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Your Fire Department Bucket List

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The ladies dig the sunset at Bryce Canyon.

Recently I spent ten days on a working vacation.  Beginning in Las Vegas, I fulfilled my attendance at the NFPA conference and the moment I closed my computer, we hopped in a rented RV and hit the trail for Zion, Bryce and the Grand Canyon National Parks.

This tour of the Southwestern US being on quite a few of my friends’ “bucket lists”,  it got me thinking: what kind of emergency service organization would be on someone’s “bucket list” of an organization people want to be affiliated with, or have serve their jurisdiction, or to just go and visit?  Or like the list of “any four people you’d like to invite over for dinner”, what four influential fire and emergency service rock stars would you like to invite to the station’s kitchen table?  Who would you like to have sit in, grab a coffee, and just talk about their vision, or war stories, or just talk crap?

Let’s hear from you all: What departments do you think are “bucket list” worthy departments? Why? Who would you invite to your station?  If they’re still alive, do they KNOW you feel this way? (You’d be surprised; some of these guys out there aren’t above hopping in the truck and showing up).  Fill me in and share some names of the fire service people you admire the most.  Okay, this is the interactive part: don’t be shy, just use that ol’ comment button over there and let fly.  See you in a little bit…

Posted by on July 10, 2010 • Filed under: change, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, leadership, motivation, professionalism, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Weekly Weasel – Your Jealous Eyes

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Stand back, mortals. I've got this under control.

Stand back, mortals. I've got this under control.

Remember Shakespeare’s Othello? Iago is envious of Cassio, who has recently been appointed as Othello’s lieutenant.   Iago then plants “evidence” of an affair between Cassio and Othello’s love, Desdemona.  In the end, people get killed, suicides occur, and the plot is exposed.  Your basic Shakespearean tragedy, as it were.

From the start, Iago tries to convince the audience that he loves Othello.  So it is of this saga that I am reminded as I enter into a meeting with “Lt. Iago”.  His need for a meeting revolves around his concern about how personnel might be losing respect for “Lt. Cassio”.  Of course, Iago brings this situation to MY attention because he is “genuinely worried for him”.  To say I am skeptical would be a gross understatement.

While Lt. Iago’s discussion has ever the slightest hint of merit, I sense the underlying reason for the issue being brought up in the first place: envy.  Iago wants to be in that rock star category like Cassio is.  Iago doesn’t have any hope of this because people don’t like to work with him.  You want to know the reason why?  Because of moments like these.  If you screw up, it’s not a learning moment, it’s a chance for Iago to prove how good he is and what a dumbass you are.

You see, Iago is a star performer in his own right.  He’s smart and driven.  Although ambition is a good thing, stomping on the fingers of everyone you are climbing over doesn’t earn you any sympathy when you fall.  Occasionally even, someone reaches up and yanks you down as well.  Iago simply doesn’t know when to rely on his own record of accomplishments rather than to resort to innuendo and plotting.  Iago, hero to us all, brings the problem forth in the name of “upholding our high standards”.  While I have much bigger issues to worry about, Iago has saved the day from the trivial.  His subtlety is truck-like in its dimensions.

Envy is characterized as a resentment of circumstances, an emotional and behavioral response toward a perceived relational threat.  Jealousy and envy have over the ages gone hand in hand.  Often, the words describing the two feelings are interchangeable.  But while jealousy is a protective reaction to a perceived threat (to a valued relationship), envy is better characterized as ill will toward someone who has something the other wants, but feels that because of unfair circumstances, they do not have.  Thus, Iago and Cassio.

Iago wants what Cassio has; respect.  Cassio has respect from the masses because he is hard working, dedicated, and knowledgeable.  Cassio also has his own issues, but he addresses his issues and deals with them.  Faced with issues, Iago assumes that everyone else is an idiot.  Cassio solves problems; Iago points out the weaknesses of others.  Of course, I could fall prey to the temptation to tell Iago, “Hey look, Cassio has problems too”.  I would hope you realize this isn’t a good idea, even though it could illustrate that yes, on the face of it Cassio is a superstar, but we all have our own issues.

How do you deal with someone like this?  The first order of business is to not give in to it.  While you must listen yet filter out the crap, the time that is spent listening to Iago is worthless from the standpoint of convincing him to get with the program.  He needs to get re-focused on doing what he is good at and spend less time worrying about what everyone else is doing.

If Iago is simply venting, it is one thing, but if he is actively spreading rumors or creating problems, as the supervisor it is imperative to deal with facts and to get the rumors out of play.  Short of keeping Iago at arm’s length, I don’t know what else you can do other than to watch out for him.  Today it’s Cassio, tomorrow it could be you.  Unless you’re like me and wouldn’t mind going back to the truck company, it’s hard to maintain objectivity when you know someone is gunning for you, especially someone like this.

My best advice, don’t be like this person and stand clear of anyone like him.  Always treat them fairly, but suspiciously.  Never give them an opportunity to stick it to you, no matter how tempted you might be.  Iago isn’t your drinking buddy, he is a man of opportunity.   If you provide the moment, don’t be surprised if your chip gets cashed unexpectedly and you’re left holding the bag.

Posted by on July 8, 2010 • Filed under: Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Funding & Staffing, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Attachment to Before

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The more flexible you are, the more likely you will weather the storm.Attachment is when you believe that things can or should remain one way forever.  Things are in a constant state of change.  Just as you change, so do the people around you, and your organization, and your community, so your relationship changes too.

Change is never easy, but if you can accept that it is inevitably occurring and embrace the change,  transition can be easier.  People put too much emphasis on remaining constant.  There is an impermanence in everything.  People come and go, the environment we operate in is constantly evolving, and new ways of doing things are discovered every day.  We can hold on to the past forever, but it won’t change the fact that the rest of the world is moving on around us.

Effective leadership requires us to understand the changes and be flexible with them. Effective leadership requires us to understand ourselves to find why we resist certain challenges.  If we can be open to possibilities and willing to explore them, we can solve anything and do anything.

Posted by on July 6, 2010 • Filed under: change, education, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, General, leadership, motivation, officership, professionalism, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

To My Facebook Friends

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The other day I succeeded in putting a U.S. Army SAR Technician together with a state US&R asset in Tennessee.  I supplied my girls’ swim instructor names of friends who have run the Chicago Marathon.  Later in the evening, I was contacted by a friend who had another friend needing examples of state mutual aid agreements.  Years ago, not only might I not have known the people to put these friends in touch with, but I might not have even known the people asking either.

While I created Firehouse Zen to educate others, my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Firefighter Nation accounts have become essentially my “research sources”.  The more minds I can get exposure to, the more likely it is I am going to get an idea from somewhere, or be able to answer a question, or just generally help.  While there are still a few skeptics, I know of many who find this new frontier exciting and intriguing.  It is apparent that electronic media and social networks have really begun to find a place in the emergency service world, if used correctly.

Knowledge is most certainly power; your network is the essential element in communicating that knowledge.  It used to be that you would have to attend dozens of conferences a year to connect with others, now I can do it from the desk in my office, or on a good day, on my porch with my toes in the pool.  Day after day, social media is revolutionizing our industry.  The more people you can connect with, the more likely you are to have an answer if called upon.

Although these applications were designed for socialization, many of us realize the utility of having access to names from all over the globe.  These contacts are not only from within our ranks but from business, NGOs, military, and a host of other classifications we once didn’t have ready access to, people who may have faced similar challenges and can provide insight, or people who might at least know a source for further inquiry.  While there are downsides, there are upsides we haven’t even begun to touch on yet.  I continue to add pretty much anyone who asks to “friend” me, mostly because I’m not looking for exclusion, I’m looking for inclusion.  I want anyone who wants to gain access to what I know to be able to, and likewise if they have something to share with me, to be able to do so easily.

So here’s to you, my Facebook buds, my LinkedIn compadres, and all of the rest of you out there who provide me a secure base of information, education, and friendship.  And to those of you who aren’t yet, feel free to come by and friend me, because while today you might have something I need, hopefully someday there’ll be something I do to return the favor.  Reach out and meet some people.  Like they say at Disney, “It’s a small world after all”.

Posted by on July 2, 2010 • Filed under: change, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, General, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, officership, professionalism, US&R • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Risk vs. Reward and Patient Advocacy

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An OLD shot of Savannah's LifeStar landing for a Hilton Head Island F/R medevac.

The SC-TF1 Director copied an article to our command staff that I found interesting.  It ran in Popular Mechanics titled Unacceptable Risk (I couldn’t find a direct URL for it, so here’s the pdf: HelicopterCrash).

Our organization allows paramedics on scene to request a medical helicopter evacuation with a minimum amount of oversight by the medical control physician.  Being a paramedic myself, I know when to call for a flight and when not to.  I am not about to call for a chopper to take a patient to a hospital for a broken foot, and likewise, I am intelligent enough to be able to assess a patient and opt to fly them to a hospital that has the resources to help my critically injured victim.  I am appalled at some of the case histories where someone was flown out for a routine (very routine) injury and consequently, I know of agencies who simply won’t call for a flight, regardless of the need for it.

How bad of a medic must you be that you can’t tell the difference between a potentially life-threatening injury and one that can be transported by ground to a hospital?  If I’ve got an altered patient with a potential head injury, I know they need to go to a trauma center.  So what if I have to go on an out-of-jurisdiction transport to the trauma center- it’s what we do.

Regardless of whether or not the aeromedical evacuation of a patient is risky and may or may not have tangible benefit, the decision must come to this: What do I need to do for the best interest of the patient? I don’t care if you don’t like the way they look, or they stink, or you are tired.  When you became a medical response professional, you probably took an oath that involved a statement like “Above All, Do No Harm”.  Our jobs involve making sure our patients not only get care, but that it is the right care, it is not care that is provided at a huge cost because we were too lazy to do our jobs, and that the patient’s rights are maintained in their treatment and transport to a medical facility (or not).

Just as I wouldn’t make you take a treatment that could possibly kill you in order to cover my ass, ordering a helovac for a finger amputation isn’t in my first line of thought.  And I know I curse and fuss when I DO call for a chopper and a spot of rain on the pilot’s windshield causes them to scrub the mission, but you know what? I’m a big boy- I’d MUCH rather you err on the side of keeping your crew and my patient safe and I’ll deal with the fallout otherwise.  But to just say, “All patients go by air” or much worse, “No patients go by air” is ridiculous.

Maybe like everything else, we need to stop applying a broad brush to a situation and do our jobs, by appropriately assessing our patient, determining their logical needs based on mechanism of injury, observable findings, and our experience, and make a good call as to what to do with them.  If we ca’t do this much, it’s no wonder we continue to have to convince people we aren’t just “ambulance drivers” but real, live, medical professionals.

