A practical blueprint for leading successful fire department change

For much of my 27 years in the fire service, I have had opportunities to design and implement fire department change. One particular change I was involved with made a lasting impact on me and has shaped the way I view organizational change.

As a new battalion chief, I initiated action to switch out PFAS-contaminated class B firefighting foam stored in on-board tanks on our fire engines. The process to replace this foam with a non-PFAS version seemed clear, and I sent it out in an email to the department. What ensued was utter confusion. Crews lacked clarity on the process, different types of foam products were inadvertently mixed, new class A and class B foam capabilities were not widely understood, and our logistics team was pulling their hair out trying to chase down and remedy every issue.

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This confusion was the result of my poorly executed change process, and I decided I did not want that to happen to us again. So, I set out to better understand the process of organizational change in fire departments — what works, what doesn’t and how we can find a system that works for our organization. Here’s what I learned along the way.

The factors driving change

While there may be some truth in the adage that “firefighters hate two things — change and the way things are,” my experience has been more nuanced. I’ve found that changes are typically driven by one of two broad situations: 1) a factor forcing change or 2) the desire for growth and improvement at the organizational, group or individual level. Many times, factors that force departments to change are macro environmental, as detailed in the PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental) analysis tool (Aguilar,1967). These are changes that must occur for us to keep pace with our changing environment, regardless of whether we are ready for them or not.

Department-initiated growth and improvement changes are often sought by firefighters themselves. The recent cultural movement in the fire service to understand and prioritize search culture is a great example of firefighter-initiated change. Additional examples could include creation of an officer development program or modifying incident command procedures based on the desire to accomplish specific strategic initiatives.

Regardless of the reason we are changing, we need to understand the odds are stacked against us. Research shows that approximately 60-70% of organizational change fails (Burns, 2011; Hughes, 2011; Jarrel, 2017), and whether the change is due to an external factor or self-initiated, undertaking significant fire department change can become a complicated endeavor.

Time and employee trust

When we ask our folks to change something about how they do their work, our time and employee trust are in play. Our time is valuable, and there is usually more work to do than we can get to. When our command team chooses one project over many other worthy initiatives and commits real time into it, it is essential we do everything in our power to ensure we are successful. Continued failed change processes can lead to spinning our wheels, putting us in a space of “organizational churn” rather than moving our department forward.

Successful change is also heavily influenced by the trust employees have in both department leadership and the change process itself (Edmondson, 1999; Oreg et. al, 2011; Smollan, 2013). When we ask employees to change a behavior or process, it can place them into discomfort. Organizational change can result in feelings of fear, anxiety and loss of control (Day, 2017; Fløvik et al, 2019). But a recent study on firefighter change found many responders were also “eager to invite changes and innovations,” if the proper success factors and support mechanisms were in place (Carlson et al, 2025, p. 11). Properly planned and well-supported change processes build trust and can prime the buy-in and appetite our employees have for future change initiatives.

Change management: A template for your fire department

Change management is a well-established discipline, although I do not often see it formally used in the fire service. In its simplest form, change management is identifying where we’re at, then making a plan to get to where we want to go.

There are many approaches, theories and genres of change management, from Lewin’s three-stage model of unfreezing, transition and refreezing (Lewin, 1947) to models that emphasize certain aspects of change or leadership. The approach I use now is a synthesis of many of these models, but one I feel is geared toward the flow and cadence of how many fire departments operate.

Step 1: Define the problem

Lewin (1946) endorsed thoroughly diagnosing a problem before attempting to solve it. My experience has been firefighters often come forward with great ideas, but they need to be vetted based on the needs and priorities of the department.

A few questions at the front end can help:

• How do we know there is a problem? Are there metrics, or is it sensed/felt?
• If there is a problem, what is the urgency to solve it now?
• If we decide to solve it, do we have the time to build the solution, the money to buy the equipment, and the ability to train the solution now and into the future?
• If we engage on this problem, are there other initiatives we will need to pause?

Step 2: Prepare for change

Most change models contain a preparation phase. We could spend an extreme amount of time on this step, but the model also needs to be realistic and useable in our fast-paced environment. Errida & Lotfi (2021) found steps in the preparation phase to be crucial to the overall success of a change.

Questions that can help guide the preparation phase of a change include:

• What’s the vision for the change? What is the desired outcome?
• What is the employee going to notice/feel when it’s complete?
• Who is going to lead the change? Who is going to build it (this can be the same person)?
• Who are the stakeholders that need to be included? Formal and informal leaders?
• What are the steps or phases of the change?
• How will we communicate it, initially and ongoing?
• What is our training plan?
• How will we evaluate? What metrics will we use?

