Evolution of a Mission Statement
You are a visiting firefighter aboard a tour bus in a strange city. The bus windows are open. At a stoplight, another tour bus pulls alongside. The face smiling at you through an open window is of Asian appearance. But the tourist’s English is much better than your Chinese. He asks what you do. You indicate that you are a firefighter. He prods for more information, “What does that mean?”
The light is changing, the engine’s already revving up. You have just a moment to speak a simple, concise sentence describing your organization’s role in society and your role in the organization. Whatever you say in the next six seconds is about as close as you come to understanding and expressing your department’s mission statement.
A mission statement is more than a motto or slogan, and it is considerably less than the compiled SOPs of the department. It summarizes the spirit of the organization in a single sentence.
Harmony and productivity depend on the willingness of the entire department to share a common mission statement. This holds true for any organization of any size. Major metropolitan firefighters may think mission statements are for gung-ho volunteers. Firefighters who feel they are trapped between municipal rules and union contracts may see no value in developing an agreeable mission statement. Volunteers may think their limited operations lie beneath the need for such a fancy device as a mission statement. But wherever a concise and agreeable mission statement is lacking, personal preferences will arise in its place, and conflict will result.
Mission statement deficits fall into three classes:
- The department is not living up to the terms of its mission statement.
- The department is working outside or beyond its mission statement.
- The department has no workable mission statement.
Each deficit casts its own special shadow on the operation of the organization.
Strife is surprisingly common within fire service organizations. It is not unusual to find coworkers who will risk their lives for each other for the good of the organization and for the safety of citizens, but who scarcely speak to one another when the crisis has abated. The subject of interpersonal conflict in the fire service is not well-researched. Perhaps we could consult studies of similar response units, such as military or law enforcement groups, composed of actionoriented individuals with aggressive personalities befitting them for the mode of operation known as “hurry up and wait.”
Suffice it to say that if members of fire service organizations could treat each other as well as they treat their customers, they would be happier people. Their ranks would be more habitable and productive. And even their customers would benefit. Some internal strife may be due to deficient mission statements—at least that portion of strife not otherwise attributable to deep personality conflicts between individuals. It is beyond our scope to consider marginally neurotic behaviors. A well-shaped department mission statement, however, will counteract divisiveness.
A GUIDING DOCUMENT
Strictly speaking, a mission statement describes the activities of a responding unit from the moment of dispatch through a complete operation cycle, including readiness for the next operation. In a broader sense, the mission statement for a given fire department is a brief, generalized description of the operation of the organization in all the forms of service it agrees to supply throughout its service area.
As the guiding document of an organization, the departmental mission statement condenses the tasks, values, motivators, and satisfiers of the entire operation into a few choice words. Whether career or volunteer, you should be able to describe your life’s work or principal avocation to a visiting Chinese firefighter through a language barrier and engine noise in no more time than it takes for two tour buses to stop and go at an intersection. If you can’t, then you and your mission statement need a fresh introduction. The department that lacks an agreeable mission statement is a department bound for low productivity, friction, and even divisive conflict sufficient to threaten the integrity of the entire organization.
Rookie firefighters, especially in volunteer departments, might write the departmental mission statement with predictable enthusiasm: “You name it, and we’ll do it!” Amused veterans smile, knowing this boundless enthusiasm will taper off as reality sets in. Unsupported enthusiasm devolves into burnout. Burnout points toward a minimal mission statement tinged with bitterness at the opposite extreme: “You name it, and we’ll think about it, because we intend to do as little as possible and still earn our keep.” In other words, “You’ve got to remember that, after all, we’re only volunteers.”
Somewhere between these extremes of naive enthusiasm and terminal burnout lies a useful statement of about 25 words that fully describes the life and work of your organization. For lack of a mission statement, the department will linger in perpetual debate over its own nature and duties.
The departmental change officer will provide a great service to the department by agitating for frequent review of the mission statement or for composing a mission statement where none exists. The change officer holds a nonelected, nonappointed, and generally unpopular position that, however, always exists to some measurable degree in every viable organization. The position must be filled by one or more persons in every fire department if that department is to have a ghost of a chance of surviving the manifold changes and challenges confronting it.
Occasionally the change officer is a genuinely elected or appointed department official—perhaps a progressive chief officer who combines with responsibilities the role of change agent and takes the lead in bringing progressive change to the department. Such departments are blessed by good fortune. As often as not, the role of change officer is played by a junior officer or line firefighter who reads a lot (especially fire journals), is ambitious and thick-skinned, has a bent for management, and likes to tinker with organizations to see how they run and whether they can be made to run better.
At minimum, the departmental mission statement blends an awareness of community needs and resources into an expression of best intentions. For example: “The XFD will recruit, train, equip, and reward personnel to deal professionally and effectively with emergencies and hazards to life and property in the best interests of all citizens of X community.” While the shortcomings of this statement will emerge, at least it is a beginning.
For departments that have given little thought to the mission statement in recent memory, a measure of encouragement comes from knowing there is probably a charter, a constitution, or another document lying around somewhere that states the purpose for which the organization originally was formed. Lacking recent revisions, that document may be the prelude to resuscitating the pertinent mission statement.
