Working Wounded Blog: Loyalty vs. Competence -- Whose Side Are You On?

Sept. 7, 2005 — -- News Flash: By everyone's account, the relief effort in New Orleans offered far too little, far too late.

I've always been a huge "loyalty" guy. I think that organizations that stand behind their people and bosses who stand behind their word are the only way to do business today. In fact, before this week I would have said that loyalty is the key ingredient for building a successful organization. That is, until the disaster that hit New Orleans.

Reading the accounts about the Federal Emergency Management Agency taught me that we learned nothing from 9/11. We did not anticipate what might go wrong, we were not prepared to move quickly and we had a communication system that wasn't able to get the job done.

Think I'm exaggerating? According to Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, as quoted in The New York Times: "When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, he said FEMA officials turned them away. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said."

Given the need to rescue people and to make the street safe, armed guards actually had to be deployed to protect an emergency communication line from FEMA. It boggles the mind.

But it doesn't stop there. Also from the New York Times: "We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water," said Denise Bottcher, press secretary for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. "They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart."