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Dedication to Customer Service

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How dedicated to serving your public are you? We seem to pay a certain amount of lip service to “serving the public, 24/7, 365″ in our mission statements. I always hear how proud we are to “serve”, but do we draw the line at putting out fires? Carting them to a medical facility? Or are you in an organization who will put someone back in bed or stop a leak until a plumber can get there?

I hear about all-hazards response all the time, but do we draw the line at “hazards”, or do we raise the bar a little? While I don’t advocate anyone in our jurisdiction calling 9-1-1 because they need help completing their tax return, if a situation really does affect our customer that they had to dial that number, aren’t we charged with understanding how this is perceived as an emergency before saying we won’t help?

My wife owns a flooring company. While a floor product delivery may not constitute an emergency issue to you, to her company, when a customer needs a product someplace at sometime, if it isn’t there, it creates issues that may effectively stop the completion of the project, be it a remodel or new construction.  This week, a delivery had to go from the manufacturer directly to the project location in another state.  To the trucking company, excellent customer service was a non-issue: After neglecting to send the materials in a truck with a lift gate, they decided, “Oh well, you’ll just have to wait until we can get a truck to do that later.”  Later being three days later.

They had a pretty blase attitude about the whole thing, despite the fact that they were contracted to deliver something, they had an obligation to deliver it at a certain time and place, and being the subject matter experts on shipping, should have probably realized that they weren’t going to just hand-carry 3900 pounds of product off the truck (especially since they had to use a fork-lift to get it on there). Then to compound the issue, they weren’t very careful about how the product was loaded and they damaged some of the pieces. Again, “Oh, well…”

Dedication to customer service requires a “can do” attitude; it might seem to be outside your scope of practice, but depending on what your marketing strategy happens to be – and make no mistake about it, your mission statement and vision is your marketing strategy when you are fighting for ever-dwindling tax funds or donations – your organization will be faced with very specific situations in which you will have to stretch your resources to “make it happen”.  In our case, we rented a truck, picked up the material from the trucking company and delivered it ourselves.  The customer was completely thrilled.

In my wife’s company, we hope our efforts will be recognized in customer loyalty and a willingness to pass the word on. In emergency services, we hope that the care we take with each challenge is shared loudly when budget time or the annual fundraiser comes around.  You can draw the line where you choose, but in these times of limited funds, can you afford to ignore the added value of extraordinary customer service? It is extra effort that will distance you from the rest of the pack.  When a decision must be made between funding an analysis of the migratory path of earthworms in your community and cutting firefighters, that’s ammo you can’t afford to ignore. The next time you are drooling over your wish list and realizing you can’t afford things, remember the choices you made as to where you drew that customer service line.

Posted by truck6alpha on July 18, 2010 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Firefighting Operations, Funding & Staffing, General, Media Relations, Patient Management, change, customer service, education, fire service, government, leadership, motivation, planning, politics, 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 truck6alpha on July 2, 2010 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, General, Media Relations, US&R, change, education, leadership, motivation, officership, professionalism • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

What Defines A Successful Outcome?

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Teams must get adequate direction to insure successful outcomes.

Teams must get adequate direction to insure successful outcomes.

To begin with, let’s slide over to Dave Statter’s site for this embarrassing moment in Missouri.  I have been in plenty of fires where the scene has had incredible damage and I have been to scenes where there is an awful lot of confusion, and while on the face it seems like a thorough search of the structure wasn’t completed, I have literally stepped on a deceased victim before, not realizing they were there because of the surrounding damage, debris, and the condition of the body.  I wasn’t there, and my comments actually have to do with successful outcomes.

