals
Kahneman demonstrated that what he called “algorithms” or simple
mathematical formulas could predict some events better than trained
psychologists or other professionals. Psychologist Paul Meehl initially
reviewed the results of 20 studies that had analyzed whether clinical

The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable 39
predictions (type of diagnosis, etc.) based on subjective impressions of
trained professionals were more accurate than mathematical, statistical
predictions made by combining a few scores or ratings, according to a
simple rule. The simple formulas were more accurate in 11 of 14 studies.
Eventually the number of studies he reviewed approached 200, which in-
cluded the evaluation of bank credit risks, the length of hospital stays,
the odds of recidivism of juvenile offenders, and even the future price of
Bordeaux wine—all of which were predicted more accurately by small
numerical rules than by the various professional experts in these areas,
using their judgment.
After 30years of similar research findings, Meehl,52
commented, “There
is no controversy in social science which shows such a large body of qual-
itatively diverse studies coming out so uniformly in the same direction
as this one,” simply stated, small numerical rules or formulas were more
effective at many predictions than were professionals in their respective
areas of expertise. The Princeton economist and wine lover, Psychologist
Orley Ashenfelter has offered a compelling demonstration of the power of
simple statistics to outdo world-renowned experts, in this instance to pre-
dict the price of wine. He used just three predictors, the temperature over
the growing season, the amount of rain at harvest, and the total rain in
the year before the harvest. The correlation was .90 between Ashenfelter’s
prediction of the cost per bottle and the actual price of the wines that were
sold. All this research and more, in so many cases of judgments by audi-
tors, pathologists, psychologists, organizational managers, and other pro-
fessionals suggest that the normal level of inconsistency is typical, even
when cases are reevaluated a few minutes later, most to the same con-
clusion. To maximize predictive accuracy, final decision should be left to
mathematical formulas, especially in low-validity environments.
The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable
A Black Swan is a very improbable event with three characteristics:
It is mostly unpredictable; it carries massive impacts; and, after the fact,
we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more
easily predictable than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a
black swan, so was the World Trade Center bombing. But why don’t we
acknowledge black swans until after they occur? According to Nassim
Nicholas Taleb224
part of the answer is that humans are hardwired to learn
specifics when we should be focused on generalities. We focus on things
we already know, and time and time again fail to take into consideration
what we don’t know. We are, therefore, too often unable to effectively and
quickly estimate opportunities. Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves
into thinking we know more than we actually do and restrict our thinking

to the irrelevant and the inconsequential while large events continue to
shape and reshape the world (Fig. 4).
Taleb was not directing his work to improving the responses and recov-
eries to the such huge and mostly unpredicted disasters as the Chicago’s
Deadly Extreme Heat Event of 1993, the World Trade Center Bombings,
2001, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Myanmar (Burma) Cyclone of 2008,
and the Haiti Earthquake, 2010 but his descriptions of our failures as a sys-
tem (and as key individuals) to realistically address black swans can assist
in future catastrophic responses, to some extent. Taleb stresses that much
of our general lack of ability regarding responding to and even learning
from “black swan” events comes in part from what has been called the
“narrative fallacy” or the System I’s need to try and explain events and
situations in logically and connected manners, even when there is no link-
age between the events. Failure to deal adequately with black swan events
also comes from what has been referred to as the confirmation bias, as de-
scribed before, reflecting our tendency to use new facts and situations to
confirm our existing feelings and predispositions, even when they may be
in direct opposition. In fact, as Tali Sharot42
reminds us, when you provide
someone with new data, data that seems to contradicts their preconceived
notions, can cause them to come up with new counterarguments that fur-
ther strengthen their original view, this has been called the “boomerang
effect.” Again, changing our ideas is difficult, not impossible, but clearly
difficult. All the Emergency Manager, or anyone for that matter can do
is to try and get in the habit of recognizing the biases and preconditions
that can lead us to respond poorly to black swan events, and to attempt
FIG. 4 Decision makers need to recognize what they know as well as what they don't
know about any given situation.

