BY ALAN BRUNACINI
We have recently discussed the topic of how boss behaviors influence organizational boundary management. It is worthwhile to explore the details of how effectively (YES/NO) limits are established and maintained because how it is done is absolutely connected to basic organizational capability and internal and external happiness. A critical boss role is to skillfully lead the troops in a way that produces both performance and behavior within boundaries that are effective and safe. This leadership skill is built around a set of human-centered management capabilities that must occur throughout the organization that continually engage the interest, energy, and capability of everyone in the system to contribute in their own way to stretching the boundaries in a positive direction that produces authentic continuous improvement. This stretch can have a very positive effect because it is based on the most critical organizational element-the feelings, experience, capability, and intelligence of the humans who operate within the system. These capabilities form the basis of authentic empowerment.
Attitude Toward Ideas
A major way this increase in effectiveness occurs (or doesn’t occur) is how ideas that come from everyone are managed. The process of always trying to continually create improvements has many interesting pieces and parts and involves a lot of people, places, and things. How this is actually done is a direct reflection of how well the organization prepares and manages itself to promote the positive support of anyone who has an idea. A positive “idea environment” within a fire department sends a message to everyone in the system to bring a combination of their biceps to work along with their brain. Biceps produce the physical capability to lay hose and raise ladders (big deal)/brains access experience, capability, and thinking when they are encouraged, supported, and engaged to always look for a “better way.” To be effective, the organization must have the natural inclination, skill, and leadership (functional boss behaviors) to engage the members to come to work as a complete (whole) person. When this occurs, we truly bring out the best in our humans. Poorly led and managed (obedience/compliance focused) systems do an almost automatic “brain-ectomy” and regard and treat their workers as if they leave their brain at the door, which they don’t. A lot of nutty things happen when the organization treats smart workers as if they are dumb!
Creating the internal environment and leadership capability is critical because it does not take very long for workers to evaluate, understand, and react to how the organization and their boss feel about and treat someone who has a new, different, sometimes unusual, and occasionally unconventional idea. No one has any more insight, experience, or knowledge of the status of organizational effectiveness than the people inside that system, and that system loses a huge opportunity to use the imagination and brainpower of the humans in the system to create the next (and the next, and the next) best method to do the business of the business. What kind of system had the capability (and leadership) to invent, develop, manufacture, and market a computer watch? I can barely use my cell phone.
The organization must continually package itself to take advantage of making everyone within the system an “improvement consultant.” I believe that every organization must produce a special idea package to fit its particular system and that a one-size idea plan doesn’t fit everyone. How this occurs is a major responsibility and function of strategic level bosses who generally have come up in their organization and understand the history, culture, style, and standards of their department. Those bosses should examine examples of idea dynamics in a variety of organizations (example=computer watch) that do a wide range of the same functions and others that do a completely different set of functions. When these big bosses, or really any bosses, exhibit a genuine curiosity about effective innovation examples, it sends a very encouraging and supportive message to the troops on every level. When that idea model leader engages his department members in a way that shares what was learned from everybody/every place and then seeks a response, it enriches and expands internal dynamics and brings out the best in that system. This leadership example creates the template for others to follow. I have thought about some of the following basic steps that leaders in any system could take to create an effective internal idea environment.
Creating and Understanding an Idea Environment
The organization should develop a basic idea management philosophy that describes the basic program objective. It might look something like the following:
“The River City Fire Department encourages every member to develop and present any idea or suggestion that will improve the effectiveness, safety, and regular and special (legitimate) status of the organization. Every department member is encouraged to apply his opinion, observations, and ideas for improvement within the structure of the organization to advance customer service performance and the internal environment. It is the responsibility of officers to always channel the energy, imagination, creativity, and opinion of every member that boss can influence in a positive and constructive direction. The organization recognizes the value every member can contribute when using their personal experience, skill, and insight to improve the quality of the system’s performance.”
In most cases, those members know the most about the practical details of how the work actually occurs because of their background, interest, and area/position of involvement. These same workers (internal consultants) also have the opportunity to produce the most authentic and effective ideas to improve the functions that relate to the operations in which they are directly involved.
Bosses have continual contact with the folks with whom they interact (inside and outside) and must become organizational talent scouts and develop the personal technique to encourage conversations and interactions that explore the thoughts, reactions, and related ideas of those troops. Effective leaders are critical listeners, question askers, and patient supporters of the regular and special interests, experiences, and opinions workers have about some areas they care about. Every person brings a personal profile to the “fire station kitchen table” discussion center, and an effective scout always has his talent radar engaged to detect and direct the special energy of that person into an idea with a future.
Bosses have more organizational influence, authority, and access; they must use them also to be idea travel agents. When an idea emerges, there is a standard set of development and implementation stages. Ideas get thought up and then developed in some discussion setting. Often, the new thing connects to a brainstorming process where effective bosses are the natural leaders. A lot of discussion in a fire station just naturally resembles the format of brainstorming where a spontaneous (unrestrained) group discussion explores a wide range of options, possibilities, and ideas. The basic structure of brainstorming is to withhold judgment or criticism of ideas, welcome unusual and exaggerated ideas, and build on ideas put forward by others. All ideas have equal value and, when combined, can improve concepts.
