Tag Archives: Hugh Caulfield

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Is the new Lieutenant “… on the level?” How to operate between 3 different fire department organizations

One aspect of Hugh Caulfield’s “getting to know you” leadership game with a new fire officer is determining the officer’s perspective of the organization. Does the new lieutenant operate within the formal organization, the informal organization or the “real” organization?

Formal Organization

Operating in the formal organization means that the officer follows all of the rules and regulations. The officer may not know the background of the rule or how to effectively implement the directive without disrupting firefighters. This is the formal typographic culture, where the fire department is a paper empire of logic and procedures.

There is a scene in the 4th season, 11th episode of The Wire where Police Commissioner Ervin H. Burrell is meeting with the new Baltimore Mayor, Tommy Carcetti, about the proposed discipline of a white sergeant who did a bad felony drug stop on a powerful black minister. The district commander’s proposal of “sensitivity training” as corrective action is not acceptable to the religious community.  Commissioner Burrell places a thick 3-ring binder on the mayor’s desk.

“600 pages of rules, regulations, directives, orders. You fire a white police officer for a bad car stop on a black minister, you’ll lose the rank-and-file. It is not cause enough, but if a commander can’t find the grounds for firing a saint in here … (points to the binder). ”

Sergeant Thomas “Herc” Hauk received a trial board hearing over improper aquisition of a police camera that was subsequently stolen, false statements and fictional informants. Nothing about the bad car stop. He was terminated from the department.

This scene from The Wire is an extreme example of formal organizational problem resolution. In the fire station, the Request phase of Caulfield’s leadership game is how firefighters determine how the new officer adheres to the rules, regulations, and SOPs of the formal organization.

Informal Organization

The informal organization is a network of organizational interactions used to conduct business. This is a more social and tribal environment where humans get the work done. The group or tribe decides on the level of compliance with the paper empire and how this fire company gets things done on an hour-to-hour basis. Fire officer leadership and supervision efforts occur within the informal organization.

linesKatzenback and Khan describe characteristics of the informal organization as:

  • Adaptive
  • Local
  • Innovative
  • Motivating
  • Ambiguous
  • Spontaneous
  • Collaborative
  • Emotional

Social Contagion

Katzenback and Khan share a New York Times Magazine article describing Social Contagion – behavioral changes that can happen among those in close social proximity with each other. Clive Thompson probes the dynamics behind the New England Journal of Medicine article by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler that describes the finding that if your friend is obese, there is a 57% chance that you will become obese, as well.

More startling, there was a 20% chance of becoming obese if a friend of a friend became obese, even if the intermediate friend did not gain weight. The authors hypothesize that the behaviors spread because, subconsciously, we calibrate our sense of normalcy according to what we see others do.

This implies an effective way to influence the informal organization is to walk your talk and model appropriate behavior.

“Real” organization

The “real” organization is the psychological contract created between each firefighter and the fire department. Unless shared by the firefighter, or brought out through effective active listening, the fire officer will only have snippets of the firefighter’s one-way emotional relationship with the organization. The snippets may come out as an unexpected reaction to a directive, situation or activity.

Be a Fast Zebra

A fast zebra is a person who knows how to draw on both the formal and informal organizations with equal facility. This is how Katzenback and Khan describe fast zebras:

Fast zebras are not mavericks. They do not seek notoriety for overtly breaking rules, and then start enjoying breaking the rules for the sake of being noticed. Instead, fast zebras are relentlessly focused on results. They prefer bending to breaking rules. They achieve results by using their fact-based knowledge of the formal organization complemented by insight into the informal organization. They often have no preference for either and view both simply as means to the ends.

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Caulfield, Hugh J. (1985) Winning The Fire Service Leadership Game. New York, NY: Fire Engineering.

Simon, David. (2006 November 20) “A New Day” at 42:00 from The Wire Season 4, Episode 11. New York, NY: HBO Entertainment.

Katzenback, Jon R. & Zia Khan. (2010) leading outside the lines: How to Mobilize the (in)Formal Organization, Energize Your Team and Get Better Results. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Thompson, Clive., (2009 September 10) “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?” New York Times Magazine, retrieved from  https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/magazine/13contagion-t.html

Katzenback, Jon R. & Zia Khan. (2010 April 30) How “Fast Zebras” Navigate Informal Networks. Harvard Business Review 

Featured Image is from Season 4, Episode 11 “A New Day” The Wire