We all define what completes a job, or any task, I should say, differently.  What makes a task complete has to do with your work ethic, your education level, and the amount of feedback you receive from supervisory personnel.  When we perform a task that has been assigned to us, what I think is “complete” might be radically different from what you understand as “complete”. While performing a daily task, this might not be of any consequence.  However, on the emergency scene, an error or omission might involve a seriously embarrassing (or worse, deadly) incident.  Completion of any assigned task requires a series of elements: an objective, material resources, personnel resources, and time, to mention the key items.  The clearer the objective, or the more well-defined an objective is, the more likelihood that the objective will be accomplished with the desired outcome.

In a situation like the Missouri incident, while extraordinarily tragic for ALL the parties involved, the discussion lends to the issues of the definition of a successful outcome.  While the public has an expectation that NO MATTER WHAT, if someone is in a burned building, that we have all of the ability in the world to find ANYONE, they are sorely mistaken.  Again, I don’t have all of the facts here, but I do know that I have been involved in fires where we literally had to sift through debris to find teeth or bones in order to determine (or rule out) the presence of a missing person.  Likewise, not expecting to find someone in a bathtub, and with significant structural damage, I could see how someone might get missed.

However, there is a certain amount of thoroughness that we must apply to each job in accordance with the desired outcome.  In this case, if there is an expectation that we have a missing individual, if they were reported to be at home, and the evidence is such that there might be a person in the building, then no stone must be left unturned to either find or rule out the presence of the victim.  This is on one end of the spectrum; the other end is that we should not unreasonably expect a team to be so thorough that they are tied up for entire shifts working on projects that are of little importance because our expectations are so high and our definition of a successful outcome almost unreachable.

As leaders, we must do our best when assigning work to assess the competency levels of the personnel we are assigning the work to in order to gauge the amount of information we will need to provide.  As leaders we must also provide the appropriate resources to get the job done, and even sometimes, we have to run interference for the team so they can get the task accomplished (scheduling, meddling Battalion Chiefs, you know what I mean).  But supervising the crew doesn’t just involve telling someone to do something, then expecting some miraculous outcome.

When people are not given adequate tools, direction, or a defined outcome, you can’t expect the outcome to be consistent with your expectations.  Too many times I have heard of company officers who are frustrated with the final outcome of something they have assigned, and my first question is, “Was the outcome adequately defined?”  Nine times out of ten, that is the problem.  I even say that to myself and if something hasn’t been done according to what I expected, I need to realize that I’m only going to get what I asked for in most cases, although some of you all surprise me (in a good way) with your extra effort and the excellent result you produce.

The Missouri incident illustrates that there are significant differences in the understanding of what constitutes a finished job.  If there are haphazard approaches to gathering information, we can’t expect to assure the outcome will be as desired.  And while successful leaders allow subordinates to learn through independent discovery, independent discovery with a chance of success requires that you at least give them the tools (material, education, personnel, and time) to achieve a positive outcome.  Anything less and you shouldn’t be surprised.  Insure that as leaders, you set your people up to succeed.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 9, 2010 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Media Relations, News, Training & Development, customer service, fire, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, professionalism • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mixing EMS and The Fire Service

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Two of Hilton Head Island Fire & Rescue's ten advanced life support medic units.

Two of Hilton Head Island Fire & Rescue's ten advanced life support medic units.

When I hear anyone suggest that the merger of fire and EMS is a mistake because “firefighters lack the skills to provide paramedic care”, I am highly insulted.

When I hear the ex-chief of a metropolitan department regretting decisions to bring medical providers and fire services together, I wonder aloud how he can continue to stomach the fact that it isn’t the inmiscible nature of these professions that caused the problem but the culture that the “leaders” of these organizations permitted to continue and encourage.

I admit that I know people with what could be termed the “fire” mentality and those with the “EMS” mentality.  But these individuals seem to be the minority now, rather than the majority.  Fortunately, I work with a lot of people who have the “Fire & EMS” mentality; people who are open to the belief we can do both well, we can exceed at the skills, we can meet our customers’ needs, and we can enjoy the diversity that having two “jobs” rolled into one provides on a daily basis.

