THE PATH TO FIRE SERVICE EXCELLENVE
MANAGEMENT
“As you may be aware, minor league baseball died fully 25 years ago. Well, the message never quite made it to Louisville, Kentucky. There’s a fellow down there by the name of A. Ray Smith [who] owns a franchise named the Louisville Cardinals. And, 25 years after the death of the sport, Mr. Smith outdrew in attendance 40 percent of major league baseball and 25 years after the death of the sport he exceeded the former all-time historical high minor league attendance record by over 100 percent. And what is the magic? Mr. Smith is very clear. He says it is clean washrooms. For those of you who attend athletic events, you know how nontrivial that is….
“There are thousands of percents of improvement that are possible in any organization anywhere. But, a la Mr. Smith, every one of those thousands of percents comes from trivia or the mundane.”
—Thomas J. Peters
Thriving on Chaos
Success is not the result of one great, magical decision or action. Success—or failure—comes from what we do every day, all year long. Are you ready to make the daily commitment to improve yourself and your organization?
This article is the first in a series that applies Thomas J. Peters’ book Thriving on Chaos—Handbook for a Management Revolution and audiotape series The Excellence Challenge to the fire and other emergency services. Peters, a noted management consultant, believes that we must change how we manage or fall miserably behind in a rapidly changing environment. Many fire service leaders agree, but agreeing isn’t enough: We have to determine exactly what we must do to get our departments up to speed.
LEAD OTHERS, MANAGE YOURSELF
What type of leader are you? Is it your style to be a cop, a naysayer, a rule enforcer, a scheduler of work, a memo writer, a bean counter? If so, you are a major impediment to quality, service, and innovation in your department.
Or are you a coach and sounding board, a nurturer of champions, a protector, and a facilitator—one who manages by walking around rather than by sending memos, who sells employees’ ideas to higher-ups, who proactively supports innovators who have failures? If so, you are probably the best thing that has happened to your department in decades.
A Peters’ anecdote: “Ren McPherson, former chairman of the Dana Corporation, says, ‘Look, when you become a manager, when you put on the hat of manager for the first time in your life, you give up doing honest work for the rest of your life [in other words, you don’t drive the apparatus, throw ladders, or pull hose). You don’t do anything of economic value to the enterprise.’ Well, and if that is the case, then the only thing that you have left is the way you spend your time. The contents of your calendar and your Daytimer, if you will.
“It really is about how we allocate our time. Pure and simple, there is nothing else. We have nothing else except our time.”
Peters says, “There are no excellent companies. The old saw ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ needs revision.” He proposes: “If it ain’t broke, you probably haven’t looked hard enough. Fix it anyway.”
What should we, as effective leaders, be striving for if we are to truly bring excellence to our departments? Some have said we must return to the basics of management—whatever worked in the past. Well, the fire service has never been a leader in quality and innovation; we are, after all, the profession that many have described as “200 years of tradition unimpeded by progress.”
According to Peters, five areas of management constitute the essence of proactive performance in our chaotic world: (1) an obsession with responsiveness to customers, (2) constant innovation in all areas [of the department], (3) partnership —the wholesale participation of and gainsharing with all people [in the department], (4) inspiring vision, and (5) control [of people] by means of simple support systems aimed at measuring the “right stuff” for today’s environment.
WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS?
As an upper, middle, or first-line fire service manager, who are your “customers”? They are no doubt the citizens to whom you provide service. They are the fire and EMS victims, property developers, arson suspects, and citizens who contact the fire dispatch. They are also the people who pay the taxes and fees and make the donations that support your department’s material needs. How responsive are you to the needs of your community? What value have you added to your department’s services in the past month? Six months? Year? Ten years? Are you providing your citizens with the best possible service?
You also have “internal” customers. They are the people in each of your separate bureaus; the leaders with whom you interact in government agencies; the healthcare workers to whom you take victims. Do not forget to ask them, “How have we treated you?”
HOW DO YOU ACCEPT CHANGE?
How do you feel about trying new ideas? Do you tolerate personnel who want to try a new methodology, or do you demand conformity? Do you applaud failure as a “good try,” knowing that the more failures you have the more successes you have? Or do you shun innovation, saying, “What we do now works okay.” Do you nurture champions or do you discourage risk taking? If you are a conformist with the past and present, then you are truly managing a stagnant department that is being left behind, a department people describe as “200 years of tradition unimpeded by progress.”
