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Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
The Silverback Blueprint: Strategic Planning & Department Culture
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Nick Brunicini, Terry Garrison, and Pat Dale examine the vital connection between internal department culture and external customer service in the fire service.
The Silverback Leadership Series offers veteran fire chiefs' wisdom on leveraging strategic planning to shape department culture and improve service delivery. Fire service leaders discuss practical approaches to create meaningful change that lasts beyond a chief's tenure.
• Strategic plans must become living documents rather than shelf decorations
• Involve approximately 30% of personnel in developing strategic plans to ensure buy-in
• Focus on tackling the top priorities each year with quarterly progress reports
• Develop simple, memorable messaging that captures your department's values
• Empower company officers as the critical link between administration and service delivery
• Trust must flow throughout the organization for strategic initiatives to succeed
• Define what empowerment means with clear parameters for personnel
• Celebrate "added value" service that exceeds basic emergency response
• Create consistent departmental culture rather than different approaches by shift or station
• Align strategic objectives with daily work so they become "what you do now"
The Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference is coming to Sharonville, Ohio, September 29th through October 3rd. Register now at bshifter.com to secure your spot in workshops and general sessions.
Hello and welcome to the B Shifter podcast. I'm John Vance, your host. I'm actually home hanging out for Labor Day weekend. Hopefully you're going to be able to spend a little bit of time with your friends and family this Labor Day.
Speaker 3:This is Thursday, august 28th, and as we're gearing up for the Labor Day holiday, we thought we'd bring you a podcast today from the Silverbacks. This is more advice from our Silverback're, not on Blue Card. This will give you a little taste of what the Silverback Leadership Series is all about, what we're talking about and some of the relevant topics that we have for today's fire service. And today we'll be talking about things like strategic planning and what you should do as a leader, especially the fire chief, if you have a strategic plan, talking about it, communicating it, how important it is to communicate it on a continuous basis. It's just not one communication and done. Or, as Pat Dale's going to talk about, you make the plan, you put it on a shelf and no one ever revisits it again. It really truly needs to be a roadmap for your organization. The other thing we're gonna talk about is how that vision and planning really works into the culture of your department and how it helps shape the culture of your department, because it really starts to define what is acceptable for your department, not only in behavior, but also in performance and service that you're going to provide, and that's part of that be nice. We say be nice all the time. Of course, it's one of Bruno's tenants that he always talked about. It sounds simple. It isn't always so simple for everyone. And then the added value customer service that we give. So that's coming up in just a moment as we throw it to the silverbacks on today's B-Shifter podcast. Before that, just want to give you a couple of reminders.
Speaker 3:The Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference is coming to Sharonville, ohio. We'll be there September 29th through October 3rd. We still have, I think, just a couple of seats in most of the workshops, if they're not full already, and then plenty of seats for our general session. So we'll just keep adding chairs for those. But we want you to get signed up, especially for accommodations, because I believe both hotels are almost sold out. I think the Hyatt is, but one of them is and one of them isn't. But go to bshiftercom, click on the conference, get all the conference details there. We're very excited for that. We'll have some giveaways there. We're excited to bring on some new partnerships. This year We've got Duty to Act coffee that we'll be giving away some prizes from at the conference.
Speaker 3:As we go to you, again, the traffic noise here. Everyone is getting out of town for the holidays, so pardon the noise, we'll be done with the noise in just a second. So we'll see you there and hopefully it's going to be a chance for you to get out and get some fresh perspective on leadership and command issues of the day. So we have 23 top-notch instructors delivering a lot of classes to choose from on the general session days for you to kind of customize what your learning experience is. As soon as you get registered, we'll send you a link to the app so you can start planning that out.
Speaker 3:Also, we are really happy to announce that Waldorf University is a partner with us. They're going to be at the conference this year and if you go to bshiftercom and go to our conference page, you can click on the link there or go to the show notes and click on the link and you can go to Waldorf and see how your B-Shifter certifications actually articulate into credits. Of course, we're ACE accredited, but if you're looking to seek higher education for yourself, waldorf's the place to get that started and also some of your B-Shifter education will transfer right over and we're going to continue that partnership and continue to add what we have credits for. So, waldorf University, follow that link and check it out and, of course, if you haven't done so already, please like and subscribe to this podcast. It helps us keep the word out.
