BY ALAN BRUNACINI
We have “Unplugged” our way through the first four parts of the performance management process. This month we will discuss the fifth and last “box” in the model, which is revision. The revision step must be done after we actually deliver service and then automatically do a standard critique of the outcome of our performance. The revision part of the process is based on the lessons the critique produced.
Some incidents teach us a lot of new lessons, and those lessons require us to make major revisions of various parts of our service delivery system. Those changes could include updating standard operating procedures (SOPs); adding or changing training; altering current or acquiring new hardware; and providing special coaching, counseling, or reinforcement.
Many times incidents were handled okay using the current system. These incidents produce the need for only a critique to verify and reinforce that the SOPs and the troops worked well. We use the term “lessons reinforced” to describe how we handle these positive performance situations. It is critical that bosses always acknowledge good performance and thank good performers for doing an effective job.
Attaching an effective level of revision to a performance experience (like a firefight) is a major leadership role. Too much revision creates change only for the sake of change. Such continual, unnecessary change fractures any sort of organizational stability. Lots of times this happens with insecure bosses who must create unnecessary change so they can put their “fingerprint” on some organizational person, place, or thing. They do this so everyone will know they are the boss.
This goofy (i.e., neurotic) boss behavior basically drives everyone crazy and pretty much destroys any ability for the organization to focus on the legitimate lessons an actual incident operation produced and then makes it very difficult to develop the changes that are needed to stay effective.
On the other end of the revision leadership scale is the boss who does not initiate and manage the changes required to keep the system effective and safe. This reluctance may be because of a fear of getting beat up by the troops who may just naturally resist change or because the required revision involves some organizational “sacred cow.” Or, it may be that the boss is simply lazy and does not want to expend the effort the change will require.
When the organization fails to make the ongoing adjustments required so that how we operate effectively responds to current conditions, the system becomes less and less effective and more and more unsafe. Knowing how to make changes is leadership science; knowing how much and when to make change is leadership art. We learn science in school. We learn art by getting scuffed up in the street. Sadly, there are many places in our service that have not invested in the revision resources needed to stay current—they apply yesterday’s system over and over to today’s fires. A smart old guy described the frustrating process of continual outdated system performance as “practicing mistakes.”
Being able to keep any program current and up-to-date based on actual experience is a major (and challenging) ongoing management function. Using the front-end parts of the model—SOPs and training—is the very practical launching pad for a continuous improvement program. The revision part creates a standard way the department makes operational and support adjustments based on what happened (both positive and negative) when we actually used our local resource to deliver hometown service.
We say that revision can be challenging because consistently doing a standard program review (critique) as a regular organizational activity and then creating a revision plan based on that critique causes our operational system to always be “under construction”—construction zones always cause a certain amount of mess, disruption, and inconvenience.
Translating both learned and reinforced lessons (based on actual experience) into an action plan for improvement is a major job of bosses on every level. This approach offers a set of integrated steps that hook up what it actually takes to effectively implement and sustain change. Gradual, sensible change based on experience becomes an organizational way of life. The ongoing application of the model makes change a regular process rather than an exceptional event.
Doing each step in order creates the capability for the organization to automatically plan, decide, and record in SOPs how it will use its performance resources, use those SOPs as the basis for training, apply those procedures to real situations, and then use a standard format to review the effectiveness of those operations. The critique creates a menu of activities to create changes that respond to what we learned from operating at the incident; this routine uses our experience to direct where we put organizational resources to continually attempt to make operational adjustments that match current conditions. This creates the capability to always be “fixing” our system.
We can use the model in a lot of external ways, and we don’t have to live through every lesson ourselves. In fact, the world outside our organization is full of lessons if we will expend the effort to learn from them, the willingness to be open to them, and the skill to effectively implement them. Such away lessons fit into the revision “box” just as the hometown experiences do. The happy difference is that we did not have to live through what was many times a painful and expensive experience to learn from it and to use the model to implement that lesson in our system.
As an example of this external loading, you are now reading this column in a magazine that for more than 100 years has provided reports of fire service events, educational material on the latest techniques/procedures, and developments in technology and operations. All of this material is ideal for processing through the revision part of the model. If we decide that something in that material would improve our capability, we just keep the steps going, and we translate the change into an SOP, train on it, do it, and then review how well it worked. The model converts a good idea (dime a dozen) into an actual capability (worth a ton).
I thank the gentle readers for their patience as we have trudged through five months of performance management discussion. I am certain that some (probably many) of our young energetic colleagues have muttered along the way that the editors of this fine journal broke this old codger out of the rest home so he could philosophize about some abstract management gobbledygook. Sometimes the directions that come with the toy are not much fun to read, understand, and follow. This is particularly true when we are anxious to get on and race down Yahoo Hill.
When you skip the assembly instructions, the problem can occur halfway down the hill when you really get going and the fun meter is right where you hoped it would be (pegged), and now you notice the front wheel is coming off because you didn’t get lock washer M tightened up behind nut L on shaft K. Now the fun meter is instantly going backward. Huge lesson #1: Fun meters run both ways, and in our business they can change in a nanosecond. Huge lesson #2: It’s generally impossible to tighten the lock washer while the wheel is going 65 mph.
The only expertise I would claim in being a 50-year student of organizational change is that during that period (about a gazillion times), I instantly became a first-semester freshman as I watched the front wheel start to wobble and then disappear because I skipped the instructions and I had just enough time to imagine what was waiting for me at the bottom of the hill.
Retired Chief ALAN BRUNACINI is a fire service author and speaker. He and his sons own the fire service Web site bshifter.com.
