BY LINDA F. WILLING
Difficult change. Some might find this phrase redundant. Isn’t all change difficult? Isn’t it just human nature to resist change, no matter how much the change is needed?
Making effective change of any type requires work and commitment-a clear sense of what is needed and a reasonable plan to obtain it. But some changes are more challenging than others. Making difficult change can instill vision and new direction within your organization, or it can be a complete disaster. The result you get depends on your preparation, your methods, and how well you communicate the underlying mission of the proposed change.
What distinguishes difficult change from other types of initiatives you may put forward? Difficult change
- affects the essential functions or mission of the organization;
- involves altering honored symbols or culture within the organization;
- occurs quickly and does not allow gradual phase-in; or
- is not really supported by top leadership, either philosophically or financially.
Some difficult changes that would meet the criteria above include consolidating several different departments, adding or deleting essential functions (e.g., taking on paramedic transport), adopting new job standards, and even changing the color or type of the department’s fire apparatus. Changes resulting from litigation (e.g., consent decrees or new testing processes) are almost always very difficult to implement within an organization.
Change is not really a choice and happens every day whether you recognize it or not; the real choice is how you manage and lead the changes you face. The easiest way to implement change is to allow everyone time to see the benefits of the new way of doing things and to get general consensus and buy-in toward the new outcome. But this is not always possible in the world we live in today.
Difficulties arise because the change is unwelcome, there may not be resources to implement it properly, or people may not understand why the change is needed and thus resist it. Departmental leaders may not be clear about their roles in making the change work.
Start with the big picture (the why of the change) and then move to the details of implementation and specific effect (the how of the change.) If you can get everyone to agree to the proposed change’s essential purpose and understand how it will enhance the organization’s mission, you will have gone a long way toward making the long-term change effort workable.
For example, let’s say you want to establish physical fitness standards in your department. Maybe you’ve never had a program, or maybe you’ve never actually enforced standards that have been set. Now you’re serious-there will be a physical fitness program and everyone will participate. If you move from this point directly to how you will implement the program, you would likely encounter much resistance.
But what if you take one step back and focus first on creating consensus on why the proposed change is needed? What is the desired result? In this case, the goal of the change is to create a department that employs healthy and consistently fit firefighters. The way this goal addresses the underlying mission of the organization is clear: Healthy firefighters are less likely to be injured at work, are less likely to compromise the safety of their coworkers, and are best equipped to provide quality service to the public.
Safety, personal well-being, quality customer service-who could argue with these values? Getting agreement to the fundamental purpose of the change will do much to defuse resistance before it even forms. Later, when the specifics of implementation are worked out, differences may arise. But if everyone can always return to the reason the change is needed, it is much easier to stay on track and find common ground through differences of opinion.
Some organizations find change management models helpful as tools for implementing change. There are many models that can be useful as templates to create a generalized change framework and identify milestones along the way; however, don’t adhere to them so rigidly that you ignore the reality of the specific situation.
There are two general models of change. One focuses on the task or change initiative itself. The other attends to the effect the change has on the people involved. Consider both types of models when planning and implementing change.
The generic task-oriented change model is often a variation on the APIE formula: Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation. The model’s stages are self-explanatory, but the process is not linear. Each phase of the process can (and often should) lead back to another: Analysis should anticipate factors that will eventually be evaluated, and implementation will often illuminate flaws in the planning process that need to be addressed before the plan can go forward.
The APIE model and many other change management tools focus on the change itself-the demonstrable goal you are trying to reach. For example, if you want to begin doing paramedic transport, you would analyze costs and market readiness; you would plan for training and equipment acquisition; and you might implement a pilot program in one part of the jurisdiction and then evaluate citizen satisfaction with the new service. This summary is a highly simplified overview of this change process, but it shows that under a traditional change model, you would be most concerned with tasks and milestones of achieving goals.
A different change model focuses on the effect change has on those who must make it work. This might more accurately be called a “transition model” and is described in Managing Transitions by William Bridges (Perseus Publishing, 1991). Bridges puts forth a model that focuses on the human impact of change and the stages individuals must go through to embrace and promote change. His model includes the following steps:
- Purpose. What is the underlying mission of the change? Why are we doing it?
- Picture. What is the desired endpoint of the change? What will the new workplace look like? To truly buy into change, people must have a mental picture of what that change will specifically do to make the workplace better.
- Plan. Once people understand the mission and can envision the specific outcome, then planning can take place. It will become clear during this process if the earlier steps have not been adequately addressed.
- Parts to play. People need to know where they, as individuals, fit into the grand scheme of things. They need to feel that their contributions are important and that they play a critical role in the successful outcome of the desired change.
Successful implementation of difficult change requires a good idea, a workable plan, and buy-in from those involved in making it happen. But even if all these factors are in place, things still may not work out as you had hoped because of reasons like the following:
- Bad timing. Many difficult changes are reactionary. For example, a line-of-duty death might force reconsideration of standard fireground practice. But suddenly changing the way things are done at fires, without further analysis or just time to let people heal, can lead to more problems than it solves. Especially in the aftermath of loss or trauma, people want stability and will be more resistant to even necessary change.