Speaker 3:And, of course, if you haven't done so already, please like and subscribe to this podcast. It helps us keep the word out. You know, when we started, I think there were less than 10 actual fire service podcasts. I know there's a ton more now. I mean, it seems like every day there's a new podcast popping up. So we appreciate the fact that you spend time with us and you listen to us and, just to let us know that you're listening, give us a like and then subscribe so you never miss an episode. So right now let's toss it over to Pat Dale, terry Garrison and Nick Brunicini and they're going to be talking about not only the vision and strategic planning for your organization, but really how it helps shape the culture, especially if you've got a be nice culture today here on the Be Shifter podcast.
Speaker 1:You know I want to bounce back to your question about how do you keep momentum going and what process do you use? And listeners might find this, if you're thinking about being a fire chief, it might sound boring, but in both organizations there was not a strategic plan that was in place and I used a strategic planning process and then a strategic plan to lead the organization. And I think I had this fire in my belly to do that, because in all the years previous I'd been through these strategic planning processes. A consultant would come in and we'd get up high hope and if three ring binders developed and it's put on a shelf, we never talked about it again and I didn't want to do that as a fire chief. So I wanted to make it real, include a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Out of a hundred people there was probably 30 involved in the planning process, representing every group and labor, of course, and then it was their strategic plan. And then I, I, I led us to keep it in front of all of us continually. This is a. So we had 40 items, say, in a strategic, a five-year strategic plan for the organization. Those are the most important 40 things moving forward in the next five years. So I said let's work on. Let's, in the first year, take the top eight most important things and, by and large, what I was leading towards was let's all work on those eight things together at the same time the administration, labor and the board. Let's focus on those and if we can accomplish seven of them in the first year, you do the math five years times eight per year, you'll work towards 40 items over five years. So I kept it in front of us, in front of the board.
Speaker 1:This is a strategic planning item. That's why I'm asking for funding for it. That was here's the objectives. That's why I'm asking for funding for it. Here's the objectives. Yes, I feel like they're broken down into. You know, I feel like I had success doing that. So you talked about a process and how do you keep the energy moving forward? You can get the command staff you know fired up about yeah, let's go work on those eight. They go away and you know what they're working on their email. So it takes energy from from me to keep everyone focused on the the most important priorities, and I worked hard on doing that. I think I had success. So if you're talking about a process and how you keep momentum going. That comes to mind.
Speaker 2:that's the destination well, I think that I think those plans have to become the jobs of people. Then where?
Speaker 1:it's not.
Speaker 2:okay, I get to go back to what I was doing. No, what you're doing doesn't exist anymore. This is where we're going and this is what you do now. So you're still going to worry about deployment and managing incidents and delivering resources and all that, but this is the way this looks now. So I mean, that's kind of the change piece of it. You got to kind of get no, we're not going back to the old way, we're going to do the new way.
Speaker 4:And you align it with the organization. It's got to match up. Yeah, it's kind of the improvement.
Speaker 2:As we slowly improve things. This is what this looks like. We're going to have to make changes over on this side and this side, but I think those become less of obstacles the more the process kind of takes over and you think, okay, this is where we want to. It's almost like the goal at the end, Like you say okay, here's the eight-year goal. We want at least three people on the trucks 90% of the time, and X, Y and Z, and those are easy to benchmark. You can kind of keep track of that. And then in the after action review process, that's where you start to validate all these changes we've made with the outcomes we're having.
Speaker 4:Exactly, that's a fourth step of that process right, yeah.
Speaker 1:You report on it quarterly. People have to report to me on the progress. Quarterly reports man. I mean like I started out saying it might sound boring a strategic plan? No, I get it, but if you take it for real and take it seriously. And you know, as leaders put focus on it and lead the organization, don't put it on a shelf and never talk about it. That can be a really useful tool. What will?
Speaker 4:happen is you'll go through that process as an organization and then you'll look up and it's five years later, Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And you went wow, okay, and this is what we've accomplished. And you can actually say look what we did, guys.
