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You Can Quote Me On That (Before 2010)

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I was driving down the road the other day and thinking, you know, I too could have a list of quotes, just like the real writers have. So in the interest of filling up a page of useless knowledge, I went back to FHZ from September of 2008 to December of 2009 and I also threw in a few notable statements I made way back on the old Firehouse Forums as a member of the IACOJ, before some of you were born, I think. 

Now, I do read a lot and listen to podcasts, etc. and I will check my quotes with a deep internet search to make sure I haven't stolen someone else's ideas, but I'm pretty sure I said this stuff at one time or another.  I also left off anything I paraphrased (I hope) and added some stuff that exists in unpublished posts (there are a few dozen of those).  Believe it or not, we here at FHZ have standards.  They are low, but we do have standards.  

So here you are, from the beginning of FHZ, some of the more memorable ones:

  • "When I give you an order, I want to see it done, or your dead body where you died trying to do it."
  • "Never eat more than your mask can hold."
  • "I am not your friend, I am your boss. If you want to be friends, that's okay, but that doesn't change the fact that I am your boss first."
  • "The company officer is the designated adult supervision in the station. Act like it."
  • "There won't be a group hug at the end of this. I don't do Kumbaya."
  • "When I call for a resource I'm gonna give you type and kind. If I call for a Lincoln-ful of Panamanians, I don't care where you got it, just give me the closest one."
  • "Let's put this in terms you can understand: Confined space rescue is nothing more than HAZMAT on a rope."
  • "Being a truckie requires resourcefulness. You are presented with a problem no one else knows how to fix and you fix it with what you brought to the party or what you can swipe. After that, it's all magic."
  • "Individuals have given themselves the freedom to make poor decisions, then be let off the hook because we 'shouldn't judge them', or because their mommy didn't hug them as a child, or whatever the victim story is this week." (Okay, I just used that one again the other day).
  • "The base cause of indignity is usually the result of inconsiderate behavior." (Oh, and that one is new. But I liked it).
  • "Conflict in life is inevitable. Conflict escalation and intractability is not." (Alright, that one is new as well.  Back to the old stuff).
  • "There's enough ugly going on around us right now without our own people bringing it down on us."
  • "Each of us should be serving as a positive example of how to do the job, volunteer or career, and without acting like a bunch of amateurs and whackers."
  • "The important part in our lives, really, isn't necessarily what we can fill up our minds with at every moment, but about creating space to let more in."
  • "There are a few things that you should raise the stakes for, like your faith, your family, and your country.  But when faced with an unwinnable scenario and a profound lack of resources, sometimes it is best to save what you can save and live to fight on another day."
  • "Where t = tempo, r = resources and f = frustration: increasing t multiplied by decreasing r = exponential increase in f."
  • "The taxpayers in your community ultimately decide what level of service they want.  If they are insistent that giving you no resources is okay, then they have to be educated to what extent that investment will reap disaster.  Risk is proportionate to return."
  • "There are other sides to every argument that get squashed by the rush of the ADD crowd to comment.  Don't fall into the trap of the unenlightened.  Think before you post."
  • "I can think of no rational society that thinks it is okay to screw the disadvantaged for the benefit of the privileged.  Taking advantage of the less fortunate is simply bullying."
  • "When we use the phrase 'customer service", if that's not appealing to you, try saying it like this: 'doing what is right for our neighbors and the people who visit and work in our community'.  That should be a little more pleasant."
  • "Successful coaches match schemes to personnel, not vice-versa."
  • "If you are going to successfully implement change in your organizational culture, there should be a reluctance to be where you were and a desire to get where you are going."
  • "I'm pretty sure that when my ticket , I'm not going to be quoted saying something profound, poetic, or heroic.  It is likely going to be something that can't be repeated around children or the faint-hearted."
  • "If we really want our industry to recognized as professional, it requires consistent conduct that is professional."
  • 'Legitimate power, in the sense of leading others, is limited to the amount of leverage the followers will permit."
  • "Tansformative leadership requires commitment, honesty to self, and an understanding of the world.  It's yours if you can embrace change, open yourself up to it, and set the example to others."
  • "Our business is too dangerous to leave the teaching to amateurs."
  • "Perhaps if you guys are going to fight fire like you are in the '70's, you should be paid like we were then too."
  • "If as a team, you can't agree on the destination, someone needs to get out of the car. Ultimately, getting to the destination requires assessment, negotiation, understanding, cooperation, and ends with commitment."
  • "More often than I care to, my 'command presence' comes out at inopportune times, like when I am talking to 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)."
  • "If you fail to illustrate a clear picture of who is in charge, someone else will come in and fill that drawing in for you."
  • "Sometimes the best we can do is to pin it down to the neighborhood of origin, if that's what was burning when we got there."

