Last month, we used an old-time unusual acronym POSDCORB (Planning/Organizing/ Staffing/Directing/COordinating/Reporting/Budgeting) to describe many of the regular management functions a boss must do to support the day-to-day operation of the organization. These activities must be done in a special way that occurs on every level. Fire company officers are working bosses and must do these things to support the operation of their station and company in a practical and routine way; these bosses have the most robust relationship to what’s on the list because they have a direct influence and impact where service actually is delivered. They are where the rubber meets the road (literally), which is the most unforgiving level in the organization because they will experience the quickest problems if those activities are not effectively performed.
The rest of the system (above/across from them) must support and assist the task level with the activities on the list because it is the fire company that shows up at Mrs. Smith’s house when she calls for help, which is the most critical part of what we do. Our basic business is delivering service, so we ought to evaluate the effectiveness of the POSDCORB functions starting with the actual response readiness of Engine 1. In effect, the department gives the company officer a franchise to protect everyone and everything in his first-due area during his watch. Imagine that the fire station is like a McDonald’s, where the hamburgers and the customers are all local. If you want to evaluate their POSDCORB performance, bite into a Big Mac. It won’t take long to “taste” how well the “brand” is doing. Mrs. Smith goes through the same “taste test” when she calls us.
Middle managers take on the list and support the functions in a tactical kind of way. On the fireground (and in many other areas), we call these people “working bosses” (sectors/divisions/groups). They constantly connect to and interact with fire companies and provide critical mid-system POSDCORB support. They also provide the critical link between the street and the head office. Battalion-division chiefs have more mobility (larger first-due area) and more access than company officers to the strategic level of the system. They represent the service delivery needs and requirements of the fire companies under their command on up the chain of command. Strategic level bosses (fire chief-executive staff = “sitting bosses”) have a more administrative and political role in providing resources and system support for the functions. When you look at the seven management areas and reflect on what big bosses do routinely, they spend most of their time doing strategic level support and asset management in and around the functions.
We inserted the list of POSDCORB management functions in the middle of the hierarchy and have been discussing in recent columns the levels of activity and influence a boss has based on that individual’s personal capability. Developing, maintaining, and refining the capability to effectively perform the basic management items on the list provide the foundation for a boss to go on up the vertical scale. As noted last month, it’s pretty tough to do the higher, finer, and more refined things if we can’t pay the electric bill or order the toilet paper Station 14 will use next month.
A major organizational capability involves the layers of rank doing the functions in an aligned way. We create the positions along the chain of command to match the needs of the organization. Each level is assigned and authorized to function where it is along the chain. The “geometry” of this approach is designed to create good order inside the system. This becomes the foundation of effective internal organizational discipline. The process is pretty simple: Every boss is formally authorized to do his job, and each gets a badge with his rank clearly marked on it.
A long time ago, a smart old guy explained how the power of the rank process really works by giving me the following example (he loved stories): One morning, the doorbell rings at a fire station. A firefighter answers the door. A guy he has never seen before is standing there. The firefighter asks him, “Can I help you, sir?” The guy says, “I am your new captain.” The firefighter says, “Let me see your badge.” The new guy shows him his captain badge. The firefighter says, “Welcome, Skipper,” and lets him in. As he told me, “You’ve got to have some system so the troops let the boss in!”
Any organization must have in place a structured internal process to move the members up through the organization that is culturally accepted and legally defendable. My old guy’s story is a good example: no badge/no get in. His story also relates to a ton of other places in the department where the troops have the ability to “not open the door.” They have more control over the organizational rite of passage than any high-ranking official. While the fire chief can give you your new badge, you are not okay until the troops say you are okay. That process never stops. I promoted up through the ranks of the department I worked in. On a dark and windy day, the city manager gave me a fire chief’s badge. Then I reported to my secretary. She said, “Let me see your badge.” I showed it to her. She let me in, and we both stayed 28 years.
When You Get A New Badge …
This is a good place to discuss the dynamics of what happens when we get a “new” badge. Most fire organizations have a structured process to promote their members. Some departments have a fairly simple promotional routine; others have an extensive one. How many steps in the process are the result of history, culture, legal factors, local custom, and organizational preference? No matter how complex the promotional obstacle course is, the candidate gets in the application starting line and hopefully comes out on the promotional list finish line. Based on that hometown system, somebody is going the get promoted. When that occurs, the person has an increased level of formal organizational influence and authority that goes with that promotion.
