Matt Cranney

Welcome back to another episode of Fast Break, where leaders share the plays that drive clarity, alignment, and impact in today’s rapidly changing business world. This month, we’re aligning with something that’s incredibly important, National Safety Month. Because while safety often shows up as policies, procedures, and prevention strategies, the reality is this, at some point, something goes wrong, a fire, a serious workplace injury, a natural disaster, a major operational disruption.

And in those moments, it’s not about what you intended to do, it’s about how you respond. And that’s exactly what we’re diving into today. At M3, there’s a team and a capability built for those moments. R3, Rapid Response and Recovery, designed to step in when clients need it most and help them stabilize, navigate, and recover. And there’s nobody better to unpack that than today’s guests.

Chris Halverson, Senior Director of Risk Management and R3 at M3, and Dylan Schroeder, Risk Manager at M3, are both here with us today. Chris, Dylan, welcome to Fast Break.

Thanks, Matt.

Looking forward to it.

01:11 Matt Cranney

Let’s start our time together with you giving us some perspective on your work at M3 and how you both serve our clients at their biggest moments of need. Chris, maybe I’ll come to you first.

01:22 Chris Halverson

We provide guidance, proactive services to our clients based off of exposures as part of their operations, whether it be a public entity, whether it be a manufacturing facility, schools across the board. So one of the things that we really try to identify is a word we like to use in the marketplace is operational intimacy. Really having an understanding of our clients’ risks, how we can respond to proactive risk management services,

But then secondarily having that knowledge in the event of a loss, our team really can come in proactively in a really negative situation and providing guidance as a part of the plan.

02:07 Matt Cranney

I love that. And that’s a great call, Chris. And of course we want to highlight, you know, as part of National Safety Money, it’s not just R3 at M3, it’s our risk management team. And you both are a big part of that. R3 is what we deploy in those situations that Chris mentioned when it’s really needed sort of on an emergency basis. So Dylan, what about you? How would you serve our clients in that context?

02:31 Dylan Schroeder

Chris did a good job on touching really what we’re about, and it’s being proactive. And with that, prevention is the goal. So when we’re working with clients and working on a proactive strategy, typically we like to dive into SWOT analyses, really learn and engage what their business is.

Really the five key steps that we take with every account is one, identify the risk. So depending on whether that is, you know, process driven risk or geographical risk, you know, there’s a lot of things that go into that. But then once the risk’s identified, really assessing it and

We like to prioritize our risk instead of bucketing them. So really giving it a risk priority number. So when we look at a laundry list of risks that are on the table, well, how do we prioritize these properly? And we calculate that. We evaluate the risk, the frequency, and the probability that that risk is to impact your business.

Wrapping those two up into a strategic mitigation plan that really the client can buy into and that we can establish a risk management plan with, paired with Remedy doing the work and then continuously monitoring it. We really look at this as a systematic cycle to partnering with our clients.

03:45 Matt Cranney

I love that you both talked a lot about prevention and strategy in planning. And obviously that is the bedrock of any great risk management approach. And at M3, that’s obviously where we want to lead. But let’s go to the moment that maybe defines that work, right? And that’s every organization believes that they’re prepared until maybe something actually happens. Dylan, I’m going to come back to you first. What does that moment look like when a client realizes, this is real. Like this is a real situation. This is where we got to break glass in case of emergency on that plan that has been put together. What does that look like in practical terms?

04:28 Dylan Schroeder

Yeah, I mean, you talk about the emotional elements of this, you know, grief, guilt, fear, uncertainty. It’s a scary reality that it happens more than people think. Our role is to be an expert and guide and direct to reduce loss exposure as much as possible. We talked about prevention and preparation and being proactive. What does that really look like within our business contingency plans? What is the emergency response team? Who is it? What are the responsibilities outlined in there? What kind of communication plans do we have? How are we going to talk to media? What are internal updates, vendors, customer relations looking like?

