BY JOHN M. BUCKMAN
I was an avid comic book read-er when I was a child and always loved to see the lightbulb drawn over the head of a character because I knew that the story was going to take a wonderful and brilliant turn. This simple symbol announced to readers that a great idea had come into the character’s mind and the character was about to turn even the most desperate situation in a new direction. If I were asked to draw a cartoon of what a typical volunteer leader must look like to thrive in the new century, I would put that same lightbulb over his head to symbolize the need for continual, creative thinking. I assume that such thinking has been part of the skills volunteer administrators have had in the past but believe strongly that our current times demand a much higher level of competency in this area. That sounds easier than it is.
For creativity to become a guiding force in a volunteer fire department, an incredible array of demands must be added to the leader’s shoulders to establish an environment in which creative thinking can thrive. Inspire creativity among firefighters through stimulation and recognition. Model creative thinking in their work. Keep everyone focused on the mission while encouraging creative tangents. Stay personally creative. Evaluate creative ideas for those that will be most effective. Have the strength of character to set great ideas aside because they do not contribute to the mission or fit the moment.
If that brings to mind the image of a juggler, you’ve gotten the picture.
THE CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT
Let’s look at the specific aspects of the environment or feel of the department or company that must exist for creative thinking to emerge and grow.
The environment of a truly creative fire department is rather easy to spot when you visit it, yet it is difficult to describe or replicate. Most of us end up with some vague statement such as, “Well, I can’t really explain it, but it just felt alive and creative.”
As nonspecific as that statement seems, it actually has touched on the essence of any environment we try to describe to others: It is the feel of a setting. Think back to times when you have had to go to a meeting or even a social event and felt that somehow you had entered hostile territory. If someone later asked you to define exactly what happened to give you that feeling, you probably found it difficult to cite specific occurrences. No one probably was openly rude, threw hot coffee in your face, or kicked you in the shins (definite signs of hostility), but more subtle clues likely told the hair on the back of your neck to stand at watchful attention for predators.
For a volunteer fire chief to create and support an environment in which creative thinking can thrive, specific things must be in place before lightbulbs go off over people’s heads.
UNDERSTANDING NORMS
Norms are simply the unwritten rules that govern behavior. They produce the environment in which rules of behavior set the standards for how people act and react.
You must be sensitive to norms that are already established; you must know which additional ones need to be introduced to encourage creativity and which inhibit freedom and need to be purged.
To accomplish this, you will first have to examine the norms or unwritten rules that already exist and identify those that are nonnegotiable (typically mandated by authorities). Hold a brainstorming session with volunteers to identify the rules they sense tell them how to behave. If it is difficult to stimulate honest sharing of such rules, you may wish to suggest categories in which norms might exist and offer specific examples you have noted.
Norms typically exist in categories such as organizational demands, recognition, punctuality, ethics and standards, support, supervision, attention to details, after-hour relationships, comfort, and conflict. Be aware also that the degree of difficulty you experience in getting your firefighters to share their thoughts openly is a clue to the climate around you—the more reluctance you encounter, the more closed or uptight your environment is; the more easily firefighters share their thoughts, the more open and creative the environment probably is. This exercise can be your first diagnostic test of the feel of your work setting.
It is critical for you as the leader to uncover the unwritten rules that govern behavior and to work to eradicate those that have a negative influence and to encourage or establish more positive rules. Be careful with those that may be less than positive but are imposed by administration. Use creative thinking to come up with ways to change them and to live with them in the meantime.
As you consider your norms, pay particular attention to those that impact creativity, such as the following:
•Is it OK for people to come up with and share new ideas, or are they met by the idea killers who shout, “We have never done it THAT way; we’ve always done it THIS way” or “You’re too young/new to the program, dearie, to understand”?
•Do people feel free to throw out any idea that pops into their heads as an issue is being discussed, or does everyone in the group glare or laugh to send the message “What a stupid idea” and then ignore the suggestion?
•When a problem arises, what is everyone’s first response? Do they feel that they must go to the rulebook to look up answers to follow the company line or to a higher authority to ask what should be done? Are they fearful of trying to devise their own solution?
•When firefighters get ideas, where must they take them? Do they have to adhere to a strict procedure and chain of command, or can they bring it up in a meeting where everyone will hear it for the first time?
