“Doing more with less.” This was once the common mantra among emergency responders. If a victim or a citizen required help and there were too few responders, the deck-plate dogma was “just figure it out and get it done.” Fast forward to today, as various response communities are entrenched in land-sea-air environments in which nearly every agency is short-staffed, and with workloads far exceeding the capacity to “just get it done.” Mid to senior level emergency responders recognize that something needs to change. It’s no longer a matter of willpower; it’s a mathematical improbability to “do more with less” as populations increase while the number of qualified responders has not kept pace. Despite the best intentions of those who comprise our EMS and law enforcement enterprises, a transformational approach is needed now to accommodate the known gaps in qualified emergency responders, while still allowing us to remain effective as frontline agencies. So how do we manage to do both?
One example of an agency faced with this dilemma, and subject of a case-study we will examine more in-depth is the United States Coast Guard (USCG) decision to navigate an unprecedented 10% shortage of enlisted personnel by committing to a framework termed the Force Apportionment Initiative (FAI) which adjusts how USCG Small Boat stations are staffed. Faced with a Congressional mandate to perform 11 statutory missions and an insufficient number of members in uniform, USCG made a tough decision in 2024 to confront the increasing demands of a growing maritime transportation system without all the people required to perform the work. Before we evaluate this vignette and why the change was instituted, how the new structure will roll out, and understanding some of the underlying critical components to help the USCG decision succeed, let’s first examine some of the challenges and priorities being experienced by a full range of leaders across the emergency management spectrum.
It’s Hard to See How This Change Is Worth It…
One of the first trials for an emergency response leader is recognizing when that macro-change even needs to be made to help their team, unit or perhaps entire agency take the leap forward. There will likely never be a perfect time to commit to the big “Change.” A large-scale transition will also be compounded by assuming some level of organizational risk as this Change will incur uncertainty and wading into unfamiliar waters. Plus, in making the transition, the leader, which for our purposes, let’s say is you, will assuredly face some initial level of inefficiency as this Change is adopted and implemented. Perhaps some in your organization will question whether the associated risks of making this Change are warranted, prudent, or even necessary.
Behind the scenes, leaders will wrestle with a seemingly endless myriad of decisions required to put the plan in place. While the full list of factors is worthy of exhaustive analysis, we’re going to focus on several key aspects related to a major organizational transformation. For those within an agency that must transform to meet staffing shortages, let’s begin by emphasizing that transparent communication is vital.
Selling and carrying the message requires the aid of deck-plate “change agents” who in turn, then require receiving their own steady drum beat of messaging, so they can hear, interpret, and echo the multitude of complex dynamics associated with the major change. Those dynamics will fluctuate, as politics, economics, cultural views, and human nature dictate making on-field audibles to a scripted, yet fluid playbook, for the Change to take form. This flexibility necessitates adopting a willingness to continuously transform.
The Change, pioneering in its nature, is not enough. The service culture must embrace the idea of innovation as an organizational value and convince partners to also innovate. This can be tricky, as an agency’s culture, or those of its closest partners, may not be nimble or ready to embrace the Change. An agency needs to know it’s partners, their capabilities, and the general pace they can maintain in adapting. Partner agencies will vary in their organizational levels of flexibility. Building a coalition of flexible partners is essential, but they must first be able to see the necessity of the Change, the future benefit, and their return on investment from adapting.
A successful service-wide change may be colored with a hue of reverie as it is unveiled. While we may initially salute the remarkable long-distance vision of agency leaders who envision and navigate an alternative future that others perceive as unattainable, the cheers of the approving crowd will soon be hushed by doubting nonbelievers or those who can’t see the goal line. Those who question the organizational Change may be well armed early in the transition to point out evident flaws and vulnerabilities that could have been avoided if you had just maintained the status quo. They may actually have a credible short-term argument. The longer-term benefits of the Change may be difficult initially for many to see from a distance.
For those who initially support or doubt the logic or leadership decisions behind the Change, they may be in a rank, role, or position to then persuade others to their argument. In some instances, very junior members who are articulate and vocal, may be the ‘real world’ influencers, who have minimal time in service, but are savvy in social media. Their perspective can subtly gain or lose support for the large-scale decision. The youngest emergency responders may possess the real positional power and be well-situated at the field level to resonate their opinions, which may be highly enthusiastic or entirely counterproductive.
Can Someone Explain “Why” This Makes Sense?
Key local influencers are a target audience. To offset the dangers of influencers misinterpreting the leader’s intended rationale behind the Change, the macro-level decision-makers need at least two essential components. The first is the message must be emphasized clearly from the onset. The second is the message must be revisited frequently in a way that revisits the objectives and clearly illustrates progress to others. Influencers must be able to fluidly and effortlessly see the merits of the initiative and see where the service is reaching slow, but deliberate milestones. These deck-plate influencers will be the ones explaining to others why the decision was made. They will be the ones at actual water coolers, locker rooms and workspaces who will tell the story behind the Change. The significance of them getting it “right” is paramount. They will have the ear of those who may be new to the service, those not looking a mile down range, or those who don’t read the latest updates.
