A `PRECIATION CURVE
BY CARL F. WELSER
Fire STATIONS can ignite into hostile hot spots. Whole fire departments can catch a flu of anger. Outsiders are surprised to hear about friction in the fire station. They admire the organization for its faithful service to the small slice of humanity inhabiting the neighborhood around the fire station. Outsiders assume such a kindly group could act nothing but kindly toward itself to an exemplary degree.
If the truth were told, large numbers of emergency service personnel would be happier campers if they could only agree to treat each other as well as or better than they treat the people they serve. Volunteer, part-paid, combination, career–it seems to make no difference. When a vicious virus gains a foothold, the whole organization can turn vicious, hacking, spitting, and infecting everyone within reach.
MAYBE IT`S OUR NATURE
Perhaps it`s partly the nature of people who gravitate toward emergency services. Available studies indicate that you`d have no luck assembling a functional fire department simply by selecting every tenth person out of the first hundred people passing through the checkout line at the local grocery store. The weight of the turnout gear alone would discourage four of the 10. Four more would find the SCBA unbearably suffocating. The ninth, and maybe even the tenth candidate, would soon find the action unsuitable. Then it`s back to the checkout line for 10 fresh candidates.
Firefighter/EMS-type people apparently arise from a selected fraction of the total population. A crew of veteran firefighters will demonstrate a degree of variability among themselves. This is good. No one needs four clones per engine. But this variability is only frosting over the shared set of core values that enables them to operate year in and year out in the sometimes taxing–and often boring–environment of emergency services. This is hard to prove, but intuitively it makes sense.
On this much you can bet your bottom dollar: If the local fire station is at all functional, then it is populated by action-hungry, results-oriented, notably obsessive and competitive people. Fits of jealousy are not unusual. These are a few of the terms generously applied by educated observers to the hundreds of thousands of people who successfully staff the thousands of organizations providing emergency services to millions of people nationwide.
But a functional fire station is no guarantee of a happy fire station.
It would be unfair to draw intricate comparisons between the local fire department and the local Rotary club, even though they often share members. Ser-vice clubs don`t fight fires. Fire departments are not de-signed to be social/ service clubs.
But it is worth noting that Rotary clubs and Kiwanis clubs don`t survive if a vicious virus takes root in them. Club members expect a certain amount of good-natured bantering as part of their weekly meetings. But it is all intended to coax the club forward on a positive note. If wise leaders detect some ill feelings festering among the club`s membership, they must act quickly to restore a sunnier climate. If they don`t–or can`t–recover that positive climate, the club is doomed. Oddly enough, fire departments torn by dissent just go on spraying. The willingness to cover each other`s butts when the chips are down, fortunately, re-mains intact.
So, why the enduring hostility in the fire station? Why the backbiting? And why the smoldering conflicts bordering on civil war in one fire department after another?
A strong finger of suspicion points to the need for competitive people to be fed on a steady diet of action. As long as there is abundant action, competitive people are willing to share. They thrive on action, with high-fives all around. When action dwindles, they begin to horde it. When action dries up altogether, they begin eyeing each other as springboards of action. It may sound cruel to compare a fire crew with a pride of lions, but there are worse comparisons in the food chain.
THE GAME OF GOTCHA
The likelihood of conflict can be predicted by the way any given shift–or any entire fire department–chooses to complete this challenging sentence: “I caught you doing something ….” It`s a game we play simply because we are human. But being human is no excuse for allowing any game to encamp at the ugly end of the field.
The two words most likely chosen to complete this sentence are as opposite as Darth and Luke. Either I am willing to catch you doing something right. Or I am determined to catch you doing something wrong. Regrettably, unchecked human nature regards right as rare and wrong as common. Therein lies the roots of conflict.
Stop for a moment and analyze your own fire station or fire department in those simple terms. Do your personnel place greater emphasis on discovering right or wrong in the actions of coworkers? We`re not talking about violations of de-partmental policies. Violations of policy justly deserve reprimands. We`re talking about lifting a finger to do something for the good of the order above and beyond the call of duty.
The prevailing mood in afflicted fire stations could best be described as a “truce.” For one reason or another, I am unwilling to catch you doing anything right. Or at least I`m not going to admit your rightness to myself or anyone else. But in hopes of maintaining a moment`s peace in the place–or on direct orders from higher up, I also agree not to be so determined to catch you doing something wrong. Thus a cease-fire line between right and wrong is drawn there in the sand. The effects of this conflict might fit on a graph as shown above.
THE EFFECTS OF CONFLICT
The effects of this conflict might fit on the graph as follows: A null point is marked to indicate that X number of effective workers will normally accomplish Y amount of effective work in any functional organization. The null point also describes the posture of warring fire departments under “truce conditions.”
