Cultural question - how to avoid being That Guy

[Notorious E.O.C.]

Sounds like you need to be identifying more fertile ground for your talents and ambitions.

Too often in my career I got stubborn and stuck it out working in an adverse environment that I could not fix ... longer than I should have. For a while it builds skills and character. Sometimes you come to the conclusions that others can make bad decisions faster than you could possibly fix them, and there is little Return on Investment for doing so.

Yeah. I've come to that conclusion. Having been in a couple of unsalvageable positions in my previous corporate life, I'm more mindful of the cues now - and the Household Command Authority also is well-attuned of the indicators that my BS filter is full. For the moment, the training benefits are worth the frustration. I do foresee a point when that will no longer be the case - but by that point, the training I'll have received here will have made me much more prepared for whatever the next step is.

[BehindBlueI's]

However, from an emergency management mission standpoint, the lack of professional autonomy in strategy, planning, preparedness actions, and interfacing with other public safety partner agencies is a crippling impediment. I don't know how to fix that without political leverage at the policy/executive level than I am highly unlikely to develop in this position.

So, two bits of advice.

1) Realize you can only control what you can control and don't stress about anything outside that parameter.

2) Document your attempts to fix the issues. When the issues inevitably bite someone on the ass, a fall guy will be sought. Memories will be "sketchy" about being warned of particular issues. Keep a backup on a USB or personal computer that can't be "lost" by your organization.

[Notorious E.O.C.]

Roger that. Former technical writer here. My documentation has documentation.

[Duces Tecum]

Unfortunately, my biggest headaches are not cultural but political. The command staff here, as well as the jurisdiction's executive leadership, exhibit a bad combination of micromanagement and benign neglect toward EM. Put simply, there's a lot of pride in what, from my professional perspective, is a Potemkin village of an emergency management program. Because of that, there's no support for program improvement, because pursuing improvement would require someone to admit that the current state is less than perfect. As someone whose drive in this field is to identify and solve problems, directly-ordered inactivity on critical vulnerabilities is driving me nuts.

With regards to the subordination of emergency management to a law enforcement agency, I tried to go into this with an open mind. As I commented in the somewhat-recent EM thread in General, this organizational model seems mainly to be a regional thing, and it's not one with which I had prior personal experience. After a year and a half working in this framework, my opinion is that being an employee of this police department is usually a very good thing, but having emergency management answerable to law enforcement is a fail for my profession. To expand on what I noted above, the LE focus on constant immediate response to calls for service is fundamentally incompatible with the long-term "blue-sky" work of EM to develop relationships and lay groundwork between the rare "gray-sky" catastrophic incidents. This drives misunderstanding and neglect, even at the command staff level where strategic thinking is otherwise occurring, because EM is not seen working at the same operational tempo as patrol officers and therefore is not perceived to be a priority. This is not a criticism of law enforcement as a whole, nor even this department: from an LE mission standpoint, that prioritization is correct and necessary. However, from an emergency management mission standpoint, the lack of professional autonomy in strategy, planning, preparedness actions, and interfacing with other public safety partner agencies is a crippling impediment. I don't know how to fix that without political leverage at the policy/executive level than I am highly unlikely to develop in this position.

Ok, I understand now. You're in the insurance business. Two useful things about insurance: (1) there's data regarding how often it's needed and for what losses, and (2) the buyer chooses the potential injuries for which he wants coverage. As I see it, a major responsibility of your position is Item 1: present the data. A major part of your supervisor's job is Item 2: choose the coverage.

The insurance agent doesn't make coverage decisions . . . but he documents every contact with his client (supervisor). Sooner or later the odd catastrophe will occur and well, you know what flows downhill. When (not if) that happens good documentation will go a long way towards immunizing you from bad "coverage" decisions. See BehindBlueI's post #22. The other side of that imbroglio will find you with much improved "political leverage at the policy/executive level".

[Cypher]

I'm a security guard not a cop but I think the circumstances of my job give me some insight.

Every place I work I'm a third party contractor not a client employee. I'm not one of the cool kids and I don't try to be. I show up on time and ready to work for every shift and do my job to the best of my ability. I also try to understand where I fit in their business model. In my case that's as simple as knowing how to handle a delivery without bothering the client supervisor.

I stay out of the client company's drama. It's none of my business and I have no opinion. I'm courteous but not overly friendly to everyone I meet. I try to be helpful but stay out of the way. The biggest thing is they're "us" and I'm "them" and I never presume to try to cross that line.

What I've found is that the client company respects me and frequently sends emails to my employer telling them that I'm the best security guard since Paul Blart. (Every so often I get a bonus check for "exemplary customer service".

ETA: I also ignore any and all "you're just a security guard." comments. As far as I'm concerned they never happened.