As I visit my department's fire stations and talk with the firefighters, the question they continually ask is, “Chief, where are we going?”

This is a legitimate question to be asked of any career or volunteer fire department leader. When firefighters commit their time and energy, they want to know the end result. They need answers to questions like “Why am I coming to work?” and “Why are we doing the things that we do?”

To help answer those questions, the Virginia Beach (Va.) Fire Department undertook a program several years ago to engage in strategic planning. Of course, this isn't a ground-breaking effort for us as an organization. Cities, corporations and other organizations throughout the United States have been developing strategic plans for years to help them focus their energy on accomplishing their goals.

We're no different in wanting to follow through on our goals. We provide a service to our citizens that's critical to their daily lives and important to our mayor and city council. It's one of our city's businesses — the business of being a safe community.

The search for meaning

As our department tried to put into words what we hoped for, we needed to figure out just what a strategic plan meant to us. Strategy usually is described as devising and using plans toward a goal, and plans are noted for their orderly progression. I like these definitions because they reflect the combination of art and science that's needed by every leader.

These definitions also help a department's members to break down the strategic planning process into simple steps. They'll recognize that the organization is going to establish some goals that are part of its overall objective. For example, in Virginia Beach the city council's stated objective is the “feeling of being safe, any place, any time.” As the fire department, we're expected to provide those services within our means that contribute to a safe feeling for our citizens and visitors.

Of course, providing those services requires us to effectively focus our limited resources, which is where strategic planning comes in. Strategy is the rationale for why we choose how to get where we want to go. It can be applied to big issues or small. We need to set strategy because we're never going to be able to accomplish all of the things necessary to achieve our goal on our own.

Even without a written plan, every organization has an implied strategy because its actions generally show a preference for one approach over another. Unfortunately, the reasons behind those preferences are unknown to everyone in the organization. The development of an explicit strategy gives the reasons why we choose one course over another, how we invest our time and energy one way, and why we choose to allocate resources to one activity rather than another.

If you don't have a strategic plan, then the thousands of choices made by your firefighters every day may not be aligned with what you're trying to accomplish. This isn't to say that a strategic plan will cause everyone in a department to make the exact same decisions as the chief. However, when department members understand where the organization is trying to go and how, their choices will be more closely aligned with those of the chief.

Strategic preparation

Although the steps that a department takes to implement strategic planning could be very simple or very complex, they certainly should include a formal process of analysis, discussion and team work. The process should be open to all employee stakeholders, as they will be responsible for the execution of the final strategic plan.

The analysis has to be based on what capabilities already exist within your community. For example, fire departments are an integral part — but only one part — of the community's public safety service delivery. We need to understand the systems and relationships that exist between our organizations and those we work with.

The preferred method that Virginia Beach uses is the gap analysis model, the first step of which is to define the issue under discussion. For strategic planning, you are comparing what the department does today with what it should be doing, now and in the future.

This comparison needs to be supported by data, which will explain what your community needs from its fire department and how the department came to undertake its many services. Gathering as much data as you can is a crucial part of strategic planning.

Where do you find that data? Community demographics can be found on the Internet or through the city planning department, if there is one. As for fire service data, you should already be compiling that through fire reports, preplans and other internal documents.

Once you figure out where you are now, you'll need to develop a shared definition of a desired outcome. Everyone in the department has to know what that end state will look like before you can define the strategy that will guide the department's plans to reach the desired outcome.

For example, one of the goal statements out of our strategic business plan for this year is “to develop, maintain and communicate a fire department strategic plan that is dedicated to quality customer service and aligns with the city council's destination points and the city's value, vision, purpose, and mission.… [To] incorporate these goals and objectives with all the department's programs ensuring these programs support the Safe Community Strategic Issue Team,” which looks at issues facing the community as a whole.

It's an open statement that doesn't discuss particular actions but states the outcome that we're trying to achieve. It provides guidelines for making those choices, and it refers to the overall goal within the safe community.

If you then analyzed our strategic business plan, you would see that under this goal statement are tasks that we believe will help us achieve those goals as we move the department forward. We believe that these tasks and goal were made more meaningful by involving all levels of our department's ranks.

The gap analysis model

The Virginia Beach Fire Department has a series of phases that it uses in moving through the gap analysis model.

Phase 1

We put together a small team of people to develop the framework for each of the outcome statements. This team of personnel should be taken from all ranks within your department because a diversity of opinions will help make the plan truly strategic. When a broad variety of members have input in guiding your organization, more people will feel they have a stake in the department's goals and can help encourage buy-in from the rest of the organization.

Phase 2

We also look at how the fire department fits into the local government, noting the relationships to other departments that we work with on a daily basis. This is where a diversity of team members is critical. The people closest to providing the services know with whom they interact to accomplish the job.

Phase 3

Next, we define the characteristics of the fire service as a business within the community. This step often uncovers facts about the department that not everyone is aware of. If this happens to you, don't be surprised. A significant effect of any strategic planning process is the learning that takes place as you move forward. These “Ah ha!” moments that occur are a normal part of closely looking at your organization.

Phase 4

With this initial examination out of the way, we create a foundation to formulate the initial strategic focus for the department. Before a foundation can be built, however, the team needs to refine the underlying reasons behind the issues facing the organization.

For example, as we discussed the reasons behind controlling the crime rates in Virginia Beach, we eventually came to the conclusion that a strong family unit was the best deterrent to crime. We, as members of the Safe Community Strategic Issue Team, eventually recommended a series of strategies aimed at improving youth opportunities.

With information and a foundation for the future, a strategic planning team can now look at where the department is and where it wants to go. The gap between the two will help determine which of the proposed steps will help move everyone toward those outcomes.

This is an interactive process that may take several times to evaluate the steps. As the team reviews the possible scenarios, you may discover other action steps that may be more effective in moving you forward.

After you have settled on those series of actions that your team intends to implement, it's time to publish the strategic planning document.

We found that sending out the plan as a draft for review gave us several benefits. The department's chief officers were tasked with looking to see what was missing from the document. A new set of eyes can help ensure that the document is understandable and useful. If any major issues were missed or are not clear, they can be reworked for the final version.

Not written in stone

With buy-in from your organization, coupled with a written plan of where you are trying to go as an organization and how you intend to allocate resources to achieve it, you will be on the road to success. This effort will give you the opportunity to have your organization in tune to move forward.

This document is a living plan. You need to review your plan at least annually to make sure that you're still headed in the proper direction. Events can occur that cause a department to rethink and reprioritize what it's doing. As an example, we started work on our strategic plan before Sept. 11, 2001. After that date there were a lot of things that we were doing as an organization that had to be reprioritized to reflect the current reality brought about by those events.

Once you have a strategic plan in hand, the benefits to your department can go beyond improving the service to your community. Your strategic plan will play a big part of the Commission on Fire Accreditation International's base line and will serve as an excellent guide for you to complete the accreditation process.

In the fire service, we are generally action oriented and look to get things done right away and move on. As a result, a fire chief can be effective even when minimizing the importance of planning, but visionary leaders will commit as much of their time and energy to planning as they do to carrying those plans out.

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A 30-year fire service veteran, Gregory B. Cade has been the chief and emergency management coordinator of Virginia Beach (Va.) Fire Rescue since August 1998, where he oversees a multi-service agency of 438 career personnel and 66 volunteers. He currently is completing course work for a master's degree in public safety leadership from Old Dominion University. In 1994 he received his bachelor's degree in fire administration (with honors) from the University of Maryland, College Park, and in 1979 he received his associate's degree in fire science from Prince George's (Md.) Community College. Cade also has completed the Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.