We are five years into a research project exploring the FDNY’s transformation and the lessons it offers other leaders. In 2015, it was ranked as the top government employer and the 17th overall best employer in the U.S. In the last 20 years, the FDNY has moved from a highly effective yet dated firefighting force to a modern emergency management and response organization. In other cases, they stimulated new efforts to change. In some cases, these reports highlighted and accelerated change efforts already under way. The 9/11 Commission also offered relevant findings, as did the National Institute of Standards and Technology. That six-month effort also led, in 2004, to the first FDNY strategic plan. It commissioned McKinsey to study both the day of the attacks and the FDNY as an organization. The department took in a wide array of perspectives. It converted an unspeakable tragedy into an occasion for learning and changing, for preparing for an expanded role in a most uncertain future. Ultimately, the organization decided not to treat 9/11 as a black swan event. It utilized and invited outside perspectives, even as it grieved and bowed under the weight of months and months of funerals and the loss they represented, personally and professionally. In the months and years to come, the FDNY took a long, hard look at itself. ![]() Should it seek to restore what had been, or should it build something different? While the FDNY was still putting out the fires at the World Trade Center, it had to decide how to rebuild. Simply carrying on would consume months, even years. Leadership challenges abounded that day and deep into the future. All the while, the FDNY was grieving the loss of 343 colleagues, including many of its officers and several of its top leaders, preparing for the possibility of additional terrorist attacks, and tending to ongoing needs of its surviving firefighters - and of the massive and complex city it serves.Ī monumental tragedy had ripped through the FDNY, one of the world’s most renowned fire departments. It took three months to extinguish the smoldering fires in the stories upon stories of rubble, rubble which included more than 90 vehicles and spewed out toxins and hampered the search for identifiable remains. ![]() Fires around the World Trade Center Plaza, including two of the biggest in New York’s history, took three days to subdue. ![]() For the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), however, the horror stretched on. Most of us remember Septemas a horrific day.
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