SC-TF1 Demobilizing From Chalmette, LA after Hurricane Katrina, 2005.

I was pretty self-conscious about that decision, even though nobody knew who answered each question and nobody would have known it was me that graded us so. I actually thought about it long afterward, in an attempt to understand in my absolute certainty with 10 seconds on the clock, that we deserved the highest mark on a standard grade. It was, frankly, a little presumptuous of me.

The quick answer is that we don’t deserve an “A”. We are definitely customer oriented and we are definitely aggressive firefighters who use best practices and manage our risk appropriately. We are definitely on the leading edge of EMS delivery and while we are not THE organization by which all should be measured, many would be doing pretty well to do so.

But while we are definitely making huge strides and we have many accomplishments, we aren’t where we feel we should be. That is universally agreed upon in our organization. There is just too much to do, and while we are hitting the high priority items, there are so many things we want to do, and have begun doing, but there are only 24 hours in a day and finite resources otherwise at our disposal.

It is for the same reason, perhaps, that I should instead embrace the criticism of some in the knowledge that the minute we stop reassessing our service we become complacent. Don’t believe for a second that I don’t take the criticism personally, because although I shouldn’t, I do. Just as you know all the idiosyncrasies of your own children, you’d never stand for anyone else criticizing them. And, after 29 years of being part of the core individuals who pushed, pulled and shaped what is now known as our department, I have very little patience for the particular individuals who have come along since with a lot of criticism and no substantive contributions. My personal take on it, in fact, is that we have a list of people who would be happy to take their jobs.

Our line of reasoning, however, should be to embrace the constructive criticism that can be drawn from some of the comments. We should always perform self-critique, but self-critique is not self-immolation. We should always be pulling lessons from where we are and where we want to be, and the reason why we aren’t where we want to be. But this isn’t an effort to tell us what a bad job we are doing, but ways in which we need to improve.

The minute we begin to believe we are Number One in the county, the state, the region, or the nation, and we begin to believe we are “The Best”, we (all of us) tend to believe we can’t learn from others or from ourselves. It also demeans the rest of those who do an excellent job providing service with the resources they have in the community they must serve. Of all things, though, it’s pretty presumptuous again to suggest that we are the best at anything other than delivering the emergency services on Hilton Head Island, because really, that’s all that matters.

My own personal vision for our organization is to be one of those departments that others hold up to say, “This is the gold standard. This is how we want to be”. We continue to make leaps in that direction. We are, though, our own worst critics. We need to always be looking out for better ways to improve. Daily, we must try harder.

The effort must be placed on continual improvement. “Zero defects” is a pretty lofty goal, but in our business, zero defects may be the difference between life and death, between going home in the morning or going home in the hosebed of the rig under a pair of crossed aerials.

Never get complacent. Never believe you are the best, at least not for longer than it takes to get to the desired result, then to take a breath, look around, and say, “Where to from here?” The moment we stop, we die. We should always resolve to do better each time we are presented with a new challenge and to dig out whatever lessons we can observe from our current situation. There is no time to dwell on it, though. Digest it, make the adjustment, and move on.

Lifted from the Canyon Lake Fire & EMS Facebook Page

I’m afraid my strategy for capturing the interest of the uninitiated has fallen through, so I’m going to have to return to preaching to the choir.  I guess it’s just as well; I’m not sure I want the lunatic fringe stalking around on my site anyway. It just so happens that I’m in the heart of Texas as I write this, talking about leadership to a class of firefighters at Canyon Lake Fire and EMS.  There are also a few from the Bulverde and Spring Branch departments and they seem like a great bunch.

I have had the opportunity to speak a little about what we should be doing as leaders, as well as what we shouldn’t be.  But regardless of how impressive our team is, we are probably all cursed with at least one individual on our team who simply doesn’t get it.  By saying they are “on the team”, it’s really only in the sense that they are assigned to your team and you haven’t found the way to move them along yet.