Posted by on June 28, 2010 • Filed under: "accident prevention", Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, News, Patient Management, professionalism, rescue, safety, Vehicle Operation & Ambulances • Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Bravery In The Line Of Fire

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Later, man.Mark Glencourse’s recent decision to end the Medic 999 blog has certainly struck a sympathetic chord with many of us in the emergency services blogosphere. We all tread the finely defined line of sharing our experiences for the sake of educational and informational purposes on a regular basis knowing that we are one troll away from internet chaos and either a loss of our jobs, public lynching, or worse. There’s a reason many of us require authorization before your comments post; one ill-phrased comment can be the same as someone throwing a road flare into a packed movie house.  Next thing you know, people are yelling at each other, getting ugly, going after whomever happens to be in the way, then voila- all consumed, the masses move on to leave you, the theater owner with your smoking rubble pile (i.e.; your life and career, or what’s left of it).  It’s a tough crowd sometimes.

Plenty of blogs exist just for the sake of venting.  The origins of the web log are in a diary format and meant as a way for the blogger to share his or her feelings and observations with others.  My site was meant to be different, just as I would bet the rest of the blogs on the FireEMSBlog Network were.  Mark’s efforts were pioneering like many of the rest of my fellow bloggers.  Many of us saw this format as a way to immediately reach the masses with timely messages.  But not only that, I think Mark set an example of a blogger that took the high road consistently, so much so that he and Justin at The Happy Medic were able to inspire Thaddeus Setla to team up for developing the Chronicles of EMS series.

While Mark and many of us chose to blog openly, for a long time I used to get a little frustrated sometimes with the people who choose to hide behind a psuedonym.  Looking back on it, sometimes I wish I had stayed anonymous, since the longer I do this, the more I realize it’s probably not a bad way to be able to say your piece without being taken out at the esophagus.  While I publish any comment for or against my views, except spam, there have been a few unnerving moments when I would read a comment and know a potential spark was heading toward the hot zone.  The nature of my blog keeps that to a minimum, but I have read others that have turned pretty emotional.

The subjects of change and leadership cover some dangerous ground.  You can be courageous and try to influence positive growth, but from time to time, leaders get attacked, especially if what they say is unpopular.  Just ask Gandhi, or JFK, or Martin Luther King, Jr.  how dangerous leading can be.  While on this site I haven’t gotten into what I consider the “daily grind”, I have discussed some best practices that apparently don’t sit well with everyone.  Some of my long-time readers might remember the series I began on credentialing that went south when a few individuals disagreed with my assessment of the current landscape.  Not only did they choose to attack me, but my employer as well (they were pretty good natured about it, considering, which goes to show how supportive my bosses are of this endeavor).  Likewise, I got an e-mail recently from someone I consider a friend, who, having read something I wrote, took it as an attack on him.  Nothing could have been father from the truth.  While there were others involved in the situation that I felt deserved some well-placed rage, I never meant to question this individual’s commitment or bravery.  But like everything else, when you are enmeshed in a situation, no matter what side of the fence you happen to be on, sometimes the firing gets a little too close.  If you happen to be standing nearby when the grenade goes off, just supporting the leader may blow up in your face, no matter how much you wanted to help and how good your intentions.

So to keep this from going on much too long, I’m reminded that I wanted to tell you all this story: I recall an event from my recent past where I was doing my station rounds; a firefighter, who obviously saw my “certificate book” years ago, when I happened to visit his station pulled out his similarly crafted three-ring binder which makes keeping track of certificates a little easier.  While mine is pretty full after thirty years in this business, this young firefighter had a pretty impressive start and I congratulated him on the many trees that were killed in pursuit of personal excellence.  Of course, this event became the equivalent of a measuring contest and soon the other crew members were bringing out their own versions, ranging from a file folder to what looked like a scrapbook.  Thus, the Zen Master saw a little teaching moment.

I wished I had my book at the time, but when I took all of the other books and stacked them on top of one another, they made a nice pile.  The crew members were laughing a little nervously (okay, where’s the chief going with this?) when I made a BIG deal out of this stack.  Then I turned to the bunch and pointed out that while this was quite an assembly of awards, the entire pile was worth NOTHING if the knowledge and experience that the stack represented wasn’t shared, either by teaching, relating it to others, or simply by setting an example.  Mark got that idea early on and decided he wanted to share his ideas, albeit in a method that many don’t understand or even try to appreciate.

Medic 999 was and remains an excellent blog.  Mark did a great job with it and he deserved the honor of Fire/EMS Blog of the Year he got last year from a popular vote.  As I mentioned earlier, Mark and Justin’s story of reaching out to one another across the pond and a continent (depending on which direction you flew, I suppose) was inspiring and certainly newsworthy.  And above all, the situation he finds himself in now, I have been close to before and there but for the grace of God go I.  I’ve been fortunate to have an employer who, while keeping their distance and reaffirming their legal requirements to maintain privacy, have also been supportive of my need for creative expression (so long as it is done off-duty and on my own computer).  It is here in which we have our last leadership lesson of the day.

Every now and then I have to endure an occasional comment from the “less-than-enlightened”; or “LTEs”, as I like to call them. Like as in “Battalion Chief Lite” or “Firefighter Lite”- you know, looks like one, MAYBE tastes like one, but we all know somehow, when you turn it to the side, you see it is just a facade (or like in beer, it never tastes as good as what it is advertised to be).  When you have a lot of these Lites hanging around, it really makes it hard to do your job.  While it gives those of us a never-ending source of material to write about, these individuals can quickly make your life miserable and wear you down.  If they are your boss, they can make it impossible to be innovative and visionary.  I have been fortunate to work with people who realize the power of knowledge and desire for us all to share (appropriately) what we know.  Others aren’t quite as fortunate.  If you find yourself in the position of being the big cheese and you have some real go-getters, do you want to be known as the chief that took off the leash and encouraged facilitated excellence?  Or do you want to be known as the Stalinist who shut down all original thought, suppressed creativity, and required everyone to march in lock-step?  In this day and age, we should all be reaching out to not only understand where we have been, but where we need to go.  Mark was reaching ahead of himself, not behind.  If you can honor his decision to make the choice, the best way is probably to learn from his experience, share it with others, and to strive for excellence.  While you may not be able to choose to blog, you can teach, you ca mentor, and you can certainly patronize those of us who can bring it to you.

Good luck, Mark.  Vaya con Dios.  Visit often and know that I’m hoisting a drink in your direction. Cheers and thanks for leading.

Posted by on June 25, 2010 • Filed under: education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, leadership, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sometimes We Need A Kick In The Head

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Not literally, of course.  But motivation to learn is directly proportional to the perceived benefit of the education and if there is no perceived benefit, we have to change that perception to achieve the team goals.

For example: Over the weekend, I was working on my porch, and the girls were on the swingset.  Our home actually sits on the ridge of a “100-year dune” so while the house and the porch are at a whopping  16 feet above sea level, the swingset area, which is about fifty feet from the house, is at 8 feet above sea level.  If you calculate the run to rise, you can see it’s not too steep.  It is, however, steep enough that walking off the porch, walking about fifty feet, engaging your subject, and walking back up the hill, back up the steps, and back to what you were doing can get real old if you have to do it OVER and OVER and OVER again.

So I’m minding my own business, trying to get the flowers and plants back to normal after yet another squirrel feeding frenzy, when I hear, “Daddy, can you push me?”  It’s Honora.  She has this sweet sing-song voice that will melt anyone’s heart.  I’m busy, but I break from what I’m doing, go down the hill, etc. etc. and push her.  Then I return to what I am doing.  For about a minute.

When she calls me the second time, I’m not stupid.  I detect an emerging trend.  I do a little bit of analysis for a living, remember?  So I consider that perhaps this is the part where I try some of the theory I pass along to upcoming leaders out, you know, put my money where my mouth is.  So I try to engage my newly minted four-year-old (she turned four this weekend) in the philosophy that you can give a man a fish and he can eat today, but if you teach him to fish, he can eat forever.  This is, of course, given you equip him with a fishing rod, show him what to use for bait, find him a decent fishing location, then teach him to gut, filet, etc. etc.  Easier said than done.

So when I go down the hill this time, instead, I try to convince Honora that learning HOW to swing is MUCH better than my having to come push her every minute.  Or it’s at least much better for me, but I digress.  She, however, wasn’t buying that.  She knew that eventually I’d come and push her, especially if she begged me long enough.  So learning HOW wasn’t really a priority on her chart.  I mean, if Dad will come push me, then why learn?

After about thirty minutes of cajoling, convincing, educating, etc. we were no closer to her being able to swing on her own than I was to having a squirrel-free garden, so I’m thinking you are getting the picture here.  No matter what, if someone doesn’t have a desire to learn, they won’t.  And I don’t care what kind of a leader you think you are, if you have someone who is just dead-on convinced they will learn nothing, that is exactly what they will learn.

I have had this revelation before, but it seemed like a pretty graphic representation of the phenomenon.  We have employees and co-workers for whom no one can teach anything.  They know it all, they have seen it all, and by God, you can’t sell them the idea that there might be a little to learn from everyone, no matter how inexperienced or poorly prepared that they are.  If anything, you might just learn what NOT to do.

Even more so, we have people that we are trying to engage that really don’t want to be engaged.  There are the performers, who seek learning opportunities, and there are the individuals who simply don’t have a desire to be motivated.  Well, there’s something to be said for that.  Is it that they don’t desire to learn or is it that the consequences of their failing to learn haven’t become clear enough or dire enough for them to get the message.

There’s the adage I have used for years about the difference between incompetence and unwillingness; if I were to put a loaded gun to your head and ask you to do a task , and tell you that I was going to pull the trigger if you couldn’t complete the task, the difference is that the incompetent still wouldn’t be able complete it and the unwilling will figure out a way somehow.  When consequences of failure are severe enough (and I’m certainly not advocating putting a gun to someone’s head), if you simply don’t know, you don’t know.  Thus there is a difference between motivation and education.

In any team dynamic, there is occasionally a need to point out the merits and the disadvantages of failure.  Some things should be pretty obvious, but in certain aspects of the job, one must be given reinforcement as to the consequences; not only as to what will happen if they fail in regard to the impact on the organization, but also in regard as to what your avenue of remediation will be to insure that it does get done.

We each have a responsibility to be able to do the minimum requirements of the job, and to do that to the standard upheld by the organization.  The problem is, many managers think that anything coming close to the requisite performance is considered “over and above” simply because they don’t currently hold anyone to the actual standard.  Learning anything, then, isn’t necessarily rewarded.  Learning is expected if you want to advance, but really, it should also be expected if you want to keep your job, especially if you aren’t fully competent at it yet.

When we just fix the errors rather than to educate the individual, we are, in essence, rewarding poor performance. Individual performance must be evaluated if we have a person who isn’t hitting the mark, so we can flag the problem, illustrate the issue, and to give the appropriate direction.  Then, in order for learning to occur, the individual must want to learn how to fix the problem and do something about it.  If the individual is sufficiently motivated, even if they don’t quite get it, they’re at least likely to seek assistance in solving the issues.  If they aren’t, you’ll probably find out the next time they need to perform the task. Hopefully it won’t be a catastrophic failure when you do.

Motivation comes to those who see value in what it is they are trying to accomplish.  Some people are able to motivate themselves easier than others, mostly because they have the benefit of understanding how their performance relates to overall team success.  This is also helped by a positive attitude, or at least an attitude of willingness to listen and appreciate another’s viewpoint prior to dismissing it offhand.