Do you provide an environment for direct, meaningful input from your personnel? Or do you believe that top management has all the good ideas? Is there a massive hierarchy in your department’s makeup? Do you reward quality performance adequately? Do employees feel an ownership for their part of the operation, or have you taken away their pride by diluting their participation? Are your personnel adaptive to change because you involve them in all aspects of their jobs and responsibilities?
DO YOU HAVE A VISION?
What is your vision of your department in the future? Do you even have a vision? Are you out among your personnel symbolizing, selling, and talking up that vision? Are you leading and guiding the changes necessary to reach your vision, or are you sitting in your office writing reams of policies, directives, orders, and memos to force their implementation? Is change welcomed or dreaded in your department? Leaders have vision. They lead their people toward that vision. Leaders are in front pulling, not behind pushing.
How do you control your people? A 500-page rules and regulations manual? A manual that everyone can hide behind to avoid responsibility and accountability? Are you a bean counter, or are you measuring quality, service, and innovation? Have you, through effective use of personnel participation, established peer group controls? The best controls are those that are self-prescribed because staff becomes dedicated to, motivated for, and proud of what they do. Think about the members who are dedicated, motivated, and proud. Do they need a 500-page rule book that only hinders their attempts at greatness, or can you throw it away so they can get on with the quality, service, and innovation that is required to make your department better?
Managers are people who do things right. Leaders are people who do the right thing. Peters says that to manage means “to manipulate, to handle, to accomplish, to have charge of, to direct, to administer, to conduct.” Leading is “showing the way to or directing the course of by going before or along with, guiding, or using persuasion or influence.” Leaders are concerned with the basic purposes and general direction of their department. They are concerned with effectiveness (quality, service, innovation), not activities (beans). Leaders focus on vision (taking the department to new heights); managers focus on the straight and narrow (bean counting). Manage yourself, lead others.
BEGIN CHANGING TODAY
How do you move from the old style of management that fire departments have always used to the new leadership style they so desperately need?
Consider a Peters anecdote which addresses that question: “If you are sitting there working 25 priorities, you haven’t got any priorities. You may not know it, but your people sure do. They know that it is this program today, that program tomorrow. Maybe on your biggies you can sustain for a full three weeks. But, they can see there isn’t any pattern. And, that’s in such a contrast to what we observe whenever there’s a winner….The whole ball game is focusing that time, focusing that energy, and making it crystal and vividly clear to every person in the organization just exactly what it is that you are up to.”
You continually must add greater and greater value (features, quality to every service that your department offers). This includes all activities, jobs, and tasks that your members perform for citizens and each other. If you are not reconfiguring your department to become a fast-changing, high-value-adding, creative environment, you are simply out of step with the changing times.
Begin today to promote a quality improvement revolution. Follow these 12 prescriptions of a quality revolution, from Peters’ Thriving on Chaos:
Management obsessed with quality. Address any services your department provides that do not meet the highest standards. The quality of the service being provided must be at the top of any staff meeting agenda. Are you spending as much time controlling quality as you are analyzing costs and scheduling? You must be persistent—a serious quality commitment is forever.
Quality means having what it takes to satisfy the customer. The customer defines its perception of excellence. Quality is our response to that perception.
Target whatever task your members are doing for quality improvement. Your internal dealings are just as important as your dealings with customers, and they should be top quality.
Starting today, resolve to not let any shoddy service or poor quality continue without comment and action on your part.
There is a guiding system, or ideology. Many quality improvement programs fail for one of two basic reasons: They have either a system without passion or passion without a system. Both elements are absolutely required. Look at several systems that embrace quality implementation, such as those described in Quality is Free by Phil Crosby (McGraw-Hill, 1979) and Total Quality Control by Armand Feigenbaum, (McGraw-Hill, 1983).
A Peters’ anecdote: “Take the DuPont Company. A twisted ankle in Singapore, a hangnail in Singapore, any accident whatsoever in DuPont is reported directly to the chairman and arrives at the chairman’s desk in Wilmington, Delaware within 24 hours of when it occurred. What happens? People are paying attention to accidents. Whole lot of plant managers running around trying to make sure that very little has to be reported to Wilmington. Does it work? Well, you be the judge. The DuPont safety record is 17 times better than the chemical industry average and 27 times better than industry as a whole. It is just plain paying attention.”
Do your managers embody the message of quality every minute, every day, year after year, and decade after decade?
