Public Safety Insights Newsletter: Key Takeaways from Fire-Rescue International 2014

Key Takeaways from Fire-Rescue International 2014
Public Safety Insight:	One of the great values of attending conferences like Fire-Rescue International (FRI) 2014 is that you come away with insights that can help you keep your community safe, healthy, and economically viable.

The Fire-Rescue International (FRI) 2014 conference in Dallas last week provided a treasure trove of valuable information. Here are two key takeaways:

1. Failing to create a balance between your agency’s efficiency and effectiveness may put the safety, health, and economic viability of your community at risk.

2. The fire and rescue service is in the healthcare business.

During their presentation on cost efficiency, Chiefs Mike Duyck and Jack Snook stressed the need to balance two related yet different concepts that often are used interchangeably: efficiency and effectiveness. They defined “efficiency” as doing things right – i.e., using resources the best way possible. Examining the ratio of outputs to inputs can help determine the degree of efficiency. “Effectiveness,” on the other hand, means doing the right things – i.e., attaining the desired outcomes. To achieve safe, healthy, and economically viable communities requires public safety agencies to balance these sometimes contradictory concepts. To the extent that decision-makers focus solely or primarily on cost efficiency when allocating resources, they cause public safety agencies’ effectiveness to suffer. The lesson: when educating your stakeholders, you must distinguish clearly between effectiveness (the WHAT) and efficiency (the HOW), and show how public safety will suffer if the imbalance is skewed.

As part of the discussion in the conference’s General Session about the need for a culture change in the fire and rescue service, retired LAFD Fire Chief Brian Cummings stated, “We’re in the healthcare business.” He suggested that the cultural change “elephant in the living room” is the fact that most agencies continue to market and present themselves primarily as fire fighters even though nationwide, about 85% of the calls are for medical services. An increasing number of those calls are not emergencies. His point: the fire and rescue service must embrace and act on this reality and come to terms with how to manage it, or others will do it for them.

To make his point about how deeply ingrained the emphasis is on the fire side of the service, Chief Cummings later said to me that EMS was conspicuous by its nearly complete absence in the photographs displayed and the videos shown during the course of the conference. My own observation was that even though the IAFC guidelines for conference presentations specified that speakers use the terms “fire and rescue” or “fire and EMS” when referring to the profession, many of the session titles and discussions were about the “fire service.”

Here are my suggestions:

1. Distinguish between “effectiveness” and “efficiency” when you educate your stakeholders. Keep the focus firmly on the end result (the WHAT), while addressing efficiency (the HOW) only after the desired outcome has been established clearly.

2. If you don’t already do so, begin referring to the “fire and rescue” or “fire and EMS” service when talking about your business with stakeholders and recruiting new members. You will be raising awareness and creating a more accurate picture of the services you provide.

To learn about how you can identify clearly the ways in which your agency provides value to the community, take a look at my article Pat Lynch’s Process for Identifying Your Agency’s True Value.

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To find other articles and resources that may be of value to you, I invite you to visit my web site at www.PublicSafetyInsights.net.

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©2014 Pat Lynch | Public Safety Insights