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Fixing The Unfixable

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Even the strongest, when faced with constant exposure to the elements, can be destroyed. Pick your battles wisely.

It happens from time to time that my inner cynic works its way out and is usually capped with a phrase I like to use in moments like these, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

Despite being positive and embracing enlightened discussion, there are occasions where no matter what you do, no matter how well-intentioned you are, you can be overwhelmed by the short-sighted.  Call it a failure to appreciate the venom behind those served by the status quo, give the numbers of idiots a certain amount of wiggle-room, and you can be sure that they will find a way to hurt you. People who sincerely want the situation to remain the same and will do anything to keep it that way, will use character assassination, marginalization, threats, and on occasion, harm, to keep real leaders from instituting change.

According to Chongyam Trungpa Rimpoche, “Rishi is a Sanskrit word which refers to the person who constantly leads a straightforward life. The Tibetan word for “rishi” is trangsong, which means “direct” and “upright.” So this term refers to someone who leads a direct and upright life by not introducing new complications into their life situation.”   When a leader who exhibits these traits comes into our lives, we need to embrace them.  However, more often than not, our leaders have flaws, just as we do.  Unfortunately, these flaws are often used by the contrarians to gain a foothold and steer those on the borders to their own side.  If the weak-minded are unwilling to look at what is best for the mission and unable to side with those on the side of right, there isn’t likely any saving them anyway.

There are situations where the individuals involved simply deserve themselves and until a leader can rise to the position and have the necessary backing, there will be no improvement in the condition.  It is at these times when things will continue to be so bad that it will require things to get even worse before someone is given the power to make things right.  In those cases, a total recalculation of culture is required, which won’t happen without a major offensive with enough firepower to establish an indisputable beachhead.  At this level of  failure, however, it often requires people to die first.

There are situations in life where the smart thing to save your self, your sanity, or everything you worked for, is to walk away.  There are situations where trying to save a completely dysfunctional organization is like trying to use a hand-pump to stop the Titanic from going under.  If you find yourself in a situation like this, it requires a serious gut check, and a realization that you can’t fix the unfixable.

There are a few things that you should raise the stakes for, like your faith, your family, and your country.  But when faced with an unwinnable scenario and a lack of resources to fix the problem, sometimes it is best to save what you can save and live to fight on another day.  As a leader, strive to become rishi and when you are met with your failings, try to resolve them through truth and acceptance.  In this you will make yourself less assailable.  But ultimately, even the rockiest and most imposing shore can be destroyed through the constant battering of the waves.  Be resolute, but not to the point of total loss.

Posted by on October 25, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, motivation, News, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

2010 Hilton Head Island Buddy Walk

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Caroline & FriendsIf you’re wondering where I’ve been, those of you who have known me for a while know where I have been.  Working on Buddy Walk stuff.  And the advantage of having your own blog is the availability of a bully pulpit. Therefore:

Seven days until the 2010 Hilton Head Island Buddy Walk! (Saturday, October 30) Make your plans to attend from 3 to 5 PM, behind The Mall at Shelter Cove, Hilton Head Island, SC

Buddy Walks are held all over the nation to educate about Down syndrome and ours is no different.  Our organization, Caroline & Friends, is a little different however, because we are not a traditional support group but an advocacy and education organization.  Through our website right now, and supplemented by literature in the future, we continue to look for best practices in research and therapies to help families point their loved ones with Down syndrome toward achieving their full potential.   This is our fifth annual Buddy Walk and we continue to grow in size, but we have a lot of fun and there’s food, music, and trick-or-treating out there.

If you happen to know of a family who wants more information on what’s being done out there, or just wants to talk to another person who has been through the experience, point them toward the site.  If you happen to be on Hilton Head Island next Saturday, I will be the one running around coordinating things, wearing the orange t-shirt that says, “Caroline’s Dad”.  I hope to see you there.

Posted by on October 23, 2010 • Filed under: General • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Increasing Tempo and Decreasing Resources Equals Frustration

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If we all pull together, there's no telling what we can achieve.

We have, in emergency services, always been in the business of doing more with less. It’s our creed. But there comes a point where we are expecting the outputs to exceed the inputs, or we are shoving more input in than we can possibly output, and in either case, something is going to blow.  This can be written:

Where t = tempo, r = resources and f = frustration: ↑t + ↓r = ↑↑f.

When we reach the result ↑↑f, it has been often expressed with an expletive and a raised middle finger.  To illustrate, let’s think about this like a mall parking lot, shall we?

