This document discusses how organizations can develop an "arrogance of success" over time by relying on past solutions and assuming they will continue to work without explicit debate. It provides an example of how a fire department's tactics led to injuries during a roof collapse because they did not adjust to the evolving conditions. The author argues fire departments need to avoid complacency and develop stronger incident action plans (IAPs) driven by priorities and strategies rather than tactics alone. A good IAP involves determining incident priorities, developing strategic objectives aligned with those priorities, and assigning tactical objectives to achieve the strategies. Regularly evaluating alignment helps ensure safety as conditions change.

1. But there comes a point in the history
of every organization that responds to
and solves the same command and con-
trol problems over and over again, when
the organization’s members no longer
pause to ask, “Should we solve this one
the same way we solved all the others?”
Instead, these organizations just assume
that the same processes and bases for
making decisions that led to prior suc-
cesses will continue to produce the same
results as they always have. And when
this occurs—when methods of problem-
solving are adopted by assumption, rather
than explicit debate and decision—they
become the command and control culture
of the organization. This is the basis for
a department’s “arrogance of success,”
or, as physicist William Pollard put it,
we “think what we did yesterday will be
sufficient for tomorrow.” Clearly, this
MIKE BRYANT (ret.) served the County of Los Angeles Fire Department and its 5 million
residences and communities for 34 years. He has held the ranks of firefighter/paramedic,
firefighter specialist, fire prevention inspector, fire captain, training captain, training program
developer, fire battalion chief, assistant chief and deputy chief. Chief Bryant is a Type II
qualified IC, operations section chief, safety officer, and has served as the IC on numerous
“all hazard” Type I emergency incidents. He now delivers presentations and instruction for
Elite Command Training. Contact Chief Bryant at www.elitecommandtraining.com or elite@
elitecommandtraining.com.
Incident Command
By Mike Bryant
Command and control values serve
as normative, moral and operational
guidelines that help ICs operate
within numerous, all-hazard
emergency situations.
Photo by Landon Jensen
Command
& ControlA department’s “arrogance of success” is
dangerous, but it can be combated with a strong IAP
W
hen it comes to command and control, the fire service’s organiza-
tional culture is a collective effort for decision-making. Within the
context of fire organizations, command and control values serve
as normative, moral and operational guidelines that help incident
commanders (ICs) operate within numerous, all-hazard emergency situations.
38 l Firehouse l March 2016

2. What are you fighting for?
I’m in total agreement with the belief that
our primary mission is to save savable
lives; however, I do not support the atti-
tudes that we operate in an “at all costs”
mode, because that mentality influences
our next tactical action. We will risk our
lives to save total strangers, but we should
risk nothing to save nothing! We save lives
through an aggressive primary (and very
rapid) search of the structure. But when
you have approximately 15 minutes (as
the investigative report identified from
the aforementioned roof collapse) to carry
out specific tactics, the threat/vulnerability
level has to be evaluated, and the decision
must be made by the IC to withdraw, repo-
sition or remove firefighters from under-
neath the collapse hazards. As an IC, I’m
fighting to win, but winning includes fight-
ing to keep firefighters’ names off memo-
rial walls and reducing firefighter injuries.
And I’m not just shadow-boxing or talking
a good story; this is what separates “OK”
departments from the best departments.
The war is between good intentions and
bad actions and outcomes. We’ve all been
guilty of exuding arrogance, overcon-
fidence, complacency, invincibility and
self-importance. We must fight to pro-
is not the correct way to progress from
being an “OK” department to becoming
the best department.
Pride and arrogance =
complacency
So how do you determine whether your
department has fallen prey to this mind-
set? One way is to examine the people
within your fire organization (ICs, fire
chiefs, union presidents, firefighters, etc.)
whose heads of arrogance are closely fol-
lowed by their tails of ignorance. In other
words, they’ve become complacent, which
can lead to major cultural command and
control shortcomings—and tragic out-
comes within your agency.