Since at some point perhaps I'll add another page of these for the next years, if one of the sentences I uttered strikes a chord with you, point it out to me and I'll add it.  I'm all about customer service.  Until next time, thanks for reading.

Posted by on June 29, 2011 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, Fires, Funding & Staffing, leadership, Line of Duty, Major Incidents, motivation, officership, planning, politics, rebellion, Rescues, revolution, Special Operations, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

We Try Harder

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

I had the opportunity to be part of a test rehearsal for a web conference going on Friday. In one of the questions, we were asked, “If you had to give your department a grade, what would it be?” I was the only one who gave my department an “A”. Of course, when you see that you have made a choice like that, you immediately begin to second-guess yourself.

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.

Posted by on April 27, 2011 • Filed under: "accident prevention", administration-leadership, change, command, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, firefighting, Firefighting Operations, Fires, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, rescue, revolution, technology, Technology & Communications, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Capacity Building Exercise To Change All Exercises

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We are all interconnected; how so remains to be examined. We are part of a bigger whole.

Our industry is in dire need to undergo extensive capacity building. Capacity building is the assistance provided to societies which have a need to develop a certain skill or competence. More recently, however, capacity building is being used to facilitate innovative approaches to social and environmental problems.

Capacity building can be defined as “activity which strengthens the knowledge, abilities, skills and behavior of individuals, while improving institutional structures and processes such that the organization can efficiently meet its mission and goals in a sustainable way.”

For organizations, capacity building may relate to almost any aspect of its work: improved governance, leadership, mission and strategy, administration, program development and implementation, identification of revenue streams, diversity, partnerships and collaboration, evaluation, advocacy and policy change, marketing, positioning, planning, etc.

For individuals, capacity building may relate to leadership development, advocacy skills, instructional abilities, technical skills, organizing skills, and other areas of personal and professional development.

When I began to write this article, I was thinking about a different direction than the one I shifted to this morning. I happened to be listening to Bob Edwards this morning, as I do routinely when I am driving around. He was interviewing Tom Shadyac, best known as the director behind movies like Ace Ventura. I’ll let the I Am video tell the story, but in short, he had a mind-opening experience as a result of a bike accident and the subsequent recovery, and it inspired him to make a documentary which seeks answers to deeper issues.

The point in his interview that really got me was this: We have been taught over the course of our lives when faced with a problem to ask “What is wrong?” when we should really be asking “Why is this wrong?” Shadyac suggests a more metaphysical approach to our cultural issues which revolve around more cooperation and supportiveness and less competition and strife.

When I applied this to what I had begun to write, it occurred to me that maybe we (emergency services and in society as a whole) are going about this all wrong. Our continual inability to work together to foster positive change is likely deeper than even we originally suspected. If we continue to go after each others’ throats in the vollies vs. career, East vs. West, Fire vs. EMS, safe vs. unsafe battles which rage daily in our business, how can we ever expect to achieve any respect from others outside emergency services, much less endorsement on issues we can all agree on.

It seems to me that the KSAs we need to teach are farther removed than basic operational issues, the KSAs we need to emphasize are our greater connection throughout the entire emergency services industry, how we need to get past the things that divide us and unite about things we can agree on and change.

We talk about “brotherhood”, but what really is brotherhood anymore? You have brothers in career shops bashing brothers in vollie houses because of a number of reasons. Shouldn’t we simply agree that we both do a dangerous job, made more dangerous by the bean-counters limiting our abilities to obtain cutting edge technologies, the best training, and sufficient staffing?

I realize that I have indeed been asking “why” things are wrong for a long time, while many of my brothers were and are still focused on “what” is wrong. I just guess I needed someone to point that out to me.
The capacity building in ourselves, in our organizations, and within our industry is essential for our continued survival. Einstein said, “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.”

