BY ALAN BRUNACINI
Last month, we discussed how critical and basic our biological (physical) capability is to effective and safe service delivery. We use the term “fit for duty” to describe our level of readiness to effectively do what it takes to protect Mrs. Smith. The other basic areas of human development are cognitive, emotional, and social. This month, we will cover how our cognitive capability influences virtually everything we do individually and collectively. Our cognitive (brain stuff) is directly connected to how we perform physically simply because it is the processing place that controls, connects, and mentally protects all the other body parts that are called on to act.
We discussed last month that the basic capability of our service is to quickly deliver teams of highly trained responders who work collectively within a strong command and control system that mobilizes those teams to perform complicated, highly coordinated tasks within a hazard zone. Such work requires a high level of physical capability regulated and directed by a very smart, flexible, and responsive mental management system. What we do tactically and how we do it operationally involve and integrate “strong muscles” that are closely connected and directed by “smart brains.” If you are just strong, the fire will out-think you. If you are just smart, you cannot physically perform. You have to have both to get the job done.
We maintain extensive (and expensive) cognitive development and maintenance systems within our organization to support how we perform. We begin our fire service career by taking a written entrance test. This exam is designed to evaluate the basic cognitive level of the candidate. Most entrance exams involve testing the basic level of reading comprehension, reasoning, and response. In recent years, those exams have been refined and, in many cases (thankfully), validated on the local level. The written test is designed to evaluate if the person is smart enough to go on in the testing process.
The written test is typically followed by an oral interview where that person’s ability to conversationally converse, answer standard questions, and effectively interact with a team who conducts the oral interview is measured. As a young (and not-so-young officer), I was a frequent board member where I attempted to evaluate along with my board colleagues if the entrance level candidate had #1: a standard level of smarts and #2: if I really wanted to spend 24 hours in a fire station with his or her personality. The entrance testing process, like most testing, is not perfect, but it is the best shot we have to try to select a trainable person with an adequate mental capability and a compatible personality who can somehow maintain an effective fit-for-duty level for the length of his career.
When a candidate passes all the entrance testing phases and is selected, he becomes a member of a recruit training class and then goes on to attend a recruit training program. Such programs are generally three to six months in length and basically involve learning the details of the operational and administrative functions that are required to become an effective and safe member of a fire company. Recruit training is very rigorous and demanding and involves a continual evaluation of the capability of the recruit to not only mentally learn the basic occupational material but to also mentally connect and physically execute the application of that material to actual evolutions and tactical operations. It’s like going to college, trade school, and boot camp all at once, along with a continual set of lessons that relate to how a “booter” fits into the department culture.
Given the extensive and very competitive initial testing process and the demanding recruit training program, an entering firefighter’s cognitive capability is well examined, extensively challenged, and completely evaluated. A person who is mentally substandard would have great difficulty getting through a firefighter’s entrance process. The process goes on long enough so that it is tough faking being smart. When you see who is riding on Big Red either facing forward or riding backward, every one of them got their ticket punched at the same extensive entrance obstacle course (literally) and just about anyone who was looking for really good workers in any industry would happily hire every member of the crew to take back to their own organization.
The standard entrance beginning creates a huge head start for the overall cognitive fit-for-duty capability of our members. The challenge we face in maintaining an effective level is what happens to us after we start in our career. If we looked at both the biological and cognitive levels of our humans, we all start out initially meeting a well-established and very effective standard. What happens then, to all of us, is that life then occurs.
The process of life beats us up, wears us down, and eventually (without effective maintenance and support) can wear us out. We hope that we start out with enough of what it takes to be effective and that that effective amount will increase as we evolve in experience. We hope that our level of experience and the ongoing investment the organization makes in us will outlast and outperform how we naturally devolve in age.
When you look at a recruit class, you see bright shiny faces, flat bellies, and sharp minds and skills. I was blessed to watch many members of a recruit class go from coming on the job to retirement. I then got to live with those same recruits as they experienced marriage/divorce, kids, stress, injury, sickness, maturity, success, failure, happiness, sadness, and everything else involved in getting up in the morning every third day and riding on Big Red for 24 hours.
How we develop as we evolve depends to a major extent on the system our organization has in place to continually invest in our personal and professional effectiveness. How that development investment occurs is a major factor in the overall fitness for duty that is reflected in both the individual members and the entire organization. Our organization is composed of a continuous line of department members who are led by the highest ranking and the most senior members, the leaders. The youngest members join the department and go to the back of the line, the followers. As they gain seniority, the followers move up in the line and, eventually, get to the head of the line.
