One of the main responsibilities for any leader is to set goals for the organization and facilitate the establishment of objectives to achieve those goals.
Goal setting is important whether it is at the organizational level (What will this fire department accomplish this year?) or the crew level (What will we do this shift?). In addition, some fire departments now incorporate individual goals into the practice of performance evaluation.
But how does one go about establishing valid goals and meaningful objectives for meeting those goals? One approach that was popularized by General Electric in the 1980s, and still widely used today, is the use of the acronym SMART.
SMART says that goals and objectives should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic and Relevant
- Time-oriented
How it works
The SMART process has much to recommend it. As someone once said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” SMART provides a simple template for creating clear, realistic goals that can be measured over a specific period of time.
For example, a fire department could establish the goal of reducing childhood drownings in its response area by 50 percent over the course of the next year.
This would be a specific, data-driven goal. If that department had responded to four drowning incidents in the past year, its measure of success would be to have no more than two such incidents in the coming year.
How this goal might be achieved goes to the creation of objectives that support the goal. For instance, when striving to reduce childhood drowning incidents, objectives might include:
- Create a fire department water safety program for school-aged children.
- Actively support swimming lessons and water safety programs provided by other community groups.
- Upgrade medical response equipment related to drowning emergencies, especially for pediatric patients.
The development of each of these objectives can also follow the SMART guideline. For example, if equipment will be upgraded, who will do the research? By what standard will new equipment be purchased? By what date will the acquisition occur?
Keep it real
Goals and objectives must be realistic and relevant to be useful. It would certainly reduce drowning accidents if a fire crew were to be stationed at all public swimming areas during hours of operation, but clearly this is not realistic.
Likewise, there might be a great education program out there geared toward ocean drownings, but if your main problem is very young children drowning in hot tubs, this program would not be relevant for your particular needs.
Why is it important to be specific when setting goals and objectives? The main reason is that some organizations confuse activity with results. They assume that just doing 600 fire inspections year after year will lead to some kind of positive outcome.
But what is the desired outcome? Is it reduced fire loss, better community relations or improved district familiarity for crews? And if any of these are the real goals of the inspection program, how will you measure whether you are achieving the desired results?
Data is important, but not just any data. The data collected has to be relevant to the established goals and objectives.
Smart data
Many fire departments collect data somewhat randomly, without attaching it to defined goals. Many firefighters do not understand the importance of data and are not specific enough in their reporting.
For example, when I was a fire officer we had a problem with multiple fire alarms in fraternity houses near the university campus. We would frequently respond to alarms three or more times a night in these buildings.
My goal became to reduce the number of fire alarms, but first I had to understand why so many alarms were occurring. I went to past run reports for data but found that many of the reports were not helpful.
Rather than using a specific code for the source of the alarm, many reports selected the most generic code (general alarm, other) and did not provide any detail in the narrative about why the alarm occurred — “Arrived on scene, found false alarm, reset the system, cleared,” would have been useful.
This leads to an aspect of setting goals and objectives not specifically addressed by the SMART model. In the model, the M stands for Measurable, but it should also stand for Meaningful.
There has to be a higher sense of purpose in gathering and using data and setting goals and objectives. Otherwise, people will go through the motions but they won’t really care.
Why did we want to reduce the number of fire alarms in fraternity houses? Was it just because we preferred to sleep rather than respond to yet another false alarm?
Or was there a sense of higher purpose — that the repeated false alarms were creating a sense of complacency among the fraternity residents that could lead to tragedy if a real fire emergency occurred? And wasn’t there real risk for the rest of the community if we were constantly tied up with false alarms and unable to respond to more serious calls?
The establishment of goals and objectives is an important part of management. Making those goals meaningful and something that inspires commitment and effort from all members is a critical part of leadership.
