The totality of the contemporary management books, current theories, lessons and commentary from the “experts” provide some context to assess where a training program may be and where an organization may be going. I've seen many successful examples of an organization being led to develop mission statements and vision statements, and to develop and disseminate the core organizational values that drive the way we do what we do each and every day. Safety campaigns, kick-offs and big events are great motivators and can get the attention of the work force, even when it's engaged in multiple competing projects and initiatives.

Unfortunately, for every 10 successful organizational transformations I've seen, there have been 50 that have faded to obscurity after a brief flash in the pan. Whether the individual seeking to implement change is a new promotee, or a new department chief or division manager, we need to get beyond the first phase of change and gut it out through the transition to prolonged sustainability. Any change worth implementing should be worth sustaining.

When we attempt to invoke change, we need to shift beyond simple understanding and move toward compliance. We then need to move beyond compliance to individual acceptance, and then beyond individual acceptance to organizational advocacy. I recently heard this process distilled down to the phrase “Head, Heart and Hands.” This refers to the process of change moving from the head (simple understanding and awareness) to the heart (individual acceptance, commitment and compliance) to the hands (institutionalized in policy, procedures, and training standards and carried out on the job).

The various skills associated with change management are acquired like any others. Part of the process is taught (theory), part is learned (practice) and the end product is based on the totality of your successes and failures (real world or virtual experience). Not until you have implemented, executed and evaluated the result have you truly become a practitioner.

When I review my own organizational track record of change management, it's no better than 50%. That bothers me in some respects, yet I can't take full ownership of the successes or failures. Fire administration and fire training are team sports. I look back on major initiatives that I and my brothers and sisters in fire administration or the training divisions have taught and see that the programs in some departments are thriving. They're being perpetuated and taught as institutional doctrine. In others, I see that soon after I left, it was as if I had never been there.

I recently had the very good fortune to bump into a chief fire officer who had taken over a position I had held in a previous fire department. Our tenures were about five years apart and we hadn't previously met.

It was interesting to note that by the time he had taken the job, many of the programs and initiatives at which I had worked diligently and implemented at great effort had been “trashed” and not sustained by the interim administration. Both of us agreed that several of the programs were critical and had to be reinstated by his administrative staff. Many of the obstacles and constraints to managing change that I had dealt with previously were still in play there years later, even with a significant turnover of personnel and ideas.

Just how do we choose the right initiatives and then ensure that they are sustained for the long haul? How do we develop programs that will last the next 50 years, not just until they scrape your name off the door of your office? How do you decide which battles are worth fighting and which ones to let slide?

Using a process called swot analysis, many of these issues can be identified in a preplanning process where the stakeholders list the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with any program. One of the major issues in the categories of weaknesses and threats is how one sustains the momentum of an initiative past simple understanding or individual compliance. Many times in our line of work our natural incination is to approach an issue as sprinters rather than marathoners. Our history is to be out the door in seconds and back in the firehouse within 60 minutes 90% of the time. This gets in the way of completing a long-range analysis. We often latch onto an idea at a trade show, conference or regional meeting, and after a quick discussion at a staff meeting, we are “blowing and going” toward getting it implemented countywide.

Institutionalizing changes for sustainability requires follows the same process by which we might manage anything else. We identify the problem or opportunity, determine the alternatives, evaluate those alternatives (through swot analysis or some other method), select the best alternative, implement it and evaluate progress.

Continuous evaluation is another area where fire and emergency managers sometime fall down. Many of us are not very good at evaluating the effects and results of change. Did the change solve the problem identified earlier, or did it only address a symptom of the problem? Many times the only way we get to the root cause of an issue is by implementing a solution and later identifying the side-effects, consequences or new problems not seen before.

Chief Dennis Rubin, of the Atlanta Fire Department has written and promoted the concept of crew resource management throughout his fire service travels. This is a change process institutionalized by the airline industry to change its culture to enhance safety and reduce near-misses and aircraft mishaps. This idea could cooperatively and collaboratively complement the “Everyone Goes Home” concept of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation that many of us have been preaching for the past five years with little effect or results.

There is understanding of the need for change, but it has little commitment and virtually no organizational advocacy throughout our profession. Campaigns and slogans are nice. Safety stand-downs are informational but there is no sustained, national comprehensive effort targeting behavioral change at the local fire department level in North America. The statistics bear this tragic fact out every year. The number of firefighter deaths during training is going up!

When the Swedish fire service lost two firefighters from flashover, it was regarded as a national tragedy throughout the country. I'm not just talking about just within their nationalized fire service. The Swedish public and all levels of government were outraged and made a promise that it would never happen again. All of the country's firefighters were trained in flashover avoidance and survival procedures. More than a decade later, the results have been sustained.

I can relate an identical story I heard while having lunch with a chief fire officer from Hong Kong several years ago. Two firefighter fatalities had occured in his department. They were the first fatalities in a decade! The department was outraged, and it implemented plans to prevent a repetiton of that tragic occurance. And they, too, have sustained the results.

The American fire service has taken this message to the “head” level, but it hasn't trickled down into the “heart” zone. Watch the news on television and you'll see that it hasn't made it near the “hands” level at all. No seatbelts, no chin straps, three-quarter boots, no eye protection, air packs on with dangling facemasks, apparatus parked in the collapse zone, and on and on.

We have to look at implementing life-saving and behavior-changing programs in a much smarter way. Plan out your initiatives. How do we get the troops to buy in and stay in? How do we sustain the momentum? It's not just through discipline, although enforcement definitely has a role. Officers and senior firefighters must model the expected behavior. And chief officers also must be held accountable for the same behavior. If you can't stay proficient, chief, stay off the fireground!

The idea of sustainability must be part of the planning and implementation process. No change will sustain itself. Consider the next change starting at the “head,” taking root in the “heart” and being sustained and transmitted into action all the way down to the “hands” in your company, battalion, division and department.

John Linstrom is executive director of The Linco Group, an emergency services consultancy. He's an adjunct faculty member for Texas A&M University and the National Fire Academy. Linstrom currently serves as a battalion chief in Apple Valley, Calif. He also serves as commander of the DHS/FEMA DMORT for Region IX and has been involved in the national USAR program since 1996.