BY ALAN BRUNACINI
Last month we talked about how the change process must somehow deal with basic fire company sociology to be effective. Fire companies are constructed like most internally directed teams, so they naturally detect anything that enters their space that is irrelevant, pretentious, or abstract. They maintain control of what that mission really means, and, to be effective, any change that will affect their behavior must fit into that mission. The firefighters are the actual gatekeepers of what is and what is not relevant in relation to the work they do (sorry again, Chief). Let me use two mission-related change examplesone successful and one not so successful.
In the early 1970s, the American fire service became involved in the beginning of using its traditional response resources to deliver emergency medical services (EMS). I was then the assistant chief in charge of the Operations Division. It was my job to get us into this newfangled program. We had delivered some very primitive “first aid” service through the years. We responded simply because there was no one else to call.
Our country had at the time lived through the military experience of having a highly trained, well-equipped medic stabilize an injured soldier right in the rice paddy where he was injured before being transported to a field hospital. This prehospital, paramedic-centered system essentially brought the emergency room to the patient and resulted in a much higher survival rate. It was logical to ask if that system worked at an away game, why wouldn’t it work at a home game? We enlisted a hippie emergency room doc to train us and a brave hospital administrator to sponsor us, and we were off and running in the very beginning of getting into the EMS business. Little did we know how it would turn out!
We recruited a small group of our firefighters to become the first paramedics. Twelve very bright, young, energetic firefighters became that first group and were affectionately called the “Dirty Dozen.” In the beginning of the new program, I became their fire department boss; it was my job to explain why it was logical for them to do what they were about to do.
We had decentralized fire stations throughout the city with rapid-response vehicles and crews in each station. Firefighters were highly trained/trainable. Our workforce had extensive experience in doing urgent, highly skillful work under difficult conditions. The customers had a system for calling us quickly with which they were familiar. That initial call system seamlessly integrated with a very refined and dependable dispatch and deployment system (it later became 9-1-1).
The most critical organizational characteristic of all was that our firefighters had a long-standing, very positive trust-based relationship with Mrs. Smith. Very simply, when we show up on her front porch at 2:30 a.m. to help her, she is happy to see us and will let us in. The initial firefighters recognized that it was logical to participate in a program that used their capability and their department resources to do what they had joined up to do in the first placerespond quickly, solve the problem, and be nice. The beginning of the program was the launching pad for a huge service delivery change that three decades later would become the majority of our service delivery activity. Mark one up in the change success column.
A few years later, my habitual (and insane) attraction to the latest and greatest current management system led me to temporarily embrace a process known as “Total Quality Management” (TQM). It was a complete and complicated collection of very academic (read “abstract”) management activities that led to creating an increased level of organizational performance. “Quality” was a big deal at the time, and we management wonks just swooned whenever we heard the word.
I started to schedule meetings with the troops to describe how this snazzy new system would lead us to the promised land. It did not take long, being the sensitive and perceptive fellow I am, to discover that the workforce had a significantly lower level of TQM interest than I did. Looking in their eyes as I was delivering my stunning lecture(s) was like looking into the windows of a vacant house. I soon (also) noticed the eye-rolling look they sent to each other that quietly shouted, “Bruno has finally slipped off the edge.”
I did what many young, determined change agents do when their program is not workingI did the wrong thing, harder. I responded to their underwhelming response by hiring a full-fledged university professor to bring the TQM word to the command officers, whom I would then assign to take the word to the troops under their command.
I knew my grand plan was in trouble when halfway through the second session with Dr. TQM, the chiefs (regardless of their assignment) bailed out of the classroom to respond to a fire. I assumed it was a greater alarm in a fully involved lumberyard with an orphanage on one side and a retirement home on the other. I called the dispatch center and learned it was a car fire. This was a pretty clear message for me when all my chiefs “voted with their feet.”
Sometimes, the major lesson in the change process gets delivered to the teacher instead of the students. In this case, the instructor should have quietly previewed his bright new idea with some smart old soldiers before springing it on the unsuspecting workers. It’s smart to listen before you talk. Mark one up at the Change School in the lesson-learned column.
Retired Chief ALAN BRUNACINI is a fire service author and speaker. He and his sons own the fire service Web site bshifter.com.