I’m suggesting that a good place to start is in a society where there are those who have a core value of service to others, a society in which the greater good is supposed to be placed above that of the individual, and where characteristics of selflessness and courage are valued attributes, not hindrances. If there is any established society in which those morals are daily sought and in which we insist they are founded upon, it would be the society made up of fire and EMS professionals.

Posted by on April 4, 2011 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, Fires, Funding & Staffing, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, Technology & Communications, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Saying Goodbye To A Friend

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We best memorialize our brethren by remembering the lessons they teach us.

I actually started writing this post six months ago. It’s probably not like you’d think. I had my initial moments of grief when a friend and colleague passed away late last year. But after that, like one of us has said, “It’s like I keep expecting her to walk through the door any minute.” It’s like she went away and we haven’t really come to the belief that she’s gone.

Susan’s credentials as a leader were impressive.  She came on board not long after our department was in the throes of a major overhaul of our command staff as a result of retirements and going on to bigger venues. But while her impact on our organization was large, her time with us was short and to be quite candid, the changes she endeavored to make didn’t quite stick the way they should have.

I guess one of the reasons I never finished posting (because the post actually went on from here) was that it kept sounding like a eulogy and that’s not what I wanted to do. This issue isn’t about me or anyone else who is still around picking up the pieces, but about moving forward, transitioning, living through a traumatic event and learning how to move on.

I dragged this back out again from my “drafts” pile because for the better part of yesterday, I was trying to catch up on my workload and making pretty decent progress. I think I’m only backlogged to November now (that’s LAST November). Things came to a crawl, however, when I began to tackle the next priority on the list, which was (is, because I’m not done) a “Line of Duty Death” guideline (LODD, for my non-fire readers). While Susan’s death was not an LODD, it was very much about a loss to our fire department family. I have always been impressed by our ability to rally, and of course, the amazing memorial that was virtually shot from the hip.

We can always look back in amazement at what we instinctively got right and make notes about what we probably could have done better at. Her family asked us to coordinate the services and a few stalwart colleagues/friends jumped in there and did a pretty damn good job organizing and contacting and negotiating to create a memorial worthy of commemorating Susan’s impact on our lives. While there’s none of us that wouldn’t have wanted to fill Yankee Stadium for her, we did a good job of filling the venue we had, and the service was both tearful and funny, the way she probably would have wanted it.

But the moral of this story is that when we lose someone dear to us, we have a need to commemorate their life. The deceased are deceased and while it is my belief that we honor them by having a ceremony, and it is also my belief that they are taking in our feelings and understanding how much they meant to us from a better place, when it comes down to it, a lot of that may be more about us processing our own feelings and trying to get us to move on to the next phase of our lives.

I have said before, and again in this post as well, that if we really care about leaving a legacy, we should consider the culture we develop as a result of our leadership of others.

What better memorial to another than to recognize that our beloved was such an important part of our life that the traditions they instilled in us, the commitment to excellence, and the dedication to service so ingrained in our culture, that we refused to let that value die long after that person was gone from this mortal coil. Unfortunately, when I think back on it, I think maybe we might have failed Susan.

With some substantial challenges on our horizon and after talking to others within our organization about a renewed commitment to improvement and service, I have to meditate a little on what that truly means and how to go about facilitating that change among the people I am responsible for mentoring. As a chief officer, one of the hardest things you have to do sometimes is admit to yourself that you have let your vision be narrowed by petty issues. As a chief officer, your vision can’t be obscured by the trees; you need to view the entire landscape.

My job must be to focus on positive strategic change. I have company officers who must translate that change into daily tactical objectives. If they can’t do that, they have to do some soul searching themselves, because the purpose of the officer on a team isn’t to be one of the gang, it is to lead the team. It is the job of the officer to work with other officers to form an effective cadre of other leaders and to be above pettiness themselves. When you make the choice that your badge will have bugles on it, it’s time to leave the past behind and focus on the future. And if you ca’t do that, then you need to admit that it might be better to return to the gang. No one ever said leadership was easy.

We have many people in our lives whom we love in their own special ways. All of the assembled brothers and processions of fire apparatus, all of the pipes and crossed ladders and other powerful traditions are nothing if we can’t be true to ourselves and appreciate that our calling is to serve others. Service to others is the hallmark of our tradition. People would not revere firefighters if not for their long-standing tradition of selflessness, of commitment despite adversity, and of bravery in the face of death and destruction. If we truly want to memorialize our loved ones and our brothers, we need to re-dedicate our careers toward self-improvement, education, and dedication, as well as to teach and mentor those who are behind us in the ranks.

