Looking back over my career, I remember building elaborate spreadsheets, access databases, automated workflow forms, and countless other technology solutions to address a fire department problem. Unfortunately, I also watched nearly every one of those initiatives or systems degrade and revert back to the original state after I left because these were personal proficiencies, not departmental proficiencies.

This is an all-too-common story, and it does not always happen when the department techie leaves. Sometimes it is due to a promotion, change in work, burnout, or even just a change in tech that they do not want to learn. To be fair, departments often do this for multiple aspects of operations, especially in smaller or volunteer fire organizations. There is the radio tinkerer, the computer-aided dispatch guru, the drone pilot, the records management system genius, and/or the social media savant. As technology gains greater acceptance, leaders need to consider if technology should continue to be an alternate duty for a firefighter, a paid position in the department, or something outsourced.

The tech expert accident

Rarely does a department plan to hire people with alternate proficiencies. It is often a happy accident when we discover someone who can weld, do mechanic work, or in this case has technical proficiency. I look back fondly at the times when I would hear my battalion chief yell from his office, “Jaasson!” Everyone in the station knew what it meant, he was having some sort of computer issue and needed help.

I never set out to be the tech expert, I was never paid extra for having skills beyond my core duties, and like most firefighters who are put in a position to help someone, we just do it. Looking back, if I had spent more time teaching and developing others, rather than just being the happy accident, things may have not regressed as much after I left. This unofficial promotion came with no title, no pay, and eventually led to me gaining administrative credentials to nearly every tech system our department had access to. The point is, having an expert is great but having only one expert is dangerous and does not qualify as a plan.

Other duties as assigned

I have rarely read a job description that did not have, "other duties as assigned” as the catch all for the things you will be asked to do that are outside of the core functions. This is becoming more of a liability as regulations, standards, and employee burn-out are hitting our career field hard. You must ask yourself as a fire service leader, is it fair to have a firefighter do everything that others are doing plus try to be system administrators, trainers, troubleshooters, vendor liaisons, data analyst, and help desk attendants? Is it good practice to have single points of failure as these systems go from needed infrastructure to critical components of a modern operation? Does your technical proficiency as a department actually exist or is it one change away from evaporating?

Systems survive when people leave

I am not advocating to abandon internal talent, in fact it is the combination of our diverse pasts, histories, capabilities, and passions that make the fire service so useful and resilient. What I am saying is that this is an aspect of the department that warrants deliberate, strategic, and thoughtful integration into the way business is conducted. Individual knowledge whether tech related or some other fire service discipline, like the person who knows every knot and rope system configuration, must be captured and turned into organizational knowledge. As a general framework:

• Document it – from purchasing through implementation, and into sustained maintenance and use. Document all aspects of the configurations, workflows, processes, passwords, renewal dates, and contracts.
• Two is one, one is none – like other areas of the fire service, at least two people should have an in depth understanding of critical and fundamental systems.
• Make it official – legitimize the specialty as a department function making it an organizational responsibility.
• Train on it – we are often good at end-user training but add administrator level training and ensure you have staff that take the training. Even if they will never be the primary, it makes it much easier to pick up the pieces if you have an awareness level proficiency.
• Reality check it – use the “hit by a bus” scenario or if that is too morbid, “won the lottery” scenario. Essentially, if this person were no longer here, could the fire department continue to operate every system and process? If the answer is no, then you do not have a personnel problem, you have a system problem.

With this framework, organizations can build identify weaknesses, establish redundancy, weather departures, and avoid costly and sometimes critical regressions.

A well-built system

Using the framework will help you down the path towards building a good system that will support any department initiative, but what does a well-built system look like?

Imagine a well-built rope system and let us overlay that with this example. All rope systems have a bomb-proof anchor… a point that is solid, strong enough to support the load, and in many ways cannot fail. This is the organization, the aspect that generally outlasts any individual member of the department. You then need a way to connect the object (individual knowledge) you are trying to move to the anchor (organization). This rope is the formalized strands of policy, procedure, people, workflows, and processes that get the object to the anchor.

As things become more complicated you can add pulleys and devices to the rope system to make it more robust, redundant, and safer. These are the force maximizers such as training, education, experience, and hands-on practice that ensure the object never falls away from the anchor.

A system works together, has immediate feedback loops if things are going wrong, and can be adjusted to fit the emerging issues. A system can outlive the people who built it and in some cases be a foundation in which other systems are built.

Conclusion

To absorb individual knowledge into the collective, it takes energy, effort, and a willingness to make sure that knowledge never leaves. This goes well beyond tech knowledge as retirees leave the fire service every day, taking with them decades of knowledge and experience that is often lost forever. Creating systems to capture, disseminate, and progress that knowledge is how departments progress with minimal regression. It takes leaders who are deliberate about creating department proficiency from individual proficiency and a willingness to stop treating a core function as a side project or alternate duty.