Speaker 2:Right Jeez, I think I need a nap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what it was truly 40 items in a five-year plan. At the first department. I was at Graham and before I left we brought it up and we actually celebrated that we accomplished 70% of those 40 items in five years, celebrated that we accomplished 70% of those 40 items in five years. And the consultant was going to come back and he said that is good. Most organizations don't achieve that much. And I said well, I want it to be trainable and repeatable because I'm going to leave here, but I want the organization to. I think it's ingrained here. Now they're going to expect another one and that's trainable and repeatable.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the point where you can bring the next chief in from the organization that just went through this, that has all the experience with it to keep it going Exactly.
Speaker 4:I mean that's kind of the goal, right, and Nick you said it, those top five or four becomes your public information.
Speaker 1:constant statements over and over again.
Speaker 4:These are our. So you have organizational culture. Those are your values that you decide. Okay, our organizational culture is based on these values. These are the actions and the behavior we're going to focus on to move in that direction. But then you just keep sharing that over and over again. They got tired of me saying be safe, be nice, be accountable. Got to say it all the time.
Speaker 2:Well, the message that we put out is we're fast, we're well-trained and we're nice. So that's the it was. The PR guy says no, you need three things that you're going to tell them. That are one sentence and that's who you are.
Speaker 4:And if you break, down those into tangible objectives you've got a really good strategic plan. Yeah, if you do those three things, that is a full-time job as a fire chief you could actually go through that process and you could do that without an expert coming in and if you're just trying your best in a small fire department.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go out to go around and say there's three experts sitting at this table that know more than any consultant they're going to bring in.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you guys have actually done it. Find out what your values are attach, and they should focus on the work yes and the firefighters and then set objectives so how you can do better at that every day and that becomes your strategic plan. If you can mark it up, that easily, move forward.
Speaker 1:I like keeping it simple, distilling it down to so, in all those animal clubs and every place. I always talked about our service that they deliver is time sensitive, highly technical and staffing-intensive, and I keep it simple. I love that you would include nice in there too, but I talked about that every single time.
Speaker 4:Say those again. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:That it's time-sensitive, so response times matter. We need to intervene.
Speaker 2:First one seconds count.
Speaker 1:One seconds count. Highly technical Core services Core services are highly technical.
Speaker 2:Paramedicine, structural firefighting, technical rescue has that is highly technical.
Speaker 1:100 staffing intensive. You gotta have the people you gotta have. It takes a lot of people to thanks.
Speaker 4:We can do that that's why I wanted you to say it again, because if you can't have, if you don't have a firefighter on a fire station that can do exactly what he, did with that it just falls apart. It's got to be simple. It had meaning Anybody could be the PIO.
Speaker 2:After four or five years of this, they could take a firefighter off an ambulance. We're fast, we're well-trained, we're nice. Boom, oh wow.
Speaker 1:I like that. They're not the most eloquent, but they they got the message across in a very enthusiastic way, oh yeah, like a puppy dog.
Speaker 2:They're like gold retrievers covered with smoke. This is great. There were some.
Speaker 3:There were some initiatives that we were taking, that we would talk about the elevator speech. Talk about the elevator speech.
Speaker 3:And if somebody comes up and asks you, you know what's your 20 to 30 second speech on the new ambulances or paramedic services or additional staffing, whatever it is, because they're the ambassadors. The firefighters are the ambassadors for it. They have to be the ones to answer the question. So, as the chief, you've got to, you've got to get everybody spooled up on the information. You guys said it with the transparency part of it. Let them know what the plans are, talk about the plans at at nauseam, so that so they know at, uh, you know the grocery store when somebody corners them and starts asking about you know you guys are going to increase my taxes, because what's it going to do?
Speaker 3:because the, the troops get that. I mean the truth. The troops get that abuse from, uh, certain elders in our community that want to take it out on them. Or how much did that fire truck cost?
Speaker 3:Or am I buying the food in your basket, or whatever it is so to be able to disarm that and then come back and talk, you know, do you know how many people we have on duty at once? And you know, the answers you get are crazy. I was at a two-station fire department where they thought we had 50 people on duty and it's like no, we have seven. You know, we're barely covering it. And then you disarm the public and they almost get to the point where then they become your fan. Right, we want to create fans out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, let me buy you dinner. All right, we started with culture is doing the culture and then make it Strategic level. Yeah, strategically, as the chief, I'm going to change the culture of this thing. So, socially, we're going to be a little nicer to each other. Professionally, we're going to keep our core services up high, but we're going to be nice. See, that's kind of where you think this should go, is being nice should be part of the core services, not some added value thing. So that's kind of what I'm having difficulty with.
