BASIC ANALYSIS FOR THE VOLUNTEER FIRE SERVICE, PART 1: MISSION
BY CARL F. WELSER
Being the chief officer of a volunteer fire department implies knowing how to run a volunteer fire department. And also why. The “why” is as important as the “how.” Failure to understand both “how” and “why” will damage and perhaps even destroy the organization. It will certainly shorten its usable life span.
When a volunteer fire department evolves to the point of choosing its first partly paid or fully paid chief officer, some rationale should guide the selection process. Certainly, the candidate must possess administrative credentials and leadership ability, should be able to provide training, and should not be a novice in the fire service. The candidate should be someone of considerable experience who has “been there and done that” many times. The overriding concern should be whether the candidate knows how and why to lead a volunteer fire department.
The fire service in America traces its history to Benjamin Franklin in the mid-18th century. Whether old Ben deserves all the credit is open to debate. Frederick Turner, an historian of some repute, once noted this about our system of government: “American democracy was reborn on each new frontier.” There is good evidence that the fire service also enjoyed sequential rebirths as settlements pushed westward from the Eastern seaboard like the daily sunrise sweeping across the American continent. The fire service may even be capable of regeneration today.
PATTERN OF EVOLUTION
Despite innumerable new beginnings, the history of the fire service displays a rather systematic pattern of evolution through a series of predictable stages. These stages generally begin at the volunteer level and pass through several recognizable mutations toward becoming career organizations as dictated by needs and demands unique to each locale.
In some notorious cases, the passage from volunteer to career occurred very rapidly a century ago when certain volunteer fire companies reportedly devolved into poorly disciplined gangs contending with each other for turf and action, much in the way competing tough gangs terrorize neighborhoods today. Administrators in some larger cities had little choice but to shatter the volunteer organizations and blend the pieces into career organizations. Many of these now enjoy a long and glorious history.
In a few remarkable cases, the volunteer fire service persists to this day in some larger metropolitan areas–albeit in adapted forms. This news is generally met with skepticism by people who feel quite certain that evolution necessarily wipes out all preexisting forms as it moves toward some end stage.
There are people who claim that the volunteer fire service is dying. Some pronounce it dead already. The death certificate draws on a predictable list of likely causes: people no longer volunteering; folks who live in those big, new houses don`t join volunteer fire departments; or new rules and regulations handed down by state and federal agencies are too complex to be understood and carried out by people who only volunteer their time.
This does not explain the fact that the volunteer fire service still has a membership approaching a million nationwide. Nor does it account for the persistence of the volunteer service in some unusual locales where socioeconomic conditions and population density might have ruled out a volunteer fire department ages ago. The volunteer fire service–in the hands of people who know both how and why to run a volunteer fire department–is not dying. It is evolving.
THE CHANGE OFFICER
There is obviously more to this evolutionary process than meets the eye. It falls to the change officer to alert the chief officer to some important variables that may ensure a long and healthy life to the volunteer fire department under his command.
The change officer holds an informal, nonelected, nonappointed, and generally unpopular position. The position will be filled by one or more persons in every fire department if that department has a ghost of a chance of surviving the manifold changes and challenges confronting it. Someone always occupies the office of change officer to some measurable degree in every viable organization.
Occasionally the change officer is also a genuinely elected or appointed official of the department. Perhaps he is a progressive chief officer who combines the role of change agent with regular responsibilities and takes the lead in bringing progressive change to the department. Such departments are blessed by good fortune when the chief and change officer are one and the same person. As often as not, the role of change officer is played by a junior officer or line firefighter who reads a lot–especially fire journals, attends workshops, is ambitious, is thick-skinned, has a bent for management, and likes to tinker with organizations to see how they run and whether they can be made to run better.
At various crossroads in its personal history, every volunteer organization is obliged to deliberate the next stage in its own evolution. If the need for change is not anticipated, then some other agency will eventually impose changes.
It is, for example, a major step for a strictly volunteer department to consider a compensation package for its members. The department takes another major step when it shifts from volunteer to combination, when it hires its first full- or part-time chief or other employee, or when two neighboring departments decide to combine into one.
In the present climate, it could be risky to attempt to outline all the evolutionary stages between strictly volunteer and career fire departments. There are reports of competitive attitudes bordering on combative. This is most unfortunate, inasmuch as a thinking person realizes that evolutionary drive–as it applies to human organizations–is directional, tending toward a fairly predictable end point. Competition should be healthy, not deadly. The main objective is to continue doing absolutely the best possible job at whatever stage your organization happens to be this year and the next, knowing that change is inevitable and that at some future point things will become different.
Many of us are dedicated to conserving the volunteer fire service wherever it is working well. The Pew Charitable Trust recently reported the results of a study in which people were asked what inspired confidence in them. The top three categories were family, fellow church members, and the local fire department. That is too good to give up. It would be helpful for ourselves and our career cousins to consider the how and the why of the volunteer fire service. Thus, we present this assessment of mission, model, and vision for volunteers.
MISSION
You need a mission statement. You may write your mission statement in whatever language you wish. Write it tight (25 words or less on a cereal box top), loose, flowery, or straight. At bottom line, you don`t determine your mission anyway. You only realize your mission. Your mission is governed by whoever pays the bills. Most likely, the political cadre in your municipality calls the shots. Whatever you include in your mission statement expresses the will of the taxpayers channeled through the municipality.
The mission of the fire service in general, and of volunteers in particular, has shifted beyond a traditional firefighting mode into more varied venues in recent years. This shift may not be as dramatic as some observers claim. Haz mat, high angle and trench rescue, and all the regulations pertinent to each are fairly new to some. But disaster mitigation combined with routine rescue activities–including at least basic emergency medical service–have long been offered by even the least active departments.
Mission may expand or shrink. Those who collect the revenues and pay the bills are privileged to inform the local fire department of changes in expectations. Possibilities for modifying mission can be considered from either above or below. Shrinkage of the workload is rare. The fire department will likely recommend new areas of service in exchange for more resources. The bill payers, in turn, will agree that the mission be upsized while the resources are downsized. That`s the basic stuff of negotiation.
A degree of peril attends the decision of a fire organization to approach the city fathers with a burning desire to expand its mission. It is called a “Rumpelstiltskin Regression.” In this famous old tale, the miller boasts that his beautiful daughter can spin straw into gold. The king, acting on this boast, confines the maiden to a tower cell furnished with nothing but a heap of straw and a spinning wheel. She must labor three days producing gold from the straw, after which he promises to name her his queen. In some versions of the story, less straw is provided on each successive day, but more gold is demanded. The maiden really can`t do this trick. Only Rumpelstiltskin, who magically appears, is equal to the task. But Rumpelstiltskin also has his price. To be named later. Review the story with your children or grandchildren for full details.
This idea of a continual demand to do more with less is familiar to fire administrators all over the country. And there is a price, of uncertain dimension, to be exacted somewhere down the road. Perhaps it may not be as drastic as demanding your firstborn child (as in the case of Rumpelstiltskin). But then you have little hope of being named queen, either.
All risks aside, the mission is changing. It is far better for the fire service to forecast the changes and implement them in gradual fashion than to wait for imposed changes that are generally sudden and painful. We all benefit from a short- and long-range forward plan.
Next month, we will consider finding the model that best fits the mission. And, more importantly, we will also recognize all the separate, personal visions of the individual members of a volunteer organization. Personal visions may not be tolerable in career organizations. But they are absolutely vital to the health and survival of the volunteer fire service, and the chief officer who understands both the how and the why of leading a volunteer fire department will take them all into account. n