There are people out there who are surprisingly reluctant to get with the program.  Its as if they have some delusion that if they buck the system long enough, regardless of their piss-poor attitude, archaic methodologies, or lousy work ethic, some sea change will sweep down and save them from the rest of us.

While in my early days I was not the officer that I am today, I still have always said, if you stay off my radar, we can get along just fine.  While that may be an invitation to the slackers to do what they do best, in fact, the slackers find ways to get right up there in my sights and hoist a billboard pretty much saying, “Come and get me.”

I believe that if we give people our expectations, provide them the resources necessary, and provide feedback as they move along, we can get excellent results.  There are those, however, who are more interested in seeing how far they can push the boundaries.

If we (that is, the team) have a shared vision of excellence and we have a good plan to get there, and doing so is for the benefit of those we serve, and we have the approval of those people as well, what on God’s green earth would make anyone otherwise think that it is okay to steer the team in another direction.  My take on it is that if you are that unhappy, just go.  Find some other idiots who want to sit around and be negative and hang out with them.  I can think of plenty of places to find people like that, if you are looking.

I realize that I don’t have the greatest ideas and to some, they might even sound crazy, but at least I HAVE ideas.  I think, therefore, I am.  Those of us who, instead of sitting around bitching, come up with ways to solve problems, while we may always be chasing at things, we are at least moving forward to do so.

This group here in Texas is very fortunate.  Chief Wherry and his staff seem engaged and professional.  They have a bunch of attentive people who are polite and respectful.  The Canyon Lake department is a relatively young department and they don’t have a lot of baggage.  That being said, they are a department with a lot of growing to do and while the foundation seemed to be intact before we got here and will hopefully be strengthened by the time we are gone, it really comes down to what they do with what we have now given them.  From the best I can tell, I think they will be just fine.

Sometimes we have to make decisions in a fog. But not always. Take the time to see the whole picture.

The brotherhood of fire and rescue is but a microcosm of the greater part of society.  In turn, a visit to any un-moderated site will reveal that the general public isn’t any better about being civil, so we probably shouldn’t put a whole lot of worry into the declining civility among people who profess to be part of a brotherhood.  It’s just become a norm of our victim society that it’s okay to be self-righteous and it’s okay to go after anyone who doesn’t think like us.

You would think a group of people who profess brotherhood as a redeeming value would be a little slower to throw one of their brothers under the bus when something goes wrong, but as I mentioned in the Tuscon post, that is obviously not the case.  In the event that an individual within our ranks does something completely against the grain of our collective morals, like set fires or engage in child pornography, I am entirely understanding about the emotion involved in that rage.  It is proportionate to the offense.  But since I’m sure you all have heard of cases where the other side of the story ends up being a compelling explanation, we need to take care and exercise caution about expressing our condemnation, because, as we command officers tend to say, the truth actually lies somewhere between Points A and B.

I’m not a hypocrite by any means; I am right there with you.  I just happen to also take a little bit of time to rein in my passions a little.  If you were standing next to me at the moment I got the news of a “firefighter declining to respond to an incident”, I’m sure you’d have seen another side of me.  However, the luxury of the internet is not only real-time event coverage, but the ability to pause before re-communicating your opinion, especially since unless you were there, it is your opinion and based on conjecture, not on tangible evidence.  You might not be able to take back what you just blurted out of your mouth, but you can certainly check yourself before clicking the radio button.  Very few of the stories I hear are actual prima facie cases.  Since these stories unfold so quickly, we often find that there is more to the story that doesn’t get revealed due to the emotions choking the lines of communication.

