Command Post: Going for the Gold: Organizational Participation

April 1, 2015
Give your people what they need to succeed

As a member of the fire service who took his first charged line into a burning building when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, I occasionally tend to wax a bit nostalgic. However, in the midst of these reminiscences, I realize that certain parts of my knowledge are growing a little worn around the edges.

Let me give you a couple of “for instances.” My career began and developed in an era when the order to conduct rooftop ventilation operations was as automatic as breathing. A change in construction materials, types and styles has rendered this automatic response obsolete. In fact, research has shown us that it can be downright dangerous. You and I today would be hard-pressed to order a person onto a truss roof for ventilation. In my department, we work off of our tower ladder and are tethered to the bucket by our life belts.

If we are thinking correctly, we have adapted our fire department operations to the changes in building construction that have occurred in the world around us. In many cases, we no longer can go to the roof. The deaths and injuries that have been prevented tell us that this operational change was truly for the better.

In the loop

Occasionally, my mind wanders back to the days when a fire chief issued orders and firefighters obeyed them promptly and correctly. No muss, no fuss, just shut up and do as you’re told. It now seems like people want everything to be a debate.

Picture, if you will, the fullest illogical extension of what we call participation. A pumper pulls up in front of a burning building, the crew dismounts and the captain lines everyone up for a vote. “All in favor of an interior attack, raise your right hand,” he bellows. “All in favor of attacking with a 1¾-inch hoseline say ‘Aye’. The Nays have it. We will perform an exterior attack with a 2½-inch line.”

By studying this simplistic example, you might conclude that my taste in leadership style runs to the classic “tight-ship” style of the legendary Captain Bligh. No, this is not the case. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am a firm believer that orders on the fireground still must be obeyed. It is in the planning and preparation for these operations when the democratic interaction is most appropriate.

Here is my critical point. It is the manner in which you prepare the people in your fire department to be a part of your firefighting team that can ensure that all orders will be carried out swiftly and surely. This is where the genesis of participative management comes into play. Bringing people into the decision-making loop of your organization during your daily drills, planning and training is critical to your success as a leader.

While the classic definition of a leader speaks about charisma, force and inspiration, these only scratch the surface. Leadership is more of an art, which can be acquired through diligence, than a science. Max DePree’s book Leadership Is an Art speaks of leadership as an art that consists of “liberating people to do what is required of them in the most effective and humane way possible.”

DePree places a great emphasis on equating being a leader with being a servant; on being the person who provides what people need to succeed. One important fact makes the message of this book even more impressive. The concepts expressed by the author have evolved during a career of more than 40 years spent working within an organization that has been acknowledged by its corporate peers as truly outstanding.

My first contact with the Herman Miller Co. of Zeeland, MI, came as a result of this book. High levels of worker productivity and satisfaction have come about in this company through a process of enabling every worker to be an effective and efficient participant in the operation of the firm. These levels of productivity have translated themselves into greater earnings for all concerned.

While a firefighter’s earnings potential is not tied to productivity, how many fire departments can say as much? We may not be in the business of turning a profit, but we are in the business of using people, labor and equipment to accomplish tasks as a service to other people.

A great many of our tasks involve some degree of risk to participants in the delivery system. Is it not, therefore, critical to allow these people a say in their own destiny? If we truly look to make our people the focus of our service as leaders, we must move outward in our thought processes.

DePree says “the leader is the ‘servant’ of his followers in that he removes the obstacles that prevent them from doing their jobs.” While we may laugh at the old U.S. Army recruiting jingle from the 1980s that cheerfully offered one an opportunity to, “Be all that you can be,” there is a good idea there. My research indicates that the Herman Miller Co. is still an industry leader. That speaks volumes about the worth of DePree’s words and operational approach.

Let me suggest that here is where you should jump in with both feet and become a success merchant for your department. Experience has led me in this direction, largely due to a certain fanaticism in my personality. If something that was done to me made me angry, I worked to eliminate it from my own personal supervisory modus operandi.

Leadership, as described by DePree, “is more tribal than scientific, more a weaving of relationships than an amassing of information.” All of us have read about what it supposedly takes to ensure active participation in an organization, but reading is not enough. We must experiment within our organizations to see what makes our people happy. How many departments can you think of where the chief cares whether people are happy or sad; productive or dormant?

As a young Air Force firefighter in the 1960s, it angered and frustrated me to be ordered to do things in a blind, Gestapo-like fashion, particularly when my buddies and I knew that in many instances we could perform the same tasks in a safer and easier way. This early experience with ignorant leadership and non-participative management set the tone for my future.

For quite some time now, it has been my practice to open up discussions on the operational aspects of any unit with which I became involved. I first used this approach back in the days when I was an engine company officer in Newark, NJ. Whether it was the manner in which my engine company conducted inspections, performed drills, laid hose or did house watch duties in the firehouse, everything was open for discussion. There were only three basic ground rules:

1. No discussions on the fireground.

2. No fist fights.

3. Nobody is better than Engine Company15.

If our company ran into a problem at a fire, my solution would have to do until we could get back to the firehouse. Then we would tear into it open things up and see what happened.

One perfect example comes to mind. Our district was experiencing a significant number of working fires in larger, old-style apartment houses. My guys came to me with a suggestion that we needed to drill a lot more on a particular evolution. This happened to involve stretching a three-inch supply line up the front stairs of a fire building and wying it off into a pair of 1½-inch attack lines. After laying out the necessary steps and roles, we drilled at a nearby abandoned building.

Many hours were spent sweating our way toward perfection. Not that we ever got to be perfect, we just got better, which is fine. To this day, that crew stands out in my mind as a great bunch of firefighters. They made me better because they made me think so that I could stay a step or two ahead of them. They made themselves better because they tried.

During my time as a field battalion commander, I used a similar approach. I tried to conduct a post-incident critique and identify what went right and what went wrong. Once the troops saw that I was sincere and would listen to their thoughts, they were more willing to participate and share their thoughts. I like to think that this made us a more productive and enthusiastic working team.

During my time as chief of training, I leaned heavily on the members of my staff. I would much rather have the team help to craft the program than to develop it myself and then work to jam it down their throats. All of my successes as a division commander were as a direct result of the outstanding people who were always willing to contribute to the successful operation of the training division.

That’s what participation is all about: Being there for your people, seeing that they have an environment wherein they can feel good about what they do and have the equipment to get the job done properly. When they feel good, they work a hell of a lot better.

Become a success broker. Create a fire department where your people can bring their hearts and minds to work, without fear of anything. Let them share in the success by being participants in the process. Try it and I am sure you will come to like it.

HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., a Firehouse® contributing editor, is a fire protection consultant based in Adelphia, NJ. He is chairman of the Board of Commissioners in Howell Township Fire District 2 and retired from the Newark Fire Department as a battalion commander. Dr. Carter has been a member of the Adelphia Fire Company since 1971, serving as chief in 1991. He is a life member and past president of the International Society of Fire Service Instructors and life member of the National Fire Protection Association. He is president of the United States of America Branch of the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) of Great Britain. Dr. Carter holds a Ph.D. in organization and management from Capella University in Minneapolis, MN.

Connect with Harry:

LinkedIn: Tubaman

Email: [email protected]

pull quote:

Bringing people into the decision-making loop of your organization during your daily drills, planning and training is critical to your success as a leader.

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