One of the constant themes I hear as I meet, work, and discuss the goings-on in the fire service with my brothers and sisters is their policy and procedure/guidelines. What is interesting, though, is that most of the time, people don't realize that is what we are talking about. How is that, you ask? It's simple. Let me give you an example.
The other day, I talked with a Chief about needing to be away from the jurisdiction for several days. As we continued our discussion, one area of concern was, "I hope everything goes OK while I'm gone." Similar sentiments include, "I can't believe they did that," "What were they thinking?" and other comments.
There is no question that, as leaders and managers, we are always concerned about the conduct of those we lead and supervise. It is frustrating when people fail to do what we expect through policy, procedure, and common sense. It's our responsibility to ensure the accessibility and relevance of these policies.
However, as we witness improper conduct, why it occurred is a big question that needs to be answered. While wilful misconduct is always possible, this is rarely true for most public safety agencies.
So many times, the importance of having high-quality, relevant policy and procedure content cannot be overstated. There is an easy parallel to draw for those who have ever played organized sports. Successful teams operate from plays developed over time and shared from coach to coach and player to player on successful teams. However, the victorious team has solid plays in the playbook and has practiced, trained, and executed the plays to achieve a winning record.
Think about it like this: Would you want to play on a team that just went out and "did the best they could" without a solid playbook and a team that has practiced the plays so you even have a chance to win? However, many public safety organizations fail to remember that organizations are predisposed to fail when we do not use our policy and procedure content as the foundation of everything our organization does and will do in its daily operations.
More often, the issue lies in the organization's policy and procedure/guideline document and can fall into three categories:
The organization and its leadership failed to develop and maintain relevant policy and procedure/SOG guidance for members.
Failing to develop a culture where policy and procedure/SOG is referenced regularly throughout a member's career.
Empowering the training division to base training activities on the organization's policy procedure/SOG where appropriate and referring to these documents to monitor for normalization of deviance of the members.
What many of us also fail to realize is that as we continue through a public safety career, there are usually only three times that most of us will ever reference the policy/SOG manual:
The day we are hired as part of orientation
The day we aspire for promotion
The day we make a mistake and face discipline
These three reasons commonly motivate people to review the policy/SOG manual. Why? Generally, the organization has set up an environment where individuals become self-motivated to educate themselves on what the organization expects. There are failure points that should be obvious to everyone when members only read or study the organization's expectations twice in their career for most and three times for those who make a mistake. Members are better motivated to review and follow policy/SOG content more frequently when expectations are referenced regularly in company-level training around the kitchen table and on the training ground to set the expectation for performance both in training and on an incident.
The point here is that if your policy/SOG content sits on a shelf in the Chief's office collecting dust, somebody must correct this foundational problem immediately. No one will follow a policy/SOG that they cannot regularly access and review.
Suppose access to your policy/SOG isn't the primary issue. In that case, the next question is the quality of those documents for relevancy and alignment with federal/state law, case law, and industry and organizational best practices.
Yes, it's a lot of work. Yes, it takes a lot of time. Yes, anyone would much rather work on anything other than a policy/SOG project. But would you prefer to build your organization on a foundation of sand or rock? Your organization's policy/SOG content is your foundation, no matter whether we like it or not.
If the leaders of any public safety organization fail to provide a solid playbook for the organization to follow, then they are setting the organization up to fail, Period.
The sooner each public safety organization recognizes the importance of its playbook, the better-motivated everyone is to ensure that the information provided is 100% dialed in.
If you need help, ask for it or seek it out, but take deliberate steps to begin improving your content today. If you don't know where to begin, contact Lexipol, which Gordon Graham and Bruce Praet started to help public safety agencies promote safety and reduce liability through solid, legally defensible policies and guidelines. It's not free, but it's worth every penny if this is an area of improvement for your organization.
Finally, if you are reading this article and you recognize your organization needs improvement, don't sit on your hands and do nothing. Sound the alarm, motivate your personnel to bring about change, and begin this vital work today.
