1. CFOA’s Strategic Objectives
Nick Collins
Director
CFOA

2. Strategy Group Strategic Objectives Within 5 years;
CFOA will, through coherent leadership, have secured influence and common direction.
CFOA will be the focal point for professional advice that drives and contributes to the development of policy that impacts upon the UK Fire and Rescue Service.
We first of all need to translate our aspirational aims into a plan of action. To do that, the first group has worked hard to take those strategic objectives and turn them into much SMARTER statements that reflect your views, are crystal clear and critically concrete enough to set out a plan.
The objectives deliberately interlock, they are meaningless without each other. Make no mistake though, these are worked through statements that are underpinned with very clear and positive outcome based activities to achieve them.
So what are they?
So in five years time – we will be leading our organisation in a way that is unambiguous and resolute. That direction will be built on both our approach to technical policy formulation and the broader public safety issues in a way we haven’t done before.
(On occasions, this will be through the expression of criteria or condition, rather than formal policy).

3. Strategy Group Strategic Objectives
CFOA will be effectively communicating views and priorities to inform key decision makers.
CFOA will be supporting its members to achieve individual and collective improvement.
The technical rigour and quality of our policies however are not enough, the way we set out our stall, work the political machinery and build credibility is vital. And because it is, we need to work as hard and as assiduously in this area as we do in the way we formulate our policies and provide professional advice.
None of this however is achievable unless we capitalise on and develop the talent within our membership – developing members to make a bigger and better contribution, to use that expertise to drive improvements in our Fire and Rescue Services.

4. Transparency of Governance Collective Responsibility
Objective I: CFOA will, through coherent leadership have secured influence and common direction
Transparency of Governance
Collective Responsibility
Business Discipline
Clarity of Roles and Responsibilities
Responding to a National Crisis
Now I’m not going to go through the objectives and sub objectives in detail other than to provide you with a flavour.
Please remember through, there’s already more work being done underneath these.
Now leadership is probably the most conceptual objective. So rather than try to populate it with worthy, but intangible statements, we’ve accepted that CFOA needs to lead (and by that I don’t just mean the board, but all those taking a CFOA role and speaking on the Association’s behalf).
Rather, we’ve looked at the behaviours that fall out of the Core Values (which we’ve championed) and how they translate for us so;

5. Transparency of Governance Collective Responsibility
Objective I: CFOA will, through coherent leadership have secured influence and common direction
Transparency of Governance
Collective Responsibility
Business Discipline
Clarity of Roles and Responsibilities
Responding to a National Crisis
Transparency – So why and how decisions are made is clear, that challenge and rigorous debate is part of the decision making process and should not be shied away from. But as we said, we then need to make a clear and unambiguous decision.
Collective responsibility – decisions made by the process are decisions/positions held. If you choose not to follow these at a local level, fine, but you cannot speak in a CFOA capacity against that policy. If we ascribe to a common direction as an Association, we need to demonstrate to ourselves and to external stakeholders that we are consistent. Now I don’t want to overplay this, as most of the time this really isn’t a problem, as ever it’s the odd occasion which gets advertised. But we need to challenge openly inappropriate behaviour and be ready to be seen t sticking to our commitment in terms of collective responsibility.
Business Discipline – It’s time to inject the same rigour that we use to run our own organisations into how we run our Association. This will be a key issue taken forward by our new Chief Executive and this leads on to being clear as to the various roles and remit of David, Rhonda and the rest of the team, the board, policy leads and sounding board.
Responding to a National Crisis – If we are to portray ourselves as professional leaders, we need to be prepared to be visible, proactive and assured in times of a national emergency. Government and others need to feel confident that we are there to take a professional lead when the chips are down.

6. Objective II: CFOA will be the focal point for professional advice that drives and contributes to the development of policy that impacts upon the UK Fire and Rescue Service
- CFOA input
Number of stakeholder
Policy as a word is a bit of a “catch all” for the very detailed document, the less detailed conditional statements and the broad position statements urgently issued. Sometimes issuing criteria will be much more appropriate than attempting to set absolute policy positions.
Policy runs as a spectrum from very technical, mainly for internal use, to highly politicised, with a much wider public safety remit.
We need to recognise this difference and act accordingly.
For the less contentious matters, policy formulation is going to be mechanistic and formalised. That way we can ensure it’s rigour and thoroughness and in so doing, develop credible policies.
Technical
Political

7. Distribution/Education Evaluation and Review
Objective II: CFOA will be the focal point for professional advice that drives and contributes to the development of policy that impacts upon the UK Fire and Rescue Service
Identify Issues
Conduct Analysis
Draft
Approvals
Distribution/Education
Evaluation and Review
Measurement and Compliance
Run through the sub objectives quickly.
Here we’ll be looking for David Brown, Chief Executive, to be working on this process.

8. A relationship management process is in place
Objective III: CFOA will be effectively communicating views and priorities to inform key decision makers
A relationship management process is in place
We have a clear approach as to which issues will be promoted
We have a clear view on positioning CFOA to maximise its impact
Our resources are used to build credibility and increase our influence
We recognise internal stakeholders (our members are key)
For the more contentious policy, we need to focus less on the process side and more on influencing the key players.
We need to work hard at developing the contacts and relationships we have at present. Whilst we’ve done well to date, we need to have a much more coherent approach that builds, not just on the here and now, but on what’s coming up.
We need a system to horizon scan, picking up the broad issues which we need to have a view on, it’s importance and what CFOA should be doing, or not doing. This, I believe, is a major role for the Sounding Board working with the board.
The way we promote an issue and the timing also needs to be a conscious decision in order to maximise our impact.
We need to use our most articulate, our best wordsmiths to best effect and where we lack skills, be ready to buy them in. Sometimes, those key players won’t be politicians, officials or the LGA, but you, the members, and selling internally needs to be taken seriously as selling to the outside world.

9. Individual Improvement Collective Improvement
Objective IV: CFOA will be supporting its members to achieve individual and collective improvement
Individual Improvement
Collective Improvement
Now Objective IV is not just an altruistic statement about helping to fulfil people’s potential – yes that is an element, but the real issue is capacity.
Having skilled, able people working in and for CFOA – capitalising on the expertise of members and staff alike and then using that collective knowledge and experience to support us to improve our respective organisations (quote examples).
Now it’s not to say some of this isn’t already in place; guidance to members, benchmarking activities and peer support, but we need to inject coherence into those activities - each seminar we hold, each database of information we construct needs to contribute to this aim in a very tangible way.