In this episode of the Crisis Lab Podcast, host Kyle King speaks with Tom Sivak, Chief Emergency Manager at Emergency Management One, about the fundamental shift in the crisis management profession from a knowledge economy to an allocation economy.

What it reveals: the unsustainable nature of manual information processing in an era of polycrisis and velocity.

With emergency management agencies facing chronic understaffing and budgets that demand "more with less," the traditional model of the "Rolodex leader" who holds the entire plan in their head is failing. Sivak argues that trying to manually process the astronomical amount of data in modern crises is no longer a badge of honor, it is a strategic vulnerability.

This conversation offers a pragmatic roadmap for operationalizing AI not as a tech trend, but as a survival mechanism. It reflects what modern leadership demands: moving from being the "writer" of every brief to the "editor" of intelligence, building "blue sky" muscle memory so tools work when the pressure mounts, and reclaiming the "gut intuition" that only a human can provide.

Show Highlights

[04:00 ] Why AI is the only scalable solution for the "do more with less" mandate

[06:00 ] The "Forethought" Principle: Why using AI only during disasters guarantees failure

[08:00 ] Parallels to 1994: How the industry feared the internet before it became essential

[13:00 ] The maturity model shift: Moving leaders from "writers" to "editors"

[17:00 ] Using efficiency to focus on community resilience and mental health

[21:00 ] The Human Lever: Why algorithms can process data but cannot replace gut intuition

[23:00 ] Why value now comes from directing resources, not retaining facts

[25:00 ] Validating the Emergency Manager's role as the original "Allocation" leader