One of the communications terms we often hear in our society is “sound bite.” Derived from film and broadcasting vernacular, it's a very short snippet of dialogue that sells an entire concept.

You're already familiar with this idea from history. For example, if I say “Four score and seven years ago,” you probably could finish the rest of the paragraph for me. You would at least know the general idea. If I say “Give me liberty or give me death,” you could tell me who said that. Among the most easily recognized in contemporary times are the sound bites from Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech.

I would suppose that many of you have thoughts about things you would like to see happen. You must have some concept of what you would like to see happening to you or to your fire department, or you wouldn't be in a leadership role. However, it's unlikely that your quotations are going to make the 5 o'clock news. Unfortunately, if nobody knows what your vision is, it remains a dream.

The purpose of this discussion is to focus on a concept that is currently being discussed in many fire departments, and that is “visioning.” The fire service, which tends to be pretty down to earth, has difficulty understanding the concept of visioning because it sounds a little touchy-feely. However, visioning has a place in all fire agencies. It likely already exists in the minds of most chief officers, or they wouldn't have become chiefs.

Visioning is conceptualizing what you would like to see occur in the future. In a sense, visioning conceives an image of future conditions so that things can be done in the present that will result in those conditions actually occurring in the future.

The concept of visioning relates to many other management methods embraced by the fire service over the last 25 years. It's getting harder and harder to find a contemporary fire chief who doesn't have some grasp of missions and mission alignment. All one has to do is visit any of our more productive and effective firefighting agencies to find the widespread use of the goal-setting process. And setting objectives that have a performance measure associated with them is becoming more of regular practice than it was 10 years ago.

Moreover, one can observe many firefighting agencies that have identified very specific action plans that have been assigned to individuals. Those action plans often result in specific advancements for that department in its local context. The value system of the fire service has shifted a little bit, too. We may not have a national value system driving the fire service, but it's fairly easy to see that individual fire chiefs and their values are definitely driving what goes on within their organizations.

That is where visioning fits in. Visioning talks about future conditions. How would you like to see things? What do you need to do to make changes in the organization to ensure that your vision is achieved at some point in the future? Visioning is not a one-shot deal. It requires individuals to practice it cyclically and incrementally over a period of time.

Who could have predicted what the fire service of 2004 would have looked like in 1904? Yet the writings of many fire chiefs from the early part of that century reflect many of today's thought processes. All one has to do is review the work of John Damrell, Edward F. Croker, Ralph J. Scott and many other leaders of the fire service to see that they had a vision on how to modify the present to achieve a new future.

Now, visioning is not predicting; it's projecting. Projecting depends an awful lot on having a strong sense of what can and can't be done. One of the concepts that allows visioning to occur is called the event horizon. In this context, the event horizon is nothing more than an ability to look forward to find out how far you can see current trends and patterns being played out. We are engaged in this process on a continual basis, but sometimes we don't call it visioning.

For example, a budget is a one-year event horizon. When you sit down to write your budget, it's almost always based on a projection of what's going to occur in the next 12 months. You probably try to incorporate a certain amount of anticipation in the budget document by looking for incremental improvements and seeking additional funding to achieve newly created activities or endeavors.

Many fire agencies have embraced multi-year goal setting, also a visionary practice. If you set goals on a multiple — budget-year basis, you are anticipating the same kind of process as a yearly budget cycle, except you often can set your sights a little higher.

Of course, we also have the concept of strategic planning, which is essentially a document in which you try to define future conditions based on both your budget realities and your goals and objectives. In many ways the strategic plan is a visioning document, although it often isn't as visionary as it is pragmatic. Another event horizon embraced by the fire service is master planning, which looks ahead anywhere between 10 and 15 years and tends to be more conceptual. This is where visioning processes can take shape.

The last part of the cycle is when we try to anticipate what the fire service may look like as much as 75 years from now. Some people would call that daydreaming, not visioning, and they might be right. Nevertheless, visioning could and should play a role in all of the previous types of activities and attempt to determine the overall destiny of a firefighting agency.

The military already has adopted the visioning process. The following is an excerpt from the work of Col. Bruce B.G. Clarke at the U.S. Army War College. He states, “Strategic vision is a mental image of what the future world ought to be like.… Development of a strategic vision is preceded by forecasting the actual, matter-of-fact, realistic and pragmatic future to create an estimate of what the future is likely to be. In doing this, the strategist looks at history, the current situation, and trends.

“Strategy is the crossover mechanism for moving from the world as forecasted to the world of our vision. Strategic vision provides direction to both the formulation and execution of strategy. It makes strategy proactive, rather than reactive, about the future.”

You might be wondering what a visioning statement looks like. Rather than talk about a hypothetical one, I am going to share with you a series of statements made by a fire department as part of its visioning process.

The purpose was “to provide a fresh perspective into the options and alternatives for the future of the fire department and the community,” and the overall goal was “to improve upon the sustainability, effectiveness and efficiency of fire department resources through the use of analysis.” This included focusing on the development of a feasibility model that considered both community and departmental service levels.

The review process pursued a range of options that included a spectrum from status quo to partnerships to contracts to alternative government models to regional fire services. The focus of this activity was to prepare for both short- and long-range planning decisions while improving operational stability. The process also evaluated economic, political and operational issues. The process was designed to be open, balanced and flexible to encourage participation by all levels of agencies. The group was committed to the completion of this process within an accepted time frame.

Here's what they came up with:

“Fire districts, cities, county, hospitals and emergency response organizations will adopt integrated, collaborative and multi-disciplinary planning to ensure that all citizens are served in an equitable, efficient and effective manner.

• Strive for a ‘seamless’ emergency response system regardless of jurisdictional boundary that considers availability, and closest resource.
• Pursue those organizational and jurisdictional changes that make financial and operational sense.
• Establish minimum standards that can be measured against industry best practices.
• Establish a collaborative process for distributing the cost of providing service to the jurisdictions, organizations and agencies that use the services.

Fire districts, cities and county will ensure the safety of its citizens through adoption of fair and reasonable fire and life safety codes and ordinances….

• Strive to achieve uniformity in the adoption and application of codes and regulations throughout the districts, cities and county without regard to jurisdictional boundaries.
• Emphasize customer service, one-stop assistance, and a reasonable balance between public safety and economic development.
• Work in concert with other regulatory agencies (building, planning, environmental resources) to develop a broad-based approach to public safety planning and regulation.
• Embrace the long-term benefits that can be achieved by including automatic fire detection and automatic fire suppression systems in new buildings.

Fire districts, cities and county are committed to enhancing their value by becoming ‘all-risk’ emergency service providers.

• Continue to develop specialized capabilities within the public safety area, including hazardous materials mitigation, technical rescue teams, domestic preparedness planning, incident command teams, and basic and advanced medical first responder programs.
• Continue to develop and enhance relationships with public and private agencies … involved in providing safety services.”

Does your organization have something similar? Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. Don Quixote was on a quest. How are you doing in terms of anticipating the future? If your vision is just to get through the average work week, then your organization may never climb to higher aspirations. On the other hand, if your vision is so far-fetched that it's become a pipe dream your organization may be unfocused and ineffective. Adopting the visioning process as part of your overall management methodology isn't a bad idea.

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With more than 40 years in the fire service, Ronny J. Coleman has served as fire chief in Fullerton and San Clemente, Calif., and was the fire marshal of the State of California from 1992 to 1999. He is a certified fire chief and a master instructor in the California Fire Service Training and Education System. A Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers, he has an associate's degree in fire science, a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in vocational education.