It brings up the topic of this page, however, since some of the e-mail (I typed in “e-mal” in my draft – was that a slip?) doesn’t seem to agree with me and of course, there are those who can hide behind their pseudonyms in the comments.  While I am sure the act of someone failing to go to an emergency challenged our beliefs in what was good and right about our profession, on lesser occasions, the anger and vitriol for say, someone not wearing their gloves in a picture, is a little over the top.  And I say “a little” in my most sarcastic tone of voice.  Some of the comments from the peanut gallery are also those who, given their profiles, probably haven’t seen too many incidents more challenging than a dumpster fire, and even then, they weren’t even in charge of that.

Individuals these days, in this moment of instantness (you like that?), are quick to react instead of reflect.  They simply don’t have the patience for the whole story.  They want their news, their blogs, their everything instantly and then they act on that information accordingly.  In a time-compressed environment, there is only a moment to digest what we have heard and then to regurgitate it so that we can be the first to make a comment.  The first to comment must be the best informed, right?  The self-appointed subject matter expert?  The one on the inside, right?

For me, I see it in the type of readership I get here at FHZ.  The comments are usually thoughtful and agreeable.  I post every comment, pro or con, so long as it isn’t spam.  And although I may not agree with you, I consider your perspective on the issues as valuable and enlightening.  But I get the impression that the few individuals who have seen fit to be trolls (with one notable exception) haven’t read farther than the first paragraph anyway.  Anything over 140 characters for a lot of these individuals is a lot of wasted time reading.

We don’t do controversy here on this blog.  We are interested in a bigger picture.  If it is an event that is truly worth discussing and there are alternate points of view, we engage in another time-wasting effort: dialogue.  We ask questions.  We pose thoughts.  We engage in critical examination.  We remain open-minded. It’s a little too much for some people, I am aware, but it keeps the riff-raff out.

The readers of this blog generally have proven to be those who I could sit down and have a beer with and talk about something other than the fire service, or have a conversation about the fire service in say, the context of a retail business, or a day care, or the University of Life.  They can see things for more than what is printed on the face.  They possess deeply considered ideas or are able to see that there are advantages to listening to the opposition.  The readers of this blog are those who I consider to be the hope for emergency services to evolve out of the tar pit of whackerdom and rise to the level of professionalism.

If you know of someone who operates on a different playing field than the norm, send them here and ask them to say their piece so we know they are here.  But most importantly, we are looking for readers (and commenters) who have ideas to share and innovative ways of looking at things.  Just because the issue appears to be obvious, it isn’t often the case.  We want to talk with REAL leaders, those of you who consider enlightened leadership to be a desired trait, not a hurdle to our position.  We need engagement, not brick walls. Haters and groupthinkers need not apply.

There is more to what we do than just "fighting fires".

In a fit of laziness, and believing fell well that I was smarter than any ol’ blogging software, I tried to use a previous blog to shortcut the addition of categories and tags.  Of course, this resulted in my changing forever the URL of that post and with my already poor memory, forgetting the previous one so I could revert to it once again.  And no, I already tried just going back to a previous version.

Thus our Zen lesson of the day: When it may seem like you are saving time, often, it costs more time to fix when you screw it up.  This, however, comes back around to the reason for the post to begin with.

As I said in “Hogs To The Trough“, we have been our own worst enemy.  We have failed, on any number of levels, to “sell” our message to the people who need to hear it most.  Getting the message out requires effort that some of our brothers and sisters simply don’t see as a priority.  We are, as I have heard so many times before, the “only show in town”.  I’m pretty sure the refrain to that is, “You have no choice but to call us when your house is on fire”.  This has been the argument of the Anti-Customer Service crowd for a very long time.  In fact, since before some of you little nippers were born.

If we were doing such a great job, this would be a no-brainer.  Cut emergency service spending, people die.  Well, if that were absolutely true, I’d bet we’d be hearing a lot more screaming from the public.  While I believe strongly that cutting emergency service spending does result in a greater flirtation with disaster and mortality, the realization from the public is, we cut emergency service spending and guess what?  No one died yet.