Motivation shouldn’t require being traumatized, but sometimes it seems like the only thing to cause a change in attitude is a lesson in tough love. When you can provide the appropriate direction, there comes the point, just as we must do with our children, where we must step back and let our charges fail on their own.

Our job is to be there to facilitate a change in behavior, help in redirecting the efforts, and to encourage them to find some answers on their own.  In doing so, we promote growth and independence.  And if we fail to do this, if we catch them every time, they’ll be dependent upon you forever.

Posted by on May 30, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, education, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, motivation, officership, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

FHZ Does “Sharing The Wealth” – First Due Blog Carnival

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Chief Harry DiezelI can’t begin to name all the people who have shared their knowledge with me over the years.  I have probably mentioned a time or two that I was fortunate to have been given an early education in the “family business”.  While I have never fought a fire with my father nor my grandfather, I have heard the stories, and in fact, a few of the firefighters who have fought fire for both of them actually moved to Hilton Head Island and fought fire for me.  I joked with one of our family friends who fit this description that he had the “honor of being a subordinate to three generations of the Mayers family”.  If you can’t take that kind of love in a firehouse, you are doomed.

At every opportunity, I formalized my training by attending as many fire schools as possible with some of the finest firefighters in the nation.  I have had the chance to talk HAZMAT over beers with Greg Noll, and likewise talk Rescue with the late, great Chief Ray Downey.  As a young officer I got to hang out with Chief Brunacini for the day when he was teaching on the Island.  And later in my career, I have had the amazing honor of working side by side as a committee officer with Carl Goodson, one of the finest leaders I have ever met.  I have had many other, lesser known, but quite inspirational and educated instructors and mentors along the line.  I have also worked directly for and with chiefs of local departments who continue to share their immense knowledge and insight with me.

Of all of these, however, until I met Chief Harry Diezel, who at the time was the Chief of the Virginia Beach Fire Department, I didn’t really have a vision of what my future in the fire service would be. What’s funny about it is that he was able to inspire a young officer candidate in sixteen hours of a seminar, by exposing to him to the potential of emergency services from an entirely different model than ever envisioned.

I have always had a strong work ethic and I thought I was a decent officer.  While was insistent on my crew being well prepared and well trained, in my early years as a company officer, my battles with management were often visible, bloody, and engaged head-on with no regard to the bigger picture.  Think “irresistible force meets immovable object”.  I knew I was good, I had swagger, and I had total confidence.  I was moving up the food chain rapidly because I was a John Wayne, no-nonsense, this-is-the-way-to-do-it kind of officer and in the ‘80’s, this was the personification of the model company officer.

As you also might have suspected, in the ‘80’s the notion of taxpayers as “customers” in the fire service was not widely accepted.  In fact, it was meeting pretty serious resistance, as it still does in certain areas.  I was no exception to the norm.  When it came to dealing with the public, I enjoyed delivering the emergency service, but as far as I was concerned, if you weren’t with us, you were against us.  After all, as taxpayers, you don’t have a choice in how emergency services are provided, do you?  If an issue came up in regard to providing fire protection, our take was, “Just listen to us, we know what we are doing, and we’ll tell you how to do it correctly”.

So when I had a chance to sit in a room over two days with Chief Diezel and learn about “paradigms” (BEFORE they became a cheap buzzword) and to learn about thinking with new perspective (again, before “outside the box” became clichéd), it was revolutionary.  When we talked about political strategy, it was fresh air and realization of a whole new approach toward selling service delivery.  When he suggested we read (and understand) “The Art of War”, not as a study in warcraft but as a guide for strategic living, it was before anyone else was suggesting any of these options.

Looking back on it, the things we talked about that weekend were shown to us as being “fresh” ideas ten and even twenty years later.  In some communities, when I come in and discuss a “vision for emergency services”, sometimes I get blank stares.  When I ask an officer candidate in another department what he or she sees in the future of emergency services, and they answer, “New trucks” or “more people”, I’m wondering why someone hasn’t tried to get them to see that our industry is affected globally, not just at city hall.

Harry got at least this one officer to embrace change, to accept that there might be alternatives to what we perceived as being the sole answer, and gave me the spark to explore and understand.  When I had the veil of ignorance lifted, it was like an entirely new beginning to my career.  I took classes on psychology and sociology to better understand the people both in the organization and in the community that I would have to motivate.  I enrolled in programs that were sponsored by the chamber of commerce and attended seminars offered to private businesses, and began to serve on boards and panels.  I realized in the ‘80’s that networking was a key element in political survival and marketing your organization wasn’t a bad thing.

Of all things, Chief Diezel got me to see that people do have a choice.  They may not have the ability to decide what agency comes when they call for help, but they have a choice in who is employed in that agency.  They also have a say in whether or not you get the apparatus and tools for the job, the fire stations to put the apparatus and tools in, and whether or not you get people to put on those resources.  These people also have the ability to put people in office who support you, and they can put people in office who will make your life miserable.

I have resolved to share this wealth with others through Firehouse Zen.  I have a vision of emergency services reborn, of revolutionary change in the way we operate and in the way that we engage the public to minimize injury and loss.  There are so many “leaders” out there who still have that veil over their eyes and have never understood the potential of a fully engaged organization.  Until they do, their department is condemned to being ordinary and marginal.  If there’s anything in this world I don’t want to be, it’s ordinary and marginal.

Learn to really be at the front of the pack and learn how to guide and push toward a goal of really effective service delivery.  More importantly, though, find someone who needs guidance, some young officer, and mentor them.  Give them the gift of vision and foresight and help them to prepare for all of the changes that will surely come in next generations.  Nothing you have gained is worth a cent if you don’t share it with others.

Thanks, Chief Diezel, for unwittingly inspiring me.  It was a great weekend.

Posted by on May 26, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, government, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Daily Values vs. Emergency Ops Values

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webDSC_0162A while back, Chris Naum at TheCompanyOfficer.com discussed briefly the New Rules of Engagement for Structural Firefighting.  This is, of course, a work in progress, but I urge you to read it and understand what these rules mean to us as practitioners.  We are called to save lives and fight fires, but to do so safely and responsibly, understanding that our resources are finite (you just can’t keep throwing firefighters into fires until one comes out safely with the victim).

If you search this blog for discussion about leading with values (I even linked the search to make it easy for you),  you’ll see that values were specifically mentioned in at least eight articles, not to mention all of the other times values were a peripheral part of the discussion.   Like it or not, organizational values define organizational culture.  These values help guide you in times when hard decisions must be made under ambiguous situations.  When organizations lack defined values, or personnel don’t understand them as the gospel truth, they don’t always reflect those values when challenged. If you have never implicitly discussed your organizational values, your personnel will revert to whatever values conform with those of the group (think “B” Shift) or scarier, their own beliefs (which you have no ability to predict).

While the article by Chris suggests that the Rules should be concise and bulletized in format, it is in that suggestion related to firefighting that I see these “rules” as reflecting our values in considering the risky nature of engaging with a particularly dangerous enemy.  I challenge each of you to read more about this and ask yourself, as well as your leaders, questions that help refine what to do in those emergency situations, especially as they involve our own organizations.

While we value the service we provide to our customers as being our highest calling, there comes a defining moment where we must place the welfare of our troops at a higher level, especially when it comes down to fighting a “lost cause”.  I am willing to personally take a calculated risk to save lives, but I am NOT willing to take a risk personally, or to expose each of you to a risk for the sake of a body recovery or to fight a structure that will be written off anyway.  I am as aggressive as they come when it comes to firefighting, but I value my personnel higher than any property, and I think we all need to think that way about how we choose to engage at these incidents.

But it is in this that the problem is apparent; we have made a decision to discuss our values in regard to emergency operations, but have we defined our organizational values when they come to day-to-day operations?  In many departments, the over-arching statement seems to be, “Use common sense and logic when it comes to making decisions”.

While I agree one-hundred percent with that statement (and that approach may very well save your life some day on an emergency scene), when we have recruits (and in that, I’m lumping Juniors, new volunteer members, etc.) making value-based decisions on day-to-day things (like when they are unsupervised or in situations where they are asked to show initiative), have we really done a good job of reinforcing our belief system to them and demonstrating a positive example by living those values ourselves?

Take setting fires, for example.  While we (and society) continually insist that firefighters setting fires is wrong, is the culture around your organization such that going to fires and “fighting the red devil” is more important than community service?  Is it more apt to say that personnel walk around moping about the loss of call volume?  Are members who seek to demonstrate their commitment to the community challenged by the lack of calls to demonstrate that commitment?  Why is it that we are in this business, anyway?  If the answer is to run around in a uniform and drive fast down the road with lights and sirens on, well, we all know that only represents a finite amount of our jobs (and it’s not like I want someone who thinks that’s a good reason to be an emergency service provider anyway).

While it seems pretty intuitive that setting fires is a bad thing, when you are dealing with people who already have a less-than-mature attitude and a challenge to their belief system, you set yourself up for disaster.  If you really want to avoid this type of incident occurring in your organization, one of the basic things that should be done is to engage personnel in activities OTHER than fighting fires/running calls.  If you want to find out how committed these personnel are to the community, give them day-to-day assignments that include non-emergency prevention or participation duties- just have them man an engine and go show the flag at the local high school football game, or go spray water for the kids on a hot day.  Anything to have them prove their worth OTHER than running hot and exerting their “auth-or-it-tie” (it always loses something unless you hear Cartman saying it).

Organizations who find themselves struggling to recruit or to get people to do their jobs must evaluate if there is a gap between what the leadership defines as valued behavior and what the membership (or potential membership) defines as a valued behavior.  If there is a gap, someone had better define the expectations, or the expectation will be that everyone is entitled to define the organizational mission according to his or her own needs.  If that is the case, I’d expect to be reading about you on STAT911 or Firegeezer some morning soon, and not in a good way.

Posted by on April 16, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Fires, Funding & Staffing, leadership, motivation, News, officership, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tolerance

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Take the time to understand others' points of view.

Take the time to understand others' points of view.

There is a great deal of controversy on the internet at any given time, but the postings between people we should be working with are getting to the point where they are troubling.  Heated rhetoric, personal attacks, and just out and out anger are more commonplace now then ever.

I posted this on my Firefighter Nation profile the other day in response to some of the discussions I have seen on other blogs lately.  If there’s anything I learned from doing research, is that even the military has come to understand that if combatants don’t appreciate adversary culture, they are likely to make assumptions that could jeopardize their mission. As a result, enlightened commanders take the time to immerse themselves in cultural education and counterintelligence to fully comprehend the aspect in which an adversary may approach a problem.  As a born cynic, my first viewpoint was that the understanding could be utilized to manipulate weakness or strength to be used against one’s adversary, but as I have grown older (and hopefully, wiser), I have found that in conflict management, many arguments could be simply defused by just toning down the language and accepting others’ viewpoints for what they are: opposing viewpoints.

This text was shared with me by a friend some time ago, but I wanted share it with you all in the hopes that maybe it could provide some perspective:

(Paraphrased from Dhammavadaka):

Remember always that you are just a visitor here, a traveler passing through. Your stay is but short and the moment of your departure unknown.