Thoughts on how to think well from Allan Jacobs 41
to learn from them as the single events that they likely are. Of course, this
assumes we are sensitive to the events we should be categorizing as these
singular lack swan events. That in itself will take some training of our
memories in those areas.
Thoughts on how to think well from Allan Jacobs
Unlike most authorities cited in this background chapter on decision
making, Allan Jacobs is not a psychologist, behavioral economist, or busi-
ness/management expert but a well published freelance writer with a
strong reputation for analytic pieces. He accepts Kahneman and Tversky’s
description of our intuitive, System 1 minds and our rational thinking,
System 2 minds, but is more hopeful regarding our ability to overcome
systemic biases and other barriers to effective decision making, especially
when we develop the habit of attempting to become aware of them and
attempting to counteract them.
Jacobs introduces a few key concepts we can all recognize, concepts
that are almost magnets for the kinds of biases and errors in thinking
psychologists like Kahneman and Finkelstein, Whitehead and Campbell
have stressed. He cites the strong human tendency to join and associate in
groups and the tendency, over time, for the individual “members” to begin
adopting the group’s biases, stereotypical thinking, and even its negative
views of others simply because they are not associated with the group.27
This concept has gotten a lot of popular media coverage under the term
“tribes,” and describes a strong potential problem that can be reflected in
political, ethnic, income, and all too many other groups. He stresses that
though we may have begun associating with individual members because
of characteristics we initially enjoyed in them, we may be unaware of
other effects we might not have seen nor appreciated. Jacobs stresses that
we begin to be influenced by the emotional dispositions of the group’s
members as soon as we “join.” According to Jacobs our choice of group
associations are critical to our mental status, and one of the less difficult
(but certainly not easy) ways to protect ourselves from habits of thinking
that are negative and that are not accurately reflective of the surrounding
reality. Many of our emotional dispositions are not necessarily the results
of our own hardwiring, but are reflective of what we have absorbed from
individuals and circumstances external to us. In short, Jacobs stresses the
importance of avoiding those individuals and groups we do not want to
resemble because our associations with others do shape our unconscious,
whether we notice it or not and whether we approved of the changes or
not, most of which we will be unaware of, even as we adopt them. Or as
you might have been warned by your mother to “avoid bad companions
so you don’t end up acting like them.”

Jacobs critically reviewed much of the significant recent research on
decision making as well as some much older ones and derived twelve
“antidotes” to flawed decision making. He views thinking as an art, but
a difficult one, one that is to be done wisely and ethically, much in accord
with the ancient Greeks, as opposed to the scientifically, research oriented
perspective presented by most other authors included here.27
• When faced with provocation to respond to what someone has said,
give it five minutes. You have probably entered a “Refutation mode,”
and your response, made just moments later, may be wiser, less
emotionally driven.
• Value learning over debating, don’t “talk for victory.”
• As best as you can, online and off, avoid the people who fan the flames.
• Remember that you don’t have to respond to what everyone else is
responding to in order to signal your virtue and right-mindedness.
• If you do have to respond to what everyone else is responding to in
order to signal your virtue and right-mindedness, or else lose your
status in your community, it is probably a community you would be
better or leaving.
• Gravitate as best as you can, in every way you can, toward people
who seem to value genuine community and can handle disagreement
with equanimity.
• Seek out the best and fairest-minded of people whose views you
disagree with. Listen to them for a time without responding. Whatever
they say, think it over.
• Patiently, and as honestly as you can, assess your repugnancies.
• Sometimes the “ick factor” is telling; sometimes it’s a distraction from
what really matters.
• Beware of myths and metaphors (categorizations) of thoughts or
groups of people that have meanings beneath the surface that are
wrong-headed or unethical. And never forget that there is power in
myths and metaphors that can be inaccurate and highly destructive.
• Try to describe others’ positions in the language that they use, without
indulging in the temptation to describe in words or phrases that convey
negative definitions that you have developed to define the other group.
• Be brave.
A final “piece” of Alan Jacob’s wisdom: We shouldn’t expect morel
heroism of ourselves. Such an expectation is fruitless and in the long run
profoundly damaging. But we can expect to cultivate a more general dis-
position of skepticism about our own motives and generosity toward the
motives of others. And—if the point isn’t already clear—this disposition—
is the royal road that carries us to the shining portal called Learning to
Think (Ref. 27, p. 147).
And, in the spirit of the thoughts of Alan Jacobs, the authors believe
that we as Emergency Managers need to be kind (which is not the same

Other documents randomly have
different content

(1868), Der Ring des Nibelungen—a tetralogy consisting of four
operas, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Die
Götterdämmerung—(1876), and Parsifal (1882).
A great deal that is confusing has been written about the Wagner
system. Indeed Wagner's works have been explained so much that
some persons have become convinced that they are quite beyond
comprehension. Those who have attentively read the present volume
should have no difficulty in understanding the brief account of the
Wagner system now to be given, because that system is simply a
new application of the original principles of Peri. Three salient
resemblances to the Peri scheme of opera are to be found in the
Wagner plan: first, the attempt to produce an art-form which should
resemble the Greek drama; second, the employment of mythical or
legendary stories as subjects for librettos; and third the construction
of a form of recitative for the dramatic declamation of the text.
Wagner was utterly dissatisfied with the condition of the lyric drama
in his day. The opera bore no relation whatever to the national life or
thought of the people. It was a mere show designed to catch the
applause of the unthinking, to dazzle the ignorant by empty display.
In its popular Italian form the music had no genuine connection with
the text, for the words were mere pegs on which to hang pretty
tunes. These tunes, too, were designed, not to convey to the hearer
the emotion of the scene, but to give the singers opportunities to
display their powers. The stories of the operas were unpoetic,
undramatic, false to truth, incoherent, and not typical. The
characters were small and unrepresentative. The opera could not
touch the heart of the people because it did not spring from the
thought of the people. In Greece the drama, founded as it was on
the great mythological legends of the nation, was almost a form of
religion; and its influence on the life and thought of the people was
tremendous. Wagner's high aim was to produce a species of German
opera that should have the same relation to the Germans as the
Greek drama had to the Greeks. It is only by bearing in mind this
fact that one can account for such works as Lohengrin,