•Is it OK for anyone to question rulings, procedures, systems, and dictates? Or are such questions met with reprimands and accusations of not being a good team player or of being a troublemaker?
All of the above questions relate to the environment or climate factors that influence creativity. If norms that discourage creative thinking exist in your organization, identify them and find ways to get rid of them. Conversely, when you find norms that encourage and stimulate creative thinking, strengthen and preserve them.
The simple act of having firefighters examine the unwritten rules that govern the behavior in your programs will send a positive message to everyone working there: “We want to do all we can to encourage creative thinking and remove any barriers that might prevent anyone from being as creative as possible.” It’s a good message and tends to produce lightbulbs over the heads of a lot of folks.
A CREATIVE ENVIRONMENT
While working with departments, I have prepared the following list of conditions that might encourage a positive environment for creativity. Think creatively in adjusting this list to your own setting. A department or company that wishes to stimulate creativity among its members includes all perspectives in discussion, not just those that agree with how things are being done at the present. Keep in mind the following considerations:
•A paid staff, volunteers, customers, suppliers, parallel workers, and experts/advisors can offer different viewpoints regarding the same effort and assist in effectively planning actions that take these into consideration.
•Gathering only “yes” people around you does not stimulate creative thinking in you or anyone else.
•The person who cares about the success of the effort and plays the devil’s advocate role can be invaluable to a secure, open-minded leader. For any effort to work, especially if it is a highly creative and innovative one, leaders must look at the downside, envision any problems the action may create, and then determine if the problems are acceptable.
•Avoid the “negative syndrome” person, one who is always negative simply for the sake of the attention to be gained. This individual usually is just trying to be obnoxious, as opposed to the true devil’s advocate, who is trying to play a positive role.
Keep in mind that even a paranoid person is occasionally right and that the negative person may be correct in his less-than-positive response to a new idea. So, always look objectively at the argument.
•Allow anyone to question anything—no sacred cows should exist. With only the constraints of no personal attacks, blaming, or breach of confidences, creative groups allow and even encourage members to question policies, systems, and procedures; but we always have lines of authority, services or products, goals, traditions, assumptions, and so on. The goal is always the same: Come up with a better idea, find a simpler path, define it more clearly, and make it better.
•Too many groups hold on to outdated systems or procedures because the person who introduced it is so revered. Help folks to understand that moving away from a traditional response does not negate the contribution or value of the older action or the person who created it. Don’t confuse worth and work. You do not label an older volunteer’s effort as worthless when you set it aside. You simply see it as a building block of the past that enabled today’s successes. It does not in any way diminish the respect.
One of the best ways to demonstrate your commitment to the “no sacred cows” norm is to invite the people you evaluate to evaluate you as their supervisor. Some of the most valuable feedback I got from those I supervised was through the last question on the evaluation form: “How might I have supported you more effectively?” Such a question invites positive suggestions that can stimulate greater effectiveness. It says to everyone, “It’s OK to risk saying what you think and to express your needs.”
•Encourage people to go outside the lines when thinking of new ways to accomplish goals. If parameters exist, such as in the case of hospice volunteers who might come in contact with a patient’s blood, tell them about the parameters and why such parameters must be followed. Do so in simple terms and in a straightforward manner to ensure understanding and model nonnegotiation.
Never allow personal attacks or blame for things that have gone wrong. Identify problems by the trouble they have caused, the lives that were affected, and their root cause. Do not place blame on people; look for the source of the problem to prevent the problem from happening again.
Do not try to overregulate actions. Sometimes in response to problems, groups overreact and attempt to control behavior unrealistically. Some groups may be led by people who need such rigid control that they cannot allow suggestions that would deviate from what has already been prescribed. In both cases, the result is the same—the stifling of creativity. Departments or companies that exhibit such rigidity rarely attract and almost never retain creative thinkers. The older the group, the more likely you are to find overregulation. A healthy group constantly monitors its rules, norms, and guiding principles to ensure that they are free from such creativity killers.
Not everyone can do well in a group that invites collective, integrated creative thinking. If you encounter someone who simply can’t adjust to such noncontrolling norms, it might be kind of you to let them find some other setting where they can control their surroundings and change is not likely to occur.