Speak quietly and kindly and be not forward with either opinions or advice. If you talk much, this will make you deaf to what others say, and you should know that there are few so wise that they cannot learn from others.

Be near when help is needed, but far when praise and thanks are being offered.

Take small account of might, wealth and fame, for they soon pass and are forgotten. Instead, nurture love within you and and strive to be a friend to all. Truly, compassion is a balm for many wounds.

Treasure silence when you find it, and while being mindful of your duties, set time aside, to be alone with yourself.

Cast off pretense and self-deception and see yourself as you really are.

Despite all appearances, no one is really evil. They are led astray by ignorance. If you ponder this truth always you will offer more light, rather then blame and condemnation.

Maybe some of you will take this for what it is worth and be a little less likely to fight with one another. Maybe you will continue to disregard any advice toward making peace with your brother firefighters and EMTs. But maybe if some of us kept our mouths shut and listened more, we might learn something. And further, maybe we need to be tolerant with some of the newbies and try to encourage their learning.

There is always a place for understanding the culture and approach of others, because you can then frame your discussion in terms which they can understand.  Be more open to ideas and accepting of others, and in the end, you will reach them because you can appreciate where they are coming from and they will appreciate that you took their sides under consideration.

Posted by on April 13, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, fire, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, government, leadership, motivation, News, officership, politics, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Technology Assessment

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web reddrive download 423If you haven’t figured out by now I’m kind of intrigued by all the technology that people use on a daily basis and how it could be incorporated into making our jobs easier in the fire service.  I can’t get over all of the opportunities that are out there to try to improve things, and yet for some reason the fire service stays riveted on old technology. It could be that there’s not enough money in the fire service to help improve these technologies.  You’d think that someone with the money might realize that better technology could be make us more efficient and also reduce pain and suffering and loss of property and all that other good stuff.

Right now I’m completely enmeshed in our community’s application for Google to provide ultra-high-speed internet (we’re talking 1 GB here).  I can only see the possibilities and they are endless.  Part of my comment to them in defense of why Hilton Head Island should be awarded this opportunity revolved around the public safety applications of this high-speed Internet.  Applications like streaming video for training and meetings would revolutionize our organization. Existing mapping and pre-planning information could be shared via server or just kept on the Internet.  I can go on and on.

Our organization is really embracing some new concepts right now in an effort to improve capability.  Sometimes these ideas work and sometimes they do not.  But the act of trying these things out are learning opportunities in themselves.

What ideas are you working on that will revolutionize the way you do business?  How can we improve our delivery of excellent customer service using existing technology?  What idea, no matter how far-fetched, would make our job an everyday joy?  What things must we change in order to make these reality?

Posted by on April 1, 2010 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, Fire Rescue Topics, Funding & Staffing, leadership, planning, revolution, Technology & Communications • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Trust Is The Mortar

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My Grandfather "Smokey", my sister, and Smokey Bear.

My Grandfather "Smokey", my sister Colleen, and Smokey Bear. Unknown which cousin is in Grandpop's arm.

Trust is the mortar, the bond between power and responsibility.  Without empowerment, people are unable to act on their vision.  Give someone power and they are free to create all kinds of possibilities.  And in turn, if you give someone power and they squander those opportunities, those with power are reluctant to share it again.

There are several reasons why “leaders” fail to empower others, some of which involve the hesitancy to trust others to use the power wisely.  There may have been a precipitating event to foster this mistrust, or a cumulative effect may have occurred.  There are those who distrust others based on perception.

Take, for example, those who mistrust others because of outward appearances.  If you come into my place of business to get a job and don’t look professional, if I’m trying hard to convey a professional appearance, then you shouldn’t be surprised if it requires me a moment to trust in you.  Dressing the part goes a long way toward opening doors; in fact, it opens more doors than closes them.  But this is just the beginning: speaking my language- not just English, but using intellect and knowing the jargon- permits me to believe I can trust in you that you know what I know.  Using logic permits me to believe that you are mature and understanding of the options, and thus, maybe trustworthy.  None of this in and of itself should establish your credibility; you may dress like a slob and be a genius.  You may not have good English skills and yet have an amazing amount of information to share.  You may be one of those crazy artists who isn’t very logical, but has an excellent abstract way of looking at a problem.  But each of these things allows me a good feeling that I can take as: this person understands that what I think is important, they think is important.

Now while you can dress the part and talk the talk, that doesn’t make you trustworthy.  That’s the realm of the con man.  That gets you in the door.  The essential element is that once I allow you to open the door, you prove that the small amount of trust I hand over to you is nurtured and used appropriately.  Furthermore, if I permit you this trust, if something goes wrong, instead of stepping away from the situation, you own it and work to resolve it, I’m more willing to at least extend you a certain amount of trust again.

It’s completely give and take and it requires a certain amount of credit and repayment.  But given that transactional experience, a partnership between people is formed and the bond increases, just as mortar cures over time.

Right now in Haiti, for the survival of their nation, true leaders must come to the forefront.  They have an opportunity to rebuild their nation and make it strong.  There was a lot of work to be done before the disaster and the squandered trust between the “leadership” and the people is certainly a problem.  But when I know for fact that a lot of work is needed to restore their infrastructure, that indicates to me many opportunities for people to shine, to show others their devotion to hard work, to innovation, and to creativity.  If the leaders really desire change for the better, they need to foster a new generation of Haitians with power to improve their economy and their standard of life.  And while the disaster is only a week or so old, and the devastation so close at hand, it makes it difficult to focus on the future, but the future is there and waiting.  Once the fog lifts, enlightened leaders should seek those who desire a strong nation and employ them to rebuild it.

In this nation as well, there are those of us who are sick and tired of the two party system, the system that seems to be all about itself and not about us, and desire leaders who don’t give in to the rhetoric of the ultra-left or ultra-right.  There are those of us who simply desire to do right by each other, to look out for one another and not see things in the extremes but in shades of gray, because we all have value, and we should all be able to engage our dreams, but not at the expense of others’ dreams.

In your particular environment, insure that those around you are given the trust they need to succeed, and if you are in the position that someone entrusts you, make the most of it.  Insure you give back what you receive, and share that power as well, and create opportunities for others, and work together to make each other stronger.  Together we are greater than the sum of our parts.  That’s what synergy is all about.  Given the right amount of trust and taking responsibility for our actions (or our failures), we can grow and we can achieve excellence.

Posted by on January 23, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, Firefighter Nation, government, leadership, Major Incidents, motivation, News, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, revolution, Training & Development, US&R, USAR • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Command Presents

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Hilton Head Island Fire Station 7

Hilton Head Island Fire Station 7

It’s that time of the year that we hear the word “presents” often enough to make your ears bleed, so I was wondering if my misuse of the word “presents” got your attention. Apparently it did, or you wouldn’t be reading this now.  Or maybe you didn’t notice.   If you didn’t notice, go and look again: when we speak of “command presence”, we speak of the characteristics of the person in charge to lead from a strong, visible, and decisive point of view, not “presents” like a gift.  Having strong leader-like characteristics  as part of your daily personality could be a “present”, if your job is to be a leader.  It also could be very annoying to the people around you.

According to my family and friends, acquaintances, and the Myers-Briggs (and every other psych profile I’ve ever gone through), I exhibit decisive, directive behavior as part of my normal personality.  More often than I care to, my “command presence” comes out when I’m talking with my wife (she doesn’t like it), my kids (they’re not crazy about it either), or my colleagues (they probably think I’m insufferable anyway).  This just goes to show you there is a time and place for everything.  Explaining to your daughter the intricacies of math, for one, is probably not a good time to be strong, visible and decisive.

Likewise, when you are leading firefighters into emergency situations, it is not a time to be easy-going, reserved, and willing to compromise.  There are those out there who are; they are also the ones with crews free-lancing, poor accountability, mixed commands, and poor coordination.  These are also the ones who get people hurt and killed.

While you don’t have to be the second coming of Field Marshal Rommel, you should understand that the fireground or rescue scene is the place where only one person can be in charge.  Coupled with the observation that leadership abhors a vacuum, you can probably understand that if you fail to establish a clear picture of who is in charge, someone else will.  It’s not the act of having a fist fight to decide who that is; the only person who can be in charge is the legally responsible incident commander.  How that decision is made is pertinent to the laws of your jurisdiction, but if you have someone who can’t command, they probably shouldn’t be in that position.

All too often, I see failure in company officers who are “best buds” with their troops on a daily basis, and then can’t understand why there’s so much chaos on their incident scene.  It is simply because those people don’t necessarily see you as the “alpha dog”.  To them, you are just another “member of the pack”.  Other members of the pack don’t call the shots, the alpha dog does.  And like I said, if you aren’t filling that role, someone else is.  That person will also be the one that when things go south, everyone turns toward for the answers.

In this time of giving, give your subordinates a lesson in leadership.  Your leadership should set a positive example, a role model, if you will, for your aspiring officers.  Command and control is important on the emergency scene and failing to work with that does not instill confidence in the abilities of the IC.  It is essential that not only do your charges see you as a leader on the scene, but in the station as well, for if they do not, on the scene is a bad place for them to convince them of that.  Make it a “present” to the people you are responsible for teaching and watching over.  Give them the tools to lead others, and they will hopefully show you that they trust your leadership, and when the time comes, they will walk on that path as well.

Posted by on December 10, 2009 • Filed under: command, Command & Leadership, education, Firefighter Nation, Firefighting Operations, leadership, Major Incidents, officership, professionalism, rescue, safety, US&R • Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Distance Separates Us

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ladder talk webDistance separates us.  Of course it does, you are probably thinking.  That’s not that much of a revelation.  But distance separates us all the more so because by being distant, or more so, by not being alike, it also indicates a schism between you and I.  The fire and emergency services are united in our history, but at some point we evolved into many different representations of the same idea: service to others.  As to whether that space can be broached or not is the big question.  While we can all claim brotherhood and a desire to do this job, whether we are career or not; whether we are urban or not; whether we provide EMS or not; and a whole host of other differences keep us from effectively saying “We Are One”.

Over the past decade, the efforts Dave Iannone and Chris Hebert have put together brought a lot of us old crusties to the digital age.  These innovative experiences took firefighters (and non-firefighters) from around the world and brought us closer together.   But while this has been a good thing because I now know and can better understand the perspectives of a volunteer firefighter in Moosejaw, AK as well as a firie in New South Wales, Australia, it is saddening because I see some of what I had hoped not to see.

Although I was first promoted to officer rank in 1985, I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good officer.  Sure I could run tactics and make sure people were doing their jobs, but I lacked maturity and looking back on it, depth.   In 1988, my eyes were opened.  During a weekend seminar on Fire Service Leadership, Chief Harry Diezel (Ret, Virginia Beach Fire Department) opened my eyes and put me on the path that I have since continued along.  Twenty years ago, this guy said that networking was one of the single most important elements of leading. Yes, twenty years ago.

I quickly found out what firefighting was and was not about.  In that one class, I realized that there was firefighting, there was being a fire officer, and there was fire service leadership.  While I never had the opportunity to work with Chief Diezel, his words have never left me.  Although some of his ideas still are met with resistance from some of our colleagues and did that weekend from people in the class, the ideas have only been confirmed over the years to me as his concept of emergency service delivery made Virginia Beach one of the model departments of the Eighties.  Over the years, people like Howard Cross, a legendary instructor at the National Fire Academy, have also reinforced those concepts to me.

