A modern incident commander gets the dispatch information immediately on a mobile device, a screen in the bay with a static picture of a building and a drone feed from the neighborhood — all before leaving the station. Preplans are available with a few taps on a screen. Automatic vehicle location (AVL) tracking identifies the location of the responding resources. Land mobile radio (LMR) systems provide interoperability across all of the jurisdictions and agencies. Terrestrial and satellite broadband networks move information faster than ever before. AI promises to deliver even more information to decision-makers than ever imagined.
On paper, it probably looks like we’re operating with unprecedented levels of coordination and situational awareness. Yet if we are honest with ourselves, many of the communication challenges that existed 25 years ago still exist today. We continue to struggle with information overload, radio discipline, conflicting priorities, interoperability challenges and time-compressed decision-making under extreme stress. The technology has changed dramatically, but human performance has not.
Connectivity is not coordination
For most of my career, discussions about communication focused on reliability. Accelerated after 9/11, agencies worked to improve radio coverage and power, automate dispatch for alarm assignments and ensure neighboring agencies could communicate during large-scale incidents — and it worked. Reliable voice and data communications infrastructure is a foundational component of firefighter safety and effective emergency operations. That being said, these advancements create a growing burden on the people expected to interpret and act upon them. This is where many organizations begin to confuse connectivity with coordination.
Connectivity is a technological achievement. Coordination is an outcome of effective leadership. Technology delivers information. It can’t determine what information matters most at a particular segment of an incident. It can generate alerts, notifications, reports and fancy dashboards, but it cannot establish priorities. It can provide options, but it cannot exercise judgment. Those responsibilities remain firmly in the hands of our human leaders.
That means the greatest communications challenge facing the fire service is how to manage the abundance of information. Can we process it, prioritize it and act on it before the critical moment passes us by?
The IC’s information burden
Anyone who has served as an IC on a tough call understands this challenge. During a rapidly evolving complex incident, information rarely arrives clearly and in an orderly sequence. Conditions change and often conflict with each other. Resources arrive at different times and may even bring additional problems. New hazards emerge. The challenge for ICs is filtering the noise, determining what is relevant and making decisions before the window of opportunity disappears.
The role of IC has become akin to air traffic controller. Both operate in stressful, dynamic environments. Information comes in continuously and priorities shift constantly. Consequences for both jobs are measured in seconds with lives in the balance. Mission success depends less on the volume of information available and more on the ability to distinguish the truth from the noise. That lesson extends beyond the fireground and into the chief’s office.
Technology will not fix unclear expectations
Fire chiefs today are expected to evaluate an expanding universe of technological solutions, and the pressure to adopt new technology can be significant. Leaning into tech solutions is a good thing. The danger comes when chiefs believe that technology alone will solve organizational problems right out of the box.
Throughout the long history of our industry, communication failures have often been attributed to equipment, software or infrastructure. At one point it was the bugle, then the runner, copper lines, low band radios, and on and on. Occasionally, that diagnosis is correct. More often, though, communication problems stem from unclear expectations, poorly defined responsibilities, inconsistent procedures or a lack of organizational discipline.
Healthy organizations will gain value from innovations because the technology supports already established processes and expectations. Organizations struggling with clarity, accountability or decision-making often discover that new systems simply make existing problems more visible. In short, we can’t expect the tech to fix our organizational dysfunction.
AI can inform decisions, not own them
To exacerbate the situation, we are plugging AI into our public safety environment. AI offers tremendous potential to assist our PSAPs, identify trends or keywords in large data sets, summarize incidents and patient contacts, and support administrative decision-making. These capabilities will undoubtedly continue to evolve and improve every day. Fire chiefs should pay attention to these developments and explore opportunities where they can create value.
At the same time, chiefs should resist the temptation to confuse decision-informing with decision-making. AI can help process information, but it cannot replace human experience. It cannot calculate the political, social and human factors that often influence emergency decisions and operations. Most importantly, it cannot assume responsibility for outcomes. Accountability, by any definition, remains a uniquely human responsibility.
Clarity is the chief’s job
The same principle applies across nearly every communications technology. The goal should not be to accumulate more information but rather create greater clarity. Clarity is one of the two most important jobs of a fire chief — and can be the most valuable commodity in leadership. Every push alert, electronic notification, email report, dashboard and communication message competes for our limited cognitive bandwidth. At some point, every organization reaches a threshold where additional information begins producing diminishing returns. When that occurs, we must become increasingly intentional about reducing complexity rather than adding to it.
“Keep it simple, stupid” (KISS) is one of the most overlooked responsibilities of leadership. We need to create systems that help people focus on what matters most. Before new technology is introduced, organizations need clearly established priorities, defined decision-making authority and fewer points of unnecessary friction. Technology will perform best when it reinforces those conditions; it will perform poorly when it is expected to create them.
This is one of the primary reasons that most successful ICs are those whose superpower is simplifying complexity. They are the humans who understand what matters. They communicate intent clearly. They establish priorities. They eliminate distractions. In short, they create clarity when others experience confusion. The same responsibility belongs to fire chiefs.
As our organizations become fully connected through Internet of Things (IoT), leaders must ensure they become increasingly coordinated as well. We have millions of disparate sources of information. That reality requires thoughtful stewardship of both technology and the people expected to use it. It requires an understanding that every new capability carries an associated demand for attention, training, maintenance and discipline. Most importantly, leaders must recognize that technology is not always the cause of — or the solution to — communications failures. Sometimes organizational dysfunction is what prevents agencies from making full use of the tools already available to them.
The future belongs to clear organizations
The future of fire service communications is incredibly promising. We’ve come a long way from focusing on simple voice interoperability. The capabilities available today would have seemed impossible only a generation ago by most. No matter how advanced our systems become, the essential challenge will remain unchanged: Information still has to be interpreted, and priorities must be established to make the best possible decision.
Organizations that thrive in the coming decade will not necessarily be those with the most technology. They will be the organizations that create the greatest clarity from the information available to them. They will understand that communication is not primarily a technology issue. It is a leadership responsibility — and that responsibility begins with the fire chief.
