Management expert and quality guru W. Edwards Deming contends that the purpose of organization is survival. Yet increasingly dramatic paradigm shifts are affecting literally every aspect of contemporary public safety delivery practices. Some would even suggest these operational shifts threaten organizational survival. Consequently, the fire service should look to a novel approach to public safety operations: an improvisational management model.

Improvisation is creating something on the spur of the moment, such as making or inventing something with the tools and materials at hand, to fill an immediate need. An excellent example of fire service improvisation is the April 1999 crane rescue by Atlanta firefighter Matt Moseley, who improvised a rescue effort by hanging from a helicopter 500 feet above the ground to save a trapped construction worker threatened by a raging warehouse fire.

Technology is breaking down industry barriers, improving productivity and creating entirely new management models. Customer expectations regarding the quality and quantity of public safety service expectations are changing.

It should be obvious that change involves risk, but many public safety organizations do everything possible to minimize risk rather than embrace spontaneity. However, conforming to a rigid chain of command and leveraging promotional prerequisites heavily toward seniority tend to create a state of organizational inertia.

Perhaps such resistance to spontaneity and risk could be reduced by applying lessons learned from the music industry, where risk and spontaneity are embraced and encouraged. Several management experts have used musical metaphors to characterize effective organizations and leaders.

In music, improvisation often is associated with small jazz groups adapting and responding to change. In both music and organizations, improvisation entails being ready to confront unexpected situations, respond spontaneously and accept the associated risk, all with the understanding that something new and beneficial may arise.

While fire scene and musical improvisation can sometimes seem to border on chaos, it's not that dramatic. To avoid devolving, improvisation requires a high degree of fundamental skills such as playing scales, strumming chords and needing harmony or anchoring a rescue line, resuscitating a patient or establishing incident command.

But how can improvisation be applied in a public safety environment? According to “Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organizations: Implications for Organizational Learning,” a 1998 Organization Science article by Frank Barrett, when the players get together they “do what managers find themselves doing: fabricating and inventing novel responses without a prescripted plan and without certainty of outcomes; discovering the future that their action creates as it unfolds.”

Requirements for improv

Emergency operations have something in common with improvisational musicians: both are “performing” in front of an audience. The public nature of the performance creates stress for both, tempting them to rely on what has worked well in the past. Pressure exists for musicians and emergency responders to appear competent and minimize risk-taking. Barrett, himself a management consultant and musician, identifies seven requirements of musical improvisation that can also be applied in the corporate or emergency service setting for an improvisational organization:

1. Interrupt habits,
2. Embrace errors as a source of learning,
3. Allow maximum flexibility through minimal structures,
4. Continually negotiate toward dynamic synchronicity,
5. Rely on retrospective sense making,
6. Learn informally and develop group norms and
7. Alternate between soloing and supporting.

If improvisation works in the organizational or fire service setting, it should create a fire department that efficiently and effectively adapts to a changing environment just as musicians respond quickly and almost instinctively to their musical setting. In today's chaotic fire service environment, this could indeed be a model for success and improvement.

1) Interrupt habits

One of the most significant impediments to an effective change is individual and organizational habit. Habits are unconscious actions or inactions, and to change them it's necessary for organizations and individuals to have “alarm clocks” to remind them when they have fallen back into their historical behavior patterns. By definition, improvisation aims to avoid the routine and safe by seeking something unique for each moment.

2) Embrace errors as a source of learning

In musical improvisation, there's an important axiom: If there are no mistakes, it's a mistake. Yet one career-damaging event in most businesses is to make a mistake and then acknowledge it. The best learning often comes from making a mistake then adjusting future actions as a result. Hence, another requirement of the improvisational organization is recognizing the need to learn from experience and, therefore, to embrace learning errors as a natural outcome of development.