Deck-plate influencers need to understand the “why” behind a Change. These influencers may even be primed to explain the “why” to more senior personnel who feel betrayed or confused by the Change. Junior members can capably perform the influencer role, but only when they are sufficiently and routinely provided with information that helps them carry a persuasive argument. If the influencers cannot see the underlying value of a service-level transition, they cannot be positioned to help others see why the Change was needed, where it’s headed, and why the growing pains are worth it. A miscalculation in messaging would be a cruel twist of irony, as the service Change was likely made to attract and retain talent.
Not Built in a Day…
In addition to influencers playing a role, another component that is critical to a service level transition is achieving a common understanding of how the concept of ‘time’ plays a role. While a service level transition may have true merit, it will take a workforce significant time to see the results. In this regard, a longer incubation period for the Change may not be an ally. Time requires patience, and that patience may exceed a service member’s contract obligation or exceed the time some members may even plan to be employed before real results are achieved. The fact a major Change may require considerable time implies a certain “trust fall” style of confidence in organizational leadership. In other words, a multi-year, service-level transition will require a degree of blind faith from field-level emergency responders. They will need to be convinced that a long-term strategy is making strides and the end-product justifies what some may perceive as being implemented at cost to their personal short-term sacrifices.
For a structured EMS or Fire/Police organization, the work-place dynamic differs from a corporate environment. There are no profit margins or reactivity to consumer demands as there are in business strategy transitions. By contrast, a police department may be steeped in tradition, process, and customary norms. Emergency response communities who work in crisis ironically tend to have personnel who are attracted to stability. While emergency teams are expected to trust their leaders possess the optics for wide-angle, long-distance perspectives, drastic fluctuations in structure can require more convincing and take longer to implement. In this model, profits are less discernible; success is not based on revenue yields, but instead, on long term agency-viability. Rapid modifications to the stability of a historically predictable Fire/Police construct can be alarming; reliability is a job benefit for many responders. Deviating from a known routine is the corporate equivalent of market volatility.
Part of the responsibility for mid-to-senior level leaders in ensuring stability through an epochal Change is providing steady messaging on how the Change is going. The messaging not only needs to appeal to both newer and more seasoned influencers, but the timing of that messaging is also central. In a structure where members expect clarity and a sense of routine, the need to reassure personnel is paramount. If we are to convince responders that a macro-level Change makes sense, and then ask these same members for their patience and potentially their sacrifice, then how that critical messaging is delivered over time needs to be a primary objective from the onset.
The Importance of Innovation
As we consider influencers and the criticality of how an effectively conveyed message can move a workforce over the course of time, we must consider another vital aspect, that of innovation. A macro-level Change, coupled with a lengthy window to achieve full capability, needs a core foundation of innovation for several reasons. Aside from requiring a certain level of intestinal fortitude from senior leadership who initially commit to the “big Change” decision, it will take pragmatic, field level innovation to make the transition happen, and to continue being nimble throughout implementation. Unlike modifying plans to constructing a new building, where the price of concrete or steel girders can be forecast, changing plans for people’s work lives is more complicated. Specifically, for a Change in which recruiting and retaining people is a primary objective, the approach must be fluid enough to account for fluxes in social dynamics, politics, the economy, and views on the agency itself. A Change that requires the role of influencers cannot afford influential disbelievers. Similarly, a Change that requires a lengthy period to institute must be able to adjust to a wide range of societal factors that could change over time.
Let’s look next at a Coast Guard case-study in which innovation is already starting to take place via a macro-level organizational Change. USCG is a unique agency; it is always a military service, but functionally and within U.S. borders, is often operating more in the role of a federal emergency response agency with the American public. In this respect, USCG daily work is more akin to a combined fire/police department than that of its DOD counterparts. At the shore-based USCG level, the small boat station community is a hybrid police/fire department model.
FAI: The Background
To perform a range of critical missions with one of the largest personnel shortages in service history, the Force Apportionment Initiative (FAI) was designed and implemented as a Change to temporarily reallocate USCG personnel from more than two dozen of these small boat units to staff other units with higher mission criticality. In other words, instead of doing more with less, the rationale was to move the limited number of USCG responders to locations with the highest mission risk, as well as to units without adjacent USCG stations/presence. Locations with nearby USCG redundancy were viewed as offering more tolerable mission risk. This doesn’t suggest USCG needed to choose which units were more important than others. It meant deciding which units got fully staffed now and which could afford to be fully staffed later. FAI is the equivalent of field level triage; some units may have deep, but survivable lacerations in terms of their personnel gaps, whereas others merited higher attention as their staffing shortages were dire.