And then what are key contractors or contacts? Obviously, top of that list, we got M3, of course, with R3 and Chris Halverson, who we have on the call here. But you talk about, is there electrical issues? Is there flooding issues, remediation, security? If you can answer what your plan is with all that you know, in conjunction with training, audits and continuous improvement, you know, those are really what it means to be prepared when, you know, that is this real moment.

05:34 Chris Halverson

You know, Dylan referenced there, you know, from an R3 perspective, which is maybe that sort of upper tier of events that happen, but what are in your experience, and you’ve responded to so many, but what are the most common events that trigger, you know, that R3 response?

Oftentimes when we think of a rapid response and recovery event, it’s usually events like loss of life, active shooter situations, fire losses on property. As we know, in the next couple of days, windstorms coming up, tornadic activities where you have more of what’s called a business interruption and insurance where it really triggers that we need to stop our operations due to a large catastrophic situation. That’s where it’s going to trigger our team to come in to assist our clients.

We think about all the different facets that go into that from media management, law enforcement, fire, EMS, injured employees. There’s a lot of chaotic things that take shape and continue to take shape over the first couple of hours of the event. And that’s where we really want to help our clients scope out and triage a plan.

06:44 Matt Cranney

For our audience listening today, we want them to realize every business needs a plan.

Because for every business, something will go wrong. It’s sort of unfortunately a matter of time because these things just happen as we are in operation as businesses. Can you share, based on your experience, what can go wrong in those first few hours if there really isn’t a clear plan or support system in place? What are those things that our audience listening today should avoid or think about in those first few hours?

07:17 Dylan Schroeder

It ultimately comes down to if you don’t plan, then you’re planning to fail. And the perfect word for it is chaos. Essentially, we want to try and reduce the amount of loss, exposure and damages as much as possible, but without a plan and everyone moving harmoniously throughout this tragic event, depending on what it is, we’re really setting ourselves up for a loss.

07:42 Matt Cranney

And Chris, what about for you, at the R3 level of response? Like what are some of those things to avoid mistakes that can happen in those first couple of hours?

07:51 Chris Halverson

As we think about any type of event, usually they don’t happen Monday through Friday from eight till four o’clock. So oftentimes we see some failures in those types of situations where there’s a delay in reporting, i.e. either to our M3 team or the insurance carrier, because as Dylan just talked about of

We want to make sure if it’s a property loss, how can we also protect the rest of the property? So oftentimes the client’s like, hey, I can’t get in touch with the insurance carrier because it’s the weekend. The other thing I think about too, Matt, is a lot of times we see failures of we’ve got a large event, law enforcement’s there, EMS, and all of a sudden three different media channels come in. And a client says, hey, no comment. We’re not going to tell you anything that’s going on. Really puts you in a bad light. So a lot of times with our communications director really kind of helps sketch out, hey, what’s going on in the initial triage of that event? It really kind of paints them the right likes.

We always think about really three different areas when it comes to that communication strategy internal communications, external communications. And then thirdly, oftentimes as family, and then clients of theirs that might be impacted due to our loss. So a lot of times if that’s delayed, it really puts that client behind two or three steps and stay in front of managing a loss when it comes to that media management, as well as really documenting, because a lot of times you have a loss.

How do you properly document what you have, and to Dylan’s point of that business continuity strategy, really outlining what are the key components into your operation? What are the critical equipment? Because oftentimes, if it’s not identified early on, we have that one main component that fails or is destroyed. How long does it take to get up an operation? That’s where I look at that first couple hours of really having that tight as a part of the triage of that claim.

09:52 Matt Cranney

The work done beforehand really then shows itself in that moment, right? Was it the Muhammad Ali quote where it was everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face? Maybe it was Mike Tyson. It’s sort of being prepared when those events are not happening as if they are right. And that’s where a relationship with M3 risk management or our R3 team will be really helpful.

Chris, I want to just keep with you for a second on one more question about R3. So we talked about that first couple of hours being really critical and thinking about all the things that you covered from your role and what part of the response phase requires the most discipline or experience to get right?

