By Jared Kimball
Metathesiophobia is the fear of change. I have been in the fire service for over a decade and have known many members and leaders who could be diagnosed with metathesiophobia.
The fire service has been known to have the “good old boys” mindset for numerous decades. Many volunteer departments are run by families who were there since the conception; those leaders tend to favor members who also have been around a long time.
Yet, this is not the best approach for leading a fire department. Adhering to standard, consistent guidelines is something many in the good-old-boy system don’t want to deal with, but must when local, state and federal requirements come into play.
Those fair and consistent standards start with having several documents for governing fire department members. These should provide guidance on emergency scene conduct and how to handle unexpected situations.
For example, some departments, either because of financing or that not every member is qualified for interior firefighting, wrestle with who gets the limited supply of turnout gear. Does the department base this decision on tenure, certification, training and call participation or on friendship and family ties?
Having and following a set policy to issue turnout gear or a rescue jumpsuit will assist officers in showing that there is no favoritism at play when members question why one person gets gear and another does not.
10-minute world
Issuing equipment, determining a unit number or deciding qualifications are only a fraction of guidance needed within a department. The guidance documents can be living documents that change as the department changes.
How many departments have a social media policy or guidance within their code of ethics, or policies and procedures guidelines?
The world we live in will not be the same in 10 minutes, let alone 10 years. A strictly volunteer department today can become a combination or career department tomorrow.
It is important to understand that doing the foundational work today will leave the department a better place for tomorrow. Being a fire department leader not only means being the calm of the storm on an emergency scene, but also leading the department into the future.
So the question that looms is how do leaders become this change? How do they right a ship that’s heading in the wrong direction?
It starts with the leadership, which primarily falls to the fire chief.
Ask members
Within my department, it started with a survey that asked members to rate the department as a whole. This survey explored a host of topics from training styles and content to approval or disapproval of the department leadership on the operations side.
The answers were compiled and presented to members. It was an eye-opening experience. It showed holes within our department that needed to be filled.
Several months after the survey, I was elected president of the board of directors for the volunteers. The chief and I sat down one evening and determined that we needed to lead the change. One thing we did not take into account at the time was the response we would receive.
At the department’s end of the year banquet, the chief began his speech with the word “change.” He assured the members that processes that had been in place since the department’s conception would be changing. I also addressed our members and reiterated that changes were coming.
The first noticeable change I made was to the agenda and the way we ran our monthly membership meetings. Unnecessary items were removed from the agenda. We received several complaints that we were removing items some members believed were mandatory.
One example was the financial matters for the fire protection district. Ours is a combination department and the bills are paid monthly. I always chuckled that a receipt from a home-improvement store for $534.29 would draw questions about the reasoning behind the purchase.
This was unnecessary reporting and was removed from the agenda. This resulted in our more than two-hour meetings decreasing to the shortest in our history, 23 minutes. This allowed us to focus only on the items that needed to be discussed and handled.
Clean, consistent documents
The fire chief and I then began to work on all of the governing and guidance documents. This proved to be the most difficult because ours was a combination department.
We joined all documents that covered our career fire protection district and volunteer fire department members. We began with three documents: classification of responders, code of ethics and department board guidelines.
We went through these documents line by line and discovered many contradictions. We rewrote each document using the same language, meaning of words and concepts.
Each document, rather than being its own special documents, became references to each other.
The words used to explain the social media policy were echoed in the disciplinary procedure. The classification of responders guideline referred to the training by classification guideline for definitions and clarity. This would allow us to refer to these documents when determining the minimal qualifications to issue turnout gear.
The guidelines we used for our documents were based on several findings from local, state, federal or insurance frameworks. As most of us know, there is a significant increase in the mandatory amount of trainings required each year for firefighters.
In Louisiana, we are governed by Property Insurance Association of Louisiana requirements. These requirements are shown and defined within our guidelines to give an accurate justification when someone questions the need for our guidelines.
Review process
Getting the input from department leaders is extremely beneficial. It allows for a unified front on any issue. It also allows the leaders to use skills the fire chief or any other leader may not have.
This means allowing the leaders within your department to review the changes to the guidelines. Fire department leaders presenting a unified front increases the likelihood the change being introduced will succeed.
The department board guidance was the next document to be gone through with a fine-toothed comb. This document was as clear as mud when trying to interpret it.
To handle this mess, we reviewed neighboring department guidelines and adopted those that fit our department. In the process, we found we were doing things that were not written down and vice versa.
Once the document was 70 percent finished, we presented to the board for their review. After some initial hesitation, the board members came to realize the reasoning for the changes.
What I learned as the board president was the need to be slow and steady when pushing changes. Once a document was complete after board member input, it was presented to the members for a vote to adopt.
We presented the new documents to the members and awaited their questions. However, a motion was made for the adoption of the document and subsequently, it passed without comments. And this came from a group that not that long ago spent hours questioning and debating small, routine expenses.
Making the changes necessary to move a department out of its dark ages takes the courage and strength of its leaders to propose and push for what may initially be very unpopular. It also requires active participation by the various levels of leaders and rank-and-file members so that the final product has full support.
Once a department overcomes that initial fear of change and the better way becomes normal, reverting back to the old ways is a change no one wants.
About the author
Jared Kimball is a firefighter, EMS captain, paramedic and president of the board of directors with the Coteau Volunteer Fire Department in Houma, La. He has been involved with the volunteer fire service since 2003 and has worked as a ground/flight paramedic for a private agency in his community.