Speaker 2:So part of that is allowing the crew to add value. Is you have to empower them, right? So you asked me a question the other night. Is, you said I.
Speaker 2:You said somebody asked me why would a firefighter talking about your 30 second thing the elevator talk? Why should a firefighter do leadership training? And I thought, well, I don't know. I thought about it for a while. I said, well, the best answer, I think, is because it makes you a better person, just as a human being. You interact with other people better when you go through this and you consider, kind of the role of a strategic leader and what they do.
Speaker 2:And I think part of that is empowering the workforce to actually do their job. It's just like no, no, no. This is my first due area. This is my franchise and this is the way I'm going to treat my customers as nice in this thing. So like allowing those people and empower them to go off and do that is a lot of people won't do it because you're giving up control, basically. Well, it's the appearance that you're giving up control because they're going to go off and do what they're going to do anyway. You got no control over what Engine 5 does at two in the morning. It's the officer that you're giving up control because they're going to go off and do what they're going to do anyway. You've got no control over what Engine 5 does at 2 in the morning. It's the officer on that truck that's managing.
Speaker 4:They don't want to run straight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So how did you guys manage that piece of it and kind of especially moving forward with the expectations, because sometimes you're almost using empowerment to get the employee where you want them and say, no, you're empowered to do these, this is what we expect from you. Now, how did you guys manage that piece of it and the effect it had on the culture? Maybe?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll jump in with maybe a little bit different view of because you know, familiar listening to the Phoenix led under Chief Municini.
Speaker 1:But you said something, nick, that made me think of an area that I focused on a lot with the ops chief, and that was the company officers, because I felt like we could talk to the crews and have these ideas and the strategic plan and 40 important things. I want it to be everybody's plan and that would. We would accomplish those things or have the culture that we wanted or not, based on the company officer, we, we, the ivory tower can have all of the wishes that we want and it and it comes to. You know the tip of the spear I talked about all the time in our department, the. You know the tip of the spear I talked about all the time in our department. The company officer is the tip of the spear because it all comes together with the company officer when it arrives at an address point because that's the reason for our existence People dial 911 and we show up to an address point Fire department ma'am, that's the company officer.
Speaker 2:You know one of the problems is we need a feather more than we need a spear. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you need a spear. There's other times you're like OK, no, you're the feather.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't want you spearing, yeah true, so that's just a metaphor, but you're thinking about it.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so one of the biggest issues that I had going into one organization is that the chief officers tried to manage the fire stations on that level and they wanted to control their little paradise, right? What do you call it? Their little— Kingdom?
Speaker 1:Little fiefdom.
Speaker 4:They're like the great oz so what our chief tries to do like in in phoenix, bruno. Bruno cini would tell you, man, I would like to have one fire department not three fire departments on a shift, three different departments plus 40 different fire stations, so one department, everybody focusing.
Speaker 4:So when I was uh creating this culture of kindness kindness the kindness conspiracy I like to call it is that, um, I had to trust the chief officers, but the chief officers had to trust the fire captains, and there was some of them that just did not trust the fire captain, like it was something as simple as their uniform. Well, they can't wear that uniform and they can't do this, but it got around uniforms, like you know. You trust this fire captain to make a decision when the smoke's pouring out, whether the duck down and to go in and attack a fire with these people's lives. You trust them for that, but you can't trust them to make a decision in what uniform that fire cap what color socks to wear.
Speaker 4:It's bullshit right when they can wear baseball hats inside a fire station.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all that.
Speaker 4:It's silliness.
Speaker 2:It's micromanagement.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so it is so it has to. But what you're talking about is it has to align all the way through the organization. Hold the assistant, and we had a guy you said everybody had a boss. Right, and everybody does have a boss. And you need to fire chief needs to kind of be, he needs to have open eyes how things are happening within the organization and he'll hear assistant chiefs not being nice to district chiefs, district chiefs not being nice to firefighters, and somewhere in there there's a breaking point that you need to. It needs to be corrected. And I would hear about a district chief say chief, you're not. Assistant chief say you're not going to like this. This district chief did this. And I go oh, who's he work for? Oh, do you agree with what we're saying? Do you agree with everything we've been talking about for the last year? Yeah, well, then go out there and have a conversation with them and and fix it.
