Chapter 14: Missions and Goals

Question 1

Chapter 14: Mission and Goals p185

How do missions and goals cause incident scene safety to be improved?

Answer 1

When everyone has clear understanding of the mission and the goals to be accomplished

Question 2

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What is the ideal way to get responders on the same page, working towards a set of goals?

Answer 2

Supervisors articulate the mission or strategy to responders and set goals or benchmarks.

Question 3

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What do commanders need to be resilient and nimble faced with changing conditions to…

Answer 3

To adjust the mission and goals and short notice and often timeless without complete information.

Question 4

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Responder with a large ego, coupled with the fragile self-esteem, may not adjust the initial mission and goals out of….

Answer 4

Fear… fear being accused of implementing a flawed plan, fear of failure, fear of being embarrassed.

Question 5

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If a commander is able to capture the clues and cues understands the conditions are changing, understands what the clues and cues mean and has predicted a future bad outcome… Then why would he remain committed to a flawed plan?

Answer 5

Control, an overly developed ego coupled with the fragile self-esteem can be a recipe for disaster. As the initial acceptable plan has become stale, the supervisor loses control the plan. He may also get fixed on a single goal and lose sight of the fact that there are multiple goals that need to be addressed simultaneously. As tunnel vision and task fixation sink in .

Question 6

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How to responders prevent goal fixation?

Answer 6

Remain mindful of multiple, competing goals and strive to balance, or share, attention among several goals.

Question 7

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Kamikaze incident leadership

Answer 7

Ego may lead a supervisor to stubbornly think he developed a superb plan and will see that plan through to the end, regardless of how the developments in the incident dictate the need for change

Question 8

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When setting a goal on the fire scene it’s imperative that you also do what?

Answer 8

Get progress updates and assure the goal was completed.

Question 9

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When setting goals what should be a red flag?

Answer 9

If the expected progress is not been made.

Supervisors should seek an explanation why the goal was not accomplished in the anticipated time frame.

Question 10

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What is one of the greatest indicators of flawed level III situational awareness?

Answer 10

Not seeing the expected progress on goals that your mental model predicted.

Question 11

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What is an important part of mental modeling?

Answer 11

Setting mental goals with anticipated deadlines. If goal progress is not aligning with deadlines, something is wrong

Question 12

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In an organization that lacks written standards (SOP) what must they rely on?

Answer 12

Must rely on the development of a common understanding of organizational operations by word-of-mouth.

This can be a dangerous way to operate in a typically challenging, high consequence environment.

Question 13

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What should be expected if the SOPs given latitude to inject opinions or preference?

Answer 13

Supervisor should not be surprised when they observed wide variation on how incidents are managed

Question 14

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Why is it problematic when people don’t the following the SOP’s?

Answer 14

It interrupts level III situational awareness sense you cannot predict what the crew will do.

Question 15

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What is absolutely vital when deviating from SOP’s?

Answer 15

Responders who are deviating from the SOP’s need to communicate to their supervisors the deviation along with an explanation.

Question 16

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When is it a right to deviate from the SOP’s

Answer 16

When something atypical is occurring that requires a unique or novel solution, communicating what that something is insurers that all responders can adjust accordingly.

Question 17

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What are other names for error creep?

Answer 17

Standardization of deviant behavior
Mission Creep
drifting to failure

Question 18

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How does error creep occur?

Answer 18

When an organization makes operational or safety mistakes, often small and harmless, repeatedly over a period of time without consequence. The lack of consequence from flawed operations leads personnel to a false sense of confidence that what they’re doing is right.

The more time and the more personnel are able to perform the flawed tasks without consequence the more they will believe that they are doing the task safe and acceptably.

Worse this error creep can lead to other error creep.

Question 19

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what is another consequence of error creep?

Answer 19

Complacency – shortcutting standard procedures or best practices under the belief that no harm will result.

Once set in deep air creep is difficult through root out

Question 20

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How is it possible for departments to rid themselves from error creep

Answer 20

Deeply rooted error creep is difficult to remove. Even a casualty may not shock the system enough for self-examination of policies. OSHA may provide the necessary guidance, but if no OSHA rules are violated their hands are tied.

The solution is rooted in situational awareness best practice that you might use before you ever have an emergency:

Conducting independent safe valuations. Comprehensive independent third-party evaluation