DURING EVERY POST-INCIDENT REVIEW, communication holds the top position of problems encountered during an event. In most organizations, it is the root of most nonemergency problems as well. Communication in any large organization is tough, but throw in multiple shift schedules, districts, battalions, stations, and volunteers, and you find yourself in the middle of the old telephone game.
Since it is difficult to pass along communication that retains its original intent, we often turn to the memorandum, aka memo. The memo is used to communicate policies, procedures, and related official business within the organization. One of the problems we commonly experience is with a memo being issued as a supplement to an existing policy, usually so word can get out quickly about a change within a policy. Then the administration gets busy and never changes the policy. At the end of the communication line, members are expected to know the policy and all the subsequent mind-numbing clarification memos issued over the years.
We typically distribute memos by email. So somewhere among the announcement of a blood drive, the passing of someone’s spouse’s cousin, a link to required recertification training, a notification that the server will be down for maintenance, and hundreds of other random pieces of information is the all-important memorandum advising you of an important change. If you are not compliant with that change, your bosses often ask, “Didn’t you get the memo?”
Memos often start with the proverbial, “Effective immediately ….” These emails are often tracked, and reports can be generated to see if you opened them. This is an attempt at removing your defense of, “I didn’t get the memo!” Unfortunately, there is no way to know if you understood it even if you did open it. Email made it much easier to communicate with our members; however, we now suffer from information overload! Just like the abundance of car alarms sounding makes them just background noise we rarely notice, important organizational communication is effectively buried among emails containing memos!
It is difficult and takes planning, resources, and time to adequately disseminate and communicate information in our organizations. Corporations spend billions of dollars communicating to their customers in the form of advertisements. Social media influencers know they have about three seconds to grab your attention, or you will just scroll on by. Has the memorandum become another CYA process in case something happens? The administration can search the sent mail, print out a copy, wave it in the air, and say, “I knew I told them!”
Communication methods have changed, but our organizations have not taken advantage of the new tools. It is no secret that the order-following World War II generation left the fire service long ago. The Vietnam-era veterans taught us to be cautious about blindly following orders and led us into a generation that needed to know “why.” By the way, “Because I said so!” did not—and still does not—resonate. It may result in temporary compliance while you are standing there, but trust me, as soon as you are out of sight, it is back to normal operations.
We must develop triage for the massive amounts of communication we send out to our members. Policy and operational changes need to be advertised, explained in person, trained on in realistic conditions, evaluated for effectiveness, critiqued, tweaked, and then implemented formally with the changes documented in a policy—not in another memorandum. Yes, it is a heavy lift to implement change, and it takes more than wand waving and memos. Sending a memo is like hitting the “easy” button in the communications world. It requires little effort or sacrifice and, therefore, its effectiveness is extremely limited. If we do not hear it, see it, play with it, break it, and fix it, it simply does not get our attention.
If you do not believe me, just remember the memo sent to my generation in the mid-1990s: “Effective immediately, everyone will be required to have a Personal Alert Safety System (PASS) device attached to their SCBA and shall activate it before entering ALL IDLH environments.” We received the box of stand-alone PASS devices along with the memo. We clipped them onto our SCBA but could never remember to activate them. To solve the problem, they were made with a clip to attach to your seat so they would automatically turn on when the SCBA was removed from the apparatus. Then we could not turn them off without returning to the truck. The number of false alarms desensitized us to the sound (just like the car alarm).
The rookies who were issued PASS devices in recruit school received training and reps on them, so they didn’t have the same problem remembering. All the memos in the world could not get us to comply, so smart folks engineered us out of the equation. Now the PASS device automatically activates when we open our cylinder valve and charge the system. We can take it off, shut it down, bleed it off, and turn off the alarm. You can thank my generation for not following the memo leading to that technological advance! One of my favorite sayings is, “We never have time to do it right, but we always have time to do it over.” Prioritize the information. Make it recognizable, meaningful, and understandable, but do not just send a memo. It never works!
