Succession Planning: Retaining Our Greatest Assets

By MARK J. ROSSI

Many of us pride ourselves on words like family and brotherhood. Don’t just toss those words around so easily. If you are a company officer, your crew should know how much you care about them. They can make or break the officer. I remember how I was treated by some of my department’s best officers; I still look up to many of them today. The positive environment they created made me feel special—not just one in a department of more than 500.

Your crew members need to know you offer an environment where problems are brought up and handled at the lowest level possible. When I enter the firehouse every shift, I think, “It is not about me, it is about them.” My job as their company officer is around the clock. They know they can call me at any time, and I am here to help them. We are family, and it holds true even after we have left the firehouse the next morning.

Leading by Example

When I was a driver-engineer, I learned from a senior officer this important rule: Always take care of your crew. One day, on the first medical call, our engine broke down and we had to swap equipment into a reserve vehicle. The entire crew of five (engine and rescue) came to help transfer the equipment. On our second call, we responded to a small residential kitchen fire. On arrival, the engine firefighter stretched the line, and I handled water supply and the tools needed on scene. The rescue crew forced entry, performed a quick search, and then began overhaul. Other than command and keeping the crew safe, the officer’s job was easy. Not every scene runs as smoothly as this one did. Back at the firehouse, the entire crew helped in cleaning the packs and hose, never complaining or questioning the tasks at hand. On that busy shift, we ran our typical 20 calls and ate both meals later than anticipated.

At 8 p.m., the battalion chief called the captain, telling him to swap into our frontline engine. Although we never complained, we weren’t happy about another vehicle swap. This was poor timing. Our captain stood up for the crew and respectfully asked the battalion chief to hold off on the swap until the morning when the next shift came into work. We didn’t have to swap twice and slept through the night. He took a small opportunity to do the right thing for the crew, and it paid off in respect gained.

Respect Is Earned

Now that I am a captain, I realize my job is all about them and not about me. I think about that shift and company officer often. When he retired, I thanked him for making me the officer I am today. He led from the front and cared for the crew. Some new officers with limited fire or life experience assume that because they are “the boss,” the respect is automatically granted, not earned. Leadership doesn’t come from a textbook; it is obtained through experience and working alongside the right career mentors.

Taking Care of Our Assets

As our members rise through the ranks and take on various roles and responsibilities, how is our organization caring for our greatest assets, our people, to ensure we are retaining our great leaders? What is your fire department’s succession plan? How is it managing succession? What’s your contingency plan when leaders retire or leave the department? Is there a written plan in place?

In succession planning, future organization leaders are identified and developed for major roles at all levels. It starts with the new hire and continues with every rank preparing subordinates for the next rank or role. Fire departments interview, hire, and invest a large amount of capital in future leaders. You build your training program starting with basic hard skills and then move on to soft skills, followed by advanced knowledge and education. Along the way, you add lots of experience.

Firefighter Today, Officer Tomorrow

The probationary firefighter today could be the deputy chief tomorrow, running operations. The recruit today could be the captain who saves two children in a house fire tomorrow and creates a new policy or technique on making members better at their jobs.

In succession planning, you identify and prepare through mentoring, training, education, and development appropriate candidates to replace key employees. It is not just about the fire chief. It is about looking at your key assets (employees) at all levels; their departure could come without warning. It’s something every fire service organization should do because turnover continues to occur at every level in every organization.

Vacancies occur because of promotions and as mid-level and senior officers leave your organization for other opportunities elsewhere. You must replace such people with appropriate, qualified successors.

Why It Is Critical

Supervisors must prepare employees for advancement so a qualified person can step in when the supervisor leaves for whatever reason. Officers have the implicit duty to prepare subordinates to take their place; your department is only as good as the people running it. Unfortunately, not many organizations practice succession planning.

Succession planning is described in the National Fire Academy’s Executive Leadership manual as “an organized and systemic way to ensure employees in a particular organization are capable, competent, and willing to replace and/or succeed to strategic roles within the organization.”