REMOVING OBSTACLES TO CREATIVITY
In both the discussions of reshaping programs and creating an environment in which creativity can thrive, we have been looking at different facets of the same concept. Our goal is not to force people into saying yes to creativity but to remove obstacles to their saying yes. Look around you. Examine your surroundings, meetings, procedures, norms, demands, and relationships. Study the way your group communicates its attitudes and actions in relation to team building, growth, pleasure, energy use, expectations, and so on.
When looking at ways to identify and remove obstacles to creative thinking and expression, take a long, hard look first at yourself and then at others whose attitude, messages, or demeanor might be holding back ideas. If those people in authority or at a peer level convey any of the following messages consciously or unconsciously to firefighters, you can bet that creative thinking will vanish into thin air:
You? An original idea? I doubt it!
- You’re too new to understand.
- I don’t recall your having experience in that.
- That’s not your job, so forget it!
- We’re the experts here!
- Your last idea was a bomb. Why should I listen to a new one?
- We’ve loved the old ways best.
- Write that up; I will read it when I have some free time.
- We’ve got enough to do already. Why are you bothering me with something new?
In an honest assessment, you will also have to look at more subtle messages that convey mistrust, jealousy, prejudice, assumptions, or—in rare cases—simple meanness. Watch especially for reactions to and sabotaging of new ideas from those planning to take credit for the idea later. Watch also for procedures that are so Byzantine and complex that innovators decide it’s not worth the hassle to try to submit them in proper form to higher authorities.
Walt Disney is known not only for his artistry on film and the drawing board but also for his gift of inspiring creativity. The engineers who designed and built Disneyland were and are called “Imagineers.” Subtle message, great results! Walt Disney also believed in Management by Walking Around (MBWA) because he said he could pick up so many more creative ideas.
Several management gurus have made a fortune in promoting this as a new management practice and present daylong seminars on it. I can’t imagine spending a whole day trying to explain to anyone with an IQ higher than 75 that the best way to encourage others is to walk around and get to know them and what they are doing. It seems so obvious and opens the lines of communication between officers and firefighters.
This is not a tough concept to grasp. When people care about others and what they are thinking about, when they talk to them like the colleagues they are instead of through layers of managerial flim flam and channels, and when they respect their intelligence and are not threatened by how good they are, neat things happen. And it doesn’t take 15 years.
Watch for barriers to creative thinking, roadblocks to people connecting across titles, levels, and management chart boxes. It’s “leadershift” in action.
REWARDING CREATIVITY
There is a simple rule of thumb in organizational and human behavior: You get more of what you reward and less of what you ignore or punish. One great way to establish an environment for creativity is to have innovative ways to recognize firefighters who have come up with new ideas.
I do not mean only a wingding of an annual recognition banquet but also finding unique ways throughout the year to reward creative thinking. Recognition is not a single event, no matter how wonderful, but a series of creative ways to reward, recognize, and acclaim the good works of volunteers and staff. All of these efforts together produce an ongoing process critical to success. For such a process to be in place, it requires what I call an “appreciation commitment.”
For a department to have an appreciation commitment, the top leaders must see recognition as an integral part of working with people. This translates into a constant effort to appreciate and respect people beyond the confines of what we normally define as recognition.
When you have a commitment to ex-pressing appreciation, it is extended to everyone who comes in contact with you. When that appreciation embraces those people who come up with creative thinking, you are telling the world how much you value creativity and, by so doing, typically attract new innovative thinkers.
There may be no more valuable tool in your effort to inspire creativity than sincere, open recognition for those who offer lightbulb thinking. There may also be no greater challenge than to devise clever and fun ways to say thank you to such people. I urge you to involve everyone in designing personalized and innovative ways to appreciate others.
Enabling creativity by establishing an environment where it can flourish, removing obstacles to innovative thinking, and finding ways to recognize such contributions are major challenges for every leader. For volunteer program leaders to be truly effective in their work, they will have to rise to totally new levels of competency in this area.
JOHN M. BUCKMAN is chief of the German Township (IN) Volunteer Fire Department in Evansville, Indiana, where he has served for 22 years, and the immediate past president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC). He was instrumental in forming the IAFC’s Volunteer Chief Officers Section and is past chairman. He is an adjunct faculty member in the National Fire Academy residence program, is an advisory board member of Fire Engineering, and lectures extensively on fire service-related topics.
