9/11, the FDNY and Lessons for Leaders
As the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center mark their 25th anniversary, we look back at the men and women who carried out the bulk of the rescue and recovery work at Ground Zero—while suffering tremendous losses of their own. How did the New York City Fire Department rebuild in the years that followed, and what can today's leaders learn from them about crisis management and organizational change?
The events of September 11, 2001, their occurrence and their reverberations touched people around the globe. The attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York figured prominently in the impact of those events and in the images of the day. Those attacks battered the Fire Department of New York (FDNY)—343 firefighters died, including 3 of the 5 most senior department leaders, over 20 chiefs, and more than 90 officers.
The deaths meant the loss of friends and colleagues as well as of spouses, parents and children. It also meant the eviscerating of the chain of command and the loss of over 4000 years of firefighting experience even as fires burned in the acres of wreckage in the World Trade Center Plaza and in buildings and cars ringing the plaza. One of those fires, at 7 World Trade Center, that the FDNY fought that afternoon would have been the biggest building fire it had ever fought but for the Twin Towers that morning. The busiest fire department in the world would spend much of the week fighting fires ringing the plaza. It would also spend 3 months fighting fires in the stories of rubble that had once made up the Twin Towers.
Additionally, the FDNY would lead the work on the site, or “the pile,” for 8 months, work that centered on rescue and recovery. Leading work of that scale and duration required learning and applying new skills. Simultaneously, the FDNY would grieve. It would also begin a process of significant organizational change that has lasted up to this day.
It is likely that most leaders and their organizations will never face the acuteness, variety or duration of the challenges faced by the FDNY during the events of 9/11. Nonetheless, the stark colors of its experience help lessons learned stand out. The colors help the reader to see and then to understand key principles for leadership action. That said, what might leaders take away from the FDNY’s leading through the crisis of 9/11, the subsequent prolonged hard time that followed, grieving and healing, and organizational change arguably amounting to organizational transformation?
Our new book, Rising from Ground Zero: 9/11 and the FDNY’s Path through Crisis to Transformation, presents the story of the FDNY over decades beginning with 9/11. It presents that story in the words of dozens who lived it and of many who led it. From those accounts, the authors derived a number of lessons, a sample of which appears below.
Four Lessons for Leaders
1. Crisis
“Whatever your job was yesterday, it’s not your job today.”
Laboring through crisis benefits from the flexible application of what one knows. An effective leader reminds and encourages others to do just that—to remember what you know, recall why it matters and act. Remembering what one knows (and its relevance) helps people act and helps them to retain a sense of agency—the ability to impact the situation. Retaining a sense of agency is central to individuals moving through crisis.
“There was no difference to me except for the loss of life and the change in leadership. As far as in my head I just had to go to work and do what I had to do.”
Encouraging and recognizing flexibility and innovation opens the possibility of new, often improvised, solutions to what Ackoff termed the “messes of messes” that often characterize crises. In short, the FDNY showed the power of applying a simple, long-standing practice: Use what you know and if that doesn’t work, then figure out something new… and get to it. All of this was based on a long-shared, carefully developed understanding and commitment to “why,” to the meaning and significance of the work.
2. Prolonged Hard Times
Doing, let alone leading others to do, something new—in this case something required by the demands of the time—invites the humbling experience of incompetence, of simply not knowing how to do something. Crisis can occasion that experience, to be sure. Prolonged hard times can do the same by delivering exhaustion along with challenge after challenge, some of which, if they are not new, still qualify as new due to exhaustion or the pain of loss.
“When I tell this story, I always say… the one thing we can take credit for is once it was explained, we weren’t dumb enough to say no.”
Prolonged hard times put relationships to the test. Leading through such periods comes down to drawing on longstanding connections while staying open to new ones — especially with people who understand what’s lacking and help to develop missing competencies.
The prestigious and understandably proud and self-sufficient FDNY learned to recognize when it needed help and how to accept help. Indeed, the FDNY came to invite help.
3. Healing
“Yes. It was forever; we were forever scarred.”
Crises can wound, physically, emotionally and psychologically, as can prolonged difficult times. Exhaustion alone can strain relationships central to pushing back against the seemingly endless press of challenges. That exhaustion in turn can make even known tasks difficult, including the maintenance of relationships key to the well-being and effectiveness of one and all.
Healing constitutes a task of its own, one that leadership can abet by naming the need, modeling the tending to it, and supporting others in doing the same. Leaders of the FDNY did all of these, consistently and effectively, even as they worked the many, varied, and new challenges before them. Their dedication to tend to the wounded amplified existing norms and introduced new ones, securing a new level of commitment to care for organizational members and for their families. That dedication also deepened the connection between leaders and rank and file.
“I think the emotional processing probably took quite some time. I think having a mission and engaging in work that you feel has a purpose helps tremendously.”
4. Change & Legacy
Simply stated, 9/11 did not change the FDNY. Rather, the FDNY chose to change. Prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center, the FDNY ranked among the top fire departments worldwide, if not atop the list. Overall, independent evaluations of the FDNY’s job performance that day were very strong. The leadership could have chosen to rebuild what had existed.
“We knew that we were going to have to rebuild psychologically as well as physically, with tools and equipment, and training and procedures, and we did that.”
Yet, the FDNY chose to attempt, and notably succeed, at broad and deep changes in the organization, some of which included: mission change from fire department to all hazards department; development of high-quality competence in incident management; dramatic expansion, advocacy, and use of counseling services; institutionalizing family care; significant increase in training (especially in leadership); and generally opening up to outside collaboration and learning (within NYC, the USA, and around the world).
Learn more in this related title from De Gruyter Brill
[Title image by vivalapenler/iStock Editorial/Getty Images Plus]