I (old school) use the primitive word “power” as shorthand to describe authority/influence/responsibility. If you lay out the chain of command from the company officers on up to the fire chief, every level gets more power so it can do its job. This rank arrangement (successive layers inside the organization) is also called the organizational “hierarchy.” The point of my boring you with all this rank talk you already know is that, in most cases and places, you get more power when you get promoted, but the system does not send you to “power school” to handle that increased new level of power. The part the organization controls and manages is the ability to confer formal positional authority that goes with that new rank-again, it’s real simple: The department buys the badges and hands them out. A moment ago, I sneaked in the word RESPONSIBILITY. The system gives you more promotional juice only so you can take on a bigger piece (read: responsibility) of helping to manage the system at a higher level.
Another critical part of the power process is that an individual basically receives positional power from above him and then personal power from below him. You can show up with a badge, and the firefighters will let you in because you now have positional power. Then, the troops will be the custodians directly involved in how much and what kind of personal power they give you based on how you behave and perform, particularly as it relates to how you personally treat them-being able to understand both process (science) and relationships (art) is a big deal.
No one anywhere knows a person as well as one who directly works for that person. The common reference “under his command” is a profound and very quiet (and sometimes sad) statement of understanding. You will not really know someone until and unless that person has power over you. Virtually everyone reading this has experienced thinking that they knew someone and then they became subordinate to that person and were surprised (positively or negatively) by what they learned about how that person really was packaged up. It is pretty easy to be on your best behavior in public, but the day-to-day regular routine will reflect the real you to those you have power over, who see and remember how you acted (many times toward them) on a really bad day.
How that individual develops, maintains, and increases his own combination of positional and personal power will determine if that person will effectively move on up the capability hierarchy we have been writing about. A huge barrier to moving up the capability scale is how you seek, manage, share, and generally deal with power. We have just observed that we don’t go to power school when we get bumped up in the system, so we are stuck with all the angels and demons we got at the factory and what we have acquired along the way to where we are right now. When you have a conversation about boss effectiveness, many times you hear workers on every level comment on the basic personality of their boss, particularly how they handle authority.
Most of the negative feelings revolve around basic and routine responses that form that boss’s personality. Sadly, hearing about dysfunctional boss behaviors is frequent and generally delivered with the emphasis of someone on the receiving end of the dysfunction whose feelings have been hurt-hurt feelings automatically come with a permanent memory. If that boss does not receive some power management coaching or reprogramming or experience a significant emotional event, he will either be stuck where he is or, if he continues to get promoted, he will get an increased amount of power and will create even more human wreckage. This is exactly what the Peter Principle describes: A person will go up the scale until he reaches his level of incompetence. Not being able to handle power has created more Peter Principle casualties than any other single failing.
I have for most of my career been fascinated by the dynamics of power within the fire service. I have routinely written notes to myself in my little shirt pocket pad when I have observed, heard, read, or just hallucinated something about how humans handle power. I have connected power management to the body part rules of engagement we have discussed in my monthly columns. Those engagement rules can provide understandable, very doable direction to improve personal performance. This capability is under the direct control of every person. I realize this is easy to say but difficult to do. If we can somehow get a report card on how our human components work, we can attach an action plan to improve that performance. Most of those improvement items require only a small adjustment that, in many cases, will produce a huge improvement. Doing that is a big bargain: little change = big improvement.
My very nonclinical observation about someone who messes up his authority is based on insecurity. I am not qualified to describe all the details of personal insecurity, but I know it when I see it. It seems that there is a natural need we all have to gain positive personal stature. When we mix positional power with insecurity, it distorts our relationship with the people, places, and things in our life. The higher in the organization we go, the worse it gets because we keep getting more stature, privilege, and entitlement with the rank. If we cannot redirect that process and create an effective power perspective, we routinely bask in the advantage of our position. A common example is that your workers must have a meeting (with each other) before the meeting (with the boss) to plan how to deal with him and his gigantic ego.
My plan for preventing falling in love with our title is to create a response that will rescue us from ourselves. That plan involves our customer Mrs. Smith. I call it “reciprocal rescue.” When we realize that we exist as an organization to serve her, not ourselves-if we use her as organizational Magnetic North-then everything and everybody must direct their efforts to our relationship with her and service to her. Organizational success should be the result of effectively serving her, not some nutty behavior directed to surviving being subordinate to some ego-damaged boss (sorry for sounding so disrespectful).
The reciprocal part of that balance is that we are in business to rescue her from tactical harm and that with that mission she can rescue us from internalizing self-destructive power that harms us. Bosses on every level should support becoming a customer-centered organization and then automatically regard the customers as both internal and external. If we maintain that attention, we create a servant leadership capability that more than anything else will continually enhance our power. Effective bosses create a power “boomerang” when they empower Firefighter Smith to serve the Smith Family-the more power they give away, the more comes back to them.
Retired Chief ALAN BRUNACINI is a fire service author and speaker. He and his sons own the fire service Web site bshifter.com.
