Many articles promote better ways to manage fire departments. They provide ideas, describe tools and provoke discussion for managers, be they crew or officers, fire chiefs or chief executives. But what they often lack is a test, proof that the department has improved as a result of a change in management style, a new strategy or the use of some new tool.

Have they considered a system that recognizes achievement and excellence? How many fire department leaders would test their “world class” in the international arena? American organizations such as Boeing Aerospace Support, Motorola Inc., Baptist Hospital Inc., Sunny Fresh Foods, Los Alamos National Bank, Sisters of Saint Mary Health Care and Xerox Business Systems have put themselves to this test, as have organizations in more than 50 other countries. So why haven't emergency service providers?

Actually, fire departments and emergency services in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand also have taken the test, but their experiences are not well-known.

Standard of excellence

The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence is a component of the Baldrige National Quality Program managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The system provides a framework that can be used to improve overall performance and compare performance between organizations. This framework does not limit improvement, innovation and creativity; rather it allows leaders to refine and enhance work systems by developing a systematic and integrated approach to the management of their business.

Seven categories make up the Criteria for Performance Excellence:

Leadership examines how senior executives guide the organization and how the organization addresses its responsibilities to the public and practices good citizenship.

Strategic planning examines how the organization sets strategic directions and how it determines key action plans.

Customer and market focus explores how the organization determines requirements and expectations of customers and markets; builds relationships with customers; and acquires, satisfies and retains customers.

Measurement, analysis and knowledge management consider the effective use, analysis, and improvement of data and information to support key organization processes and the organization's performance management system.

Human resource focus analyzes how the organization enables its work force to develop its full potential and how the work force is aligned with the organization's objectives.

Process management appraises how key production, delivery and support processes are designed, managed and improved.

Business results examines the organization's performance and improvement in its key business areas: customer satisfaction, financial and marketplace performance, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operational performance, and governance and social responsibility. The category also examines how the organization performs relative to competitors.

Organizations can choose to measure themselves through internal assessment or by an external evaluation process against these criteria. Both processes consider an organization's approach, deployment, learning and integration of systems and processes.

Successful fire departments share many common elements with successful businesses: good leadership, effective planning, sound financial management, knowledge of the customers and their needs, collection and analysis of data and information, a work force that knows what an organization wants and feels a valued part of it, an ability to continually repeat best practices and to learn from them, and a regular review of key organizational performance results. The criteria address these in a way that integrates fully into an organization. But there needs to be a commitment to the process.

Before embarking on a program of continuous improvement, senior leaders must understand their role. They don't have to drive the process, but they must commit to fully supporting the “change agent” or business improvement leader tasked with this responsibility. Words alone are not enough.

Why and how

Why did the New Zealand Fire Service choose Baldrige to improve its performance?

Between 1990 and 2001, the New Zealand Fire Service went through a period of upheaval as it tried to comply with new state sector legislation, a drive to reduce costs and an attempt to negotiate internally driven change with a resistant work force.

In May 2001, a new chief executive was appointed to a post combined with that of national commander. The firefighters' employment contract was renewed, and the business excellence process was first referenced.

Government and private-sector organizations were using a variety of tools to help improve performance, but the Baldrige Criteria process that had many features that the New Zealand Fire Service believed would enable it to become high-performing and recognized as world-class within its field. The criteria values and categories provided a systematic approach that could lead to a culture that would embrace improvement.

There was very little internal knowledge of business excellence and what it meant. Even the term was confused with other management tools such as Management by Objectives, Total Quality Management and ISO standards.

During 2002, some of the fire department staff chose to learn more about business excellence and eventually were appointed as national evaluators for the Business Excellence Awards process in New Zealand. These staff members were to become the core of an experienced group for assessing improvement.

Following presentations describing the continuous improvement journey to our senior leaders by companies that have successfully applied the Baldrige Criteria, the decision was made to carry out a self-assessment to establish just how we measured up against the world class.

