Hey, This is Urgent
Some people in the fire service, both wildland and structural, make their organizations sound like hotbeds of organizational sluggishness. They, of course, aren't, and most fire professionals take pride in the can-do spirit of their agencies. In fact, this is the 10-year anniversary of the groundbreaking TriData study of wildland firefighter safety culture that identified that can-do spirit as a core value shared by firefighters across agencies.
However, fire agencies are bureaucracies and bureaucracies, by their very nature, are not known for their adaptability, nimbleness or flexibility. We've all heard industry insiders routinely refer, only half jokingly, to the fire service as 300 years of tradition, unimpeded by progress. While the wildland branch of the family enjoys a much shorter history than its municipal cousin, this irreverent characterization still hits pretty close to home. However, people in the wildland fire service are trying to innovate.
Consider doctrine, high-reliability organizing, reforming the spectrum of investigations, and any number of other initiatives. Clearly, fire agencies are undertaking innovative efforts, but those efforts often are slow to gain ground. Wildland fire agencies are not alone. In their book Winning Through Innovation, Michael Tushman and Charles O'Reilly describe how historically effective organizations confront what they call “the tyranny of success” — typically strong, aligned cultures and structures that enable them to succeed, but also inhibit them from innovating and adapting to changes in their operating environments.
Take wildland fire control agencies, for example. They face hurdles that challenge their organizational effectiveness, including an increasingly volatile fire environment directly affected by climate change, as well as demands for smaller, yet more responsive government. These and other forces will relentlessly push fire organizations to change and adapt.
Evident as these changes are, however, many agencies remain content to keep doing what they've always done, telling themselves they are doing a good job and justifying their resistance to change. These organizations have become what Tushman and O'Reilly call “dynamically conservative,” working hard to sustain the core competencies and organizational models that served them well and brought success for decades. They contend that even very successful organizations can develop “organizational inertia,” which often renders organizational change efforts difficult, costly and slow to take hold.
However, organizations can pursue efficient management that achieves short-term success while simultaneously engaging in visionary leadership that activates innovative change. Unfortunately, the fire service has shown that it mostly innovates only when faced with urgent challenges. That likely explains why it often seems that, while wildland fire personnel show interest in much of the organizational change proposed within their agencies, they also appear unready to formally and purposefully make those changes. Not enough people feel a sense of urgency to shift to significant organizational innovations that people advocate for their agencies. This is why in many fire agencies, like in all organizations, most organizational change efforts fail.
That's where leadership comes in. Organizational change expert John Kotter describes eight errors organizations make that contribute to the failure of their change efforts. At the top of his list, Kotter includes failing to establish a great enough sense of urgency. In fact, Kotter titled his very recent book on organizational change A Sense of Urgency, and has concluded that, above all else, the ability to create a sufficient air of shared urgency lies at the heart of successful change efforts. One might say that successful organizational change is all about combating complacency.
Kotter contends that people who share a sense of urgency remain alert and responsive, act on change initiatives, and focus their time and priorities on the tasks of those initiatives. Combating complacency and establishing a sense of urgency requires leaders to act boldly and decisively, resolving to move the organization in some direction without hesitation.
Enormous changes and challenges relentlessly confront wildland fire agencies, and leaders in those agencies must do two things. First, they must engage in processes that candidly examine their operating realities, identify and acknowledge both the crises and the major opportunities they face, and then talk them out. These include challenges and opportunities that exist now, those that are emergent, and those with potential to arise in the future.
The organizations most effective at this process typically engage lots of people and involve them, tapping all the talent of their organization they can. That often means drawing people into the process from a slice of their organization that is both very deep and very broad. Rarely have I found people committed to organizational change in which they were uninvolved. Ultimately, the organization must bring focus on critical issues and the action needed to address them.
This leads to the second thing most wildland fire agencies must do. Once clear on the challenges and opportunities they face and the action required, effective leaders plainly, clearly and unambiguously send the message, “Folks, we have some vital problems, and they will get worse in the future if we don't take action right now.” Ultimately, emergent leaders in wildland fire agencies will ratchet up their organizations' sense of urgency as changes in their operating environments become more apparent. Until then, and likely only then, will the organizational changes that people seek in their agencies reach their tipping point.
Mike DeGrosky is chief executive officer of the Guidance Group, a consulting organization specializing in the human and organizational aspects of the fire service. He also serves as an adjunct instructor in leadership studies at Fort Hays State University. His interests include leadership, strategy, and bringing the concepts of learning organizations and high-reliability organizing alive in fire organizations. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. focused on organizational leadership. He can be reached at info@guidancegroup.org.
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