In the preferred scenario, we have a goal and in order to achieve that, we have to put something into the process to make it occur.  If we have our theoretical parking lot, so long as the number of cars that go into the lot are equal or less than the number of cars exiting the lot, there won’t be a lot of pain.  However, when the balance tips and the number of cars entering the lot exceed the number of cars exiting, there will be quite a deal of anger, especially if the input of cars continues to exceed the available number of spaces and a bunch of mouth-breathing numbskulls drive around the lot aimlessly, exponentially adding to the confusion.  In normally high-performing organizations, situations like these can evolve into frustrating moments when we continue to expect more and more for less and less, without considering that what we have is a definite resource issue. In those finite resources, of course, we are referring mainly to time and funding.

If I were to build you a house, and money was no object, time was no object, and you didn’t care what it looked like, I would have absolutely no problems putting you in a home.  If money were no object I could buy what I want; pay myself what I want; I could hire people who have built homes before; and any number of resources I could possibly need, I could get, if you know what I mean.  Likewise, if time were no object, I wouldn’t worry about how long it took for permits, or whether or not the subs were there on time.  And of course, if you didn’t care what it looked like, I could build you a tent and charge you several million dollars.

When we begin to place limiting factors on the outputs, there occurs a correlating  increase in pressure.  As managers, it’s easy to delegate.  There are plenty of managers out there, however, who delegate without consideration for the resources needed.  It doesn’t do us any good to keep throwing more plates in the air for our subordinates and expect the outputs to remain consistent.  It’s the theory of laminar flow: the more pressure you add, the more chaotic the environment and the less effective the output.  You need to either decrease pressure, add capacity, or increase the size of the discharge.

The most challenging part, however, is remembering that the personnel you most trust with pulling off clutch moves are the same ones who tend to get loaded and loaded until they reach a snapping point.  These are your high performers who won’t dare tell you “no” because they really want to succeed and to help you to succeed as well.  It’s important to discuss the workload with these individuals and if you find you have to back off the heat for a while, make it happen.  They’ll appreciate your recognizing the situation and in allowing them to adjust their pace, may be able to come back stronger in the long run.  But keep beating that same horse and I can reassure you, it might take a while, but when it does go down, it won’t be peacefully.

Your job as a leader is to continually evaluate the situation and adjust.  If additional resources exist, you can add these, but unfortunately, that isn’t a likely scenario.  So it comes down to heat if we want to increase the outputs.  As leaders, we have to constantly assess whether the heat we add to the problems is sufficient, or too much.  If it is not enough, things will go at their own pace and may never be accomplished.  Too much heat and you run the risk of backlash.  But the right amount of heat creates change. And if change is what is required, you are going to be the one with your hand on the throttle.  Manage it wisely; it’s a temperamental machine sometimes.

Posted by on October 12, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Disincentive for Responsible Reporting (Tax and Spend Socialists)

7 comments

Take a deep breath. There, that's better, isn't it?

I don’t even know where to begin with this discussion except to offer my apologies for using a derogatory term to describe one side of the issue and failing to come up with a sufficiently derogatory term for the other side. When I decide to offend, I think I’m an equal opportunity offender, because like I stated, I’m not a proponent of either camp. I think for myself.  And for the comment from one individual who suggested, “This and the many attempts to drag the tea party into the mud show how desperate you guys are”.  I am not “you guys“, because I certainly don’t believe in the alternatives either side has presented me as being responsible or for the good of the people.  Given the rhetoric on both sides, I’d be embarrassed to be in either camp.

Likewise, it appears I have been the subject of misinformation. While I am well-versed (and abhor) the quid pro quo tax-and-spend mentality of the liberals and bureaucrats in government, the extreme in the other direction, given discussion I have had with friends and colleagues who have expressed to me their support of their ultra-conservative views (and defending the Tea Party Movement) has been one of scorched-earth budget management and widespread privatization of almost every aspect of governmental service. However, as has been expressed in comments regarding my last post, that is not the platform of the Tea Party Movement. Of course, this is pretty difficult for me to embrace, because there doesn’t seem to be anyone who can consistently state anything to me about the Tea Party Movement other than their anger at the status quo. So other than, “Vote the bums out” and “Obamacare is going to cost us jobs and decent healthcare”, both statements of which I think are pretty extreme in themselves, I haven’t heard anything that causes me to get warm and fuzzy when I think about these individuals taking office.

So since I now have your rapt attention and expect to get plenty of hate mail from the OTHER side of the fence, maybe the two poles will come together to listen to what I have to say without finding it necessary to accuse me of unprofessional or crass behavior.

When I speak of “lock-step” marching to the party line on EITHER side, it is the mindless reliance on sound-bites and partial information because I think many people have become too lazy to think for themselves.  Thus, this article.  Because like I said, the fault I had in the last article was 1) not coming up with an equally sensitive descriptor of another point of view and 2) not having an accurate view of the platform of the other side I chose to illustrate my case.  Because really, there are many more than two points of view and to suggest that these extremes were the only extremes would be grossly oversimplifying the issue.