The assessment was to use a tool developed by Paul Steel, a member of the Baldrige Board of Examiners, called Best Process Technology. With this tool, in a short time and with a concerted effort by senior managers in a series of workshops, a snapshot could be presented to clearly identify strengths or areas, for improvement that would give us the greatest benefit. Best Process Technology guided us through the first assessment and feedback report in six weeks and clearly identified many areas where we did well.

What's different now

A year later, the feedback report was analyzed and a number of opportunities for improvement were grouped together and turned into projects. These projects covered: the leadership system, customer and market focus, information data and analysis, organizational performance measures, strategic planning, human resource system, and process management.

With these projects, knowledge of the aims of business excellence has permeated through the workplace. We have seen formal and informal examples of improvement within the organization. There is a project management process that requires a more systematic approach to the development of new projects and a project review committee that looks at proposals on the basis of organizational benefits, priorities and strategic alignment.

There are new software applications available to staff via the intranet, including the Fire Incident Risk Management System, which stores data about emergency incidents and building information, and the Station Management System, which allows stations to plan and schedule tasks related to achieving station business plans, as well as other work such as training and equipment testing. Both of these systems incorporate a feedback mechanism to allow users to make suggestions for improvement.

Using the criteria requirement, we assembled our major organizational processes into logical groupings: our product processes and processes that support our daily operations.

We also have a more systematic approach to determine who our customers are, what specific requirements or needs each segment may have, and how to involve each of those customer segments in developing products to meet its needs. There is also a formal public feedback management process that will record feedback and complaints, whom they were assigned to and how issues were resolved. This will help further identify areas for improvement that may not be obvious when complaints are handled at a local level.

There also is a formal agreement between the firefighters' union and the New Zealand Fire Service to work together more effectively.

Better understanding

Initially, we had difficulty in interpreting the language of the criteria and describing it in a way that was meaningful to us. For example, we didn't understand what was meant by “work systems” or “value creation,” and we struggled with how to define innovation in a way that could be used throughout the organization. Now we see many opportunities to improve the way that job descriptions and performance measures are developed and to recognize the contributions that our staff makes to our business. We are investing more in our people through redeveloped training, an advanced program to help with preparing people for future leadership roles, and succession planning.

Strategic business and actions plans have always been important, but we didn't really understand the value of ensuring that all action plans and business plans fully aligned to the organization's outcomes and strategies. We didn't always involve the right people in the planning process, write down and communicate the plan widely, build in accountability, or regularly assess if our goals were being achieved. We now have an improved process with wider involvement from staff at all levels who contribute to our national business plan.

The New Zealand Fire Service has always been information-rich, but we lacked skills and tools to make fully effective use of our data. Now accurate and relevant data is analyzed and used daily in decision-making throughout the organization. Performance indicators didn't always address key areas, and although we had many results, we now are able to better align them with areas that are important. We make more effective use of results to review our strategies, plans and processes, and we use the information as a decision-making tool.

The criteria are about creating a highly satisfied “customer,” but New Zealand firefighters didn't like that term to describe the recipient of their services. We conducted a staff survey to find the preferred term. Overwhelmingly, the response was “the public.” We now are looking at the effectiveness of using the term public instead of customer and integrating that into our work.

By completing the organizational profile we were able to describe, in clear terms, the New Zealand Fire Service: our culture; major technologies, equipment and facilities; structure and governance system; and strategic challenges. We now have available as a resource for the public a comprehensive description of what the New Zealand Fire Service is.

The next steps are to repeat the self-assessment program, using our own nationally trained evaluators to measure the progress the New Zealand Fire Service has made against the criteria requirements; prepare a feedback report, complete with strengths and opportunities for improvement; and prioritize and implement those items that will allow us to continue to improve and measure ourselves against the world class.

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Brian Davey, MIFireE, is national manager of operational standards for the New Zealand Fire Service. A career firefighter with 32 of years service, Davey has been using the Criteria for Performance Excellence (Baldrige Criteria) within the New Zealand Fire Service for three years. A national evaluator for the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation for five years, he is involved in the evaluation of fire organizations participating in the awards process. He is also executive director of the New Zealand Branch of the Institution of Fire Engineers. For more information about the New Zealand Fire Service, visit www.fire.org.nz.