Moving an idea along requires effective, basic packaging that is clear, understandable, and thoroughly explained and researched; an estimate of the cost of its implementation; and an outline of the implementation roles (who does what). The dynamics of ideas in a very functional organization like a fire department can be a challenging process. When we talk about continuous improvement (which I do a lot), it can begin to sound like a highly energized happy face the boss gets when coming back from a motivational seminar where the color-coordinated instructor leads the group while they hold hands singing, “We are the earth.” I have probably done that exact routine as a young officer and, most times, the results were that the firefighters on the receiving end rolled their eyes and the company boss said, “Shut up, and we’ll go home early.” There is no organization in which the status quo is more powerful than a fire department. There are many areas in which this is a very effective way to operate simply because we routinely must bundle up in our personal protective equipment (a really good idea) and take a quick trip into the hazard zone. It is critical that we continually do a set and series of operational actions that create (1) a trip into and (2) a trip out of that immediately dangerous to life or health place. The most important boss function is to create a “round trip.”
Because our hazard zone survival is critical to us, it also creates the need for current stability and future continuous, ongoing improvement. Although the hazards are pretty timeless-structural collapse, toxic insult, and thermal insult-the ways we now control, eliminate, and survive those hazards have continually gotten better and better. Many of those improvements were the results of ideas that produced a safer and more operational response. I have been an observer and a student of this process throughout my career. In fact, I was in a position to directly engage the members of my department for a long time in a never-ending, very energetic, ongoing discussion about the process of change.
What this involves is a conversation about changing a practice, a procedure, a technique, a tool, the level of technology, or an organizational “habit” that we may have done for a long time and like doing because we are comfortable with how it works. Basically, change involves disrupting familiar habits. I quickly learned that it is a verbal contact sport for the messenger leading a discussion about something new that disrupts those historic habits. Necessarily, when a new idea is connected to an old, established practice, the folks responsible for that practice generally will not welcome it with open arms. Our ongoing routines typically have a well-developed and practiced management and support system built to support that practice. The idea management system inside an organization must recognize and respond to this reality; the front end of the idea approach should be open, accessible, and well-facilitated. As that idea works through the system toward implementation, timing, communication, and training must be done to create new skills and unlearn old routines. Engaged leaders must connect the players to the change = more functional boss behaviors.
Anyone who plays in the idea arena must understand the details of the care and feeding of an idea and develop the personal resilience to go through that process. For this to be effective, the organization must build and maintain a positive internal environment. Bosses on every level must operate in a smart, supportive way, and everybody must put on their rhino skins so they can be smart, tough, and nice.
When getting into the beginning of the idea process, understand that your suggestion gets sliced and diced and processed by a variety of other department members. This goes on in a very robust organization and requires all adult players.
We have all gone through the recent Great Recession that sadly necessitated that we reduce our resources, so someone now showing up with a “great idea” that will take a gazillion bucks to pull off is living in a dream world. It has been painful, but throughout the recession, we have implemented ideas that reduced our resources rather than increased them (because we had to). However, we have probably increased the effectiveness of how we have done “different” with less.
One of the critical roles of bosses is to engage the members of the organization to describe and discuss the current and projected status of the system. This discussion creates the reality therapy that establishes the overall context of the system, and that contextual framework can involve a wide variety of ways to develop improvement projects to fit into current reality. When there aren’t any new bucks and we are struggling to protect old bucks, we are not going to process and pull off ideas that require +$, but we can develop improvements in internal procedures, better techniques, improved training for performance in every role, increased delivery of basic service and added value, increased efforts to refine the planning process, and on and on. I lived through the economic ups and downs of a very active metro system, and if I had to choose between running out of money and running out of creativity, I would have picked the power of our collective imaginations to a big glob of bucks (which are nice when you can get them). In my travels, I have seen a ton of excellent fire departments with a modest budget and another group with big finances and little effectiveness (or happiness).
Idea management fits into our ongoing discussion about the hierarchy of boss capability and performance because it is part of higher management. Playing the new idea game is a rough-and-tumble sport, and anyone who sticks his head up can be in a vulnerable spot. It’s a lot easier and safer to just ride backward and keep your mouth shut. A major organizational capability is for leaders to make the idea game sensible, patient, humane, and well-managed. Good bosses have a sense of opportunity for an idea and a connection to how things get done in the organization. They must have the skill and capability to operate a continuous improvement approach that welcomes and supports active discussion; they understand how to research an idea; they are able to help package a concept in a practical way; and they must have a refined set of skills to commend good performance and to celebrate success. They are creative in presenting concepts and new programs, and they know when to put an idea in staging and when to proceed because they are connected to the “mood” of the organization. These are things that necessitate refined human and organizational skills. Someone with an idea is a lot more effective when a supportive boss is somewhere in the picture and a lot better off if that boss gets high grades while ascending the management hierarchy in personal capability and organizational effectiveness.
Thank heaven that some effective boss helped Halligan to develop a hook, Humat to invent a valve, and Kelly to think up an extra day off as they climbed that management hierarchy. If they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be able to force a door, pump a supply line, or go on an extended fishing trip.
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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