Is it time your department shifts its focus from rules to values?

Our fire department recently had an organizational epiphany: We discovered that creating additional rules could not make our organization any better than it already is. On a personal level, most fire service leaders already know this. Rules do not make us better people; we either follow the rules because they're applicable, or we willfully break them with good intent as a matter of professional discretion. We recognize that good judgment trumps the written rule when the two do not align. At the organizational level, however, shifting the focus away from rules requires humility, because we nearly always apply a rules-based approach. If something breaks, we fix it, search for a cause (a.k.a., the guilty party) and then write a rule to make sure it doesn't happen again. Rules generated and applied in this way are an indirect approach to getting the organizational outcomes we desire.

Our department had hit the point of diminishing return on rules and policies. We needed a better approach to reach the next level of organizational development; we needed to shift from being rules-driven to values-driven. Don't scramble for the exits just yet; I'm not saying we should get rid of all the rules, and I'm not advocating a behavioral free-for-all.

But rules are not enough to achieve organizational excellence. Because we can't write a rule for every circumstance and every situation, achieving organizational excellence requires members to apply proper values to discretionary decisions. Poor discretionary decisions in an organization occur when personal values are applied first, with other stakeholder values as an afterthought. Organizational excellence occurs when members routinely put the values of other stakeholders — the community, the fire department, other jurisdictional departments and appointed/ elected officials — before their personal interests.

This article focuses on how you can identify community values; our department agreed that community values be given the most consideration when we make discretionary decisions.
 
RECOGNIZE THE NEED
There was a time, say 20 years ago, when being rule-driven was an effective approach. Our fire department, like many others, was staffed almost entirely with employees who grew up in our community; as a result, a kind of organizational "common sense" existed.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, some of our firefighters were full-time and some were auxiliaries, but regardless, to get in, you had to fit in. Looking back now, this setup may have created a negative effect by excluding minority employees and impeding diversity — but that's material for another article. The positive effect: It promoted a community-based "group think" that fostered a common understanding of what was acceptable in the fire department. In other words, our values were aligned.

Today, the situation is different. Our employees come from nearly anywhere — geographically, culturally, politically, religiously, etc. — and they quite naturally bring their own sense of what's acceptable with them. Unfortunately, our department has failed to appreciate this shift and has not articulated the organizational expectations to our changing workforce; in other words, our values are not aligned.

How do you recognize whether your department suffers from the same problem? The hallmark symptoms of non-aligned values present something like this: People in the organization do something "stupid," and you're outraged. You ask yourself,  "What the &%^*$! were they thinking?" Worse yet, they don't think they've done anything wrong, and they expect you to defend your position! In exasperation with their irreverent response, you play the authority card and write a policy/rule that prohibits the "stupid" action, just like we always have, except that now it seems like we must do this constantly, rather than just occasionally.

Uniforms and personal appearance provide a ready example. Either directly through official request, or indirectly through experimentation, some of your new people decide they want to change/challenge the rules. The issue quickly polarizes into two positions.

Staff fight the change because the current standard has always been acceptable and ensures a professional appearance. T-shirts, shorts, piercings and tattoos will scare the public, they argue. The change advocates say the public really does not care what firefighters wear, especially when they save said public from heart attacks or fires or extricate them from car crashes. They also argue that the change they want to make is toward a contemporary community norm (remember the arguments between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black?). In both cases, the groups justify their position on what they perceive the community will accept.

Here's the mindbender: Do we, the old guard staff, really know what our contemporary community values are, or are we simply assuming they're the same values we grew up with? Do the new employees really know what the community will accept, or are they just pushing for their diverse individualistic preferences in the workplace? The truth: We must reach out to community members and find out what's important to them today. We must identify and align our existing values.

SHIFT TO A VALUES-DRIVEN ORGANIZATION
My department is supporting the rules-to-values shift in two ways. First, we are reviewing our existing rules/policies; second, we are meeting with the community in small focus groups.

Policy review. Our policy review effort looks for two things: obsolete rules and rules written in indirect language. Some policies are just plain obsolete due to changes in law, equipment, work schedule (we now work a 48/96), etc. The size and scope of our policies makes updating them an endless task. An example of an indirect rule: "Firefighters must be out of bed by 0700 HRS each morning." What we really meant was, "Hey, be ready for the day's work by 0730 HRS. Whether you're up at 0720 HRS because you are low maintenance, or you need to get up at 0520 hrs to create a masterpiece breakfast, what matters is that you're ready for work at 0730 HRS on the second day of your go-round."

Our intent during the policy review is to write our rules in language that directly states the outcomes we want, and then develop/trust our people to apply discretion when attaining those outcomes. More than a few of you will proclaim you've been doing this for years; if so, that's great. Here's a gut check, though: What would your labor group's president say about how you develop and trust firefighters in matters of discretion? You can call ours, Local 1265. They probably won't give us a gold star yet, but I think they appreciate that we're trying. They've been excellent partners in the process.