Tannhäuser, and Parsifal, on the one hand, and Der Ring des
Nibelungen on the other. The first three are Wagner's embodiment
of the Christian mythology of Germany, with its whole content of the
fundamental religious beliefs of the nation. Der Ring des
Nibelungen is his presentation of the old pagan mythology of his
country, with its noblest thoughts pushed to the front and its final
retirement before a new order of faith strongly suggested by the last
scene of Die Götterdämmerung.
The employment of the myth or legend as a subject for dramatic
treatment recommended itself to Wagner also on a purely musical
ground, which Peri could not discover in the crude condition of
musical art in his day. Myths are embodiments of human types, of
fundamental traits of character and of elementary emotions. They
have the advantage of universality. They are free from conventions
of time and place. Thus Wagner saw that the employment of
mythical subjects would permit him to concentrate the whole power
of his musical expression upon character and emotion, which are
just the things within the scope of operatic music. Every one of his
music dramas makes action and the pictorial elements of the drama
subordinate and accessory to the expression of the emotions of the
scene. In working out this plan he came upon the final and
fundamental law of his theory, namely, that there must be in a music
drama an organic union of all the arts necessary to the expression of
the emotions of the scene to the spectator. Text, music, action, and
scenery must all unite in a common purpose, and their union must
be so complete that no one element can be taken away without
injury to the whole. From this law Wagner derived the corollary that
he must write his own text, and so he did. All his librettos are his
own, and they are not mere schemes of dialogue, arias, processions,
and ballets, but remarkably fine dramatic poems. The text being
written, according to Wagner all the other elements in the drama,
music, action and scenery, must be devoted to the fullest and most
convincing expression of the emotions contained in that text. Now
the conveyance of emotion is within the power of music, and the
more completely the music can be devoted to this, the more

successful it is likely to be. The use of the myth enabled Wagner to
make perfect his organic union of the arts tributary to the drama,
because it focused the music upon the emotions, and so carried the
other elements to the same point. This principle—concentrating the
musical expression upon the emotion—led Wagner to adopt a new
musical form. He writes what has been called continuous melody.
That is, there are no set arias, duets, or ensembles in his later
works, but all the dialogue is carried on in a free arioso form, and
duets are simply the musical conversation of two people. Wagner
wrote voluminously in regard to his theories, and on this point he
says:—
The plastic unity and simplicity of the mythical subjects allowed of
the concentration of the action on certain important and decisive
points, and thus enabled me to rest on fewer scenes, with a
perseverance sufficient to expound the motive to its ultimate
dramatic consequences. The nature of the subject, therefore, could
not induce me, in sketching my scenes, to consider in advance their
adaptability to any particular musical form,—the kind of treatment
being in each case necessitated by the scenes themselves. It could,
therefore, not enter my mind to engraft on this, my musical form,
growing as it did out of the nature of the scenes, the traditional
forms of operatic music, which could not but have marred and
interrupted its organic development. I therefore never thought of
contemplating on principle, and as a deliberate reformer, the
destruction of the aria, duet, and other operatic forms; but the
dropping of those forms followed consistently from the nature of my
subject.
Nevertheless he could not proceed without any form, because music
without form would be without design, and hence would not be an
art. Form in music is based on the systematic repetition of
fundamental melodic ideas. This constitutes the identity of the
composition. A tune made of disjointed fragments, no two alike, is
not a tune at all. A composition does not exist unless there is
repetition of the melodic subjects of it. In the old aria form these

repetitions existed within each aria, which formed in itself a separate
composition. Wagner, having abandoned the aria form, was obliged
to invent a new system of repetitions for his continuous melody. This
he achieved by introducing the leit motiv, leading motive or
typical theme, a melodic phrase employed to designate a certain
personality or thought in the drama, and heard, either in a voice part
or in the orchestra, whenever that personality or thought is
mentioned or has an immediate connection with the scene before
the auditor. It was while composing The Flying Dutchman that
Wagner invented his new system. In Senta's ballad, which tells the
legend, he employed two themes. The first of these

Listen: Theme One
View Larger Image Here.
[Theme One--Soprano.]
he intended to represent the Hollander, and to convey in some
measure his unsatisfied longing for peace. The second theme
Listen: Theme Two
View Larger Images Here.
[ Pg 364 | Pg 365 ]
[Theme Two--Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass.]
is intended to represent the complement to the former, the sacrificial
love of Senta, which is to bring the peace. Wagner says: I had
merely to develop, according to their respective tendencies, the
various thematic germs comprised in the ballad to have, as a matter
of course, the principal mental moods in definite thematic shapes
before me. When a mental mood returned, its thematic expression
also, as a matter of course, was repeated, since it would have been
arbitrary and capricious to have sought another motive, so long as