- Inadequate resources. You’ve got a great idea, and everyone buys into it. Just one problem-there’s no money to make it happen. Change requires resources: time, money, and personnel. If these resources are not available, or if the commitment cannot be made to use them for the change process, the outcome is in peril.
- Unprepared leaders. Even change efforts that are necessary, well-understood, well-timed, and well-funded can sometimes fail. When this happens, the reason is usually leadership. Who’s in charge of making the change happen? To whom can you go with questions about the new truck, the new policy, the new training protocol? Are people getting consistent information? Who has the power to redirect the change effort, if necessary? In many cases, the answer to these questions is “I don’t know,” and that’s trouble.
- Change affects honored symbols. Several years ago, the Army decided to change its standard uniform, toward the goal of raising morale among soldiers. A consulting group recommended that black berets be a standard issue uniform item. Historically, the black beret has been the symbol of the elite Army Ranger Corps. Suddenly, the Army had decorated veterans protesting the change in front of the Washington Monument. Although the change was ultimately implemented as planned, hard feelings persist throughout the ranks.
Outsiders witnessing these events might be puzzled. It’s just a hat, right? Wrong. The beret was an honored symbol that meant something very specific to service members. Change in these areas is tricky and should be approached with caution and only when ab-solutely necessary.
- Lack of consideration for all stakeholders. One fire district wanted to annex land on its eastern perimeter. The people living in that area generally supported the annexation and looked forward to improved service as a result. But the fire department failed to pay any attention to another major stakeholder in the annexation area: a large golf club that was the majority landholder in the proposed annexation. The benefits of annexation were never specifically sold to the members of the club, most of whom were not district residents; as a result, they mobilized and lobbied successfully against the annexation. When proposing major change, it is necessary to consider the impact on all who are affected-internally and externally. To avoid doing so will almost certainly cause significant problems later.
Effective communications are key to all successful change efforts. Most change efforts fail to provide effective communications throughout the process, and this can lead to very bad but completely avoidable outcomes. Remember: When faced with incomplete information, people often will connect the dots in the most pathological way possible. Proactive communication will go a long way toward keeping things on track.
Difficult change requires a communications plan. Designate a spokesperson and a liaison to stakeholder groups. Be preemptive about dispensing information, with weekly press releases during the transition and regular meetings with community groups. Make sure all leaders are saying the same thing.
Another requirement for successful change implementation is planning to manage the inevitable conflict that will arise. Conflict can be disruptive but should not be looked at as something that should be suppressed. Healthy conflict can save you from forging ahead with an unworkable plan or can remind you of a critical factor in the proposed change that you may have overlooked. But you must manage conflict, and this requires skills in facilitation, effective listening, and mediation. These are all skills that can be taught, but many fire departments do little to instill this kind of learning in its members.
When making any type of change, follow-through is critical. Some organizations love the idea of change and will come up with half a dozen different plans that they try to implement all at once: new trucks, new uniforms, new training standards, new SOPs for fire scenes. Even people who support the underlying reason for change can be worn out by too much going on at once. When multiple large change efforts are happening simultaneously, it is also more likely that at least one thing will never be completed. When this happens a few times, people begin to lose faith in change initiatives-they can even become a joke. It is far better to focus on doing one thing well and move on to the next need than spread resources and attention too thin.
Another way leaders undermine their own change efforts is to ask for input from organization members and then never use it. It is terribly demoralizing to spend hours of your personal time to be on a committee that will advise on new station design, for example, only to have your input devalued or ignored altogether. In some cases, leaders know that input from the rank and file will not be used and that the decision will be unilateral. If this is the case, it is far better to be honest from the start about how the decision will be made than raise expectations falsely. Then, in cases where input can be used, a system for gathering it and using it should be put in place at the beginning of the change process.
In a perfect world, all decisions would be made as a result of unanimous buy-in from all stakeholders. The process for implementing change would be gradual, and resources would be unlimited. Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. Change may happen suddenly. Not everyone will understand or accept it from the start. Conflict will arise. People will compete for resources.
Any change is difficult if it is made poorly. However, even in this imperfect world, the success of any change effort can be maximized. Focus on the underlying purpose of the change and how it enhances your organization’s mission. Prepare leaders to manage change through training in conflict resolution, planning, and facilitation. Use the talents you have within your department, but don’t lie to people about their level of input. Approach honored symbols with caution, and change them only when absolutely necessary. Above all, communicate well and often, and always allow for the possibility that the plan might need to be reassessed as conditions change.
It has been said that you can’t leap a 20-foot chasm in two 10-foot jumps. All fire departments face changes that may seem hopelessly difficult from the start. They may hesitate to do anything at all or try to make small incremental steps that really don’t address the problem. When major change is needed, you have to make that jump. Good management and leadership of change will make the leap one in which every-one ultimately can have faith.
LINDA F. WILLING is an adjunct faculty member in the Executive Fire Officer Program at the National Fire Academy (NFA) and serves as a curriculum adviser to NFA programs. She is a retired fire officer from the Boulder (CO) Fire Department. Willing develops customized fire department training for leadership development, conflict resolution, diversity management, and communications through her company RealWorld Training and Consulting. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in management from Regis University in Denver.