These are the same people who, when faced with the addition of a traffic light at the busiest intersection in town, cry and complain in the newspaper and at meetings about the inconvenience, only to cry and complain about the lack of public safety consideration when a family of four dies at said intersection.  Then, of course, that horse has already fled the barn, but by God, there’d better be a traffic light at that intersection before the weekend or heads will roll.

There are no switches for turning on the message or turning it off.  If you aren’t preaching the Gospel daily, the audience doesn’t hear the message when everyone is shouting and it’s too loud to hear.  Our presence in our communities has to be a daily event, so that when you are silenced, it is deathly quiet, and people realize, “Hey, something is wrong here.”  If you are saving homes and businesses from fire through your prevention message and excellent response and mitigation, you need to trumpet that to the rafters, and regularly.  If your community sees a benefit in early recognition of cardiac arrest, advantageous placement of AEDs, and the presence of a well-trained, well-equipped tiered medical response, you need to share that.

There are no shortcuts to this.  Communicating the message of the value of your organization must be done constantly.  This isn’t a one-individual task either; it has to be at the very heart of your organizational culture, that service to the community isn’t just a good idea, it is the core of our existence.  When we fail to provide an excellent service, the taxpayers will remember it come budget time.  If we piss off the masses, they will be the first to stand silent when we are losing personnel, apparatus, equipment, training, and every other enhancement, because frankly, your existence is invisible to them.  Given the choice between funding you and not funding you, if the effect is only a subjective loss (just because you SAY people will die, doesn’t mean they will), they are more willing to take the chance of not funding your needs.

My wife owns a flooring retail and installation company, KPM Flooring, here on Hilton Head Island.  She is the sole proprietor. She has a vision of what the organization represents to her customers.  She doesn’t wait for you to read her mind to find out what that vision is.  She doesn’t wait for you to come in looking for tile or a beautiful area rug to show you what things could be like in your home.  She creates (herself, I might add) advertisement that portrays her company as being “sophisticated”, “classy”, “exclusive’, “original”, and “innovative”.  Those words are in quotes because these are comments we have gotten from people who have viewed her website or her print advertisement.  And you know what?  They have found this to be true and have told their neighbors, families, friends, etc.  We probably advertise less than Brand X, but where we advertise and the message we send says: If I want a really classy look to my home or business, I need to go to KPM Flooring.

Getting your message out requires you to have an idea what you want your message to be, first.  Many emergency service organizations haven’t even decided upon that concept yet.  They are happy with the status quo.  The status quo doesn’t require a bunch of effort.  There’s a certain comfort to saying, “We’re okay with the idea the public thinks we are a tax burden, but they don’t have a choice.  You know, because PEOPLE WILL DIE.”

We don’t want to change.  If we did, we would do it willingly.  As Pumbaa said, “You have to put your behind in your past“.  Or something like that.  If we really do care about serving the public, we will get on board in getting them involved to find out what it is they need, and providing service for that need.  When we can do this, the community won’t PERCEIVE that they have a need for us, they will KNOW they have a need for us.  And when they do, you won’t have to worry about budget cuts again.

When this was new, do you think they were saying, "It can't get more modern than this!"

I hate to borrow a line from a commercial, but it got my attention the other day: “People say there aren’t any more frontiers; but there are frontiers all around you.”  The challenge to “think outside the box” was a unique way to describe innovative thinking in the ’80′s, and it was so overdone that everyone cringes when you say that phrase now.  But when you are considering paradigm shifts and defining stretch goals, what better way to say that you are reaching out of the walls that confine your thought?

I was driving down the road the other day and thinking to myself, if there were a way to simply will ourselves from Point A to Point B, like the “Transporter” does on Star Trek, what need for roads?  We wouldn’t need a car.  We wouldn’t need sidewalks, or bridges, or doors for that matter.  Think about being in the road construction business or the bridge building business, or in the auto industry, and one day, there were no need for your service.  Your skill set, once valuable, was useless.  What then?