UPDATING THE MISSION STATEMENT
When a long-forgotten charter document emerges from hiding, it is always interesting to discover whether the department is still living up to the terms of the original agreement. Seldom will a department have sunk beneath the original promises, although this is not impossible. More often, departments have added additional responsibilities over the years, which may leave them hanging far out on a limb in terms of their original agreement.
The best of all is to find a department with an up-to-date mission statement describing the full scope of the assigned tasks in terms of the shared values of the community and fire department members. This statement also will touch on appropriate motivators and satisfiers that lead people to make the sacrifices necessary to fulfill the mission statement. There also should be evidence to support the claim that the department is meeting or exceeding all the terms of the agreement. In short, this mission statement accounts for all the tasks, values, motivators, and satisfiers that apply to the department and its service area. All that in 25 words or so.
Does your department pump flooded basements? There are good arguments pro and con. If so, is the work done as a matter of policy or as a favor? And if as a favor, is the favor selectively applied to special citizens? Obviously, a briefly worded statement cannot specify every contingency. Only by frequent review of the mission statement can the department hope to understand and agree on whether pumping basements is a matter of policy or personal favor. A good mission statement fits like a saddle—snug enough for function and safety but slack enough to allow breathing space for the one obliged to wear it.
THE EVOLUTION OF ONE DEPARTMENTAL MISSION STATEMENT
With evidence of plentiful community spirit, good citizenship, and patriotism-all predictable at the end of World War II—community leaders founded a new fire department from scratch in the late 1940s. Their operating agreement was not called a mission statement. In those days the phrase “mission statement” still evoked memories of military operations. Basically, the founding fathers of the department agreed, “We will fight fires, help each other, hold a dance once a year, and promote good citizenship in between.” There, in less than 25 words, is a working mission statement. The emphasis clearly is on fire suppression and community service, both on paper and in the minds of those who belonged to the organization. And the organization was called a fire department.
Sometime in the late ’50s or early ’60s, an E & J Resuscitator—a secondgeneration version of an oxygen device old-timers used to call a “pulmotor”—was slung on board the grassfire rig; at that moment the future course of that fire department took a perceptible turn. The department had ventured into “resuscitator calls.” Without changing its name or amending the mission statement, the department commenced converting itself into a fire and rescue service.
The surrounding community grew in leaps and slumps paralleling several successive building booms and recessions. Incident frequency mounted from a few dozen calls per year to 400 in 1991. Of these calls, fully 70 percent now are exclusively EMS situations. Many of the remaining 30 percent also have medical potential.
But the mission statement never was reviewed or revised to account for this shift in emphasis. As the workload increased, friction and divisive conflict resulted between those who welcomed more frequent and diverse challenges and those who rightfully asked, “Why can’t we just be a fire department the way we used to be? What kind of an organization are we anyway? Why are we running all these ‘Band-Aid’® calls?”
Obviously, the department no longer is in harmony with the only available working agreement it can identify. Fortunately, the performance of the department grandly exceeds the terms of its antiquated mission statement in every facet. But vulnerability that will not go away is created here until the mission statement is revised to account for every service this department actually performs.
Everyone has heard the “seven last words” of a doomed organization: “We never did it that way before.” This is quite a natural reaction to the first hint of imponderable changes. It also highlights the importance of feeding on a steady diet of small changes. A mission statement is never considered finished. It is always up for grabs, subject to review and refinement every year or so. And this is good. When change occurs frequently, in the smallest possible increments, it is less perceptible and therefore less painful. Annual review of the mission statement provides for this.
The change officer might be tempted to commit the fatal error of writing the mission statement and presenting it to the department for approval. It is not difficult to compose a cute, 25word jingle. One creative person can do the job more quickly than a committee and certainly faster than an entire department. But there are whole file cabinets full of such deadend documents. The workable mission statement must be sown and grown in the fertile minds of the entire membership of the organization. And if these minds choose to be infertile, then the persistent change officer must figure a way to harvest a palatable mission statement off hardscrabble and muck, if need be. The harvest may be a long time coming, but it won’t be worth anything otherwise. But that’s how the change officer earns his/her keep.
Reviewing and revising a mission statement is akin to shedding a skin. It is a natural consequence of growth. Snakes do it all at once. You’re also shedding your skin, but yours comes off in little flakes, barely noticeable when it’s done right. Your replacement skin is not all that different. Just renewed. Constantly renewed. That’s the best way to grow a mission statement.
Workable mission statements are necessarily designed by induction, which is to say they arise by the open discussion and common agreement of those responsible for carrying out the mission. By definition, a workable mission statement cannot be imposed on workers by a higher authority.
A classic example of an imposed mission statement, written in the upper echelons of leadership and sent down from on high to be carried out by line regulars, is reviewed by Alfred Tennyson in his epic poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not tho’ the soldiers knew someone had blundered:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
There are rules these days that strongly counsel against purposely leading firefighters into great peril, even if they are shy “to make reply, or reason why,” and even when they yearn “to do and die.” The departmental mission statement is a key document in ensuring the safety, productivity, and gratifying participation of all personnel in any emergency services organization *