the object was an intelligible representation of the subject, and not a
conglomeration of operatic pieces.
The leit motiv system was not so extensively used by Wagner in his
earlier works as in his later ones, when the system had become fully
developed and he had obtained a complete mastery of its difficult
musical technic. In his later works the orchestral score is largely
made up of repetitions and elaborations of the various leading
motives, and this has led to some grave misconceptions as to the
nature and purpose of his system. Many writers have published
handbooks purporting to explain the Wagner dramas. These
handbooks contain musical reprints of the various thematic phrases,
with names which Wagner never thought of giving them. The books
simply follow the scores through, page by page, enumerating the
various motives as they appear. The result of reading these books is
naturally a belief that the principal business of the auditor's mind at
the performance of a Wagner drama is to identify each leading
motive which is heard, and by doing so to get at the composer's
meaning. In other words, those handbooks cause many persons to
suppose that the hearer of a Wagner score has to translate the
music into definite terms, those terms being labels which will tell him
what the music itself does not. This is an utter misconception of the
Wagner system, and it has been one of the chief obstacles in the
way of its ready acceptance by persons educated in music of the
older sort.
It is not necessary to know the name of a single leading motive in
any Wagner drama in order to understand the work. Wagner himself
did not know all the names found in the handbooks. He did not
invent the names. The quotation given above explains what Wagner
was trying to accomplish by the use of leading motives. He tried to
embody the principal mental moods of his dramas in definite
thematic shapes, and to use those thematic shapes whenever he
desired to express those moods. Now if the themes do not express
the moods, all the names in the handbooks are worthless, because
incorrect. If the themes do express the moods, the names are still

worthless, because superfluous. Furthermore, if a passage made up
of various leading motives does not fairly convey to the auditor the
moods and emotions of the text and action to which that passage is
set, the whole system is a failure. If it does convey those moods and
emotions, then it makes no difference whatever to the auditor
whether he knows the names of the leading motives or not. It does
not even matter whether he knows that there are any leading
motives at all. An acquaintance with the leading motives immensely
increases one's intellectual pleasure in listening to Wagner's dramas
and enables one better to appreciate their musical form and their
subtler details; but I repeat that it is absolutely inessential to an
understanding of the dramatic force, eloquence, and truthfulness of
the music. The text is the only test to be applied to any opera music.
If the music expresses fairly the emotions contained in the text, it is
good dramatic music. That was the test which Wagner himself
imposed upon opera music, and it is the test by which his work must
be judged. Every leading motive in Wagner's dramas is explained by
text, usually on its first appearance, but sometimes not till afterward.
What is called the sword motive makes its first appearance in the
score of Das Rheingold, when Wotan simply conceives the idea of
creating a race of heroes.
Listen: Das Rheingold
[Das Rheingold.]
The meaning of this motive is thoroughly explained when Siegmund
in Die Walküre sees the sword in the tree in Hunding's house, and
the trumpet in the orchestra intones the phrase in a manner not to
be mistaken. None of the motives in these Wagnerian dramas are
composed arbitrarily. The poet-musician used every resource of
music—melody, harmony, rhythm, and instrumental color—to make
them, in the fullest sense of the word, expressive. Occasionally he
fell into the error of trying to embody in music purely intellectual

processes, which are quite beyond the scope of musical expression.
But no one need ever be at a loss as to his meaning, because the
organic union between text and music is so perfect that one always
explains the other. For example, in the final scene of Die Walküre
Brünnhilde announces to Sieglinde that she will become the mother
of a great hero, Siegfried, in this passage:—
Listen: Die Walküre Brünnhilde
[Die Walküre Brünnhilde.]
The high-est he-ro of worlds
Hid'st thou, O wife, in shel-ter-ing shrine
And we forthwith learn to associate that music with Siegfried in his
character of hero. Sieglinde answers Brünnhilde thus:
Listen: Die Walküre Sieglinde
[Die Walküre Sieglinde.]
O mar-vel-ous say-ings
Maid-en di-vine!

When Brünnhilde, having prophesied the downfall of the gods,
throws herself, in the last scene of Die Götterdämmerung, upon
Siegfried's funeral pyre, the orchestra peals out this phrase in
majestic tones. There is no mistaking its meaning; it proclaims the
divinity of Brünnhilde. Wagner has also employed the sound musical
device of thematic development when it can be used with plain
meaning, and this is a decidedly unique feature of his scheme. In
Siegfried the young hero plays on his hunting-horn this theme,
which seems to be an utterance of his buoyant youth:—
Listen: Siegfried
[Siegfried.]
In Die Götterdämmerung, when Siegfried has gained his maturity,
Wagner presents his theme rhythmically developed from the gayety
of six-eighth measure to the solid strength of four-fourth measure
and adds to its breadth and dignity by the instrumental treatment.
Listen: Die Götterdämmerung