A basic organizational challenge is how that entire line is provided with practical, understandable, doable training, educational, and developmental support services that equip every position in that line with the same educational reinforcement they received when they were in recruit school. This is very challenging, expensive, and never ending. Sadly, the most extensive and complete educational curriculum in some fire departments is recruit training. For the members of such an organization, the only time in their career that they will be adequately trained as an official function of their department is the moment they walk across the stage and receive their diploma from recruit school. Now, life begins.
Today, that graduating recruit joins a service that is in a major transition in many ways. Some of those changing ways create a major challenge to our fitness for duty. A significant part of these young firefighters’ career-long professional challenge is how they will cognitively face the rest of their career. We must continually develop our brain cells as we face the current challenges of our job. Now, those challenges are changing so quickly we can’t keep up with them. When we stop learning, we stop! We should not stop until the end (our last gasp). If we do stop learning before the end, we can become an organizational obstacle and a liability.
Many times, like much of the other stuff in life, what you thought you were signing up to do before you got the job is not what you discover you are doing when you actually go to work. This dilemma (i.e., occupational surprise) basically applies to not only the new firefighters but to virtually everyone on every level. A great joy in my life is to frequently get to interact with members of the fire service in a setting where we conduct highly interactive discussions about life today in our business. I get to go pretty much all over and deal with a complete cross-section of our service. Every place I go, I hear our members describe how they are attempting to cognitively fit into what is now happening.
I notice in my travels that much of what we do is basically timeless. I can relate to this because I started doing that same thing in 1958 (!), and we are still doing it. We rescue people who need to be rescued, and we put out the fire we are rescuing them from. Fire now produces more heat, and modern buildings (toothpicks and glue) fall down more quickly; still, very little (even now) burns when it is submerged. That part has stayed essentially about the same. Almost everything else has changed and is changing faster and faster. These are the changes my travel companions are trying to keep up with.
This is what is currently bashing into our cognitive fit-for-duty function. During periods of active (actually nutty) change, like now, we are effective to the extent that our organizations prepare us to meet that change and to educate us in what it will take to not only survive that change but also in what is needed to prosper in the future. That opportunity for prosperity is a direct function of the investment our department makes in preparing us cognitively to deal with the details of how those changing conditions will present us with service delivery opportunities. Someone asked a world class hockey player why he was so expert. He said that he could always figure out where the puck was going and then he skated there. We must cognitively predict where our “puck” is going and then position ourselves at that point.
A major job of a boss on every level is to engage the workers in a process that loads into their brains information on not only current events that affect the organization but also where and to what those changing events are leading. That same discussion must also involve everyone to actively participate. From the perspectives of their position and experience, they should help to determine how the organization can operate in a way that not only fits into the future but also can shape that future for our customers and us. That robust discussion must necessarily be multigenerational: Older members can bring the wisdom of their experience, and the younger members can add their more current perspective of the future. The kids must direct us all in the dynamics and potential that electronics will bring inside and outside the department. Skillful/thoughtful bosses must facilitate this discussion and bring our members closer together.
Any discussion regarding fit for duty must connect with the function of how that duty actually operates. The basic focus of our duty is for Firefighter Smith to quickly and kindly deliver service to Mrs. Smith. Right now, a lot is going on in Mrs. Smith’s life. She is going through a recession like all of us, and she will soon be trying to figure out how the changes in healthcare will affect her and her family. When she attempts to make sense out of anything connected with the government, she will have a lot more questions than answers. Many of our sane old answers don’t fit the crazy new questions. She also knows and is confident that when she calls us because something is disrupting her life, we will respond quickly and solve her problem and will be nice to her.
The problem is that Firefighter Smith is trying to somehow make sense of exactly the same confusing stuff. Based on how complex things that used to be simple are now, there is a whole new set of responsibilities the organization must engage in that directly determines how cognitively current and effective we are now and where we will be in the future (skate to the puck). A while back we could teach laying hose and raising ladders and then do a periodic refresher, and we were smart enough and current enough to be effective. Now, we have become a full-service organization and are the agency of first resort and last resort.
That has now dramatically changed because the world we now protect writes a new script about once a week. Every new script involves and affects us in some way, so we must create a level of cognitive flexibility that matches those changes. It is not easy to be a modern boss who must serve as a cognitive travel agent who continually describes and makes the arrangements for the trip to the future.
● Retired chief ALAN BRUNACINI is a fire service author and speaker. He and his sons own the fire service Web site bshifter.com.
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