Like these individuals did for me, I have always wanted to do for others.  Firehouse Zen is part of that legacy.  I want others to look at this job with renewed perspective, to comprehend, rather than simply demonstrate knowledge.  To understand, rather than to just repeat memorized information.  To seek alternatives, to improve, and to be about positive change rather than to be about the status quo.

FireEMSBlogs.com is just a natural evolution of sharing this body of knowledge.  Dave and Chris have done a tremendous job to bring us together and to allow us to share experiences, to bond, and to better appreciate the situation each of us must face daily.  We have, however, light years ahead of us and so long as we refuse to acknowledge that our differences are actually a good thing, we will never be united.

To effect change, we must seek to understand.  To understand, we have to be presented with knowledge and that knowledge comes from others.  As the internet bridges the miles and brings our world closer together, we are finding that we share a lot more than we thought we had in common, and yet we also find ourselves unwilling to accept the views of others and even assault those who happen to share a contrarian view.  In order to grow, it is imperative that we open our minds and take the tools we are given, and use them to the best advantage.  Do us all a favor this year; point a colleague toward some of the networking opportunities out there, especially the one afforded by FireEMSBlogs.com, and tell them that there’s no time like the present to start working toward tomorrow.

Posted by on November 4, 2009 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, education, Firefighter Nation, leadership, National Fire Academy, politics, professionalism, revolution, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Science Is Your Friend

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While taking Honora to school a few days ago, Bob Edwards was speaking on NPR Radio with Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, the authors of the book, “Unscientific America”.  While the book apparently discusses “scientific illiteracy”, some of the commentary seemed applicable to what we currently endure in the fire service; clinging to tradition for tradition’s sake and the global ignorance of scientific findings that can improve our efficiency and safety.

The authors, in discussing their premise, suggested that the general populace isn’t stupid when it comes to science, they’re just disengaged.  The idea that they put forth is essentially that science needs to discover a way to get people to re-engage on the issues, which is not as easy as it might seem.  While the scientific community as a whole might not necessarily agree upon the ways to communicate their issues, for scientists and supporters of science to simply dismiss the “emotional side” (my quote) of others when it comes to scientific issues is turning their back on the problem.

In the early to middle parts of the last century, scientists were looked at as heroes.  Science brought us protection against disease; it brought us innovative fabrics and materials.  Science ushered in a nuclear age and took us to the Moon.  Science, however became pedestrian or became background noise.  Although Mooney and Kirshenbaum didn’t suggest it, I suggest that maybe we all began to take these accomplishments for granted.  Consider that every other time I upgrade my computer it becomes a third smaller and four times faster (and I seem to have to upgrade these bad boys about every two or three years).  While the laptop I am typing this on has 500 GB of storage, my first work computer back in 1988 had MAYBE a 120 megabyte hard drive.  Since I wasn’t so computer literate back then, I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much RAM it had.

While these technological miracles happen almost daily, maybe they’ve become a little too commonplace.  And of course, the unintentional wall established between science and the rest of us (maybe I’m a bad example) doesn’t afford any converts.  In fact, the authors discussed that Carl Sagan suffered considerable stigma from the scientific community because of his efforts to put science in a context others could understand.  The result was that he was considered to have “populist” (their quote) views and was somehow, not worthy of inclusion into the supporters of science.

What has happened is that science just isn’t as popular a subject.  Mooney stated that if you read the newspaper, “Science doesn’t beat the horoscope or the sports pages” among most people.  Along with the theory that your political view influences your perspective on science (I’d agree with that), especially in this day of deeply divided emotions about our nation and the people who run it, I’d bet that the thought of discussing some of these scientific endeavors (stem cell research, evolution, etc.) with some of your friends or family probably makes you uncomfortable, regardless of where you stand.  So it’s no question that science in many circles, isn’t exactly a hot topic of conversation.  In fact, unless you are surrounded by a bunch of like-thinkers, you might well avoid scientific discussion altogether.

So just as goes science as a discussion for us all, so goes the fire service for those of us within it.  Go to any firehouse and you’ll see some strong feelings on certain fire service topics.  For any of us to discuss deeply held beliefs about our fire service brings up some pretty raw emotion.  Depending where you sit on many of these issues, sometimes it is better to sit it out and watch the fighting than it is to engage.  Why is that?  Well, I know personally, while I don’t shy away from conflict, I am not interested in engaging in an all-out battle with anyone who just can’t see any side of the issues except the one they are on.  If I choose to remain open-minded and civil, so must you.  That doesn’t seem to prevent people from acting like assholes though (yeah, I said it).

Blogging and posting is a little unique.  The anonymity of being online seems to permit some of the less enlightened individuals to pipe up when they should probably just stick a sock in it and slink back to their corner.  Especially when I’m being lectured by some moron who has two or three years under his (or her) belt and all of a sudden, they are the subject matter expert du jour.  Since the privacy of the internet protects cowards and psychos from getting popped in the mouth if they cross the line, I’d just as soon focus on positive discussion, but it doesn’t seem to stop some of them.

The emergency service industry, as does the scientific community, must remain objective while considering the deeply held beliefs and traditions of those who came before us.  While it seems that logic should overturn any voodoo, the scientific community can’t be dismissive of the emotion attached to these beliefs, because they can be equally as powerful, and no scientist has really been able to explain that.

I’ve said before that I love the traditions of the fire service.  I come from four generations of firefighters and I am proud of that heritage.  But just as my grandfather and my father were renegades and agitating for change and improvement, so do I.  I’m happy to keep a roto-ray on the front of my engine, but I’m not so keen on rushing so quickly to a fire alarm that I flip a rig.  I guess that’s a tradition that seemed to occur a lot in the past that I’d just as soon leave behind.  And yes, there are some who still think that this is acceptable behavior, as do those who think risk/benefit analysis is for sissies.

If we really want change, we have to understand that it scares some people.  Being dismissive of their fears or their preconceived beliefs doesn’t bring them to us in harmony, it creates division.  Understanding how and why things do the things they do is just as important as understanding who we are and where we came from and how we got here.  Since most of you reading this already get “IT”, I’m probably preaching to the choir, but perhaps we can do a better job of reaching out to the dinosaurs and conveying our respect for the way things were done, as well as educating them on safe and effective practices.

Understand that although scientific exploration may bear out an idea and that idea is as right as rain, that same idea will remain locked up in your head somewhere if you’re unable or unwilling to frame the idea into something everyone can understand and eventually, embrace.  If I had the universal answer to all of our problems, I wouldn’t be sitting here asking you open-ended questions.  But it seems that the questions keep getting asked and we aren’t hitting on the answers.

As a brotherhood, we need to band together and discover what others have found before us.  That together we can work toward improving public safety while striving for our own safety as well.  That tradition is important, but it doesn’t supplant common sense.  And that science, in reaching out to find answers to our questions, has achieved a method of achieving logical approaches to many problems, but we have to sometimes choke back emotion and realize that improvement sometimes means walking away from the treasured, but flawed, reasoning of our past.

Posted by on October 1, 2009 • Filed under: change, command, customer service, education, fire service, Firefighter Nation, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, technology • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Turtles, Circumstances, and Change

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Hilton Head Engine 7Just this week, not only on our relatively quiet haven of Hilton Head Island, but right here in the community in which I live (Palmetto Dunes), comes a story which has become national news.  Before I knew it would be on CNN and everywhere else, I read in our Island Packet this article on a romantic proposal gone wrong, and the subsequent death of sea turtles.  Now while I never really thought I might read in the same article anywhere, the words “sea turtle”, “romance”, and “death”, you really might be wondering, “What does this have to do with the fire service?”  I can reassure you that it does. 

 

How it does is that it clearly illustrates the law of unintended circumstances.  I’d be willing to bet you that no one involved in this story desired to kill off 60 turtles and had no idea that their simple luminary tribute to the sanctity of marriage would touch off what ended up on the AP news feed.  But as a result of something they did, or might also be the case in our situation in fire and emergency services, didn’t do, there was heartache, conflict, and even injury and death.

 

Actions are taken in our fire stations and on emergency scenes on a daily basis that sometimes go badly, and I would venture to guess that 99.9% of actions that resulted in poor outcomes were purely unintentional.  However unintentional these actions (or inactions) are, though, our actions may have wide-ranging impact on our entire organization.  Our actions or inactions may not even be noticed today, or could end up as front page news.  We must constantly be vigilant of the actions we take and how they affect our current situation, and even more importantly, our team, our agency, and our customers.  What may seem insignificant to us may end up costing someone their life later.

 

Working together as a team, we have to have the courage and the ability to say, “Hey, that doesn’t look right” to our colleagues, and they should also be able to say it to us.  It’s a basic tenet of crew resource management.  Fostering this attitude in your team requires cultural and social change, especially in our traditional paramilitary hierarchy.  Our most important role in this concept is awareness of the things we do and importantly enough, to do things right, as well as to be open to the suggestion from others that we should be doing something differently.

 

Being in the position of a transformational leader requires more than being right, it requires us to be open to the idea that we might not be.  As part of a team, when we make a mistake, we must strive to understand what occurred and what the results were, so that we and others don’t repeat that mistake.  When we mistakenly lay off blame we don’t really learn from the mistake. 

 

I had a driver once who had a minor accident with the apparatus we were assigned to.  It was obviously a result of a failure for someone else to do their job.  But he owned that situation and every time he pulled out of the station from then on out, I noticed him looking to insure it never happened again.  It is imperative for us to understand our shortcomings (hey, I have many), own them, and resolve to do better next time. 

 

I’d say that if that couple ever does decide to re-visit our Island again, they’ll never forget to blow out the candles when leaving the beach.  It’s called a watershed moment,  In our lives, it is one thing, but when we have one of these events occur while operating as part of a team we are tasked with leading, it is a requirement that we critique it, learn from it, and resolve to not let it happen again.

Posted by on September 25, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, Firefighter Nation, General, leadership, Media Relations, officership, professionalism, revolution, safety • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tribes

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I’ve been pretty busy lately so I haven’t been able to post.  Something about the end of summer, doing deliveries and computer stuff for my wife’s company, doing the initial planning and contacts for our annual Down Syndrome Buddy Walk, and of course, getting the kids back to school.  With all of that, something really important is also this weekend, the beginning of football season.

When I met my wife almost 20 years ago, I’ll admit, I was not as much of a college football fan as I was of the NFL.  But my very subtle leanings toward the Notre Dame Fighting Irish became pretty intense as a result of my wife’s having attended the University, as well as much of her family.  It was in becoming part of the Powers clan that I learned much more about the University of  ”Our Mother” and really more than what I saw on TV that I liked.  I learned more about what the University means to the alums (and to us “subway alumni”) because of their adherence to higher standards, standards that may not have recently evolved into winning on the football field, but standards that have resulted in producing people of integrity, faith, and dedication.