Succession planning is critical for the following reasons:

It maintains morale by promoting from within vs. going outside.
It ensures the agency can readily fill key positions—e.g., chief, deputy chief, and battalion chief.
It reduces the chance of promoting underqualified and unprepared individuals.
It avoids the “great badge giveaway” when departments have more positions to fill than people on an eligibility list.

Why It Is Not Done

Some fire departments don’t have succession plans in place because of the following reasons:

Inability to decide who to promote.
A candidate passes the test but doesn’t have the skills or talents needed for the next step.
Bias against potential successors.
Fear of disturbing morale.
No structured formal officer development program is in place for company and chief officers.
No training funds because leaders feel this cost delivers no immediate benefit.
Ignorance of where to start and who to call for help.
Leaders are unable to disconnect from the day-to-day issues to focus on long-term planning.
Leaders don’t believe successors are ready to assume control, and so they feel nothing can be done.

Hopefully, your organization is committed to developing succession plans, which should be in place for department/bureau heads and administrative positions too, not just the top. The plan must consider the organization’s strategic goals and interests. It must have validly evaluated employee skills. The performance measurements should be specific, measurable, attainable, reliable, and timely. Training/development, advancement opportunities, and recognition for succession candidates must be a big part of the plan, which should be a living working document and integrated into the hiring strategy. The plan should be tried and tested, like all good strategies.

Identifying Your Successors

If a position in your department became vacant today, is someone readily identified who is willing and able to fill it? If not, start identifying that successor now.

Fire department leaders can help lay the foundation for succession planning. First, at the top of the chain, the chief must lead the department in creating a culture that values education and personal development at all levels. Identify and communicate the requirements and opportunities for advancement clearly to all ranks. Firefighters’ performance improves when they receive the right set of skills, abilities, and training to do their jobs. Employees tend to remain with an organization where they experience personal and professional growth. They leave when they don’t feel valued. If a department fails to train their employees, assumes the risk and liability.

The chief or deputy chiefs should identify successor candidates for different organization operations and levels. The chief should seek out the advice of not only the chief but company officers, since the company officer has the single most influential role in the department. This individual is a great resource for identifying future department leaders.

Candidate Attributes

Although I work in rotation with various firefighters on my shift, I know I am responsible as their officer to invest time into their future not only for promotional opportunities but for their growth as firefighters to better serve our citizens. I have an informal succession plan for those department members who I see as the organization’s future leaders.

I work with a rescue lieutenant who is an ideal candidate for the captain position and will soon be promoted. For the past two years, I have prepared her for the role she will soon assume. During a recent shift, I gave her my captain seat for the entire shift, and I worked on her rescue so she could gain some experience. It is my implicit duty to train viable candidates for the next role and its responsibilities. Perhaps one day I will be in a position in my department to help write our organization’s succession plan from the top down. Until then, in developing a succession plan, I would include considering the following traits, ideas, and components based on my observations as a captain.

Soft (People) Skills

Soft skills such as reading, writing, following orders, all forms of communication, and the ability to process and understand concepts are crucial to a leader’s success. As a captain, I must complete annual employee performance evaluations. I am aware of those who have demonstrated their ability to be responsible for others, take charge of a situation, delegate tasks as needed, and influence and motivate others. I also seek out the employees who take constructive criticism, receive feedback, and grow and improve from the feedback.

I seek out members who like to learn. Learning is the ability to comprehend, not just to memorize something; it includes having the common sense to use the new knowledge properly.

Proactive Thinking

Proactive thinkers come to the table with solutions for handling a problem. They have identified a problem and the obvious and unseen causes, researched various solutions, and choose the best ones. They have developed a plan to solve the problem, implement the plan, and follow up on the results.

Adaptable in a Dynamic Environment

Adaptable individuals can remain calm on scene, especially at the most chaotic calls to which we respond. As officers, we must constantly adapt and overcome fireground problems. Sometimes, we must make split-second decisions based on the unknown and limited information.