[ Pg 370 | Pg 371 ]
[Die Götterdämmerung.]
As I said before, if it were necessary to go to the handbooks to find
out the existence and meaning of these musical devices, they would
be valueless. But Wagner's works are self-explanatory. An attentive
listener, whose mind is open and who has not entered the opera
house with a preconceived idea that an opera must always consist of
pretty arias, duets, and ensembles, interspersed with recitatives, will
have no trouble in entering fully into the spirit of these masterpieces
of dramatic music. One of the features of Wagner's system which
will require some attention on the part of the listener is the complete
independence of the orchestral part. Wagner seldom writes an
accompaniment pure and simple. His orchestral score, made up of
the constant weaving and interweaving of thematic fragments,
designed to express definite thoughts, is a vast and complex tonal
illustration of the text. The orchestra is one of the chief agencies in
the development of the plot. Characterization and emotional
expression are largely, at times chiefly, confided to it, and it is quite
as important a personage in the drama as the tenor or the soprano.
While it is voicing the thoughts and emotions of the scene in
imposing tone-language the actors are reciting the text in voice parts
wholly independent. These voice parts are frequently written in a
kind of recitative, but it is a recitative which is better described as
declamation, because its form is so flexible. At one instant it may be
recitative pure and simple, and the next moment it will glide into

melodious arioso. The following example is taken from the first act
of Siegfried:—
Listen: Siegfried

[ Pg 372 ]
[ Pg 373 (top) | Pg 373 (bottom) ]
[ Pg 374 (top) | Pg 374 (middle) | Pg 374 (bottom) ]
[ Pg 375 (top) | Pg 375 (bottom) ]
[ Pg 376 (top) | Pg 376 (bottom) ]
[Siegfried.]
Mime.
ppp
German: Viel, Wan-de-rer,
English: Much, Wan-de-rer,
pp ppp
weisst du mir von der Er-de rau-hem Rück-en.
wot-test thou of the earth's far stretch-ing sur-face.
pp
Nun sag-e mir wahr wel-ches Ge-schlecht
Now rede me as well what is the race
wohnt auf wol-ki-gen Höh'n?
wards the wel-kin a-bove?
Wanderer.
molto moderato dolcissimo
pp ‹‹‹ ››› pp
Auf wol-ki-gen Höh'n woh-nen die Göt-ter
The wel-kin a-boveward well the Æ-sir
Wal-hall heisst ihr saal licht al-ben sind sie;
Where they dwell is wal-halla light-elves of heav-en;
The address of Mime to the Wanderer is an admirable specimen of
the Wagnerian declamation. The phrase in the accompaniment
marked A has previously been made known as illustrative of Mime's
labor as a smith, and it is here followed by B, a motive which has
been identified in the score with Mime's meditation. The two phrases
used here plainly say, Mime is thinking, and the text and action
show us that he is thinking very hard about the question which he is
to ask the Wanderer, for he has wagered his head that this Wanderer
cannot correctly answer three questions. He has answered two and

this is the third. The Wanderer is Wotan, father of the gods, in
disguise, and when he is asked who live in the sky, he rises to his
feet and, while his face glows with celestial light, he answers in a
passage of broad and noble arioso. The orchestra, at the point
marked dolcissimo, begins to accompany him with the Walhalla
motive, whose meaning has been clearly brought out in the finale of
Das Rheingold. It makes no difference at all whether you know the
names of these motives. Their significance has already been shown
on their first appearance in the score. And even if it had not, they
form an accompaniment thoroughly suited to the meaning of the
text to which they are allied.
I have devoted this chapter to an explanation of the Wagner system,
because it is the vital element in this master's work. In it are to be
found the novelties in his method of applying the principles of Peri,
Gluck, and Weber. If the reader will refer to the Gluck preface
previously quoted and to the excerpts from Weber's letters, he will
perceive how in this system Wagner was only carrying out their
ideas in a musical form invented by himself. This new method of
Wagner's has been imitated with disastrous results by some
composers to whose works it was unsuited, and to whose genius it
was foreign. Wiser modern writers, like Massenet and Verdi, have
adopted the broader features of it—the continuous melody, the
arioso declamation, and the independence and illustrative agency of
the orchestra—without attempting to make extensive use of leading
motives. Massenet has used them moderately, Verdi not at all. But in
Falstaff Verdi has filled his orchestration with illustrative melodic
fragments, which are not repeated. All recent composers have
treated the orchestral parts of their operas with much freedom, and
have scored them with great instrumental richness. This advance in
operatic writing is due chiefly to Wagner. It is quite impossible to
estimate at a time so soon after the composer's death how deep and
permanent will be his influence upon operatic art, but it is plain that
every writer of today has yielded some allegiance to him, and every
one has striven to attain dramatic fidelity. Better librettos are written
for operas; and public taste, in almost every country where opera is

given, demands that the lyric stage shall present for consideration a
genuine drama per musica. This demand for sincerity has spread
into other branches of musical art, and it can fairly be said that
Wagner has done more for the general advancement of musical
taste in his day and immediately after it than any other composer
who ever lived.