But this isn’t a blog about that.  This blog is about tribes.  The “tribe” that I am a member of, those of Notre Dame fans, is so because of what the University means to me.  It’s not because the number of games in the win column (although that’s nice), it’s because of what they stand for.  There aren’t names on the backs of their shirts because it’s not about the individual, it’s about the team.  The student-athletes at the Univeristy of Notre Dame are expected to graduate; they’re not just taking up a scholarship for the purpose of winning.  When I wear a shirt identifying me as a supporter of Notre Dame, it’s because of my pride in the school and the product it turns out; from the people I have met, those would be educated, compassionate, involved people.  I am proud of my association with the University, even if it is only as a supporter and not an alumni.

Why do people wear shirts or hats or anything with a logo on it?  Generally, it’s because they identify with the group or product that the logo represents.  People wear logos or get tattoos often because they are trying to send a subtle (or not so subtle) message; “I relate to this advertisement”.  People put stickers on their cars for the same reasons.  They are trying to say, more often than not, “I like what this represents”.

Why do we wear firefighter logos or tats?  Why do we sport “colors” even when we don’t have to?  I live in a resort community and often I’ll be shopping at the supermarket and see someone wearing a t-shirt with a FD logo on it.  I always ask- “You on the job?”  Surprisingly enough, some of them are not.

We identify with our fire service identity because it is meaningful to us.  If it were not, we would certainly not advertise it.  If we worked with the “Loser Fire Department”, something tells me we wouldn’t wear their shirt when we were off duty.  We’d probably wear someone else’s.  Or maybe we wear the shirt of another department simply because we identify with them as brother firefighters.  I have a shirt that is one of my most prized possessions, the shirt a Capitan Miguel of “Cuerpos de Bomberos y Rescate, Cancun, Quintana Roo” told a firefighter to take off and give to me when his own shirt didn’t fit me.  I can’t even imagine that happening here in the States and interestingly enough, the same thing happened to my brother in Dublin, Ireland.

So the short version of this is, if we are so proud to associate with each other as brother firefighters, why is it that we continue to battle each other over trivial items and fail to band together to achieve greatness?  Even when we realize that we have more in common than we don’t, we continue to bicker and we fail to get together to realize gains in important issues, like sprinkler legislation, fire prevention, embracing accountability and incident management strategies, and especially in firefighter safety.

Then, what makes things even worse, is when we have people who bring disgrace to what we value.  People who represent themselves as members of our brotherhood who do things contrary to our mission, by setting fires or calling in false alarms, because they are “bored”.  People who steal from their brother firefighters, and people who say they are something when they are not, and in doing so, short-change those who HAVE earned the right to wear the badge or the patch.  And of course, people who wear the colors but don’t train and don’t work toward betterment of of their team, people who are just filling a spot.

Although I never went to Notre Dame, I realize that when I am wearing a logo on my shirt that says I support Notre Dame, that in some small way, I do represent what that stands for, even though anyone with a few bucks can go down the street and buy one easily enough.  But when I am in a crowd and I see someone wearing something with an “ND” on it, I yell, “GO IRISH!” to them and in a lot of cases, the person ends up stopping and talking to me about the University, or this year’s team, or the last time they were on campus.  We have an immediate friendship because of our common interest and of course, our view as to what is good about our “team” is often something we share.

When you are wearing your colors, your fire department colors, are you saying something good about your organization?  Are you trying to tell others that you are proud to be associated with that group? Or worse, are you ashamed to be wearing anything identifying you as part of your organization because of what they are and what they stand for?  if so, perhaps you should consider associating yourself with a different team.  I think if you wear the colors, but constantly bad-mouth the organization, then you probably should look really hard at what it is that you think the team is about and ask yourself if you really do want to continue being associated with that group.  Maybe it’s a message to move on.

We don’t wear items that associate us with things we detest.  We may not be completely in love with whatever it is that we happen to be wearing, but I can reassure you, no one wants to wear ANYTHING that has any identification with something they hate.  So if you like it enough to wear it, and that patch happens to be the trademark of the organization you are a part of, shouldn’t you be doing whatever it is that YOU can do to make that team better, or at least showing that you endorse what that group is all about?

When I put on a blue t-shirt that happens to come from your organization, I can reassure you, I wear it because I have a lot of pride in the fire service, enough pride that when someone says to me, “You on the job?”, I say back, “Yeah, I’m a firefighter”.  How many other jobs are out there where people do that?

Posted by on September 5, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, Firefighter Nation, firefighting, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, officership, professionalism • Tagged: , , , , , , ,

(Insert Task Here) For Dummies

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IMG_0144 webI’ve been very busy working on my wife’s company’s website and unable to really spend any time blogging lately.  That’s probably a good thing as I really have wanted to learn a little more about creating sites from scratch (or close enough, using Dreamweaver) but found it to be much harder at first than I thought it would be.  I created a whole bunch of sites several years ago which caught the attention of many of you (the old HHIFR Station 6 – The Icehouse website as well as one for each of our stations, etc.) using a VERY user friendly online program.  Then when someone decided to jack up the price on the site hosting and it ultimately started to come out of my own pocket, I just let it close down.

But anyway, since then I have undertaken several web management and development projects and the long story short, I had to purchase the book “Dreamweaver for Dummies”.  It really opened up the door and now I am making much more headway than I had at all before.

I have contemplated a “Firefighting for Dummies” book, but I’m not sure that’s a good thing.  Or how about “Paramedic Certification For Dummies”?  As I’m writing this, someone is probably stealing my idea, but I’m afraid itn not likely that any fire academies or paramedic training institutions out there are going to spend big bucks recommending a book to their students that suggests they are dummies (I think the books are mostly of the “self-help” genre).

So anyway, as I was writing this, I’m watching the news and on a neighboring island, there have been a significant number of drownings this summer.  Now the video-journalist shoots a picture of the beach and on it there are not one, not two, but FOUR signs warning people about the rip currents, etc.  I’d bet there’s more, but the segment had to fit in people talking and stuff.  There’s talk now about educating the tourists and other beachgoers.

Any time that you have multiple signs on anything warning about something and people disregard the warnings, something tells me an education message isn’t going to do much more than heap onto the pile of ignored information.  I don’t know what the answer is.  Think anyone hanging out at the beach would like to purchase an advance copy of “Beaching for Dummies”? 

When we put people through a training academy and we tell them about the safety issues of our job, then educate them on a daily basis, warn them with little tags and signs on the equipment we use and the apparatus we ride, and put posters in stations, etc. and unsafe behavior continues, is it an education issue or an attitudinal issue?  There’s a favorite question someone asked in a seminar I was in once, as to whether the problem a subordinate had was a commitment issue or a competence issue.  The difference, he said, was, “if you were to put a loaded and cocked .45 to the head of the person and said, ‘do the task’, if they could then do the task, the issue wasn’t a competence issue, it was a commitment issue”.

Now I certainly don’t advocate trying this at home, but it kinda makes for an interesting point.  Because the issues I am discussing here are the ability for personnel to take precautions regarding safety issues, it really is an issue of life or death and yet there are those who choose to challenge the odds anyway.  So is it really a competence issue?  Is it a commitment issue?  I’d suggest that it’s the challenge of “it can’t happen to me”.

Despite the warnings, despite the education, and the despite the dangerous nature of our jobs, firefighters continue to exhibit risky behavior when no value is gained by their doing so.  Something as routine as buckling your seatbelt doesn’t take away from the glory and excitement of going to a working fire, yet firefighters are killed and injured every year because they fail to do it.

It puzzles me as to why people continue to do things that are contrary to common sense.  Hell, I’m one of them.  But there are things I do that I know will save my life and I make it a point to share those tips with people on a regular basis, and yet I see those same people ignoring that advice and getting hurt.  Maybe we do need a “Firefighting for Dummies” book.

Posted by on August 17, 2009 • Filed under: change, education, fire service, leadership, professionalism, safety, Uncategorized • Tagged: , , , , ,

Finally, No More Begging

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Hilton Head Training Center FLAG PropFor the past year or so, our department has been building a training facility of our own.  We officially dedicated it on the 29th and christened some of the props with a little demonstration burn to wow the VIPs who came out to celebrate with us.  It’s a nice facility and was designed with more than just training in mind, given our organization’s desire to find multiple uses for things.  The site was designed to also be an effective staging location for after hurricanes, or to be used as a distribution center in the event of the same, and can support our semi-annual HAZMAT roundup.  But to me, one of the best things is no more begging.

For years, we have had to improvise when it came to training.  It’s difficult to motivate someone into working at “drill speed” when they are flowing a handline into the woods and pretending it’s a burning building.  While we have gotten good at being creative, I sometimes felt like my kids, pretending to be a firefighter while spraying a garden hose at an azalea.

To me, there aren’t too many more exciting sounds then the “whoosh” made by LDH coming out of the bed and punctuated with the ding of a coupling hitting the pavement every 100 feet.  Or the sounds of hose being coupled and the background noise of a roaring fire.  And even though we will be using predominantly theatrical smoke in the tower, there’s really no substitute for dragging a charged line through zero-visibility and not having to worry about marking up the walls or carpet of the hotel or timeshare willing to permit us a little realism that day.

Every time one of our more motivated instructors wanted to insert some live action into their training, for the most part, it required an act of Congress.  Not to mention that although you can’t get much better than live fire training in an acquired structure for some good scenarios, between the asbestos mitigation and all the other associated permitting, by the time it was done, one or two days of burning and then cleaning up afterward just doesn’t hold the magic of being able to light off in the burn room and being able to mop up by flowing your streams into the sloped-floor drain designed for just that task.

If you come down our way, come by and see it.  We have a lot to be proud of.  And we certainly appreciate the support of the community in helping us get there.  In the end, they are the ones who will benefit the most, though, because as a result of our new acquisition, the training calendar is already filling up with companies who want to practice in a real facility, and not by having to imagine the environment they might be working in.

Posted by on July 30, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, rescue, Uncategorized • Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Innovation Distinguishes Between Leaders and Followers

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Safely chocking those wheels.

Safely chocking those wheels.

If you didn’t know, that’s a quote from Steve Jobs (I didn’t).  I was sitting in the office of our Deputy Chief/Ops, reading a magazine while he finished up a meeting, and I saw that quote.  I liked it a lot and wanted to share it with you.

The quote was being used by David White, the editor of Industrial Fire World, in this month’s editorial, where he is discussing “evolution vs. intelligent design”.  His point was that while it is fantastic we have these newfangled radios and all, they’re really not worth anything if we can’t talk to anyone on them because they’re too complicated to use. What’s more, while we have been wrestling with interoperable communications for eons (I mean, look at the Tower of Babel and all), we have another situation that merits a technological solution: tracking firefighter location inside a burning structure.

While some of this stuff is a little out of my immediate reach, there are tools used daily around us that don’t get used to their full efficiency.  Take for example, that little bundle of software you probably have on your computer right there in front of you.  If you’re like me, you have some sort of office pack with a word processing application, a spreadsheet application, and a database application.  In most total office packages, I would surmise that they are interoperable between each other.  I’d be willing to bet you that most fire stations these days have computer workstations and in each of those you also have some sort of interoperable office pack.