I happen to work in an organization that merged fire and EMS together in 1993.  Prior to that, the two fire departments provided first responder service to our community to supplement the response of our local rescue squad.  Ultimately, with the merger, we took all three of these agencies and combined them into an outstanding example of emergency medical service delivery.  EVERY line employee is required to be at the MINIMUM a nationally registered EMT-Basic and of those personnel, over 40 of them are National Registry Paramedics as well.  This doesn’t count each of our chief and administrative officers who were all certified EMTs as well, and also doesn’t count our Training Division officers, who are both NREMT Paramedics as well.  Our organization provides a highly-recognized service to this world-class resort community and has incorporated 12-lead ECG monitoring and interpretation along with telemetry to reinforce our STEMI recognition program, among other programs like Island-wide AED promotion and education, public CPR and First Aid programs, car seat installation, and many, many other efforts.  I honestly work with some of the most outstanding EMS personnel in the nation and I’d be honored to let them work on anyone in my family, which is good, because I live in this community as well.

I have had it with anyone who suggests that EMS should be the exclusive domain of the third-party providers, especially since, with rare exception, a good number of these “non-fire service” providers don’t seem to provide any better of a service than the fire department EMS providers.  In fact, I know that our agency is an excellent EMS provider and is right now striving to be more than just excellent, but to be “state-of-the-art”.  With leaders like Lt. Tom over at the EMS 12-Lead ECG Blog, and Pete at the Star of Life EMS legal blog, we have a very good chance of putting ourselves in the position of being innovators and setters of the gold standard.

I would never suggest that fire-based EMS is the ONLY solution, but there are a few dinosaurs out there who continue to insist that EMS can only be effectively provided by non-fire department providers.  Apparently, stuffing themselves in their too-tight BDUs and hanging out at the local donut shop has occluded some sort of cerebral perfusion.  I hope they are watching carefully as the rest of us, the people who desire to have community-based EMS delivered by competent and caring providers, regardless of agency affiliation, kick them to the curb.

Your agency can only be as good as the personnel you retain; if you continue to recruit people who can’t do the job, the community shouldn’t be surprised if the situation won’t work.  Volunteer or career, you get what you pay for, and if the community doesn’t invest in good training, good equipment, good leadership, and good methods of keeping personnel, they shouldn’t be surprised if all they get is a crappy EMS system.

Posted by truck6alpha on March 20, 2010 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Media Relations, News, Patient Management, change, customer service, fire service, government, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Almost Good Enough

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Pseudoladder. Could pass as a truck company in some places.

Pseudoladder. Could pass as a truck company in some places.

What does it mean to be “good enough”? Is being good enough sufficient to meet the needs of our customers? Is it good enough to meet safety requirements? Is being “good enough” good enough to keep civilians from being killed, much less firefighters?

When we establish a standard, the document is a minimum definition of what is “good enough”.  While standards may prove irksome to people, those standards keep what is featured in the attached picture from being termed a “truck company” in some communities.  When we have standards it keeps the old “five bubbas, a pound hound and a pickup truck” example that I like to use from time to time from being called an “urban search and rescue task force”.

As an officer, and more accurately, a leader, what is “good enough” for you to proclaim that title?  Is it a minimum standard of education and experience?  Or was it that you had the lowest social security number?  Or even worse, was it because you are a “nice guy”?  That would be the ol’ elected standard, in some places.

In most businesses, unless you are related to the boss by blood or marriage, there are certain standards required for achieving the pinnacle of success in your company.  It may very well have been that you were the person who lasted the longest, but chances are that you had some kind of a spark of leadership somewhere if someone decided to put you in charge.  Fogging a mirror might not be the only criteria, but if you fogged it the best, maybe that was the deciding factor.

As a leader in emergency services, “good enough” gets personnel injured or killed.  ”Good enough” costs the public millions of dollars in waste.  ”Good enough” is the price for an annual fire loss that leads all industrialized nations.  So long as we continue to settle for the status quo, “good enough” is good enough.