N
Chapter XXVII
The Lessons of Musical History
Characteristics of the three great periods: Polyphonic, Classic and Romantic—
Purposes of composers and possibilities of music in each—Limitations of the
periods and their reasons—The contest between Classicism and Romanticism.
O critical review of the development of the tone art is complete
without notice of the intellectual and emotional impulses which
governed that development, and of the characteristics of the three
grand periods into which the history of music is divided. Two primary
impulses have operated in the formulation of a system of musical
art. These impulses are called Classicism and Romanticism. The
terms are very glibly used by many music lovers, but are not
definitely understood by all. The ordinary concert-goer, whose
terminology is nothing if not vague and unprecise, calls all artistic
music, above the level of that heard in operettas or ballrooms,
classic. The term should be strictly applied to those works which
have stood the test of time and have by the general consent of
enlightened music lovers been accepted as masterpieces. From the
fact, however, that the great masterpieces of the classic composers
were conspicuous for their development of a clear, symmetrical, and
logical form, the term classical in music has come to be applied to
all works in which pure beauty of form and matter are the most
conspicuous features. Romantic is applied to music in which the
form is made for the immediate purpose of a particular work, and is
the direct outgrowth of the thought contained in that work. As Dr.
Parry has worded it:—
'Classical' is used of works which have held their place in general
estimation for a considerable time, and of new works which are
generally considered to be of the same type and style. Hence the

name has come to be especially applied to works in the forms which
were adopted by the great masters of the latter part of the last
century, as the instrumental works in the sonata form and operas
constructed after the received traditions; and in this sense the term
was used as the opposite to 'romantic' in the controversy between
the musicians who wished to retain absolutely the old forms and
those, like Schumann, who wished music to be developed in forms
which should be more the free inspiration of the composer and less
restricted in their systematic development.
The controversy is now at an end, and it is generally conceded that
a modern composer may fully choose whether he will embody his
romantic thought in the classic sonata form, as Brahms did, or make
new forms to suit his purpose, after the manner of Liszt and
Tschaikowsky. The contest between classicism and romanticism
began as soon as musical science had formulated sufficient law to
enable composers to work according to some system. The very
development of the classical era itself was due to the impulses of
romanticism. But the process of perfecting form is a purely
intellectual operation. Hence the dominance of formal development
was due to a belief that form was of paramount importance in
music, and to a determination to work according to that belief. The
dominance of romanticism, or free emotional impulse, could only
come when composers had arrived at the intellectual conviction that
this impulse ought to be permitted to make its own forms according
to its needs. At this point I must ask the reader to accept a
somewhat long quotation from another book of my own (What is
Good Music?), simply because I cannot present in any different
form what I have already said and now desire to say again:
Music was originally a free dictation of fancy or feeling, and it dates
back to the night of time. When I say 'free,' I mean in respect to
form. It was probably a kind of intonation employed in the solemn
speech of ceremonials, as instanced in the First Book of Samuel, x.
5: 'After that thou shalt come to the hill of God, where is a garrison
of the Philistines; and it shall come to pass, when thou art come

thither to the city, thou shalt meet a company of the prophets
coming down from a high place with a psaltery and a tabret and a
pipe and a harp before them; and they shall prophesy.' Further
historical support of the probability that song began in mere
inflections of the voice is found in the old Neume notation, which
preceded the notation now in use. The Neumes were marks,
somewhat like the Greek accents, placed over the vowels of a text,
to indicate the intervals, up or down, through which the voice should
pass in intoning. What we now recognize as melody was developed
by gradual growth from intonations of this kind. Rhythm must have
made its appearance in music as soon as it did in the verses to
which music was set. Eugene Veron, in his 'Æsthetics,' says:—
'A very important characteristic of ancient languages was rhythm. The more or less
regular recurrence of intonations and of similar cadences constitutes for children
and savages the most agreeable form of music. The more the rhythm is
accentuated the better they are pleased; they love not only its sound, but its
movement also.... The most civilized nations cannot escape this tyranny of
rhythm.... Rhythm seems, indeed, to contain some general law, possessing power
over almost all living things. One might say that rhythm is the dance of sound, as
dancing is the rhythm of movement. The farther we go back into the past, the
more marked and dominant is it found in language. It is certain that at one period
of the development of humanity rhythm constituted the only music known, and it
was even intertwined with language itself.'
The earliest music, then, must have been a kind of intonation, in
which the rhythm was simply that of the text, and the melody a
derivative of the inflections of the voice, as dictated by the natural
utterance of that text. The most artificial attempts in music have
been based on the idea that we could return to that primitive form.
One attempt was that of the founders of the church chant; the other
was that of the inventors of opera. It is incumbent upon us to
consider now only the first of these. At the beginning of modern
artistic music (not the music of the people, the folk songs) we find
the Gregorian chant, a musically formless droning of the church
liturgy, in which the only rhythm was that of the text, and the
melody was the outgrowth of mere intonation. The cultivators of
artistic music were the monks, who found as material ready to hand

only the folk songs of the people and the music of the Greeks. The
latter appealed to these cloistered mediæval scholars as the only
proper material for churchly use, and they set to work to develop a
system. It was inevitable that modern scientific music should begin
with the invention of the materia musicæ. These old monks had first
to develop melody, and it was natural that having once started upon
that labor they should carry it out to its logical issue. Melodic form is
more obvious than harmonic, hence they developed it. Having once
got the melodic idea firmly fixed in their minds, they conceived a
composition to be a combination of melodies, and when at some
period about the end of the eleventh century the device of imitating
in a second voice the melody uttered by the first was invented,
counterpoint, single and double, grew with great rapidity.
In their exploration of the possibilities of melodic combinations,
Okeghem, Des Prés, and their successors laid down the primary laws
of music and consequently established the first forms, for in music
form is the first manifestation of law. The first of all musical forms
was that found in the songs of the people in which the rhythmic
dependence of the music upon the text was the controlling principle.
But the earliest scientific composers, the monks and church writers,
having only the liturgy in mind, ignored the folk songs and so robbed
themselves of the aid of the simple rhythmic forms dependent upon
verse. They naturally could not avail themselves of these forms
because the liturgy was not written in verse.
Having, therefore, nothing to serve as a model, they were obliged to
start from the foundation and build a wholly new musical system.
Thus they produced, in a series of developments occupying nearly
700 years, the most closely knit and purely intellectual group of
musical forms, those classed as canonic or fugal. Hence we find that
the first of the three great periods of musical history, the Polyphonic,
is chiefly distinguished by intellectual characteristics, because, as I
have said, the evolution of form is in the main an intellectual
process.

But even the canonic forms were modified by the irrepressible spirit
of romanticism. Whenever in the history of music the desire to
express one's self has acted upon a man of original mind it has
caused a change in forms. The first period of the Netherlands
school, for example, was devoted to the formulation of musical
science. In the second period came Josquin des Prés, whose desire
for pure beauty in music led him to modify the forms left him by
Okeghem. In the third period, as we have seen, Willaert and others
still further modified forms and introduced the element of tone-
painting. In the fourth period we find Lasso again modifying forms
and introducing the element of pure emotional expression, which, in
so far as unaccompanied church music is concerned, was perfected
by his great contemporary, Palestrina. In later periods we find that
Haydn laid the foundations of the sonata, Mozart of the concerto
and genuine opera, Beethoven changed the whole trend and scope
of the symphony, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt remodelled the
diction and the technics of the piano, and Wagner produced an
absolutely new operatic form. These are only a few instances. This
book is made up of the accounts of these and others.
Every original genius in music, then, has something to alter existing
forms. Why? Because he could not say exactly what he wished in the
forms as he found them. Classicism, in its old sense always resisted
just such movements. Original geniuses are not numerous. One
makes or changes a form. The mechanical workers (often mistaken
for geniuses) take the forms left by the geniuses and use them. The
impression spreads that the form is the essential thing, and he who
does not strictly adhere to it is condemned. An era of formalism
usually follows any great improvement made in form by an original
mind. This continues till another original mind makes a new
departure, which is accomplished always in the face of opposition.
This opposition is not wholly wrong, for it must be proved that a
man is a genius before it can be admitted that he has a right to offer
a new form to the world. It may be that his genius is purely
technical, as in the case of Liszt, or wholly spiritual, as in the case of
Schumann, but there must be something convincing in the man and

his work. A small mind which has nothing to offer cannot justify an
alteration of accepted forms.
The contest between classicism and romanticism, now at an end,
since classicism simply means devotion to pure beauty of form and
matter, is exhibited throughout the three great periods of musical
history. The Polyphonic period may be regarded as extending from
the beginning of the French school, 1100 A. D., to the death of Bach,
1750. This, as the reader will see, includes the transfer of the
technics of polyphonic writing from vocal to instrumental music. The
classic period, that in which the great works in the sonata form were
produced, extends from the production of Haydn's first symphony,
1754, to the production of Beethoven's Eroica symphony in 1804.
Then came a transition period, during which the romantic element in
music was pushed to the front by the Eroica and the fifth, sixth,
and seventh of Beethoven's symphonies. In 1821 Weber's Der
Freischütz was produced, and Schubert's Der Erl-König was first
sung in public. From that time the romantic school in music has been
dominant.
The chief value of the study of musical history to the music lover is
the acquisition of a correct point of view, and it is to aid in that
acquisition by the reader of this book that I have written these
observations upon the characters and purposes of the three great
periods. In listening to the music of any composer the hearer should
take into account the general tendency, purpose, and scope of
musical art of his period and also the particular aims of the
composer. No one has a right to say that Mozart failed because he
did not achieve what Beethoven did. Mozart accomplished all that
could be accomplished with the resources of musical art in his day,
and he himself enormously enlarged those resources. That is the
achievement of a genius. Every one has a right to say that Donizetti
and Bellini failed because they not only did not succeed in
accomplishing all that it was possible to accomplish in opera in their
time, but deliberately ignored the fundamental principles of the art
and also the immense advances in its technic made by Gluck and

