Time for Panic, Time for Gratitude

There is no good time for panic when you're a public servant. Before a crisis hits, when life feels like it's business as usual, there's no point. Once a crisis hits, when life feels like it's spinning out of control, there's every incentive to panic. Something big has happened, and the sense of horror and overwhelm will start to rise. Your thoughts spin faster, adrenaline will flood your veins, and there will be such temptation to raise your voice, run around and do something, anything! Your reactive lizard brain will want to take over. This is a terrible time to panic, though. Dealing with a crisis is hard, and panicking doesn't help. Crisis response requires processing a lot of new information and making good decisions, and all that requires a calm, focused mind. So don't panic.

Every moment, however, is an opportunity for gratitude. During good times, you have the bandwidth to assess how well life is ticking along, look for opportunities for efficiencies, and implement improvements. You can invest in the ability of your future self to feel gratitude. Having spent my entire career either dealing with a crisis or waiting for the next one, I know it is absolutely rarer to have those moments of gratitude. With planning, however, it is possible.

California's 2020 Complete Count Census efforts were a good example of how planning can help avoid panic, since it became apparent after the 2016 election that the Republican administration would prefer to have a count that favored their supporters. (NPR had extensive coverage of this, and a good round-up can be found here: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/20/1044944618/census-citzenship-question-history-oversight-committee, downloaded May 31, 2024.)

A decennial census of all persons present in the United States is required by the Constitution. People are supposed to be counted, regardless of their wealth or other circumstances. These population counts are used in everything from apportioning Congressional seats to estimating poverty from survey data. However, many people who don't routinely interact with the government or wider society can be harder to count. These are often the people that need extra assistance from the safety net, and undercounting them systematcally gives even more weight to those with more privilege. But counting these populations can take extra effort. As one of the largest states, and a common landing spot for recent immigrants, California suspected it would be particurly likely to be hurt if those extra efforts were not made. Relying on the easy to count would put the state at a disadvantage.

Luckily, California recognized the risk in 2017 and was able to appropriate 187 million to set up the infrastructure to help get everyone counted. This wasn't easy, of course. It took years of effort and cooperation from a myriad of local organizations to do outreach. In the end, it had a better response rate than other states, even despite all the pandemic disruptions. It is likely that the state avoided losing more than one Congressional seat because of these efforts. (More information can be found here: https://census.ca.gov/, downloaded May 31, 2024.)

The state also benefited from lessons from the 2010 Census efforts. After the global financial crisis started in 2008, the state had very little money. California benefited from the federal government recognizing it needed to do more outreach. The state did make some efforts to connect with locals, but it was started closer to 2010, had less money, and didn't have the benefits of technology. Still, that experience helped make the case for the 2020 efforts.

When crises happen, it's easy to kick yourself in hindsight. Sometimes that avoidance of panic and regret is enough to encourage efforts to avoid bad things in the future. None of us like getting yelled at, and if that's the only feedback we get, it's tempting to manage defensively in a bureaucracy. But it's hard to know what to prioritize, because there are potential disasters everywhere. Far better and more satisfying to take the time to look at risks far in advance and think about what can be done to avoid problems in the end. It's rare to get the public to recognize your efforts when things are going well, though, so you have to make sure to recognize it for yourself. Bask in knowing that you averted disaster. Be grateful you don't have to panic. Take a moment to feel that satisfaction, and take a moment to savor the feeling of a job well done. And remember that feeling so you can set it up your future self.