If you fail to recognize that just being good enough isn’t, take this as a call to achieve more than that.  By establishing vision, promoting core values, declaring a mission and goals, and doing something to tie all those things together, you take your team from existing to succeeding.   By seeking innovation and more effective practices, we strive for excellence.  By observing the mistakes of others and instead of ridiculing those people, learning constructively from their experience, we avoid having to make the hard (and painful) mistakes ourselves.

No one reading this probably feels like “good enough” is the answer to anything; by reading this, it shows you are probably interested in motivating yourself and your team and are looking for answers.  If anything, be reassured, “good enough” has killed and injured more of us than any one factor, by way of heart attacks, falls, drownings, vehicle accidents, and any other number of causes of firefighter deaths.  It shows itself in complacency and in acceptance that what the current situation is cannot be altered.  I challenge you to look into your soul and wonder if by standing around and doing nothing, you were leading, or simply accepting your role in the line.

Be excellent and strive for being the best.  It will keep you and your crew alive and it will better serve the public you are charged with protecting.

Posted by truck6alpha on February 18, 2010 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, Funding & Staffing, Media Relations, Training & Development, change, customer service, fire service, government, leadership, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, revolution, safety • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Values

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Hilton Head and Bluffton Firefighters practicing FLAG drills.

Hilton Head and Bluffton Firefighters practicing FLAG drills.

In the wake of the Toyota recall disaster (that’s about the best description for that event), it brings us around to thinking about the values you might have in your organization, especially when having to make tough decisions.  The author and motivational speaker Bud Bilanich has said about values:

“Values ground an organization- providing direction for people who find themselves in ambiguous situations.  They are guides for decision making.”

If your organization doesn’t have agreed-upon values, it’s a good time to get your people together and discuss some.  Even if your organization fails to enact some, the team you control should put together a value statement that provides direction to those who have to make a watershed decision at some point with little guidance otherwise.

While remaining true to your core values aren’t always easy.  It may even cost you at some point, like the instance in which Johnson & Johnson had to pull Tylenol off the shelves in the wake of a cyanide poisoning scandal.  The decision cost them hundreds of millions of dollars, but ultimately, the company prospered because of the ultimate consumer confidence that sprang from sticking to their values: “…our first responsibility is…to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products.”

As an emergency response organization, your core values may involve treating the people who call you for assistance with compassion and dignity.  I’ve been in the situation before where that has been difficult, for whatever reason (like when they are abusing you verbally at 0400 hours) but ultimately, the decisions you must make in serving that citizen (or visitor, in our case) should be based on that value and subsequently, those values will protect you in the event that things get nasty.  Like when they decide to call a councilman or make a media event out of their situation.

While there are those out there who struggle with calling the people who call for our services “customers”, that shouldn’t preclude you from believing that these people are the reason for your existence, whatever you choose to call them, and they should be treated with dignity, respect, and empathy.  Just because you don’t perceive them as having a choice in who provides their service, it doesn’t keep them from raising a royal stink over the attitude you present, regardless of “who started it”.  You’ll still look like the bad guy in the media.

It is imperative that not only does your organization recruit and retain people who embrace your values, but that the culture holds those values dear, that people are rewarded for upholding those values, and that deviation from those values are redirected.  When the going gets tough, those values will carry your organization through the tough scrutiny of a media frenzy and by standing close to those values, it will keep you all together though the storm.

Posted by truck6alpha on February 14, 2010 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Media Relations, News, Training & Development, change, customer service, government, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism, revolution • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Fixers

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webIMG_1675

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.

