This summer, we created our most important Game Plan yet.
After six months of providing executive coaching for Portland’s new Fire Chief, Sara Boone, Portland Fire & Rescue contracted Pregame to lead its strategic planning process for 2020-2023.
But this was no typical planning year. As first responders, PF&R was on strict Covid precautions, which meant no in-person meetings and strict mask and social distancing within their administrative offices and firehouses. Plus, city budget cuts meant that the plan had to be created in less than half the typical amount of time.
Pregame was up for the challenge. We teamed up with our friends ASCETA to design for efficiency and effectiveness and with and Fearless Facilitation to expand our community reach. We drove the entire process via Zoom and email, including meetings with the Strategic Plan Steering Committee, PF&R Leadership team, and focus groups including three firehouses, administrative staff, the equity committee, and community leaders representing every demographic. We surveyed the entire department to ground-level perspectives on top priorities. Over the course of the project, we touched over 750 stakeholders throughout the Portland metro area.
Fire Chief Sara Boone generously sat down with Ciara after the project to debrief and share more about her experience working with Pregame.
(Interview condensed and edited from audio.)
On Executive Coaching
Pregame coaching has helped in so many different ways. Stepping into a leadership position as Chief of Portland Fire, Pregame was able to offer professional support in executive strategies. You were able to work with me to really bring out the values of the organization as well as understanding my own. I was able to align my personal values with the organizational values and identify what people could get on board with in order to drive change – and success.
That’s in addition to just offering support and being able to see things objectively, and reframe things to where I could make decisions more from outside the organization / at an executive level, versus being within the organization.
I would not have been able to succeed in my first year as Fire Chief without your help and support, as well as helping me to identify how to align the values of the organization with the direction we needed to go.
On Strategic Planning
I knew that from the time we contracted your services for coaching that you were the one we also wanted to consult with when it came to our strategic planning… because you’re amazing!
It is never easy to walk into different spaces – especially with Zoom! – you met so many different people and took so much information and compiled it in a short time frame. I don’t know how you did it! The process lent itself to the result.
You were able to get a quick understanding of our organization and the values that a public safety bureau stands upon, and at the same time understood that this institution needed to transform.
How you guided us through the different focus groups – being organized and intentional with questions and the information elicited – reflected back to us the org we want to be. You have the ability to really hear people, whether it’s an executive or someone within the organization. You’re always able to connect back to what’s important.
I arrived with an understanding of the priorities of the bureau, taking part in the city’s vision, and incorporating those into priorities, but you took it to a whole new level for translating the priorities into SMART goals for which we can be held accountable.
You were able to help us take a vision and priorities and then turn them into actionable and achievable goals.
“Pregame has fire. We know that.”