PHOTO COURTESY LINDA PATTERSON, CITY OF SPARKS When soliciting community input, it's important to obtain the feedback of community members who have special needs. We meet with community members to ask them to respond to the question, "What values & characteristics do I want my fire department to possess & to display?"

Community input. Concurrent with the policy review, we meet with community members to ask them to respond to the question, "What values and characteristics do I want my fire department to have and to display?" Earlier, I noted that poor discretionary decisions in an organization occur when personal values are applied first, with other stakeholder values as an afterthought. When our people can exercise discretion about something they are doing in the workplace, which is quite frequently, we want them to use the values and characteristics desired by the community as their primary compass heading, rather than their personal preference.

PHOTOS COURTESY LINDA PATTERSON, CITY OF SPARKS Members of the Sparks (Nev.) Fire Department lead a community input session. Such sessions are designed to be held anywhere — in schools, churches, community buildings, etc.

During the input sessions, community members are asked to identify the values and characteristics they want the fire department to display. Responses are then grouped by category. It's essential that community members lead this process, not firedepartment personnel.

OBTAIN COMMUNITY INPUT
Our community input sessions use a variant of an a priori public policy analysis method designed to evaluate policy alternatives. The method is specifically designed to attain legitimacy in the eyes of the policy's stakeholders. We used this basic process on a smaller scale several years ago to evaluate a change in the department's work schedule, so we have some experience with it already.

A typical input session lasts about 90 minutes, and they're designed to be held in almost any location. By the time this article is printed, we will have conducted about 10 input sessions; we're anticipating holding 25 to 30 total to saturate the community. The first sessions are the toughest to set up, but once you complete a few, they take on a life of their own. Once it looks and sounds like a legitimate process for input, no one wants to get left out or have a perceived disadvantage with other special interest groups. 

I require a minimum of three facilitators to be present at each session, all of whom I put through a facilitator training class (about four hours long). We start with a basic meet-and-greet, then explain the overall project. We always use a blank flip chart to capture ideas or concepts from the group; this feedback might be outside the focus group's purpose, but it's important nonetheless. We call this a conceptual "parking lot," and it helps us keep the discussion focused by "parking" ideas not related to the main topic.

Next, we give participants pens and a stack of yellow Post-it notes. We ask them to write down responses to the question, "What values and characteristics do I want my fire department to have and to display?" Each response is written on a separate note, with no more than one to three words per note. After each person has written as many responses as they can think of, usually in 5 to 10 minutes (or about 10 to 15 notes), we ask them to pick a leader and group the notes by common themes or concepts, sticking them to a piece of flip chart paper. It is essential that the facilitators let the participants run their session and not influence the input.

We then direct the group to write each of the common themes on a pink Post-it note, creating a "concept map." Once this is done, we place clear tape over the notes on the flip chart paper to save their location until I can transfer them into a digital format. Note: Advanced software programs exist for doing this kind of work, but laptops and LCD projectors can be intimidating and keep people from participating.

We plan to use the concept maps in two ways. First, to capture overall trends, we will create an aggregate map that combines each of the individual focus group's concept maps. Our customer-service team will present this feedback to our department in focused training that will identify the basic community values we want our people to apply in matters of discretion. Decisions shaped by laws, contracts or policies will continue to be made in the same way. But for decisions that require members to exercise discretion, all members will be expected to apply these community values and characteristics to guide their decisions. Second, we will collect the concept maps into a report and distribute it to all of the focus group participants. This demonstrates to the participants that we heard and understood what they had to say. So far, the sessions have been a huge success in terms of gathering information and establishing better community contacts.

THE SCARY PART
There's one caveat to this whole process: Don't even consider doing something like this unless you're prepared to go where the community and your other stakeholders guide you. We are filling a role of public safety stewardship in our communities. Failing to ask for guidance from those we serve may be arrogant, which is bad. But asking for input and then dismissing the unwanted results is self-serving and dishonest, which is far worse.

If you're willing to take some risks in pursuit of developing a values-driven organization, this process is a great first step. In the simplest terms, it's about reminding each other that we're part of something larger than ourselves — and that's what attracted many of us to the fire service in the first place.

Frank Frievalt is a division chief with the Sparks (Nev.) Fire Department. He has been in the fire service since 1979 and has worked with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Bureau of Land Management. Frievalt holds a Master's Degree in Fire and Emergency Management from Oklahoma State University. He chairs the Fire Science Advisory Board for Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nev., and is currently part of a committee creating the Center for Public Leadership at the Regional Public Safety Training Center in Washoe County, Nevada.