As the truce weaken, and coworkers actively resume finding fault with each other (“Aha! I caught you doing something wrong!”), the regressing slope of a sigmoid curve predicts that the number of personnel (X) doing the work remains the same. But they now become less effective people, and their work (Y) output drops accordingly.
Sadly enough, emergency service organizations, which require the work of action-oriented people in whatever arrangement–volunteer, combination, or career–will discover that the organization has a tendency to move, not upward, but in the negative direction if left to its own devices. Being nice requires some outlay of energy.
THE PARETO PRINCIPLE
A lot of reduction in productivity is written off to the so-called Pareto Principle, which declares that 20 percent of the people in any organization can be counted on to do 80 percent of the work. Also, 80 percent of the problems are caused by 20 percent of the people, and so on, to infinite redundancy. Pareto no doubt stated a truth. But we need to pry the lid off the Pareto problem and look more closely at some of the underlying causes.
When anything a person does will most likely be judged wrong, extra effort loses its value. Anyone in the group who might be willing to expend extra effort quickly learns it is not worth it. Risk taking in the better interests of the organization only results in harsh criticism. Risk taking is therefore halted. And Pareto wins again.
CHANGING THE CLIMATE
Figuring things out up to this point is not difficult. So far, it`s the work of a simpleton. The real trick lies in solving the problem.
Changing the climate of an organization from wrong-catching to right-catching is not easy. But it`s preferable by a long shot!
If the graph is correct, then cultivating the willingness of personnel to catch each other doing things right should drive the organization forward and upward on the sigmoid curve. The same number of effective workers actually perform as though their numbers were larger. And so they produce an unexpectedly larger amount of effective work. This is an observable difference between neighboring fire departments. When things are right, things look right and feel right. Not surprisingly, this is also the scale that measures the success of your local Kiwanis club.
By examining its own history, an organization will discover evidence that productivity runs in cycles. There were times in the past when half the present number of people were doing twice as much as can be accomplished today. Or so it seems. Sometimes the past glows with an undeserved luster. There were other years when the situation must have been even worse than it is now. This is no reason to let things drift until they become better again.
The great 17th century mathematician Isaac Newton once wrote: “If I have seen further (than Hooke and Descartes), it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” That`s a very noble and very humbling thought. But it is a difficult thought to hold in practice.
When the fire station turns nasty and competition runs amuck, the petty parts of human nature dictate that people will not only stand on other people`s shoulders, they will also stand on heads, hearts, hands, and any other part of the anatomy that gives an elevated sense of towering a little bit above the next guy. There is nothing humble or noble about that.
Who will risk changing the climate in the fire station? At what cost? Would that the required changes were only as mechanical as resetting the thermostat.
There is no need for the fire department to outshine the local Rotary club. But there are lessons to be learned from upbeat groups. What is really needed is a willingness to maintain a climate within which it`s OK to take risks and it`s OK to fail on occasion, and it`s OK to do so because people are now determined to catch you doing something right for a change.
Initiating “Firefighter of the Year” and other special awards is a fine idea. But enforced sweetness may backfire. Niceness, like honey, is best offered in measured doses. Too thick quickly sickens. Calling attention to someone`s achievements in a hotly suspicious environment may only “light them up,” as they say in the radar business, for some really ugly treatment.
Do the following:
Purge the wrong-catching habit wherever it is most easily accessible. Begin with yourself, assuming you are human. Gently challenge the habit in one other person. Gently means without direct accusation. There has been enough of that already. Simply respond, “I feel quite uncomfortable with the way we treat each other here.” Doing this may light you up for wrong-catching. But risk taking is the order of the day.
Catch someone doing something right, and quietly mention it to him. You may be as surprised at his reaction as he is of your observation. Recruit an officer or other influential member of the department to join you in seeking better places to bury old hatchets besides the back of other people`s heads. Consider engaging the services of an arbitrator if things get really tough.
Don`t do the following:
Do not attempt a radical transformation of the organizational climate overnight. We`re talking total climate change, not just sunlight and shadows. Climate implies whole weather systems. Here in Michigan, we are suspicious of weather systems that change too rapidly, because they are usually full of growly things that spit ugliness all over the place.
If the chief officer or his designee were to dance around the fire hall touching firefighters on the forehead with a magic wand, exhorting everyone to think good thoughts and aspire to noble deeds, he might as well don a tutu and clamp a rose between his teeth. There are limits.
But somebody has got to push the limits.
 |
CARL F. WELSER is a 30-plus year veteran of the Hamburg (MI) Fire Department, Inc., where he serves as training officer. He is a certified Firefighter I and II instructor, Fire Officer-1, and EMT-S. He has a master`s degree in divinity and a master of science degree in biology and is a member of the Fire Engineering editorial advisory board.