10:38 Chris Halverson

It’s not initially triage because oftentimes we think about a large loss exposure. Everyone’s moving in different directions. So what we really try to tie in and really educate our clients of creating what’s called your EOC, your emergency operating command center. Getting your top tier executives into that room to identify what are key exposures, how are we going to address them proactively in taking a disciplined decision every half hour.

11:07 Dylan Schroeder

So I actually just went through this and I would call this a success story, but it’s really ownership within leadership. So safety comes, you know, from the top down in most cases, you can tell what companies get it. It’s a culture that’s ingrained from the top. So typically when you’re working with these types of individuals, you know, that safety is trickled down from the top. There’s this, you know, personal responsibility element where, you know, after a serious injury, it’s how could we let this happen? How, how didn’t we know about this? Or, you know, great leaders own the action items. They own leading the progress, the drive, the change that happens after it, because

You know, these companies, they come out more resilient ultimately in the end. They take a personal stake in it, I guess, is what I’ve seen the most from those types of leaders.

12:02 Matt Cranney

Chris, anything you’d add to that based on what you’ve seen?

12:05 Chris Halverson

What I usually oftentimes see is the change in culture and philosophy. You know, and I’ve got a couple clients that have had major catastrophic property losses, and what they’ve been able to do is one, learn from that. But oftentimes to Dylan’s point, we see them coming together to say, how do we change our practices? That’s where we see kind of that buy in from that CFO, COO to say, I’m going to lead on this because I need to own it just as much as my employees do.

12:38 Dylan Schroeder

In a lot of these cases, it seems like that ownership is like they didn’t know what they didn’t know. And so the client I just went through this with, they’re like, we’re best in class in everything that we do, and that includes safety. We didn’t know X, Y, and Z needed to be put in place. Now we’re going to move that needle to make sure that we’re best in class in safety too. So it’s a mentality component as well that I wanted to add into what Chris said.

13:05 Matt Cranney

Yeah, I love that. It’s sort of the call of you can’t always control if things are going to happen, but you can control what happens after what’s happened.

And the ability to, when hard things come along, you have to get quickly to a place where you can ask, what is it here to teach me? And so sometime after the event, being able to sit down and go, so what will be different? How will we be best in class in safety in this situation?

13:34 Dylan Schroeder

Absolutely. And I would say that’s almost like the golden rule of corrective action. You know, okay, it happened once. What are we now doing to implement into our systems to ensure this never happens again?

13:45 Matt Cranney

Guys, one thing that I want to make sure we touch on here, you know, it’s almost like, and it can get overlooked in conversations like this is the human impact. You know, the things that both for our teams here and for our clients teams and the insurance companies teams, these events don’t just affect operations. I mean, they affect people, employees, families. Leaders making tough decisions in real time. So how do you support the human side of that crisis? Maybe not just the operational side.

14:15 Chris Halverson

Really, this is why real relationships matter. We’re real people that care deeply about you, your business, and your people. The word that comes to mind is empathy. You know, we see real life altering circumstances all the time. And You grow to know and care for these people we serve and, you know, being able to provide them on the emotional side as well as the operational side is critical.

14:43 Matt Cranney

During National Safety Month, and you guys both talked about it in the intro to our conversation, a lot of our focus is as it should be on prevention. And we sometimes maybe think about prevention as, you know, just our plans and of course that’s a huge part of it, but how should leaders be thinking about preparing their people, not just the processes for a potential event?

15:06 Chris Halverson

It’s a question that we deal a lot with the industries that we provide service to, because oftentimes we see there’s written procedures, but it hasn’t been practiced, as I talked about earlier, tabletop exercises, even the foundational things, Matt, of severe weather month. Are you truly doing evacuation drills, fire drills, things of that nature, that it’s written, but is it really practiced?

And the more that we can get anyone to continue to practice that and application based, the employees are then going to benefit and have a true understanding. It really gets them feeling like, hey, my company’s taking care of me. We’re running through some uncomfortable drills that I feel better about it.

