Henry Mintzberg is not a fan of the “American” style of leadership.

In the July-August 2009 edition of Harvard Business Review, writing in Rebuilding Companies as Communities, Mintzberg asserts:

They sat in their offices and announced the goals they want others to attain, instead of getting on the ground and helping improve performance. Executives did not know what was going on, and employees didn’t care what went on. What a monumental failure of leadership.

Sound familiar? Mintzberg is the John Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal. His writing and research is focused on managerial work, strategy formation, and forms of organizing. His 2004 book Managers not MBAs, asserts that conventional MBA classrooms overemphasize the science of management while ignoring its art and denigrating its craft, leaving a distorted impression of its practice.

Mintzberg describes a very different approach to management education, which encourages practicing mangers to learn from their own experience. No one can create a manager in a classroom. But existing managers can significantly improve their practice in a thoughtful classroom that makes use of that experience.

FIRE HERO AS LEADER

The American Fire Service has embraced the heroic leader at the expense of management. The deployment of power in a civil war based command-and-control organization isolates people in leadership positions. This isolation facilitates the “Idiot Replacement Theory” (here) and creates a gap between the 55 year chief and the 30 year old company officer.

The tremendous stress created by the recession amplifies leadership isolation and sets up a “I got mine, screw you” perception as the younger members face demotion or layoffs while senior members protect their positions.

JUST ENOUGH LEADERSHIP

Mintzberg suggests a different approach, leadership that intervenes when appropriate while encouraging people in the organization to get on with things. He looks to small groups of managers to lead the change to create a feeling of “communityship” from the middle of the organization.

The success of the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s fund drive (here) depends on the informal leaders and first line supervisor in each fire company to get the crews out on the street. The fire chief can encourage by cancelling all other non-emergency activities during the collection days, the battalion chief can offer to cook dinner for the company that collects the most money, but it is the work at the company level that gets the boots on the street. IAFF firefighters have been “Filling the Boot” since 1954.

FOUNDATIONS OF COMMUNITYSHIP

Four conditions exist in fire departments that faciltate the effort to develop communityship and just enough leadership:

THE REMNANTS OF A COMMUNITY. Minzberg looks to middle managers in large corporations that are deeply committed to the organization and want to promote survival. Each fire department has a rich history and committment to its members and the community. Captains and battalion chiefs, along with senior informal leaders, are the keepers of the flame.

AN ATMOSPHERE THAT PROMOTES TRUST. The most fragile of the four foundations. Trust between the rookie (or senior) firefighter and the fire chief is difficult. Trust between the firefighter and the company officer is vital. It is the basis for the Phoenix “Be Nice” efforts in taking care of the internal customer (more info here).

A ROBUST CULTURE. The career American Fire Service has about 150 years of history, a major participant in the community with a rich collection of experiences and stories.

LEADERSHIP AT THE CENTER. Mintzberg looks to the middle managers. “Community leaders see themselves as being in the center, reaching out rather than down. They facilitate change, recognizing that much of it must be driven by others.”

FIVE JUST ENOUGH STEPS TO COMMUNITYSHIP

Mintzberg describes a five step evolution to communityship that requires just enough leadership:

1. Community building in an organization may best begin with small groups of committed managers.
2. The sense of community takes root as the managers in these groups reflect on the experiences they have shared in the organization.
3. The insights generated by these reflections naturally trigger small initiatives that can grow into big strategies.
4. As these initial teams promote change, they become examples for other groups that spread communityship throughout the organization.
5. An organization knows that communityship is firmly established when its members reach out in socially active, responsible, and mutually beneficial ways to the broader community.

The strain created by the recession makes it important that we start with the internal community of firefighters. Let us begin with company officers agreeing on how the department handles emergency responses with smaller crews. Then expanding to supporting the members that are laid off.  The IAFF reported in June that 900 members lost their jobs.

Mike “FossilMedic” Ward

We were about 2/3rds through our career when Eddie described his Idiot Replacement Theory (IRT). For every old-school idiot, jerk or loser who retired, our generation would provide an equally inept replacement. I was shocked when he originally made that statement and wondered if it still was true.

CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

We were part of the hundreds hired thirty years ago as a collection of rural VFDs grew into an urban county fire department. Our first line supervisors were appointed years before affirmative action. The promotion process was a “store-bought” 100 question multiple choice exam. Candidates who scored as low as 47/100 were promoted.

I worked for one of these old-school lieutenants at an engine-tiller truck-ambulance house. He was a hometown volunteer who applied for a county job when his construction trades company failed in the middle of a building boom. He could barely read or write. He had no supervisory skills and a wicked temper. He refused to allow his firefighters to get turned over as back-up drivers.

Just one firefighter was a back-up engine driver, three firefighters were tiller-qualified. All obtained training before they were assigned to this station. The truck sergeant was the back-up tractor driver if both of the apparatus technicians were off.

ARROGANCE OF YOUTH

As 20-something baby boomers, we believed that we were smarter, better and more capable than the 40, 50 and 60 year old chiefs, captains and senior firefighters.  Just ask us.

We had more formal education. We had folders bulging with NFPA/ProBoard and state EMS certifications. We competed for promotions by taking validated, diversity-appropriate promotional exams that had a written and performance component.  In order to qualify for the exam, we had to meet time-in-grade and career development requirements. The difference from the #1 spot to the #15 spot in promotional eligible list was less than 2.4127 points.

As 40-somethings we promoted into the middle management ranks: staff jobs, specialty section supervisors and field battalion chiefs.  That was when Eddie, working at a staff job, described the idiot replacement theory.

BEST AND BRIGHTEST

It has been about 15 years since Eddie expressed his theory.  Our group now makes up most of the senior department leadership. Impressive resumes, some with graduate degrees, and many completing the NFA Executive Fire Officer program (HERE). A few are credentialed as a Chief Fire Officer (HERE). About 40% of the senior staff were/are paramedics.

The issues are different. The disconnect, dysfunction and anger expressed by those hired in the past six years sound frustratingly familiar.

REORGANIZING DURING WORST BUDGET SINCE WORLD WAR II

The department is implementing a long-overdue merging of the company officer ranks and reconfiguring the staffing of ambulances. In a department known for making very complex solutions, these are related … along with career development.

When I talk to the paramedic/firefighters from my era that are still on the job, they feel betrayed by the department. Their investment in EMS seems unappreciated and minimized. Moving lieutenant positions from medic ambulances to ladder companies is a kick in the teeth. Yet another example that ems is second-class. The most articulate advocate for this perspective set up a listserv to support his position.

When I talk to firemedics that came on in the past six years, they complain about a lengthy intern process that is designed to crush initiative and competency. Not much love when a national registry paramedic with years of pre-employment experience in a 1-and-1 or chase car system is berated by a senior ems supervisor with a cardiac-emt card and a much smaller ALS skill set.

The  firemedics point out that the department has made two or three changes in “career development” that keeps piling on the time they need need to spend on the street before they can take the “all-hazards” lieutenant exam. They set up a blog site that, through anonymous postings, are brutal in their assessment of senior staff.

Especially after promoting 31 lieutenants from an “all-hazards” promotional test that the firemedics could not take AFTER a change in the time-in-grade requirements. I guess the effort to recruit experienced national registry paramedics does not count towards their “qualification” to become lieutenants. Only the time spent on local streets will count.

HEY EDDIE …

There seems to be the same percentage of “idiots” in senior positions today as there were 30 years ago. Better credentialed, better educated, more effective communicators but still maintaining that disconnect and dysfunction that made us angry decades ago.

Henry Mintzberg is the John Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal.  I have read a couple of his books.  In the July-August 2009 edition of Harvard Business Review, Mintzberg explains a crisis worse than the economy, the “deprecation in companies of communities – people’s sense of belonging to and caring for something larger than themselves.”

In the next Urban Commander article, we will look at how YOU can improve this situation.  It will NOT require a ”Beer Summit.”  Link to Rebuilding Companies as Communities

Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
Urban Commander Series