Speaker 4:Whatever it's, I'm going to empower you to fix that yeah and then that needs to go and that needs to fall, to fall down. But but Bruno Sini did something that was so awesome is. He spoke a lot about. He said what empowerment looked like. First of all, you have to define what is empowerment, because it's such a goofy word. But what does empowerment look like for a firefighter? For a firefighter, you're empowered to do the right thing for the customer. In fact, I'm going to give you a set of parameters that you can kind of think about as you're deciding to be empowered. Am I going to be empowered? Is it the right thing for the customer? Is it safe, is it lawful, is it within your control and is something you can do If it meets? And I know there's probably a couple more.
Speaker 2:We'll show them the card up there. Yeah, but that was pretty much it.
Speaker 4:And they would say if that all lines up, then you can go do it. So there's got to just like everything else. We assume people know what empowerment means and we shouldn't do that. We should take the opportunity to educate them, show them what that looks like. Take the opportunity to educate them, show them what that looks like, and then when they go out and they do those kinds of things we hear about them, which you always like, nick, you talk about after action more than anybody I've ever met in my life, because that's where you correct behavior right. You would correct it if you saw something safety and you'd have it right there you'd correct it, but really after action is where you reset the employee or reset the behavior.
Speaker 2:Well, you, you, you actually analyze what just happened at the incident scene and you, you could always improve things, but you're not going to be. You don't take it to that level. That's okay, that's more of a strategic thing, but within our existing SOPs and everything else, you had this set of critical factors.
Speaker 4:You took these actions and we had this outcome. So, when people do these special and, like you said, it'd be nice if added value was embedded into every call, and it wouldn't be added it would just be service delivery. Wouldn't it be nice if we just called it service delivery?
Speaker 2:Well, see, but I think there is an added value thing. Like an example, like in the after action review, there was a deal where, like somebody's burned out, they can't return, they can't spend the night in their house, somebody figures out that there's a social organization that you can get vouchers to a hotel and so after a work and fire, we get these vouchers so you can give, like a family, three free nights in a hotel and a taxi ride there. Well, yeah, that's a taxi ride there. Yeah, well, yeah, that's a whole different thing. Yeah, sometimes I was the wrong person to empower all the way.
Speaker 2:So that was, I want to say, that came out of an after action review. And then the fire chief heard it and said no, no, no, no, no, we're going to do an after the fire thing. So he strategically repackaged this and said after a fire, this is what this looks like. So within two months there are boxes, cardboard boxes, with the Phoenix Fire Department logo. That would salvage boxes, and so that's for people, pictures, pets and pills. So if somebody's burned out, we would go through their house with them. They collect all the stuff they need to go spend a night in a hotel for three nights and they've got the Phoenix Fire Department box. Well, how the hell couldn't they love you after that? I mean, what did that cost? A box? A buck.
Speaker 4:I mean you, you, we're like an old couple that lived together so long that I'm trying to get to a point and you eat it.
Speaker 2:You take my point, that's what I was saying so what was it? Dan, nab and Allison.
Speaker 4:Because everything he says too. So if added value becomes service delivery and then beyond that becomes special, recognize those in the organization and then have awards, have thank yous, green sheets, celebrate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just celebrate it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's so funny because you just I love the fact that. Did you know? I used to work for a guy that had your same initiative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you did. Well, hey, you asked the question. If you throw underhand pitches, I'm going to hit them back at you. Sorry, terry, I got you guys started to begin with, and now I can jump in whenever I want, that's beautiful All right.
Speaker 3:Today we'd like to thank Pat Dale, Terry Garrison and Nick Brunicini for sharing their wisdom on the B-Shifter podcast. If you want more of the Silverback Leadership Series, go to your subscription. It's over in all of the continuing education modules on your blue card site. If you're not a blue card subscriber, stay tuned because, specifically, we'll be getting that available to you sooner or later as an entire series, an entire leadership series. Have a great and safe Labor Day weekend, If you're just going into the weekend, if not, you know. Hopefully you got to enjoy it and we appreciate you listening to the Be Shifter.
Speaker 1:Podcast We'll see you next time, you.