It is this overbearing pride that amazes
me. Examples include high-ranking fire
service personnel—even some promi-
nent instructors at trade shows speaking
in front of impressionable young firefight-
ers—who downplay or make light of fire-
fighter safety, or those who still uphold
risky, outdated strategies and tactics.
The tactical
superiority problem
In California, there was a display of tacti-
cal superiority recently, when firefighters
accessed the roof of a large, commercial,
long-since-vacant building with no sav-
able life inside. Suddenly and without
warning, a portion of the roof of the build-
ing collapsed, and four firefighters rode
the roof to the building interior—and to
the seat of the fire. The four firefighters
were injured, one burned severely.
The department’s after-action report
included the following findings:
• Strategic and tactical decisions did not
take into account extended forcible entry
operations.
• Tactical decisions did not keep pace with
evolving fire conditions.
• Coordinated firefighting operations were
hampered by fragmented communica-
tions between roof ventilation and interior
operations.
• Decisions to perform specific firefight-
ing tasks were not consistent with the
strategy and tactics required to control
the incident.
Often after something like this hap-
pens, it’s clear how decisions were made
based on what had been done in the past—
not based on what made the most sense for
the situation.
Avoiding accountability
Another offensive display of self-impor-
tance is the fire chief who, during a news
conference, reports the findings from an
investigative report where firefighters lost
their lives due to an early (“roof failure”)
collapse. In some cases, those conducting
the investigation and the chief deny any
wrongdoing, with the chief saying they
were relieved to see that nothing within
the investigative report negatively identi-
fied the decision-making, risk management
and incident command process. Really?
The early threat caused by fire burning
structural members poses an extreme col-
lapse risk, and therefore puts firefighters in
vulnerable tactical positions with tremen-
dous consequences. From a command and
control perspective, this is where the arro-
gance of success has to stop and the com-
mand and control decision-making process
begins. That is why ICs are required by
NFPA 1561: Standard on Emergency Ser-
vices Incident Management System and
Command Safety to implement the incident
priorities, which drive all of the forthcom-
ing incident action plan (IAP) decisions.
The first step in developing any IAP is determining what every strategy, tactic and task performed
on the fireground should be driven by—the incident priorities. Photo by Jon Androwski
March 2016 l Firehouse l 39

3. Incident Command
duce a smarter, safer command and con-
trol algorithm—a set of rules that can help
ICs navigate their command environments
of chaos. So, how do we accomplish this?
Effective command algorithm
First, the fire service has to stop using a
“tactical platform” as a primary decision-
making method on the fireground. Tactics
do not drive your next decision; rather,
your incident’s priorities do, as outlined
in your IAP.
There is overwhelming, documented
evidence of firefighters who fight defen-
sive fires in offensive positions and with
no savable lives to save. Of course, I’m
not advocating the use of defensive strate-
gies for all fires, fighting all fires from the
outside without risking our lives to save a
savable life, nor to risk a fire service fall
from public grace and/or the loss of our
identity. But we should use some com-
mand and control wisdom as our primary
weapon when establishing an IAP.
IAP: priorities and
strategies, step by step
Step 1: The first step in developing any
IAP is determining what every strategy,
tactic and task performed on the fire-
ground should be driven by—the incident
priorities! The incident priorities may
vary depending on the type of emergency,
but for a building fire, the incident priori-
ties should include life safety, incident sta-
bilization (through fire control), property
preservation and environment.
The number one priority, of course,
is life. It is why we, as firefighters, have
taken an oath swearing that we will risk
our lives, sometimes greatly, to save the
lives of total strangers. The act of saving a
life also requires us to ask ourselves some
simple questions:
• Do people need rescue? If so, how many?
• Are they trapped or missing?
• Do they need to be evacuated, or can they
shelter in place?