This skill is also important when dealing with the many problems that surface in managing and leading any organization—station life, personnel problems, labor vs. management, and so on. How individuals deal with an issue and recover from the consequences (good or bad) based on their decisions is as important as the decisions themselves.

Results Driven/Open to Change

I enjoy training individuals who focus on the destination and are not dismayed by the path needed to get there. Change is inevitable. It is also among the hardest things to adapt to in the fire department and obtain buy-in from the members who have been doing something for a very long time. Results-oriented employees understand that they are responsible for their own career development and are committed to making this happen. Good succession plan candidates understand the long-term fire department goals and culture. If they resist change or are negative, they will never be able to adapt at the command and administration level.

Sustaining It Long-Term

Now that you have developed the plan and carried it out in your organization, how do you sustain it for the long run? Recruitment, proactive/ongoing training, performance evaluations/measurement, and feedback are some of the keys to successful plans.

Succession planning starts with new hires. Recruitment can make or break your succession planning. When human resources looks to bring in new firefighters, they look at a candidate’s potential and competency. Potential is the ability to demonstrate the behaviors needed to succeed at the organization’s next highest level. Competencies and behaviors are a good indicator of potential. Competency is a current indication of how someone performs a skill now, whereas potential anticipates future skill performance. Any fire service entity can always improve its recruiting process. We owe it to the fire service to include performance-based testing in recruiting. Fireground skills, physical fitness, and emergency medical services skills should be a part of every hiring process. The firefighter’s job relies on hands-on skills as much as it does on the soft skills.

Leadership Skills

Training your members in leadership skills and knowledge is critical to success. Fire departments often bring in outside vendors for training. Training makes the members more productive and efficient. In return, the organization becomes more successful, and your future succession plan leaders grow.

Performance Evaluation

Businesses use performance evaluations to measure how well people are performing and how they can improve. In fire service organizations, it is important to give feedback to our people often. We are in the service industry to our citizens. We should be consistently evaluating how we are doing and how we can grow and learn from our successes and challenges. As a company officer, I rely on consistent feedback not just from the crews and supervisors but from the citizens we serve. If an issue arises, we fix the issue in-house. If we receive a complaint, we will do our best to remedy the situation. Feedback provides positive criticism and allows all of us to see what everyone can change to improve our focus and results.

Succession planning is a critical component of organizational development to ensure an organization’s long-term success and sustained leadership. It is a routine business element we should build into our daily activities, the new hire process, and annual planning. Organizational development encompasses recruitment, training, performance appraisals, and measuring success. As fire service officers, we owe it to our people—our greatest assets—to develop them professionally. They are the future leaders of the fire service organization.

References

Bierster, Greg. Succession Planning for Staff Chief’s [sic] for the New York City Fire Department. New York Fire Department, Brooklyn, New York.

Daley, Ryan. (August 24, 2020). 21 Shocking Statistics on the State of Succession Planning. Aiir Consulting. https://bit.ly/3oP5i3V.

International Association of Fire Chiefs. (September 2016) Succession Planning or Succession Program? https://bit.ly/3ETxxnS.

Jenaway, William F. Who Is the Next Leader in Your Organization? The Case for Succession Planning! Firemen’s Association for the State of New York. https://bit.ly/3GJPplJ/.

National Fire Academy (2005) Executive Leadership Manual. SM 7-3.

Nawaz, Sabina. (May 15, 2017) The Biggest Mistakes New Executives Make. Harvard Business Review. https://bit.ly/3ESo2p3.

Robert Half Talent Solutions. What Is Succession Planning? 7 Steps to Success. https://bit.ly/3oQbk4s.

MARK J. ROSSI is a captain and 20-year veteran of the Fort Lauderdale (FL) Fire Department, assigned to a busy engine company in the downtown district. He is the co-founder for the (South Florida) First-Due Engine/Truck Program at Coral Springs Regional Institute of Public Safety. Rossi is an accredited fire officer and has a BS degree in finance and an MBA from the University of Florida.