There are a certain amount of people who advocate EMS as a method to save firefighter jobs when fires cease to happen.  Conversely, there are those who say there will always be a need for firefighters, because fire will always be a problem.  Perhaps instead of limiting our vision to these options, consideration must be made for what will we do to reinvent our industry wholesale.  What if robots could be trained to do our jobs?  I’d bet that as late as ten or twenty years ago there were people in the auto industry who thought that there was no way a robot could produce a decent automobile: Now we have robot-assisted surgery.  How much father off do you think it will be before they are making interior attacks?

Anyone who demonstrates an obsession for the status quo and fails to think about the future with an open mind is only setting the table for their eventual obsolescence. Even what might sound like a stupid idea isn’t always too far-fetched.  If you fail to consider the opportunities, you are missing a piece of the puzzle.

From the technical aspect, you might be able to guess at any number of possible eventualities.  I’m interested in the nuances of leadership and command and what changes are in store for us there.  While many think about the possibility of fighting fire without water or providing radical prehospital medical interventions, perhaps you should consider what would happen if we turned the way we lead upside down.  Or if we were MORE of a military-style agency, like if we were brought into a branch of federal government.  Or if everyone was paid.  Or if everyone was volunteer.  There’s no end to “what if…” because while the first few answers might not be plausible ones, they may lead to a prize-winning innovation.

Instead of making statements, every day you should be asking questions.  And while not all change is good, if you don’t consider the effects of certain factors on your organization as they might occur, you might be surprised when they change despite all your best efforts.  As leaders, if we fail to keep an open mind and reconsider every approach to what it is we do, while we may not fail today, we do a disservice to our organization.  Doing things the same way day after day may seem “good enough”, but if you are caught flatfooted when things change overnight, don’t be surprised if you are left standing in your box while everyone else is running around outside it.  Where are the new frontiers?  They surround you, if you reach far enough.

Being a firefighter is real work and not for the faint of heart. If dirt bothers you, go get another job.

We should make getting into the fire service at least as hard as trying to get into the NFL. If everyone wanted to be a firefighter when they were growing up, most of us also probably wanted to play football. The NFL has all kinds of hurdles to cross to get a job there: the Wonderlick, the combine, scouting, etc. In some fire departments, all you have to do is fog a mirror, and even then, I wonder if that is even a requirement.

When all hell has broke loose in our lives, who better to see than the fire department?  If the people we are recruiting can’t even solve the simplest of daily problems, what makes us think that at 0200 with the roof falling in on us that there will be sudden improvement in judgement and reasoning?  It again goes to my post of the other day about being cognizant of what we do and don’t know.  Some of these folks are so sure of what they think they know, that it makes them dangerous to those of us who know that we can’t possibly know everything.

Thus the survival instinct of the crustiest among us: situational awareness.  We know that with Murphy lurking around every corner and maintaining a skeptical eye on most every situation, we aren’t entirely surprised when things go wrong, because we figured that they would anyway.  It’s like some of the newer guys I talk to think that just because they studied it at the Fire Academy, it is going to go like the plan at every incident.  I don’t know how you teach someone to be a little less optimistic, but if we can figure out how to do that, we might get some of the problem licked.

But that isn’t all; there’s something to be said about the mentality of “heavy lifting” that escapes some of our new hires around the nation.  They seem to think that the problem is solved when we arrive and that it’s all going to be blood and glory.  Then they become disenchanted when they’re mopping up vomit off of Mrs. Smith’s kitchen floor after the rig has taken her to the hospital.  Our job requires us to tough it up and do what is necessary, whether we like it or not.

A little less bitching and a little more effort would go a long way.  Your truck isn’t running perfectly?  Well, sorry: For years I held apparatus together with duct tape and superglue.  Suck it up and do your job.  If something doesn’t work, roll with it.  I took a lot of pride in knowing that I could do whatever job necessary with whatever I had with me, or at least knowing where I could make something work in the meanwhile.  Nowadays it seems like if the least little thing goes wrong, people are throwing their hands in the air and giving up.