15:52 Matt Cranney

Yeah, it’s like you talked about before, Dylan, like how do we not just put, you know, safety as a value on the wall, or on a sign or in our offer materials to new employees, but how do we live it? And how do we get comfortable when maybe nobody wants to do a tornado drill or run, hide, fight drill?

One of the phrases that I use a lot here is a value is not a value unless you’re willing to be punished for it. And punished is a strong word, right? But being able to, again, work with the employees of these companies and your own employees as you’re listening today, say, hey, this might not be the popular thing. People might be like, why do we have to do this? But if it’s a value, you’re going to be willing to lean into that.

16:34 Dylan Schroeder

I think that’s spot on. And I think it’ll really dovetail well into a lot of the things that we preach with our clients. And that’s why when we first get engagement with a client, it’s trying to get that foundational elements of behavioral, making sure that they’re addressing cultural issues because that’s where we see the biggest roadblocks is, is that cultural impact. So yeah, I think what you mentioned fits directly in with kind of our models.

17:03 Matt Cranney

Okay. One of the things that we try to be on fast break is really practical. So let’s bring this down to something every leader who’s listening today can act on this week. What are two or three things every organization should do right now to be better prepared for an event?

17:24 Dylan Schroeder

Yeah, so I got two things. The first, I think we’ve been preaching this pretty hard is be proactive in all elements of your safety program. So it’s not just emergency preparedness, but job hazard analyses, equipment integration. That’s a big thing that we’re seeing is people just buying equipment, but not making sure it’s up to standard and has all the right safeguards in place.

Thing two would be establishing an annual plan, you know, creating risk registers and ensuring you have a corrective action plan. It’s one thing to identify risk. It’s another thing to plan and mitigate. And this is the big area that I see missed. It’s, it’s really no different than driving a car with a check engine light on, you know, the sign is there now you need to act. So, you know, all these things add up and actually prevent these major events from occurring. It’s, it’s easy to point at what you didn’t do after a major event happens. So be proactive to prevent that from happening in the first place.

18:23 Chris Halverson

You know, the main thing is Dylan highlighted is the preventative side of it. But number one thing, as we think about the prevention, the training is what do you have in the event of a catastrophic situation? And it really ties into that business continuity. And the one thing that I try to tie into that, what are the critical components of your business? What if we had this type of a loss?

Oftentimes we don’t have that plan. That prolongs your loss exposure when it comes to an R3 event. So a lot of those really easy things you can put into play because oftentimes, like I said, they happen at midnight, one o’clock in the morning because I don’t want you in a situation where, oh, we got to wait till the morning until we can call someone.

19:10 Matt Cranney

Yeah. And again, to our theme of our conversation, it’s almost like, hey, in the NFL, they talk about, maybe even college bubble, they talk about scripted plays.Right? So when the quarterback comes out for that first drive, the second drive, they’ve already walked through the plays a whole bunch. They know what they’re going to call. They’re ready to go. And it’s that idea of how can our clients and people listening today, how can you script your first few plays so that you’re able to get momentum in the response based on the work that you do ahead of time to be prepared so that we can prevent so much of that.

Man, Chris, Dylan, this has been a hugely important conversation. And for me, if there’s one takeaway that stands out, it’s prevention is really important. And it’s also about being ready. And I think that’s what you two have done a great job calling us to in our conversation today. Because in those moments, speed matters. Clarity matters. Leadership matters.

You’ve called all those out and having the right people and the right plan in place can completely change the outcome. And that’s what risk management and R3 at M3 is all about. So Chris, Dylan, thank you both for joining us on Fast Break and to everyone listening as we recognize National Safety Month, take a moment this week to ask yourself if something happened tomorrow. Are we ready?

This has been Fast Break, brought to you by M3 Elevate. I’m Matt Cranney. Thank you for joining me. Do you want more tips to help grow and protect your business? Subscribe now and catch all of our episodes. And we’ll see you next time.