Mozart. Every one must admit that Verdi has achieved the triumph of
a great master in his Falstaff, for he has utilized everything
contributed to operatic art by its leading geniuses, old and new, and
yet has produced an entirely original and independent work. In
conclusion, therefore, let me call the attention of the reader to the
salient characteristics of the three periods.
The Polyphonic, because of its labors in developing the most rigid of
forms, is chiefly notable for its intellectual characteristics. It displays
immense mastery of the elementary materials of music and an
enormous profundity of thought in purely technical processes. As it
advances one sees it gradually developing beauty of style, and
finally, from a state in which it is impossible to discover any emotion
at all, it advances to one in which there is the purest and most
beautiful embodiment of the devotional, contemplative spirit of the
religious life of its time. It is the religious life that is withdrawn from
the world, not that which is spent among men. For the embodiment
of the latter life one must turn to the music of German Protestantism
and study the works of Bach. Thus we find that Polyphonic music
finds its expressive field in religion, just as did Gothic architecture, to
which it so closely corresponds. There is no use of seeking in this
music for the note of earthly passion. For that you must go to the
opera, and later to the symphony.
The Classic period was the period of pure beauty in instrumental
music. It corresponds to the second and third periods of the
Netherlands school, and existed for the same reasons, namely, that
its formal materials had been developed just far enough to permit its
composers to make beautiful effects without aiming at an organized
system of expression. In the Classic period we find wonderful
symmetry of form, a continual subordination of profound learning to
a pleasing style, and a sweetness and serenity of the emotional
atmosphere. In Haydn and Mozart we find simple and tuneful
subjects and bright, good-natured, and perspicuous treatment. In
the sonatas and symphonies of the Classic period one finds no
attempt at the expression of anything deeper than sentiment. The

note of passion was attempted only in opera, but it was never
permitted even there to create a serious disturbance of pure musical
beauty.
The Romantic period took its spirit from the romantic movement in
German poetry. In it one finds a constant struggle for the definite
expression of the profoundest emotions of our nature. Its forms are
flexible, its diction the richest attainable, and its conception of
beauty based largely on its ideal of truth. It is in this period that
music now is, but it does not follow that no contemporaneous
composer has a right to offer us a work in the classic form and style.
We must accept it as an example of pure musical beauty, and not
look for an expressiveness which the composer did not seek to
attain. The tendency of composers of absolute music at present is to
make less and less use of the strict classic forms. But there are
certain fundamental principles of music which they cannot ignore
without danger to the art. The music lover who has an
understanding of the spirit of musical history will best be able to
appreciate their purposes and their achievements, without losing the
power to enjoy the less pretentious works of the fathers of modern
music.

Index
A capella church music, 79.
A minor, the scale of, 6.
Abou Hassan, Weber's, 349.
Académie de Musique, the, 295.
Acis et Galathée, Lulli's, 302.
Adam and Eve, Theile's, 338.
Adonis, Perrin's, 295.
Æschylus, 200, 238, 239.
Æsthetics, Veron's, 384.
Africaine, L', Meyerbeer's, 325, 326.
Agnes von Hohenstaufen, Spontini's, 323.
Agricola, 93.
Aïda, Verdi's, 282, 284, 285, 288.
Akebar, Roi de Mogol, Mailly's, 295.
Alaric, 55.
Alceste, Gluck's, 314, 315.
Alceste, Lulli's, 302.
Alexandria, Christian communities of, 2.
Allegri, Gregorio, 77;
his Misere, 78.
All Souls' College, 63.
Ambrose, St., 3;
his system of chanting, 3, 4, 71, 74.
America, Wagner's works in, 358.
American Academy of the Dramatic Arts, the, in
New York, 248.

Amico fido, L', Bardi's, 236.
Amsterdam, 49.
Anerio, Felice, 77;
his masses, 78.
Anhalt-Koethen, 121.
Anima e Corpo, Cavaliere's, 148;
production of, 149;
the first oratorio, 203.
Anti-buffonists, the, 309.
Antioch, 3.
Antiphonal writing, 46.
Antwerp, 40.
Apollo, 200.
Apostles, the, 2.
Appassionata, Beethoven's, 145.
Arabs, the, 57.
Arcadelt, 39, 75.
Architecture, Doric, 69, 70.
Architecture, Gothic, 70.
Arezzo, Guido d', 19, 86.
Aria, five kinds of, 273.
Aria da capo, the, 263, 265;
Scarlatti's development of, 269, 270;
Verdi's use of, 282, 287.
Aria form, the, 318, 363, 364.
Ariadne, Perrin's, 295.
Arianna, Monteverde's, 254, 260.
Ariodant, Méhul's, 322.
Arioso style, the, of Italy, 210, 287, 288, 330,
372, 377.
Aristoxenus, on rhythm, 238.

Armand, St., 14.
Armide, Gluck's, 315.
Armide, Lulli's, 302, 303-306.
Arnstadt, 121.
Arpeggios, 105, 107.
Art, the Renaissance in, 69.
Art of Fugue, The, Bach's, 122.
Artaserse, Gluck's, 313.
Artusi, 260.
Ascanio, Saint-Säens', 332.
Attaque du Moulin, L', Bruneau's, 334.
Auber, Daniel François, operas of, 323.
Augsburg, 95.
Ave Maria, Verdi's, 283.
Avignon, papal court removed to, 24.
B minor, Bach's mass in, 153.
Babcock, Alpheus, 97.
Bacchus, the altar of, 200.
Bach, Carl Philip Emmanuel,
on clavichord playing, 108;
piano sonatas of, 130, 133, 134, 161;
the father of the sonata, 132;
work of, 132-134;
his departures from polyphony, 133, 135,
138, 139, 144;
symphonies of, 161.
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 90, 91, 93, 98, 100;
his Well-Tempered Clavichord, 100, 106,
122, 139;
his use of the thumb, 109;
his fingering, 109;

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