After aggressive primary and sec-
ondary searches are completed, and
confirming that all occupants (life) have
been removed from the building, it is then
the fire chief’s and/or commanding chief
officer’s responsibility to transition the
incident priorities into incident stabili-
zation (through fire control). This is the
most critical transitional phase, because it
is at this point that the incident scene and
everyone on it “down-shifts” to a lower
gear, especially while operating off a tac-
tical platform. The tempo of the incident
goes from high risk to a more controlled
pace. This is also when a “temporal shift”
needs to take place in everyone’s brain,
and where good command/control habits
are demonstrated by establishing controls
to mitigate identified hazards so that the
next tactical action won’t kill or injure a
firefighter. Too often in the fire service,
we don’t accept the need to “down-shift,”
instead moving forward with the same
tactical actions that started the incident,
even when those actions could place fire-
fighters in danger.
Step 2: The second step of an effec-
tive IAP involves strategic objectives.
This step is what distinguishes the ICs
who have a strong plan from those who
only operate from a tactical platform, or
the seat of their pants. Incident priorities
drive strategy, and strategy drives tac-
tics. This positive alignment is missing
in many IAPs.
Strategy involves thinking ahead,
not in the now. Any successful strategy
answers the question, “What are we trying
to accomplish?” It can be either a short- or
long-term plan of action designed to achieve
a particular goal or priority. Strategy is used
to make a problem easier to understand and
solve; it also includes choices that directly
affect tactical outcomes.
The way to express a strategy may
look/sound something like this: Safely
remove all occupants from the building;
keep the fire to the room, floor, area or
building of origin; extinguish and confine
the fire in building one; protect and defend
the five uninvolved exposure buildings.
The IC has the responsibility of com-
municating this strategy to all companies
on scene. For officers, understanding
the leader’s intent will help you deter-
mine how to use limited time, resources
and energy, because you just can’t do
everything. But before you can accept
an assignment, you must have a clear
understanding of the IC’s intent on the
fireground; if you don’t, how can you
properly communicate the tactical/task
Developing strategic objectives is what distinguishes the ICs who have a strong plan from those
who only operate from a tactical platform. Photo by Chris Mickal
Questions to
Determine How to
Adjust Your Objectives
O
n your next fire, when in the seat
of command, use this evalua-
tion process by asking yourself a
couple of key questions:
• Are the tasks in alignment with the tac-
tical objectives?
• Are the tactical objectives in alignment
with the strategic objectives?
• Are the strategic objectives in alignment
with the incident priorities?
With the answers to these questions, an
IC will know immediately where and how
to adjust their IAP.
40 l Firehouse l March 2016

4. Indicate 117 on Reader Service Card
assignments to your crewmembers?
Step 3: The third step of an effective
IAP involves the incident’s tactical objec-
tives. This seems to be the place where ICs
excel, because they feel most comfortable
with making tactical decisions. Unfortu-
nately, heavy emphasis is often placed on
assigning resources, many times without
purpose or relevance to the IAP’s strategy
and/or incident priorities.
A tactical objective may sound some-
thing like this: Primary search second
floor; fire attack (confine and extinguish
first floor), forcible entry (open roll-up
doors on “B” side), recon and report on
conditions, ladder the “C” side, ventilate
to support search and fire attack.
This is the critical portion of the
IAP, because it directs fire companies
(and company officers) when perform-
ing tactics and tasks on the fireground,
both inside and out of the building. This
is also the “critical interface” between
the company officer and the IC where
good communication has to take place.
Why? Because the company officer is
observing the changing fire conditions
and searching for missing or trapped
occupants while trying to locate, confine
and extinguish the fire. Fire companies
should therefore be utilizing their situ-
ation awareness (and experience) while
performing tasks, amid the elements
and within a limited amount of time
and space.
Final thoughts
Tactical adjustments are determined by the
incident priorities and strategic objectives
(aka, the leader’s intent). For example, if
the IAP has identified an incident’s prior-
ity as saving life and the strategic objec-
tive is to remove all occupants from the
involved building and surrounding expo-
sures, your company’s tactical objectives
may include performing a primary search.
After a primary search is complete and no
occupants are found, your tactical objec-
tives will need to be adjusted or reassigned,
thereby readjusting the required task. From
this point on, you establish and implement
greater control/mitigations for many of the
hazards on the incident. These actions in
the tactical environment provide much
greater firefighter safety and still accom-
plish the given assignments. n
March 2016 l Firehouse l 41