Promote The Dog Sitter
And Other Principles for Leading During Disasters
A transformative guide for aspiring crisis leaders revealing ten proven principles for decisive action and dynamic leadership during disasters.
About the Book
In Promote the Dog Sitter: And Other Principles for Leading During Disasters, award-winning author Ed Conley offers a path to crisis leadership based on lessons drawn from his sweeping experience in the disaster zone.
With stories that span the globe, Ed takes the reader on a journey that incorporates firsthand accounts of leadership in action. From cities to rural communities, Indian reservations and remote islands, Ed describes how crisis leaders excel and fail, and why.
Featuring a FEMA insider peek into the disaster world, Promote the Dog Sitter covers the full spectrum of crises. Hurricanes, terrorist attacks, floods, tornadoes, public health emergencies, earthquakes, school shootings and wildfires–the author has faced them all.
Embraced by readers worldwide, Promote The Dog Sitter has been praised as “inspiring” and a “valuable contribution to the crisis leadership bookshelf,” with endorsements from seasoned professionals, established experts, and industry thought leaders to emergency management newcomers and students entering the field.
But don’t mistake Promote the Dog Sitter for a dry textbook. It’s been called “engaging,” with “wonderful stories told in conversational style,” and “reads like fiction but every word is true.”
Eager and willing to step up when chaos emerges? Ready to be the type of person communities count on when adversity strikes? Promote the Dog Sitter chronicles lessons from real world events, helping aspiring leaders exercise their potential and make a positive difference in the lives of others.
Chapter by chapter, the book shares ten disaster leadership principles:
Chapter One, Show Up:
Immerse yourself in the emergency. Your legacy depends on it.
Chapter Two, Step Up:
Never underestimate the potential of a can-do mindset.
Chapter Three, Think in Threes:
Master this simple yet powerful organizational tool and turn chaos into opportunity.
Chapter Four, Own It:
Create action-oriented, collaborative response teams by fostering accountability and embracing responsibility. But a warning, this takes courage.
Chapter Five, Promote The Dog Sitter:
Disaster leadership demands ingenuity, flexibility, and a sharp mind. Learn seven ways to become an independent thinker. Plus, discover the memorable story that inspired the book’s title.
Chapter Six, Be Willing:
An inspired vision for overcoming adversity combined with perseverance and authentic hope can lead to remarkable accomplishments. Learn to mobilize the power of your will.
Chapter Seven, Facing Failure:
Bounce back from inevitable mistakes and setbacks. Remember, you’re not in the failure business–you’re in the comeback business.
Chapter Eight, Talk Straight:
Information during a crisis is as important as food, water, and shelter. Yet many crisis leaders mismanage public information efforts. Here’s how great leaders communicate with disaster-impacted communities. Also, why “panic” is the most misused word in emergency management.
Chapter Nine, Follow Up:
Demonstrate integrity by being consistent in your thoughts, words, and actions.
Chapter Ten, Come Home:
Make your well-being priority number one. You can’t take care of others if you don’t take care of yourself.
“After three decades on the front lines of disasters, natural and manmade. Ed Conley has written an anecdote-studded guide to addressing ‘all-hazard’ emergencies in the future. It can be read for pleasure but makes an excellent primer for anyone in the emergency management field.”
— John N. Maclean, author of Fire on the Mountain and other books
Order Your Copy
If you’d like a signed copy of Promote the Dog Sitter, place your order using the “Request a Signed Copy” button above. Provide instructions for your inscription request, mailing address, and preference for paperback or hardcover version. We’ll contact you to confirm your order, cost, and provide payment options before shipping.
Readers are saying
Show Up!
Leadership, not management! This is what Ed's book brought forth to me. Show up, act, decide, and take risks from the smallest situations in life and family, to the stressful atmosphere of responding in a disaster situation. Ed's writing style and many examples serve to remind the reader of many situations in his or her life when it is important to just show up. Having worked for FEMA for 14 years beginning in Colorado where I met Ed for the first time, I can now attest that his words put into this readable style, confirms my experience in showing up on disasters for FEMA. For life or emergency management response, this is the book.
Great Insight & Tips for Those Interested in Emergency Services
Full of interesting and helpful insight into a career in emergency services and/or first responders. Love the examples of how a career in this field starts out, what the right personality is for this type of work, what to look out for and what makes a person great. Also, the focus of the book keeps on doing things in threes. Terrific tip for everyone in all areas of life. Your book, Promote the Dog Sitter, will make emergency workers come up to speed quicker. Once they read it, they will understand how they can quickly and efficiently get started making a difference during a major disaster and when they may need to pivot. Thanks, Ed Conley, for exposing the rest of us to the inside of emergency services. I'd like to see your book in all the high schools and colleges in the career section.
A Handbook For Real Life
This wonderful book provides a framework for showing up through hard times in a way you can be proud of. I thoroughly enjoyed reading every chapter of this book. Ed Conley is warm and uncommonly authentic throughout as he distills his hard-won wisdom from three decades of working with FEMA. He shares how he continues to focus on the resiliency and strength of people through the most horrific circumstances. Heroes are not born, they are big-hearted people who are prepared to work and willing to learn. This book will leave you more prepared to navigate all of life with more grace & grit.
PROMOTE THE DOG SITTER CAN BE FOUND IN LIBRARIES WORLDWIDE
Black Gold Cooperative Library System, California
Arapahoe Community College Library, Colorado
Saint Louis Public Library, Missouri
Meadville Public Library, Pennsylvania
My Mom’s Bookshelf (literally, my mom), Montana
9/11 Memorial & Museum, New York
OCLC WorldCat Knowledge Base, Ohio
Pasco County Libraries, Florida
Spokane Public Library, Washington
Sno-Isle Libraries, Washington
TAFE New South Wales Libraries, Strathfield, NSW, Australia
The Ebook Library, Claremont, Western Australia, Australia
Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel
Chillin’s Library, Thailand
Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
Askews and Holts Library, Lancashire, United Kingdom
University of Manchester Library, Manchester, United Kingdom