The Cajun Navy and Dispersed Initiative

The story

On August 11, 2016, a slow-moving low-pressure system settled over south Louisiana. Over the next three days, some areas received more than two feet of rain; Watson, in Livingston Parish, recorded about 31 inches. Statewide, the system produced roughly three times as much rain as Hurricane Katrina. Because it was an unnamed system, never classified as a tropical storm, many residents did not treat the warnings as seriously as they would a hurricane forecast, and the flooding was far worse than most expected. By the fourth day, more than ten Louisiana rivers had reached flood stage, several of which, including the Amite, crested higher than ever recorded.

In Ascension Parish, the Amite River overtopped a levee, flooding about 15,000 structures—nearly one-third of the parish’s homes. Statewide, parish agencies received more than 11,000 requests for rescue or assistance. The flood killed 13 people and damaged 146,000 homes across 56 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes.

Residents saw the growing scale of the emergency, and were concerned agencies would not be able to respond to all requests rapidly enough. So they hitched up jon boats and bass boats and headed toward the flooding. In Gonzales, more than 100 boats assembled in the Cabela’s parking lot. Volunteer dispatchers vetted rescue requests from Facebook and the walkie-talkie app Zello, then paired boaters with Ascension Parish deputies. Troy Green brought his boat to a National Guard staging area, volunteered, and spent the day helping a local partner rescue people from flooded homes. At one point, he carried nine people, a cat, and two dogs. These volunteers became known as the Cajun Navy and completed thousands of rescues in Ascension Parish alone.

How we see it through leadership economics

The local response was spontaneous; it hadn’t been initiated by any official agency. So what made it work? We find that it illustrates the effectiveness of dispersed initiative. Dispersed initiative is one of those concepts that is often in vogue in the leadership zeitgeist, something leaders often know they “should do.” But in high-stakes conditions, leaving crucial decisions outside of your control is terrifying.

Dispersed initiative is powerful because it takes advantage of the detailed information available to the people actually doing the work. In this case, the most important information is local and, most importantly, changes rapidly. Allocating who goes where and knowing how they get there requires knowing which streets are passable right now. It requires knowing who is trapped in an attic (but wasn’t an hour ago), and where currents are too strong for a small boat. A distant command post cannot gather and act on those details quickly enough. Centralizing decisions would have delayed action while information moved up and down the chain, making directives completely out of touch with reality.

The parish leadership succeeded by placing a light structure around decentralized action. Dispatchers did not direct the boats; they set a few parameters—verify each call, pair a boater with a deputy, and report back—then left on-the-water decisions to the crews. The intent was clear: get people out. This reflects the framework’s central tradeoff, which is moving decision authority closer to the information increases speed and ownership. However, it also reduces the leader’s control. Under what conditions is this loss of control even possible?

Pushing decisions down the chain requires trust. Official authorities needed to trust that these local efforts would be helpful rather than put more people at risk or enable bad actors. That necessary level of trust came from having a shared set of values and years of building a community around them (not to mention knowing that navigating a Louisiana swamp in a bass boat was equivalent to years of training navigating flooded streets). That happens over decades of small interactions that refined and enforced those values. As the distance increases and officials have to rely on complete strangers to make choices, it requires years of being part of that culture and knowing someone maintains those values even when you don’t know them personally.

When conditions change faster than decisions can move up and down official channels, the two essential ingredients for successfully building a dynamic, agile response are (1) clear intent (not just a clear objective, but the principle behind the objective), and (2) trust built by shared values (a culture) refined and enforced in everyday interactions.

A quote we’re thinking about

We are made for co-operation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another then is contrary to nature.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.1 (George Long translation)