Quality is measured. “What gets measured gets done. Measurement is the heart of any improvement process. If something can not be measured, it cannot be improved.” The cost of poor quality can be measured in every function from the secretarial staff to operations to administration. Display these measures—post charts and graphs—so members can see how their actions impact the quality of service they provide.
The following Peters’ anecdote shows how far one businessman went to measure service: “J. Willard Marriott, Sr. opened the first A&W Root Beer stand on the East Coast in 1928. Mr. Marriott continues today to personally read, unedited, every single customer complaint card from what is now in excess of a $3 billion operation. In other words, 56 years later and he still doesn’t think he’s got service right.”
Quality is rewarded. As quality improves, a reward system must be in place. Without incentives, motivation will be limited. Quality awards dinners, banquets, certificates, and constant pats on the back will make champions of your best innovators and service improvers.
Train everyone. Train all department members in problem cause-andeffect analysis, group problem-solving techniques, and interaction techniques. If you want quality improvements, your people must understand how to measure quality, identify problems, and provide solutions in a nonthreatening atmosphere.
Teams are used when problems affect multiple arms of the department. Form corrective action teams to solve problems. These teams should contain members from various bureaus and should be disbanded when not in use. Often managers, because of internal fighting, will not lend members to teams that cross bureau lines. Don’t tolerate managers who do not work together for the benefit of the organization —they must do so for the benefit of the customer.
Small is beautiful. No improvement is insignificant, no matter how small. Don’t try to improve one major service; instead, make a lot of small improvements —they’ll add up to big results.
There must be constant stimulation. The pats on the back, rewards, and recognition must be continuous. The antidote for poor quality is new direction, new strategy, new themes, new rewards, new champions, new team configurations, and plenty of hoopla.
Structure a quality improvement committee. You will need a steering committee and a recognition committee to plan the reward and recognition program and establish standards. Control these committees closely so they do not become another bureaucracy in themselves.
Everyone plays. Involve not only your managers and all your employees but your customers in decisions affecting quality. Ask customers for their input concerning building plan reviews and fire prevention inspections. Send a letter and return postcard to citizens who interface with the fire marshal’s office. Ask them questions regarding professionalism, service, responsiveness, assistance, and courtesy. Remember, it is the customer’s perception of quality that matters. Take the time to find out what that perception is.
As quality goes up, costs come clown. When what we do is of greater quality, the resources used to produce the service are expended more effectively and efficiently. Attempt to simplify every operation. Quality is not about high complexity; it is about streamlining, eliminating the unnecessary, and loosening controls that are in place for the weakest among us in order to free the best of us.
Quality improvement is a neverending journey. It is impossible to achieve the ultimate in quality, even though that is what you strive for. All quality is relative. Each day products and services change, but we do our best to keep up.
As Peters says, “Quality is defined by the customer’s perception of service delivery, not the legislative parameters of a particular program. Callousness or indifference in the delivery of an inherently helpful service destroys much of its benefit.”
THE ROAD TO QUALITY
The following are the first steps to take on the road to quality in your department.
- Form a vision. What does quality mean to you? Can you develop a passion for it? Be sure you believe in yourself and your ability to sustain the passion. You must form a vision of where you are taking your organization.
- Don’t let any poor-quality act or delivery go unchallenged or uncorrectecl. You must begin to symbolize what you arc all about. Be consistent and be decisive.
A Peters’ anecdote: “Forrest Mars [founder of Mars candy], instead of spending his time in the office, spent about 50 percent of the time running a S4 billion business in his 70s in the corner stores of America, checking out the Snickers Bars displays and the M&M displays. And, they said when the old man would come across a single miswrapped candy bar, his typical response was to call upon the offending factory, have them send him a carton. He would carry that carton into his weekly officer operating meeting in McLean, Virginia, and proceed to throw the candy bars at his officers, one at a time. They got the message —this old fellow was pretty serious about product quality.”
- Survey customers. Collect information from the customers—all who interface with your department —on how they perceive what you do and how well you do it. Use form letters, return postcards, telephone inquiries, and face-to-face meetings. This information is the basis for measuring improvement.
- Involve customers in the program. After all, it is in their eyes that improvement really takes place, not yours.
In future articles we’ll discuss providing superior service, creating uniqueness, and becoming obsessed with listening with regard to innovation, empowering people, viewing leadership at all levels, and measuring what is important *