Innovating, Where Partners Matter:
For USCG Sector Commanders who oversee field operations and many of the shore-based units involved in this initiative, FAI is a significant, but necessary change to doing business. The reduction of personnel at Small Boat Stations in particular, requires maintaining effectiveness while reassuring regional partners and their communities that the USCG has not abandoned them. In this regard, the value of innovating lines of communication to partners cannot be overstated. The Coast Guard is one of few federal agencies that engage daily with US citizens. Due to the frequency of interaction with the American public, the USCG accomplishes many near-coastal missions alongside local and state partners. These relationships include fire departments, police departments, emergency responders, environmental agencies, and city/county managers, although the full list of key USCG stakeholders is far more extensive. The shortage of USCG staff at field units, compounded by short-term plans to reallocate limited crews to locations of highest organizational need, has required USCG to work even more closely with all these trusted emergency response partners, and to consider how their agencies may be affected and need to adapt until the USCG small boat units can be fully staffed again.
FAI represents a long-term effort that will require sustained collaborations with many of these established regional partners. The most effective USCG partnerships rely on transparency and crystal-clear communications, as life, property and the environment are the priorities that are at stake. Since FAI involves temporarily shifting USCG resources to areas of greatest need, there are communities who will see less Coast Guard in the coming years, and it is these local/state partners who will need to be most routinely informed of the progress and the impacts and consequences of FAI. They may in fact be asked to ‘cover down’ to some extent for USCG in locations where our response times are slower than any time in recent memory.
As we focus here on the criticality of effective messaging during a major transition such as FAI, innovating those communication strategies with regional responders is fundamental to keeping partners informed and involved. This equates to providing partner emergency responders with clarity on shared operations, to include sharing schedules with fire and police departments as to when FAI affected units will be conducting more frequent patrols or training in certain areas. Particularly for regions that cover significant shoreline, this transparency on scheduling will help Other Government Agencies (OGA) prioritize availability of their marine-units and when those OGA platforms could be more present. Shared scheduling, through secure servers and historically structured venues such as Area Maritime Security Committees can also help other responders fiscally project their overtime obligations. Staffing OGA marine units will inevitably incur additional, unbudgeted municipal costs. Helping our partners forecast personnel and maintenance costs is a matter of professional courtesy and healthy communication protocols.
For marine event organizers who work closely with the Coast Guard, innovating how and when they share information with USCG on future events is another example of how timely communications can reduce impacts from FAI. For instance, by submitting marine event permits well in advance for fireworks, regattas, boat parades, motorized races, etc., this coordination can help USCG plan where to best employ limited boat station assets. Marine events often require increased law enforcement (LE) patrols, so knowing when LE boats need to be on the water helps USCG forecast with other partner agencies.
In addition, FAI is a great opportunity for commercial salvage (COMSAL) operators, who make a living by towing disabled recreational boaters to the nearest safe haven. COMSAL operators can leverage FAI as their opportunity to make increased profits. By USCG coordinating with these companies in advance, a higher percentage of non-distress SAR cases can be handled by COMSAL, using known USCG search-and-rescue (SAR) data, to tow disabled boaters off the water. Via this communication, COMSAL can make a profit while limited USCG boat crews can focus efforts on responding to urgent SAR distress cases. It’s a better use of everyone’s time.
Another example of innovative communications is establishing early seasonal communications with 911 Centers, to avoid wasting precious minutes for emergency response. Cellular calls often come in to 911 Centers for marine assistance, and if 911 Centers were to better understand the basics of how FAI may be affecting USCG in their region, they can be prompted to coordinate the location of SAR cases more rapidly to USCG Command Centers, or to dispatch other local marine responders to locations where the Coast Guard is not as readily available as in years past. In addition, innovative communications embraces ideas like how to relay core safe boating information to the public to avoid preventable boating issues in the first place. Knowledge is a force multiplier and educated boaters are less likely to break down. This then equates to less USCG boats needing to launch for otherwise preventable SAR cases.
In Conclusion…
While the Coast Guard doesn’t intend to do more operations with less people through FAI, they have already started to do more thinking as to how to leverage available resources, efficient communications and partner-based innovations to navigate this major Change. This includes a strong emphasis on the importance of messaging. How an agency advertises a major transition, manages timing of the message, communicates the plan to “influencers” and innovates with partners are all essential. Internal agency change-agents and field-level influencers can help convey the message and communicate organizational progress to peers. While Change takes time, leveraging how and when to message the Change is an art form. FAI, or any macro-level change will also come with the bonus of learning new and unforeseen efficiencies. We should remain receptive and adaptive to emerging best practices that we never saw coming, and may have sprouted from influencers, innovation and timely communications with partners and responders. An agency committing to a major transformation is ultimately making a transition for more than just themselves. In examining our USCG example, it is a change for members within the organization, the stakeholders who work daily alongside USCG on the water, and for the American public, who expect a reliable level of readiness and availability from their Coast Guard. A Change needs to be primed not just for implementation, but prepared to be unveiled in a way that embraces the Change for multi-faceted adoption. In the end, it will be the strength of a well-calibrated and carefully devised communications strategy that will determine whether a service wide Change was a good idea that never got well-formulated and became forgotten, or, if the Change is remembered as one that allowed responders, despite staffing shortages, to accomplish their job while assisting the people we are all dedicated to serving.