Posted by truck6alpha on November 12, 2009 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighting Operations, HazMat, Major Incidents, Media Relations, Special Operations, Training & Development, US&R, change, customer service, fire service, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism, rescue, revolution • 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 truck6alpha on September 25, 2009 • Filed under: Firefighter Nation, General, Media Relations, change, customer service, education, fire service, leadership, 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 truck6alpha on September 5, 2009 • Filed under: Firefighter Nation, Media Relations, change, customer service, education, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, professionalism • Tagged: , , , , , , ,

The Case For Credentialing – The Argument

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SC-TF1 in Chalmette, September 2005

SC-TF1 in Chalmette, September 2005

As discussed in the last post, there are those who are against credentialing, for their own reasons.  Because I have had plenty of discussions about the subject, I think I have the discussions channeled into four groups (and if you have a different argument, let me know, because I don’t want to miss anything on the subject).  I plan to talk about each of these in a little more depth, but I wanted to at least put the parameters of the argument out there.

First, we have the genuine thing, the spontaneous bystander, who sees a need for action, then does something about it.  The discussion I have heard so far from this camp is that there should be nothing that would stand in the way of people who just have a desire to help their neighbors and do the right thing.  Quarantelli discusses the social aspects of emergent response from spontaneous bystanders in Katrina, but also in the Guadalajara gasoline spill and fire.  Plain ol’ people like every other neighbor you ever had saved lives, and were not agents of the government, had no training, and only did so in the effort to help others.  There’s something very beautiful in that, but call me skeptical, I see a lot of response from people who claim that is their motive, but I’m not seeing that altruism coming out when they’re out operating the video camera or taking souvenirs, rather than manning a sand-bag line.  More about THAT kind of person later.

We also have the disaffected group/person I call the “outsider”.  Having been one on a few occasions, I can certainly empathize with their cause, but I don’t necessarily sympathize with their way of handling things all the time.  Often, these are people who have a lot of training, or maybe come from somewhere where they had a lot of training and experience, and the place they are now in life won’t make room to allow them in.  There are dozens of reasons we will discuss, but there are also some issues regarding the credentialing side of things that would STRENGTHEN their position if they were in fact, truly qualified but being marginalized.

Then there are those who are currently the jurisdictional responder but are afraid the light of truth will expose that their organization/agency is not following industry standards, or that they are not ready, or are failing in any number of reasons.  These people really don’t have much sympathy from me in regard to their argument against credentialing.  However, there might be some discussion that merits a look.  I’ll reserve my judgement for now.

And finally, there are the thrill and glory seekers.  They might be there for the attention, they might be there for the notch in their gun, or they may be there to profit by defrauding the response community.  So as of now, this is where I stand and these are the arguments I want to discuss at first.  There are in some, compelling ideas.  There are in the others, no possible way you’ll be able to get me to support their theory.  But we’ll talk about them and I’d love to get your thoughts on the subject.  See you in a few.

Posted by truck6alpha on May 30, 2009 • Filed under: DHS, FEMA, General, Media Relations, NIMS, USAR, command, credentialing, planning, politics, professionalism, rescue, safety • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Case for Credentialing

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Side of an OFFICIAL SC-TF1 vehicle in Louisiana during Katrina.

Side of an OFFICIAL SC-TF1 vehicle in Louisiana during Katrina.

I’m about to launch into a multi-part blog to discuss the merits of credentialing.  Right now I am aware of some opposing arguments to the requirement that disaster response personnel have credentials, particularly when it comes to those who routinely offer their services after a disaster but are not necessarily part of a response entity.

At this time I am dealing with the multiple phone calls for information on a group calling themselves “Urban Search and Rescue“, located right here in my own community.  From what I have been able to tell, they were featured on a local television interview the other day and managed to get a request for assistance out there, but failed to provide a working telephone number, as well as having bad links on their webpage.  When people found they could not reach this entity, I’m guessing they “googled” the terms “Hilton Head Island Urban Search Rescue” and believe it or not, that gets a few hits for me and my phone number.