So here’s what it comes down to: We must figure out a way to test individuals for resiliency and determination, while also measuring their ability to understand that if they want the glory job, they should have probably worked harder for that baseball scholarship. There is no glory in our job.  Put away the wacker lights and the Bad-Ass Firefighter t-shirt and know your role.  If you aren’t out running calls, be grateful that you get to have a night of sleep and that no one became homeless last night because their house burned.  And if glory and fame is what you want, go form a posse and hang out with Lindsey Lohan or something.  We’ve got a job to do.

How can we help you today?

Are you a fire department or are you an EMS service?  Do you do both?  The knee-jerk reaction I sometimes get was one coined by a previous chief, “We are an EMS agency providing fire service”.  In fact, it sounds so clever that there are a vocal few who like to throw that out there time and time again, like they were the ones who originally came up with the concept (they’re paramedics, so they’re a little biased, I’m sure).

Something I said in a much earlier blog bears repeating:  customer relations are essential for any department operating in this day and age.  There are those who continue to disagree with the use of the word “customer” when referring to those who use our service.  Respectfully, I also continue to insist that just because they don’t walk into your shop and buy something doesn’t mean they don’t have a choice in using your service.  Taxpayers may not be able to change providers, but with enough votes, they can radically change your organization.

The world can change overnight.  If you think the current model of how we provide service is going to last another 200 years, think again.  As our customers become more educated and expect more innovation from government, look for them to insist on ways we can do things better.  We need to continuously and constantly evaluate our direction and possibly even reinvent  our concepts in order to stay out front.  Good customer service revolves around recognizing the needs of our customers and using our skills, abilities and past experience to improve service quality and to provide excellent service.

As has happened over really the last thirty years, our industry has evolved into one that defies definition, one that more and more reflects all-hazard response.  I’m going to go on record to say that I’m even confused as to what to call us anymore.  There’s a famous paragraph in Report From Engine 82 (Dennis Smith) that I’ll paraphrase, because I can’t remember it exactly.

In this city, when you turn on a wall switch, you may or may not get a light.  When you turn a faucet, you may or may not get water.  If you pick up a phone, you may or may not get a dial tone.  But everybody knows that if you pull the handle on that red box, you WILL get a fire truck.

The purpose of my poorly remembered paraphrasing of that statement was to illustrate that times have not changed from when the book was published in 1972; just substitute “call 9-1-1″ for “pull the handle on that red box”.  But what we have become has, as we become EMTs and HAZMAT Technicians and Water Rescue Technicians and etc., etc.  I read “Report” cover to cover when it first came out (I was eight- I’m a good reader) and the context of that paragraph has stuck with me forever.  Dennis Smith points out in his story how the fire department was used to handle plumbing issues, to handle overdoses, and to handle pretty much anything up to and including, things that happen to be burning.

So back to customer service; what is our mission?  Why do we exist?  If your answer is, “To protect people from fire” or “To help the sick and injured”, I’d suggest that maybe you should reconsider all of those calls that don’t meet that definition as distracting you from that mission.  If you’re anything like me and the organization I work for, I’d say that not handling those calls is probably counter to the needs of your community.  And what your mission should really be, is defined by those needs.

When someone dials 9-1-1 (or whatever they dial in your community), they do so because they have a problem they can’t handle themselves (or should I say they don’t know how to handle), they don’t have the resources to handle the problem, and they don’t have anywhere to turn for an answer.  Obviously, you are saying, “Well, if my pipes are leaking, why wouldn’t I call the plumber?”  Again, think about the ENTIRE situation.  Maybe they can’t afford a plumber.  Maybe they can’t find a plumber to come out.  Maybe they are totally freaked out by the situation and not thinking clearly.  There are many answers to the question, but the long and short of it is, they trust YOU to help them solve the problem and YOU are the people they call.

