Is there general literature on how to be a “responder”?
There seems to be a real tension between doing things to practice now and getting sucked into those things to a degree that degrades your ability to respond. I feel like we saw this quite often during the pandemic and I can see it happening as people pivot now.
Other fields must have solved this - any suggested reading?
“Thought about”, likely - not sure “solved”.
Sport, perhaps? Seems likely to be some operations research-like work considering it, or B-school case studies. Various war college departments might have occasionally thought on this - can ask after it when I’m next visiting.
Like @pearsonca says, I’ve seen it more from business perspective. Thinking of The Fifth Discpline for a constantly learning organization. I think they mention Admiral Rickover’s nuclear safety program… That and all of Jeff Liker’s books on the Toyota Way. While they have a focus on business and manufacturing the principles are translatable (I think). How do we institutionalise problem-recognition and solving. Substitute any “manufacturing issue” with “disease outbreak” and you’re off to the races.
@medewitt I think @samabbott 's question is perhaps more subtle than constant-learning, continuous-improvement, etc programs.
As I read it, Q is how to balance prepare-do-recover activities in organizations that are regularly cycling between on-off modes (crudely stratified), and particularly how to avoid prepare/recover activies from distracting from doing.
I suspect that comes up a bit in your suggestions, but is mostly implicit rather than directly addressed. In a lot of businesses the goal is to minimize prepare/recover time and those books address how to effectively fit learnings into that short period between long do cycles (or to make room at all for prepare/recover phase). Ideally, for crisis response organizations, the goal is to minimize the do phase, so perspectively likely out of sync.
I mentioned sport and military explicitly, as they have defined cycles of prepare-do-recover, and issues like over-training absolutely come into play. Seems likely to be of a different sort, and maybe @samabbott is also worrying about external forces (e.g. they like the “prepare” phase products too much & leadership gets distracted chasing short run approval instead of critical mission).
This is a good recommendation - added it to my reading pile. Soon I will be the world’s best manager!
As @pearsonca says though what I was trying to get at here is the tension between preparing, doing and recovering. I actually think the issue is reversed vs @pearsonca though as doing is so incentivised vs other actions typically (as people want short-term output).
Ideally, for crisis response organizations, the goal is to minimize the do phase, so perspectively likely out of sync.
i.e. this (good to see @pearsonca disagreeing with themselves 
)
also worrying about external forces (e.g. they like the “prepare” phase products too much & leadership gets distracted chasing short run approval instead of critical mission
Yes exactly.
From: Christian Testa over on Mastodon
One way to think about this might be to look into the literature on “organizing [social movements].”
What you may be describing is organizing people and scientists around pandemic preparedness.
My thinking is that organizers in general face this dilemma: we can sit around and about argue strategy, and that’s important, but what are we actually doing to be ready when the time calls for action?
I really like the thinking in terms of social movements (and that of course is kind of the idea behind what we are doing here).
I agree there is an issue of talking about doing something and doing it but I also think that “doing it” can be preparing to do vs trying overly hard to link today’s activities into a preparedness roadmap for the future.
I really like the Citizen’s climate lobby post.
But we don’t become transformed in isolation. We become transformed when we’re in relationship with others.” Working together rather than in isolation is a key feature of organizing that keeps people more involved over the long term.
Just be careful re this sort of outcome The Newsroom - Occupy Wallstreet Interview - YouTube