Lessons from the Mann Gultch Fire

A terrible thing happened 75 years ago in Montana. A team of 15 young well-trained firefighters, known as smokejumpers, parachuted into the Mann Gulch National Forest where a lightning strike had started a fire.

Their mission was to use their ingenuity and firefighting tools to contain the fire.

They assessed it as relatively slow burning, which probably created a sense of complacency, and they felt confident they would have the situation under control by morning.

As they approached the fire, an unexpected strong wind caused it to shift and intensify. So they decided to turn back and try a different approach.

The crew foreman was an experienced firefighter called Wagner Dodge. He had recently taken over as the leader of the group, but had not yet got to know the team.

Dodge could see from his vantage point the danger they were suddenly in, and he yelled at the team to drop their tools and run quickly away from the fire. But they were reluctant to follow his instructions and continued to carry their equipment up the hill. They probably thought that dropping their valued tools was a stupid thing to do.
 

Dodge's plan

Watching his team's reluctance to ditch their tools, and realising there was no way they could outrun the fire, Dodge came up with a radical plan. He found an open grassy area and lit a new fire. He then jumped into the burned out area created by his fire and shouted to his crew to join him. But no one would come back.

The crew could now see the fire raging towards them. Dodge again screamed for them to come back, but they scattered in panic up the hill, still carrying their heavy tools.

As the fire descended, Dodge lay face down on the ground. The fire went around him and quickly surged up the hill and engulfed the young team. The only people to survive were Wagner Dodge and two others who had stumbled into a rocky crevice.

The tragedy of the Mann Gulch fire has inspired two movies, several books and articles, including a Harvard Business Review case study on how leaders can establish trust and credibility, so they can lead their teams to success during periods of rapid change.
 

Leading in a VUCA World

In my last Tip, I wrote about 7 trends we should all be considering given the super-charged VUCA environment we are in. (VUCA describes situations characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, and was first coined by the US military in the 1990s).

Here are four capabilities I think can help us all to navigate our way forward in this VUCA world..

#1. The ability to lead with credibility. This means quickly gaining the trust and commitment of the people who you need to follow you. Unfortunately, in our story above, Wagner Dodge was not able to do this. It takes time to build trust, and if you're leading others, this needs to be your top priority. In a couple of weeks I'm going to be leading a Field Manager Bootcamp, and the most important skill we'll be exploring is how to quickly build trust and credibility with franchisees.

#2: The humility to follow with confidence. It takes a clear, calm head to put your ego aside and be open to listening to good advice, especially if it involves some inconvenience or letting go of preconceived ideas. Again, if the young firefighters had trusted the experience of their leader, they may have survived. While franchisees are leaders in their own right, they also need to learn how to follow with confidence so the group can retain its collective strength.

#3: The willingness to proactively collaborate to achieve shared goals. Collaboration is not just going along with the group to keep the peace. It is actively listening and contributing your unique take on a situation to make things better. Sometimes this means backing yourself and putting yourself out there. At other times, we need to step back and allow others to take a lead.

#4: The courage to reinvent our businesses before we are forced to. It's easy to be seduced by the momentum of success and fail to see how sudden shifts in the environment can quickly lead to our demise. Something I have repeatedly witnessed is winners of awards becoming complacent and then facing serious setbacks a year or two down the track because they have stopped paying attention to what's going on around them.

If you are responsible for leading franchisees and would like to explore some of these important leadership skills with me, please consider joining our next Bootcamp.

Until next time, stay safe.