3) Allow maximum flexibility through minimal structures

Today with the Internet forcing older, successful organizations to become more responsive to market and customer demands, traditional structures are being challenged. The purpose of policies is to reduce ambiguity and provide ready-made solutions and reporting lines. Yet structures and policies can easily become rigid and invisible, often inhibiting innovation, flexibility and improvisation.

The incident command system is an excellent example of a fire service application using minimal structure to ensure maximum flexibility. While the ics is a formalized and structured means of safely achieving emergency scene objectives, officers are expected to be innovative and flexible in accomplishing their tactical objectives.

Remix an old tune

No one is saying that all traditional fire department procedures need to be thrown out with the hose water, but they should be frequently revisited for relevancy and effectiveness.

4) Continually negotiate toward dynamic synchronicity

When times were less turbulent than today, businesses planned ahead for five, 10 or even 20 years. A strategic plan was created, and it remained viable throughout the relevant time period. But as the rate of change escalates, planning horizons are being dramatically reduced. Today it's critical for organizations to continually and constantly review and update their planning. This requires an ongoing dialogue with employees to ensure problems are identified and solutions found that are truly in sync with dynamic situations.

5) Rely on retrospective sense making

Today's operating environment often is chaotic, and rigid structures often are considerably less functional and effective. Consequently, there's an emphasis to create organizations with a process orientation, knowing the environment will constantly demand adaptation, responsiveness and innovation. Employees are encouraged to draw on their experience and skills when confronting ever-changing customer and market demands rather than conform to policies, procedures or chains of command.

In the February 2000 Chief's Clipboard, available at www.firechief.com, Ronny J. Coleman laments “I don't know about you, but I'm really fed up with the contention that the fire service is rigid and inflexible.… If you've ever taken the time to study the history of the fire service, you would have noticed that we've made tremendous strides in how we combat fire over the last 300 years. You should have observed that the pace of change has never been more relentless than it is today.”

6) Learn informally and develop group norms

Organizationally speaking, informal learning is called enculturation or socialization. This is a crucial process where the standards of acceptable behavior are shared and developed in each individual. This process is particularly important as employees learn the organization's values, which then support the other requirements for improvisation.

To develop musical improvisation skills, musicians hang out together informally, listen to recordings of great musicians, discuss them in great detail, memorize the great solos and jam together after hours. This allows novices to learn the standard tunes, tempos and keys, and even to see how other musicians dress. Developing these norms in organizations always occurs informally regardless of the existing formal processes.

7) Alternate between soloing and supporting

The final requirement for improvisation is alternating between soloing and supporting. This is a critical ingredient for organizations operating in today's turbulent environments where employees must not only follow but also lead from time to time as they deal directly with customers or with novel situations. Without free and ongoing dialogue in organizations, errors can't be embraced nor lessons learned. Problems won't be addressed in a timely manner; innovation will be stifled; and traditional outdated and ineffective top-down communication approaches will continue.

As organizational survival is constantly threatened, adaptability, responsiveness and innovation are critical success factors for all organizations. Creating an organization where the seven requirements for improvisation are present and nurtured can allow the organization to grow and change, which in turn can lead to extremely satisfied employees, satisfied customers and ultimately to survival in rapidly changing environments.

As adaptability and change continue to be explored as critical organizational success factors, present and future fire service leaders may want to consider adopting some of the non-traditional, improvisational model. It's hoped this improvisational model will receive wider study and experimentation, leading to fire departments that built to last and built to perform.

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Barry Barnes has a Ph.D. in business and is an associate professor of management at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He had a successful 20-year business career before joining the academic community. Barnes' instructional interests are focused on strategic planning and organizational change and development.

Bill Lowe, Ph.D., EMT-P, is a captain/shift supervisor with the Clayton County (Ga.) Fire Department, where he has worked for 23 years. Lowe has a doctorate in human resource management, a post-doctoral specialization in marketing management. He is pursuing the National Fire Academy's Executive Fire Officer program and is an adjunct public administration professor.