Don’t make saying goodbye a hollow promise of honoring the deceased. The funeral is just the beginning of a new life without that person standing next to us. If they really mean something to us, we will consider the lessons they taught us and create action instead of words.

Posted by on March 28, 2011 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, Fires, Funding & Staffing, In the Line of Duty, leadership, Line of Duty, LODD, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, revolution, safety, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Residential Fire Sprinkler Comparison

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Post-fire picture of a room with a single residential sprinkler head activation. Nice save.

We conducted a comparison burn today at Hilton Head Island Fire & Rescue to demonstrate the effectiveness of residential sprinklers in the control of incipient fire. Since I was off, I was able to video it as your ordinary citizen and the crowd, which was pretty nicely sized for the Island on a Saturday morning, was very impressed.

I posted it to my personal Facebook page, but felt like this was important enough of a video to share it with all of you Firehouse Zen readers. Feel free to pass it on. (UPDATE: These are now posted to YouTube also).

The teamwork involved in putting this presentation was very encouraging: all three shifts participated in one way or another, led by Chief Fire Marshal Joheida Fister.  It’s another reason the people I work with at HHIFR are individuals I consider to be the best in the business and make me proud to be associated with them.  The funds for creating the demonstration were provided through a grant. The building of the props were done by HHIFR personnel and local businesses (including my personal favorite, KPM Flooring) contributed elements of each room, lumber, the sprinkler system, and the installation.

The first burn is of an unsprinklered furninshed room of frame construction.  The inner walls are sheetrock.  In addition to an ordinary fire load in a bedroom, a small Christmas tree was at the front of each room (which surprisingly did not significantly contribute to the fire load in either case until well into the fire spread, as you will see).  The detector activated in the first room in 9 seconds, the room was untenable and very shortly after flashed over in under a minute.

The second burn is an identically sized and furnished room, the only exception being the presence of a residential sprinkler head.

As I have said on my FB page, if this doesn’t illustrate the live-saving capability of residential sprinklers, I don’t know what else to tell you. You can dry things off after they get wet. You can’t unburn your family or your home. But I am obviously preaching to the choir. Therefore, it is important that you all share these videos to many, especially the non-firefighters you know. This is important information and these two videos pretty graphically demonstrate the difference.

While there is a significant amount of undeserved controversy regarding residential sprinklers, especially the myths of inordinate cost, the whole “Hollywood all-the-sprinklers-going-off-at-once” myth, and a number of other things, the reality is that with smoke detectors and sprinkler installation, more lives will be saved and fire loss will decrease.  It’s a no-brainer.  But it IS a tremendous cultural shift and most homeowners, not being accustomed to this type of protection device, are on the fence.  They will continue to be on the fence so long as we are pushing systems and others argue against them.  This is the time when we need to be the driving force to push harder.

Share the video.  This is a game-changer and we need to be behind it, at least if we really do ascribe to the notion that our first responsibility is the protection of life and property.

Posted by on December 4, 2010 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firefighting Operations, Fires, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, News, professionalism, technology, Training & Development • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Perception

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We all have a job to do.

When it comes down to it, we don’t really know what’s in the hearts of anyone else, do we?  All we can do is read what people write and listen to what they say and watch their face to see if we are getting anywhere. The internet provides a place where anyone can feel brave and say what they want to say behind the anonymity of a computer terminal without fear of reprisal.

It’s those who feel the need to draw lines in the sand wherever they go that are probably the most disturbing.  Is it fire vs. EMS?  Career vs. volunteer?  East Coast vs. West Coast?  Rural vs. Urban?  European vs. North American? We all have a job to do and the job has different elements depending on where we are, what we are dealing with, and how we perceive the issues at hand.  Why fight about it?

If we were all the same, I could see being able to say who is better, but it’s the equivalent of comparing apples to elephants.  There are similarities in certain facets of the business, but really, as we have said on here a hundred times, emergency service delivery is a very specialized business in your unique community.  There aren’t too many tenders wandering the streets of Manhattan, and conversely, there aren’t many six-man truck companies in rural Arkansas.  Saying one is better than the other is ridiculous; they don’t compare.