Believe me or not, I had no intention of pushing anyone’s buttons and I’m sorry for doing that.  It did, however, reveal to me the obvious.  There is a disincentive for responsible reporting and you all have unpleasantly illustrated my argument with a gold frame.

I have been writing on the internet since before there were blogs.  I am not, however, a reporter.  Much of what I speak of on the internet is anecdotal or observational.  I do, however, write technical articles and papers independent of FHZ, and my expertise is in research and strategic planning.  So while one of you chose to express your feelings about my “lame” article, I’d say that I’m not hurt, in fact, I’m smiling a little to myself because the only comments I ever hear about how lame something is happens to be when I’ve tweaked someone.

Since I can view the number of “hits” on my page, I take a particular interest in my “outlier” posts: those which show me wild spikes in readership.  I take great pains to present both sides of many issues.  Anyone who actually KNOWS me knows that I am very concerned in getting multiple points of view and understanding the entire issue.  I am not an “emotional poster”, or one of these clowns that has a conspiracy theory about anything coming down the pike.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you see it), I have a pretty stable and respectful readership that makes rational and sound comments based on their own experiences.

With the exception of the “Roto-Ray” article several months ago, those outlier posts have consistently occurred when the headlines or lead paragraphs have involved controversy.  It is clear: rational and reasonable discussion is not what people want to read.  With few exceptions, people want sensationalism and anger.  It’s no wonder the internet isn’t safe anymore.  People are willing to post damn-near fiction in order to get traffic.  What does THAT say about society?

I don’t have any interest in writing titillating articles and reveling in a flock of readers who are only coming by to see what awful thing I have to say about someone or something.  I don’t rant.  And this is neither MSNBC nor Fox.  When I talk about balance, I mean it.  But I would like to have more readers, if anything, because what I have to say, I think, should be said.  I would like to think that when I write, instead of creating hate, readers say, “Wow, that’s something to think about”.

I don’t apologize at all for suggesting that both extremes are wrong.  There are many more of us in the middle than on the fringes.  We are not all zealots and we certainly don’t all believe in the vast right or left wing conspiracies.  Those of you who do are often just unhappy people itching for a fight.  Those of us in the middle lean to the left or the right because we do see some values in one or the other direction of thought, but most sensible individuals realize there’s a certain value in compromise and consensus.  Let’s go back to the sandbox, shall we?

Any of you who have ever played in a sandbox know that there are sandboxes where personalities dominate.  In some cases, a bully has taken over the whole sandbox.  In some cases there are two opposing forces.  In many cases there is one force, the force of sharing and collaboration.  If you had three sandboxes side-by-side and you were choosing which sandbox to put your children in, I’d be willing to bet that none of you would choose to put your children in sandbox one or two.  So why would you choose to live in a society that encourages those behaviors and a grander scale?

Firehouse Zen is not for the weak-minded.  I am calling my readers to be responsible and ethical and balanced.  I ask you to take other points of view into account, if for any reason, it may reinforce your own beliefs.  I’m not asking you to embrace opposition, I’m asking you understand it.  In doing so, is where we grow.

Since I have the attention of those who just want sound-bites, let me tell you, there is a wealth of information on the internet that will make you a better person.  We don’t all have to flock to these negative sites and we don’t all have to be at war with each other.  Just as in the situation in South Fulton, there are other sides to the argument that never came out when the ADD bloggers began blasting out accusations and rhetoric.  Don’t fall into the trap of the unenlightened.

If you read the first article and still hate me, I’m okay with that.  But I ask you to re-read it and see that it wasn’t directed one way or another, and admit that to yourself.  If you don’t care to come back, I’m okay with that too.  And if you think I’m unprofessional or crass, I ask you to read my other articles and see if you still believe that to be true.   But I’m not about to apologize for telling you all, it’s not always about winning or losing, sometimes it’s about surviving the game.  Instead of fighting with each other, we should be pulling together to solve our most pressing challenges.  There are too many awful things going on out there that we could solve together and maybe we’d feel just a little better about one another.  Of course, if you choose to stay, I’d like that too.

Let’s reward insightful and responsible discussion and avoid the lunatic fringe.  Let’s work together rather than apart, and let’s step away from the negativity.  I’d just as soon do that myself and it’s my hope that you would too.

Posted by on October 9, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Subscription Emergency Services – Your Classic Tea Bag Scenario

11 comments

These aren't free.

In one corner, the people who think that what the South Fulton Fire Department did was reprehensible.  In the other, those who think that you need to “pay to spray“.  In the classic Firehouse Zen outlook, let’s go to the root of the problem.  Here we are in a brand new age of doing more with less. It’s our creed in emergency services.