How many of you are proficient at using these programs, not just as stand-alone applications, but in concert with one another?  Can you create a table in Excel and transfer it to Word?  Can you create an Access database and then query it to get information, then export it to Excel to create graphs and tables for presentations?

I was at a “presentation” the other day, and the person was trying to influence a governmental body into giving their project funding.  While the speaker was disorganized, what was more appalling is that in this day and age, there weren’t any supporting slides or visuals to reinforce their points.  There’s that whole theory of how much you retain by hearing and seeing something in comparison to just hearing it or just seeing it that you learned in Instructor I (one more reason for requiring this kind of a course as a pre-requisite for Fire Officer I: it teaches you how to communicate to an audience).  You’d think that by now someone might have retained that information themselves.  If you care enough about your project that you’re willing to get up in front of a whole bunch of people to discuss it, why wouldn’t you try to SELL it?

If you want to be a leader, it’s not just about surviving, it’s about EXPERIENCING.  You have to stretch and pull, not push.  You don’t see the lead climber at the back of the pack, do you?  They’re the one forging the way, finding the path, and establishing the precedence.  You have to get out ahead of people to lead them and the way to do that in places other than on the battlefield is to be innovative and thinking about new ways to do things, and learning and finding out the better way up, not by taking the same path everyone else takes.

To be a real leader requires creativity and more than anything, the ability to manage in a dynamic environment.  If you are willing to be flexible and change with the conditions that present themselves, people will look to you for the answers when they don’t have them.  This isn’t just from your subordinates, either, this will very likely come from your superiors as well.

There’s a question I once heard on The West Wing, “Would you rather be ‘The Man’, or ‘The Man that The Man Goes To’?”  If you are a subordinate who desires to be considered a leader (or wishes to have real influence), consider that premise.  I hear from people all the time who complain that they wish their boss was a better leader and I always say, “Why don’t you fill that spot?”  Leadership abhors a vacuum.  If the appointed or legitimate leader fails to lead, someone will.  If that place is filled by you, insure that you cement your value to the boss and the rest of the crew by being a positive, motivated, seeker of truth and knowledge.

If you care enough about your job that you want to lead, you should consider that leading requires more effort than following. A lot of that effort is learning how to be ahead of everyone else in the pack, especially when it comes to improving your condition and by employing creativity to do a safer and more effective job.  Be proactive and be the best at what you do.  if you do that, I can reassure you, with a good attitude, people will come knocking on your door for the answers.

Posted by on July 28, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, firefighting, government, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, revolution, safety • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Reserving Our Scorn for the Deserving

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Hot Day on the Training Ground

Hot Day on the Training Ground

I know that I am one of the chief purveyors of snarkiness as a means of combating the less-than-professional element in our midst.  I guess that just because I have a personal vision of what I’d like to see the fire service evolve into, there are those out there who also have a vision of well-lit POVs and thumping bass stereo in their engines as what is considered to be worthy of discussion.  However, just as many other red-blooded males of the species, I’m okay with crushing my enemies, seeing them driven before me, and hearing the lamentations of their women.  To each his own, I suppose.

So the dilemma, I guess, is which battles need to be fought and to what degree.  This then relates to what level of sarcasm should be employed when you are trying to point out that someone is discussing what we consider to be bizarre or to the extreme and we are trying to point out that yes, they are an idiot.  As I have found out over the years(and especially recently), the degree of snarkiness should probably be limited when dealing with the less fortunate, the disadvantaged, and the criminally insane.

As to why we blog or write, there are different reasons, of course.  I am not interested in blogging for the interest of stirring up hate and discontent, except as it goes to encourage spirited but civil debate over subjects that require deeper thought.  So for me, my reason for writing and expecting feedback is to ask questions to challenge the minds of others, in an effort to learn more and to grow. 

Some people blog and posts to hear themselves speak.  Just as when we must tolerate the gas from a nearby infant, what comes out of the mouths of some of these people may stink, but just as we wouldn’t flame a child for passing an offensive cloud in our direction, we must consider the source of some of these scratchings (“writings” would be pretty charitable for some) and be relatively tolerant. 

Likewise, no amount of clever rhetoric is going to get you back the thousands you’ll have to spend defending a frivolous lawsuit.  What it really all comes down to is that we must decide for ourselves what is harmless and what is dangerous, and go after the dangerous and ill-advised.  All other discussion is probably wasted because with some of these individuals, no amount of logic will sway them from their misdirected viewpoint.

I guess my measurement on deciding which individuals should be dealt with would be that there are those whose views are derived either because of laziness (and reluctance to change because it would require them to do something other than to take up space), those who are as a result of ego or greed guarding their domain (and reluctant to change because it would cost them their position in our “society”), those who are defrauding others (for whatever reason, again as a result of ego or greed, aware that change would cause people to analyze their claims), and the malicious.

Believe it or not, I don’t find too many people in our business that fit into the category of deserving of a flame attack.  In most of the cases I have found where I am dealing with someone who gets my temper to flare up, after a few moments of deep breathing I have found that they fit into the category of the misinformed.  The question then is, are they receptive to education, or is it me who needs to be educated?  After all, maybe I’m the one who was misinformed or misunderstood the issue.  The key, I have found, is that both parties need to be open to civil discourse and willing to appreciate the viewpoint of their counterpart.  It is in this area where I find many of us, including myself, to need improvement.

By checking our emotions at the door and getting to the point of the discussion, figuring out the difference between factual information and rhetoric, we achieve enlightenment.  Let me paraphrase something from the Tao Te Ching; the useful part of a jar isn’t the jar, it is the empty space within the jar.  Unless we are willing and able to understand someone else’s position on a subject, no matter how right or wrong, we will not be able to teach someone the truth, or appreciate the truth ourselves.  In understanding how someone comes to a conclusion, we can then effectively show the way, if that is what is necessary, or we can be shown the way.

I may have lost some of you with that, but it is in this that you can probably see the point better.  When was the last time you were completely convinced that something was the truth, only to find out after time that you were wrong?  So in that interim, did you find yourself defending that “truth” to the point of being uncivil to another?  How did you feel then about what you said or did that may have been to defend your position, only to find out now that you were wrong?  Did you regret your actions?

There is an eastern tradition that the victorious should be be magnanimous in victory and as much as possible, allow the defeated to save face.  In doing so, you secure allies and you earn respect.  If you trot around like T.O. after a touchdown after winning your point, be reassured that if you are ever wrong, it will be rubbed in your face (like I wish someone would do to T.O.).  When you are convincing someone of your point, you’ll find it to be a good move to win them over rather than to point out their folly and subsequently, you’ll find that you gain trust and respect as well.

It may feel good to be snarky and rub someone’s face in their ignorance (I enjoy it), but after a while, you’ll find it to be a hollow victory.   I’m sure we can all agree we should never attack the unarmed, and in a battle of wits, that is the root cause of much of the problem. So instead of being smug about our victory, maybe we should celebrate together that we have another convert to our cause.  That seems to be a more appropriate celebration anyway.

Posted by on July 27, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism, revolution, safety • Tagged: , , , , ,

Why Yell?

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IMG_1146I’m Mick, and I yell.  I think this is the part where you all are supposed to say, “Hi Mick.”  Why do we yell?  I started to say, “I’m a yeller”, but that doesn’t sound right.  And I don’t scream.  Screaming to me indicates panic or total loss of personal control.  But anyone who knows me knows I have a little bit of a fuse and when you light it, I’m liable to say some things I wouldn’t intentionally repeat around the God-fearin’ folk.

This blog is as much about therapy as it is for education and sometimes the questions I ask are actually me asking myself the question (did that make sense?).  Why yell?  Well, I guess the simplest way to say it is that I yell when I am frustrated.  I guess in a bit of self-analysis, I should ask, who gives me the right to yell except me?  Who made me the arbiter of all things?  Does the yelling solve anything? In short, I probably don’t really have a right to yell and the yelling only solves things when the recipient gets the message.

So it sounds like it’s more of a communication problem.  I don’t really yell when I don’t get my own way.  I yell when it is apparent to me that someone isn’t paying attention or I yell back when someone is yelling at me.  When someone isn’t paying attention in most cases, I get angry because I feel like the other person is being selfish and acting in a manner that doesn’t show consideration for others.  It’s funny, because I don’t nearly get as angry about someone wronging me as when I see someone wrong someone else.  And when someone is yelling at me, I guess I’m inclined to yell back because when I screw something up, I take it to heart and simmer over it for a while.  So you don’t have to yell at me, I get it.  And if you don’t get that I get it, I begin to yell too.

Generally, I am an empathetic man, and when I finish yelling, I wonder why I did it in the first place, and more often than not, I feel badly about it.  I don’t CHOOSE to yell.  I guess that’s the powerlessness coming out.  Just as a three-year-old will lash out when no one understands what they want, I guess yelling is a form of emotional immaturity that we need to choke back.  But how else then can we communicate what it is we need when the subject doesn’t seem to be listening?

The problem at the heart of this truly is communication.  If all the laws of effective communications came together like they are supposed to, we wouldn’t have to yell.  We tend to yell when there is a lot of noise, and by noise, I’m not just talking audible noise, but distractions – problems at home, busy schedule, not feeling well, etc. I suppose the key is to either find a way to effectively drill through the problem or to postpone the communication until a more appropriate time.

I’d just as soon never yell again, but unfortunately, I’m in a business where sometimes things go seriously wrong and people die when orders aren’t understood.  If you aren’t paying attention on the fireground, I’d rather yell at you then see you fall through the roof, so please bear with me.  And I have three young children at home, none of whom seem to be inclined to pick anything up when they are done with it, so as much effort as I have put into not yelling at home, it’s inevitable that it will happen again.  I suppose it all really comes down to a matter of perspective.  If I don’t yell at home, the result might be a dirty house.  If I don’t yell at work, someone might die.

But just like commercials and other annoying things, too much completely ruins the effectiveness of it.  If I yelled all the time (other than everyone staying away from me), the intended recipients just see it as another crazy rant.  I know people who like to yell at me (a lot) and while at first it bothered me, now it is just so much background noise.  So if yelling a lot isn’t working, I guess the key observation would be that you should save your yelling for when it is absolutely necessary, else it will have no impact whatsoever on your chosen yellee.

I guess this brings us full circle then.  Is yelling effective?  Why yell?  It almost seems counterintuitive to suggest that yelling will cause people to NOT listen to you, but if you do too much of it, chances are that you are headed right down that path.  So some advice- take a deep breath, put the problem into perspective, and decide if yelling is even worth it.  On occasion, it might be.  But the likely scenario is that by the time you consider all that, the problem individual has moved on already and you may have even cooled off.  So think hard before you use a shotgun to kill a housefly.  Save the yelling for the completely necessary events only.  My audiologist thanks you.