Anymore it seems like the nameless and faceless just want to stir up controversy for the sake of stirring up controversy.  Of course, it’s easy to stir up controversy if you have no fear of reprisal.  There used to be a certain argument that the controversy was there to open up minds and to inject fresh ideas, and given some recent posts I have been watching, I am inclined to say that I saw no new ideas or the championing of best practices.  I didn’t see people fighting injustice with their secret identity.  Instead I saw bullies and provocateurs making illogical statements and specifically baiting others, just to get a rise out of someone.

It’s a product of our society, I guess.  We can all be intimately connected yet have enough distance between each other to feel safe.  People bemoan how uncivil society has become, but forget that when we were all cooped up in our little neighborhoods, if someone acted in a manner contrary to the social mores, they became quickly ostracized.  Living in a community with others you had to get along with meant that associating with provocateurs wasn’t safe.  Now we can align with people who espouse all kinds of wild ideas and don’t fear anyone, because really, how will anyone know?

Firefighting and other public safety personnel were always respected because honestly, these people were part of our community too.  We didn’t do things that hurt others because we felt a certain connection to them.  We went to school and church with them.  We were likely related in some form or fashion.  Our parents knew one another.  These days, there’s enough distance that you can be the bully you always wanted to be and hide your 95-pound weakling body behind the monitor.  If you treated people like that in your old neighborhood, you’d likely have the crap beaten out of you.

I believe there is a certain amount of merit to having a pseudonym, if it is used for good, and especially if you know that saying the right thing will have detrimental consequences.  But I don’t see so much of that these days as the other, the troll who just wants to make spurious statements and not have to back them up.  There’s nothing I love more than reading through a thread of meaningless diatribe to find out the idiot on one end is some Junior with the wacker-pack and a keyboard.

If you really want our industry to be recognized as professionals, it requires conduct that is professional.  It requires discussion and exposition of ideas, but it doesn’t have any room for intolerance or illogical thought.  We must remain open to the perspective of others, regardless of whether they are the aforementioned Junior or the saltiest jake on the truck.  But being respective and considerate of other ideas doesn’t mean that we have to lay down and sing Kumbaya if someone is being a troll.  Maybe we need to call some of these people out, or even better yet, ignore them, and perhaps they will go away.  We all have a responsibility to project what we desire in our society as a good example, and to guide the poor examples either toward enlightenment or toward the exit.  In either case, it requires action, not ignorance.

Posted by on November 3, 2010 • Filed under: change, command, Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Fires, government, leadership, motivation, politics, professionalism, rebellion, rescue, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Stuck In The Past

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The definition of something “world-class” years ago led me to consider what we mean in the fire service when we say “world-class” in the same breath as “progressive” and “professional”.  The use of these terms is truly in the eye of the beholder.  Given the evidence that continues to mount in the Charleston incident, many people in that community are struggling through the nightmare of believing their fire department was the definition of excellence only to find that the leadership mentality was still operating in the past.

I guess its all in how you frame your reference as to what is acceptable versus what is “excellent”.  It certainly sounds as if that culture is evolving into a better place with Chief Carr at the helm.  But across the entire fire service, while exposed to so many ideas, we continue visit the same problems within our own organizations that other organizations have been experiencing for years.

Professionalism or progressiveness isn’t defined by experiencing the same problems over and over again. Being effective doesn’t include repeating mistakes that others have made, got the t-shirt for, and moved on from. If learning isn’t occurring from all of the rhetoric, then what use is it?  When your organization is experiencing such dysfunction that it is obvious even to the newest recruit, then how clueless are you to insist that everything is coming up roses?

The sad part is that this lesson has to come on the backs of dedicated firefighters and the deaths of our brothers.  While it appears our friends in Charleston are moving forward, we continue to read story after story around the rest of the nation of lessons that continue to be learned the hard way.  After all, how many unbelted firefighter LODDs need we read about before deciding once and for all that using our seatbelt is a smart idea?

Instead of reading the news and saying, “Wow, that’s incredible”, perhaps we should be saying, “Wow, how do I make sure that doesn’t happen here?”  Be an agent of productive and progressive change.  Set the positive example and show others what the real definition of progressive and professional is and be a real leader.

Posted by on August 3, 2010 • Filed under: "accident prevention", change, command, Command & Leadership, education, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Fires, government, leadership, LODD, Mass Casualty Incident, motivation, News, planning, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, safety, 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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,