Step 3: Implement the change

Some people learn through mnemonics, and I developed this one for its simplicity and sequential order. This step draws from the preparation we performed in the prior step. It includes:

• Train: We train to the level of competence we want to achieve. If we use the Dreyfus (1980) model of skill acquisition as a guide (novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, expert), we need to match the amount of training with the desired competency. We cannot achieve expertise with novice level training.
• Implement: We implement the change based on our predetermined steps. Tracking steps using a Gantt chart can be helpful, so long as the chart is realistic. Implementing change across multiple shifts, stations and crews takes time, so build in a buffer for the reality of day-to-day operations and new urgent items that arise.
• Evaluate: Start looking at the data in real time. Is the change working? Is it being well received? If there are challenges and barriers popping up, solve for those quickly before they start to undermine the change and erode your positive momentum.
• Support: Support for complicated change processes is a critical piece, and usually looks like in-person, face-to-face visits. When concerns are raised, resist the urge to immediately push back or restate the process. Curiosity can help uncover the true concern, and in many cases people understand the change is here to stay and just want to be heard. They may also highlight a gap in the plan you did not previously recognize. Email will likely not be sufficient to support very involved change process.

Step 4: Embed into the culture

Institutionalizing the change into our organizational culture is often the forgotten step, but one of the most important. We do this by changing policy to reflect the new process, including it in our new recruit onboarding, and adding the change to promotional testing processes. If we want the change to last more than six months, we need to take steps to ensure it becomes our new normal.

Revisiting the foam change

With all this in mind, if I were to go back and rework my foam change process, I would do a few things differently.

Initially, I would map out my change process from start to finish using a template. This would help me identify early where there may be confusion or resistance. I would then approach the operational battalion chief group with a strong problem statement and the proposed step-by-step solution, complete with infographics showing the new foam product and apparatus fill and drain ports. Completing this step ensures that I have 24/7 on-duty support for crews who perform the switch over after hours or on weekends. I would still distribute the change process in formal memorandum but would be sure to attach specific deadlines and better visual instructions.

As the change leader, I would make sure I was present for the first few flushes, answering questions and looking for problems. I would also check in with supervisors frequently in the first two weeks to make sure we were making good progress. Finally, I would send out an update that identifies the crew that has performed the successful changeover (capture small wins) and reminds the rest of the department of the process and deadlines.

Final thoughts

Whether we are changing based on shifting environmental conditions around us, or to support our desire for operational excellence, there is no easy button for successful organizational change. It usually includes a lot of planning, execution and follow-up work. But having a purposeful, structured, well-executed change on the front end not only saves us time overall, it builds trust and fosters employee buy-in for the next inevitable department change we want to make. Our mission in the fire service is too crucial and our time is too limited to leave our most important change initiatives to chance.

REFERENCES

• Aguilar, F. J. (1967). Scanning the business environment.
• Burnes, B. (2011). Introduction: why does change fail, and what can we do about it?. Journal of change management, 11(4), 445-450.
• Carlson, E. J., Manierre, M., & Bazzocchi, M. C. (2025). Firefighters Hate Two Things—Change and the Way Things Are: Exploring Firefighters’ Perspectives Towards Change. Fire, 8(9), 348.
• Day, A., Crown, S. N., & Ivany, M. (2017). Organisational change and employee burnout: The moderating effects of support and job control. Safety science, 100, 4-12.
• Dreyfus, S. E., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1980). A five-stage model of the mental activities involved in directed skill acquisition (No. ORC802).
• Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly.
• Jarrel, T. (2017). Success factors for implementing change at scale. New York, NY: McKinsey & Co.
• Errida, A., & Lotfi, B. (2021). The determinants of organizational change management success: Literature review and case study. International Journal of Engineering Business Management.
• Fløvik, L., Knardahl, S., & Christensen, J. O. (2019). The effect of organizational changes on the psychosocial work environment: changes in psychological and social working conditions following organizational changes. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 2845.
• Hughes, M. (2011). Why Does Change Fail, and What Can We Do About It. Journal of Change Management, 11(4), 451-464.
• Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of social issues, 2(4), 34-46.
• Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics: Concept, method and reality in social science; social equilibria and social change. Human relations, 1(1), 5-41.
• Oreg, S., Vakola, M., & Armenakis, A. (2011). Change recipients’ reactions to organizational change: A 60-year review of quantitative studies. The Journal of applied behavioral science, 47(4), 461-524.
• Smollan, R. K. (2013). Trust in change managers: the role of affect. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 26(4), 725-747.