Posted by on July 12, 2009 • Filed under: customer service, education, fire service, leadership, officership, professionalism, safety, Uncategorized • Tagged: , , , , , ,

Star of Life Law Blog

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I am encouraged by some of the blogs that are going on out there right now and I try to throw a link to the good ones over on the side over there (you know, over THERE, on your right).  A great one that popped up in the past few days has some serious merit; the Star of Life Law blog by my friend and colleague Pete Reid, who is not only a practicing lawyer but a practicing paramedic.  I am a man who has braved some serious fires and disasters, dove into alligator and shark infested waters (not at the same time), and fathered three girls, but if there is a subject that strikes fear in the hearts of all of us, and that’s the legal side of the business.  It’s likely because we don’t fully understand it, but given the few posts Pete already has on there, he has the opportunity to help us at least stay out of trouble.

As I posted before, a quote from a lawyer on lawyers:

“Lawyers are like vultures – most people look upon the vulture as a vile creature, eating carcasses and garbage, reprehensible to watch.  However, if there were no vultures, think about all of the roadkill that would rot on the highways, in the forests, and elsewhere.  Vultures take care of the messes we find distasteful.  If people would just get along and deal with each other in a civil manner, we wouldn’t need lawyers.” (Judge Thomas Kemmerlin, in a Leadership Hilton Head session)

While Pete is certainly not a vile creature (he’s actaully a really nice guy), he does offer a perspective on the legal side of emergency services that I hope to include in our discussions on here, because after all, he’s the lawyer.  If people didn’t sue people, we wouldn’t need lawyers, but if we do our job, we shouldn’t have to worry about being sued either.  Unfortunately, that’s not always the case and frivolous lawsuits cost a lot of money to defend, money that I’m sure most of us have allocated for more important things, like food and a mortgage.  So learn, educate others, and protect yourself.  Go check it out.

Posted by on July 10, 2009 • Filed under: change, education, fire service, government, leadership, officership, professionalism, US&R • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Case for Credentialing – Answering Your Comments

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I hate to break free in the middle of this series like this, but there were some comments made that I wanted to discuss.  Since one is on one post and the other is on another post, I felt the need to tie them together and talk really quickly to the issue.

On June 15, Steve said:

Yes, credentials would help but WHO is the final authority on issuing them? WHO sets the standards? How are you going to avoid the age old paid vs volunteer bias in any credentialing agency?

My quick answer: I am against the bias in the career vs. volunteer.  If you can meet the standard, you can meet the standard.  I think there is plenty of room for volunteers, especially in disaster response.  So some career guy is going to tell me my docs can’t be part of the team because they aren’t career guys somewhere?  And I have said in regard to SC-TF1, where I do have some pull, if one person in a one-station volunteer department down the road wants to be part of our team, we need to let him if he meets our criteria (background check, physical agility, etc.)  As Ray Wilkinson, our past Director once said, “I can teach someone to break rocks, what I can’t teach is desire.”  If someone wants to do the job, and goes through the requirements to meet a position, why should I care if he’s a member of FDNY or of Acme Fire Department?  So Steve, I’m with ya, brother.

On June 16, Kevin said:

I live in a state where there is no agency tasked with certifying or credentialing Search and Rescue dogs. I have seen (many times) where someone will buy lights for their POV and load their pet dog into the truck and call themselves a SAR team! If I didn’t know better, I might think all volunteer SAR teams were like this. However, there are a number of excellent non-governmental SAR teams in my state as well. I myself and a member of a volunteer K9 team.

Kevin goes on to say that they have a volunteer K9 SAR team because there isn’t an existing asset and law enforcement has asked for it.  Well, Kevin, as they say in Australia, “good on ya”.  You have identified a need and you have tried to meet that need.  No one else has that asset and it sounds like you have tried to do a good job of using accepted industry standards to meet the need.  THAT is good stuff.

However, I just went to discuss the concept of “those of us who want to do this right, but there are people with authority screwing things up so we can’t get in”, and realized that the post I wrote for that last week never posted as scheduled!  So that is now on the post schedule and I hope it does discuss some of the feelings I personally have in that regard. 

On June 16th, SAR Volunteer also commented:

I totally agree with your points. Please understand this are a handful of small volunteer K9 SAR teams in the state of SC who do NOT self deploy, do NOT work for anyone but the proper state or municipal authorities, train hard, carry their own liability and workmenscomp insurance, align their standards with NIMS Resource Typing, and are working to ensure they meet the proposed credentialing requirements.

And to you too, SAR Vollie, I applaud your efforts.  I think there is a place for the small volunteer K9 teams at the table as well, if they meet a standard.  Let’s take SC-TF1 again for example.  I have said over and over again, if we have people out there who want to do this stuff, let’s get them involved.  But not being a canine guy, I have some difficulty understanding some of the things the canine types are telling me.  So when I get national experts telling me one thing, and some guy with Rover in a pickup truck (or Expedition, as it were) saying his dog can detect live scent, cadavers, lost pets, and get a beer and catch a frisbee, understand that I am skeptical.  And the self-deploying thing is just purely bad in my book, but that’s a whole other issue as well that doesn’t stop with canine SAR teams, and DOES include career guys, departments, and organized teams, etc.  Frankly, if you (SAR Vollie) or anyone else in SC have dogs trained to find LIVE HUMANS in collapsed or damaged buildings, and feel like you can meet a standard, send me an e-mail.  I’d love to hear from you.  But anyone who calls themselves “Urban Search and Rescue” and they are running around doing wilderness searches, well, go back to my box of rocks comment.  Be what you say you are.

Anyway, I hope this illustrates some of the issues considered so far and we’ll get back on track with the next post (which should have published before the last one- go figure).  Please continue with your comments.  I certainly appreciate your perspectives.  Stay safe.

Posted by on June 16, 2009 • Filed under: change, command, credentialing, DHS, education, FEMA, government, leadership, National Fire Academy, NIMS, officership, politics, professionalism, rescue, safety, SAR, Uncategorized, US&R, USAR • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Case for Credentialing – The Spontaneous Bystander

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First, we have the genuine thing, the spontaneous bystander, who sees a need for action, then does something about it.  Rescue911 commented on the story of the Good Samaritan and how a traveler, with no reason to do so other than to help his fellow man, went out of the way to assist another.  This lends a certain amount of credibility to the discussion that nothing should prohibit people who wish to help others in their time of need.  Now realize, of course, when I am referring to these individuals, I am referring to people who just have a desire to help their neighbors and do the right thing.

 Quarantelli discusses the social aspects of the emergent response of spontaneous bystanders in Katrina, but also in the Guadalajara gasoline spill and fire.  There is also discussion on the subject by Kirschenbaum that the current philosophy of governmental and NGO response to disasters effectively dilutes the response of neighbors and has resulted in an over-reliance on these agencies to provide assistance.  After all, man has been besieged by disasters since time immemorial and it’s not like they had FEMA to come to the rescue back in biblical times.

There’s something very beautiful (albeit, chaotic) in the spontaneous response of the altruistcally motivated.  But call me skeptical, I see a lot of response from people who claim that altruism is their motive, but I’m not seeing that generosity of spirit coming out when they’re busy operating video cameras to sell tape to the media or taking souvenirs, rather than manning a sand-bag line.  More about THAT kind of person later.

There are indeed a few challenges with this kind of emergent response, problems that if resolved, would go a long way toward goodwill with the community in general (it seems like everyone’s got some kind of beef with FEMA in every disaster, despite their extraordinary efforts to educate people that they need to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on the government), and provide resources to the jurisdictionally responsible agencies that seem to be strapped for bodies when the big one rolls around to their neighborhood.

The main problem faced by those of us in the disaster community when it comes to spontaneous response, is the fact that as the designated adult supervision at these events, we have a responsibility to insure not only mitigation (or depending on the complexity and scope, control) of the incident, but the safety of those who were not necessarily part of the problem before, but now are. 

Let’s step down a wee bit and look at it from the perspective of the first-due engine arriving at the scene of a water rescue.  Let’s even go further to relieve the complication of the situation, and let’s say this is a static water body and it’s just one person involved.  Now I understand that the vast majority of those of you reading the are responders, so bear with me as I educate those who are not.

If, as the officer of the first arriving fire apparatus on scene, we have a single person in need of assistance in a pond (or lagoon as we call them here on Hilton Head Island), it’s really just a cut-and-dried approach to the situation.  Providing we have the resources (water rescue equipment, trained and prepared personnel), it’s a matter of assessing the scene, determining the problem, solving and planning a solution, and putting the solution into action.

Our problem, however, is that more often than not, it isn’t that easy.  In a lot of cases, when we roll up, there are people in the water trying to make a rescue.  In a lot of cases, one or two of these people are now ALSO in distress.  There are bystanders who are interfering with the operation because they don’t understand that standing for a second and looking over the scene for additional hazards is necessary so that we ourselves don’t also become part of the problem (“WHY AREN’T YOU DOING SOMETHING?!!!”).  There are those who parked their vehicle in our way so they could get a better look.  These days there are people video taping so they can sell it to the media or even better, catch you doing something wrong.  Without beating this horse too much, suffice it to say that there are a whole lot of other things going on here.

Now how, you might ask, does this apply to me as a spontaneous responder?  Well, the video taping and the access issues aside (you are a Good Samaritan, after all), let’s go to that first issue: those of you in the water.  Think for a moment, while you are in front of your computer, why this person got into trouble to begin with.  It might very well mean that they can’t swim.  It might be, however, that there is another danger you don’t see.  Thus the need for experienced and equipped responders who can provide an effective rescue.  There is an oft-quoted saying in the confined space rescue community, that 50% of the victims in confined space emergencies are the first responders.  These are often well-intentioned, but less-than-educated or undisciplined responders who failed to take into account the dangers associated with space entry themselves.

My whole reason for saying this is that while most of us in the response community can certainly appreciate the bystander response to an emergency, there are cases upon cases in every aspect of disaster and technical rescue response where the spontaneous bystander response in and of itself became an additional rescue mission for us on our arrival.

So, how can the person who doesn’t have a desire to be part of an organized response help?  Take CPR and first aid courses.  Attend a seminar on what to do in a disaster.  Know that there are other ways to help (“throw, tow, row” come to mind BEFORE “go”).  Put your name on a volunteer reserve list or call your local jurisdiction and ask if there is some way to help if needed.  But more importantly than anything, when you are inclined to go and help, if the legally authorized incident commander (or their designee) gives you an assignment, no matter how mundane, it is what they DO need done for the management of the incident.  You may not understand or appreciate the IC’s request, but in our eyes, there may very well be a method of allowing you to contribute at your level of expertise and to permit your contributions without adding to the complexity of the situation (when something goes wrong and you aren’t equipped or prepared).

This all being said, in times of disaster, people do want to help and the response community has to be proactive enough to have a mechanism for channeling the energy of these responders.  The big issue in my eyes is to make sure people know in advance what they can do, create programs to educate lay responders, and tap them when you can to promote interest.  Furthermore, it is a good practice to identify a place they can report to and get information on them, credential them to the extent possible, and assign them according to their quickly-identified expertise.

I will tie this into the argument about credentialing later, but this is the first discussion regarding the “interested parties” against the argument for credentialing, so be on the lookout for the next post.  Thanks and feel free to comment or help illustrate your view on the subject.

Posted by on June 2, 2009 • Filed under: change, credentialing, DHS, education, FEMA, fire service, government, leadership, professionalism, rescue, safety, SAR, US&R, USAR • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,