The beauty of this all is that while there are those who want to limit the “reach” of government, we have to remember that the point of having government involvement in the first place is to protect us in our vulnerable moments.  I am neither a tax-and-spender nor a teabagger.  I don’t march in lockstep to anyone’s platform.  I have an open mind and I evaluate where things are beneficial to my community and things detrimental, and balance the risk vs. a reasonable cost.  It doesn’t seem to me that either of the extremes are acceptable answers.

This is a complicated issue and it can’t be solved by just glossing over the sound-bite material.  There are departments who have been doing the subscription thing for years.  Personally, I suggested to some funding-challenged departments a number of years ago that perhaps you could do a “soft-landing” subscription: you pay (in advance) for spray, but if you don’t pay (in advance), you REALLY pay.  Like 500% of the subscription rate, charged to the insurance company.  Something tells me the insurance companies would be insisting you pay or you don’t get insurance.  Something also tells me that if you fail to pay in this scenario, they WON’T be paying anyway.  But subscription service, while it seems like a logical solution, is fraught with peril.  There are just too many “what-ifs” to make it a workable solution to the whole.

We do have a responsibility to the community to protect life, property and the environment.  But we are painted into a corner when we can’t raise revenue to sustain our operations, be it a fairly low cost solution or the full-on urban response solution.  Thus we return to the risk vs. benefit assessment each community must undertake before deciding, “Okay, we don’t want paid providers” or “We are going to shut down companies”, or “Our risk is low enough that we can make it with an all-volunteer force”.  This is something that has to be decided locally, but by responsible individuals who aren’t just looking at the bottom line.   There is nothing wrong with any of these scenarios if they can be applied effectively.  The problem is that when they are not, and the decision is made to do this anyway, it is often done with catastrophic results.  You know, of course, who gets left holding the bag in that case, don’t you? (That would be us, in case you didn’t get that hint.)

The elected officials of your community are charged with more than just appearing ad nauseum on your TV screen for several months leading up to November, although for some, it’s the only time I ever see them.  They are charged with making decisions that benefit the community and uphold societal standards.  I know of no society who thinks it’s okay to screw the vulnerable at the benefit of the privileged.  Well, I take that back- I know of no RESPONSIBLE society who thinks that’s okay.  For any “leader” of a community to say, we’re going to go with a subscription fee for service and it’s okay to opt out of it at the risk of losing everything you have, it seems to me like you are taking a chance that this could go terribly wrong.  Sending someone a letter to confirm they are “not in” doesn’t sound too cool either (I have had too many personal experiences with undelivered registered mail to have confidence in that solution).  I think if everyone was paying the fee and suddenly, someone wasn’t, I’d have someone give them a call and make a face-to-face confirmation to find out what the problem was.  Can you not afford it now?  Are you saying you are okay if we don’t respond?  I really think some follow-up is required here before saying, you are now on your own.

What may have seemed like a good solution has become national news, but it didn’t have to be.  Kirschenbaum in Chaos Organization and Disaster Management suggests that the whole social aspect of disaster response was overtaken by a bureaucracy concerned with job protection and cost reimbursement years ago anyway and this whole event pretty much emphasizes his point.  But when the community insists on having service but is unwilling to pay for it, other solutions must be found for funding.  In this context, “helping neighbors” for purely altruistic reasons has been trumped with who is paying for service and who is not.  This takes the whole emergency services as a business concept to a very predictable level.  But there really is balance to be achieved in every situation.  The challenges facing us in communities like Oak Park, IL and Xenia, OH illustrate there is such a thing as when the “fiscally conservative” become unreasonable, but compelling.  When we insist on the gold standard and our community can only afford the aluminum version, we expose ourselves to this kind of rhetoric.  I’m not saying that’s the case in these communities, but the situations making national headlines there only encourage community activists elsewhere who already think a scorched-earth approach to cutting the municipal budget is appropriate.  Our job as leaders is to foster innovative and efficient organizations while maintaining a responsible budget.  Again, balance is in order.

While we use the words “customer service” as a way to describe our efforts, it again goes back to doing what’s right for our neighbors and people who visit and work in our community.  While there are those of us who are paid to do this, we have to remember that it is a service we are paid to do often because the volume and type of emergencies we are called to solve exceed the community’s readily available resources.  Or maybe it’s because we don’t care enough about our neighbors anymore because we’re so wrapped up in “me”.  Regardless, until people begin to give away fire apparatus, permit us to operate without insurance, and clothe us in turnouts out of the kindness of their hearts, we have to pay for this stuff.  Therefore, every community, like it or not, has to endure funding these endeavors, through taxes, donations or subscriptions.  It’s up to you how you do it.  But it’s a requirement that it be done.

Posted by on October 8, 2010 • Filed under: change, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Funding & Staffing, government, insurance, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, News, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,