When I say there’s some confusion, you bet.  When I tell the bewildered caller that, yes, I’m the Deputy Director of the South Carolina Urban Search and Rescue program and the Vice-Chairman of the State Urban Search and Rescue Alliance, but I have no idea who ”USARK9″ is or what their credentials are, you can imagine the rest of the conversation.  After all, they have seen their official looking vehicles, I have heard they walk around town in official looking uniforms, and apparently, according to their website and some discussion from the media, they’re doing a good job of self-deploying all up and down the coast, but I don’t know who they are.  I must be an idiot.

But this isn’t a discussion about them; this is a discussion about how when we don’t know who you are or how you got here, it makes it a little problematic when we are trying to put you to work, or eventually, trying to feed and shelter you (because invariably, these “assets” don’t come with the support they need), a la Hurricanes Andrew, Floyd, Katrina, et al, the World Trade Center, and any number of disasters that happen on a fairly regular basis.  It is a problem when we can’t account for you, it is a problem when you can’t work within a command structure, and it is a problem when we think you have one capability and it turns out that you do not.  It is also a problem when uninvited guests show up and get hurt, then want compensation.

The blog will discuss my perception of the problem, opposing viewpoints as they have been made know to me, considerations and existing knowledge, and hopefully incite some discussion.  As you may or may not realize, I have a pretty open mind.  So don’t be surprised that I agree that there is a need for spontaneous bystander rescue (although it makes me a little uneasy) and I agree that there are genuinely altruistic people and agencies out there who desire to help and have problems fitting into the picture. 

Anyway, as usual, I have a lot going on, but I’ll lay out the discussion further and ask you to chime in if you have something you’d like to say, and I’d expect to add the next blog in a day or so.  Rome wasn’t built in one blog, after all.

Posted by truck6alpha on May 29, 2009 • Filed under: DHS, FEMA, General, Media Relations, SAR, US&R, USAR, motivation, politics, professionalism, rescue • Tagged: , ,

Putting Things In Perspective

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As much as the media hype is annoying and excessive, my heart breaks for the parents of the first swine flu death in the United States, as well as for all of the other deaths that have occurred so far. As the parent of three young children, I can only imagine the pain that the family is going through and pray that things work out somehow.

However, as I was explaining to several people, and I have also said in my Twitter and Facebook feeds, we need to look at this situation and put it in perspective.

According to the Global Energy Network Institute, 35,ooo people die DAILY from starvation in the world.  Yet since these people probably aren’t subscribers to USA Today or have TVs to watch network news, I guess it’s not that much of a problem.

According to the American Heart Association, over 150, 000 people die each year from myocardial infarction (heart attacks, for you non-medical types).  The actual figure for 2009 translated into an average of 413 people dying per day, from a largely preventable disease, and a disease that we as EMS providers toil daily to educate the public about and secure funding for programs to mitigate against, but there is no media frenzy.  Now realize that number has dropped since 1980, so we are chipping away at the problem, but still, this is an astounding number of deaths from something we could work harder at solving.

Then of course, there is something much more preventable, that of death from injury.  According to the CDC, in 2006, people were dying at a rate of 490 a day from injuries.  How many times have we tried to get that message out, but have our PSAs relegated to after the 11:00 news when everyone has gone to bed?

I think we need to look at the swine flu situation carefully.  We need to take reasonable measures to mitigate against further outbreak and to minimize exposure to ourselves and our families.  But like the HIV hysteria of the ’80′s and every other crisis that comes along, the media has done a great job overselling the drama when it suits their purpose, and a mediocre job of helping us get the message out about many other efforts like putting smoke detectors in homes. It is our job to continue to bubble up the real message to our customers and it is our job to help the CDC and other parties to keep the effects of this pandemic to a minimum.  But the hysteria can stop already.  I have enough drama in my life, I don’t need this to make it that much more of a challenge.

Take universal precautions, eat and drink healthy and stay fit, and stay well.  Let’s not make this any worse than it needs to be.

Posted by truck6alpha on April 29, 2009 • Filed under: DHS, Media Relations, Uncategorized, customer service, education, fire service, funding, government, leadership, politics, safety • Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,