So what I’m telling you is that our job REALLY is to respond to a request for help, gather facts about the problem, analyze the options, apply a solution, and ultimately, stabilize the situation.  We may not FIX the problem, but when we leave, things should at least be stable.  We really don’t need doctor-wannabes or adrenaline junkies for our job, what we need are people who can look at any situation and understand the situation, then apply creativity using the resources at hand (either on site or on that BRT you brought) to stabilize their situation.  And further along that line, we’re not asking these individuals to rebuild the house, we’re asking them to stop the forward progress of the damaging element (or disease process or whatever it is) and return some means of order to chaos.  We’re not building a piano here, we’re improvising and hopefully we’ll come out with something that can at least pass for a musical instrument of some sort.

What should our business be called?  What is it that we do?  How can we possibly have meaning in our life if we don’t have a label or title for our life’s ambition?  When I hear of the trash guy being called a “Sanitation Technician”  or a dog-walker a “Pet Care Specialist”, I wonder what title really defines what it is we do.  What it really comes down to is that everyone recognizes the title for your job more than you could ever know.  When someone asks me what I do for a living, I answer, “I’m a Firefighter”.  The knowing look on their faces and the subsequent questions about my job, my worst call, my most stupid call, etc. confirm for me that most everyone understands what our job is really all about.  Now the bigger goal is to get those of us who do it to understand that as well.

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.

It reminded me of several passages from the Tao Te Ching, one of which says: “Those on tiptoe don’t stand up, those who take long strides do not walk; those who see themselves are not perceptive, those who assert themselves are not illustrious.”

These are some teachings that have lasted centuries and what, exactly have we taken from them?  When I was younger, I wanted it all.  When I grew up and could have it all, it was hard at first for me to understand, but I realized that it wasn’t altogether worth it.  Power comes from within and can’t be seized.  If you let it come to you, it will.

Conflict comes from people wanting something.  The amusing part of that is those who have power will say all day long, “If you really want it, you have to let it come to you.”  I’ve found that to not exactly be true.  That concept relies on enlightened leaders seeking people who are also enlightened, and not on surrounding oneself with “yes-men” and deceivers.  Had I waited my whole life for people to come to me and ask for my help, I’d probably still be waiting.

Thus the neverending struggle between seizing opportunities and creating them;  I have put a significant amount of research into what it would take for me to get from Point “A” to Point “B” and in some cases, made it happen.  I’m happy to say, however, that a lot of what I have accomplished has actually come about because I didn’t walk up the backs of others to get where I am at.

Ambition is not necessarily a bad thing; being deceptive, manipulative, and doing things contrary to the good of the team and the public we serve is.  What we individually have as a vision of our organization is proper if it involves service to the people we are charged to protect and assist, and not if it involves the “benefits” of public service.  By those, I mean the “perks” of having a badge, importance in the community, and the ability to lord over others and speak down to people.

There is such a thing as being an advocate for those who have no power, for standing up and doing the right thing, even when the right thing requires going out of our way to do so.  The other day I was driving down the road in my chief’s wagon and saw a family broken down on the side of the road.  I also saw several other official vehicles (not ours, thank God) pass these people by.  Had I been going somewhere in a hurry, would I have stopped?  Maybe those other official vehicles had places to go and people to see.  I stopped and helped them out.  They were grateful but I didn’t do it for their gratitude, I did it because it was the right thing to do.

As leaders, are we interested in the chase for power?  Or what we can do with the power once we have it?  I was talking about money with my oldest daughter today and explained to her, what good is money if you already have what you need and you are more interested in accumulating “stuff”?  Wouldn’t it be a better idea to help others who are in need, or at least taking the time to do something nice for others?  Once we hit the mark we desired, as a company officer, or a chief officer, what will we do with that newly found power?  Will we share it with others and empower them?  Or will we use it to beat others down and tell them what to do and where to go?

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?