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The Antidote To Road Rage

Being a reader of FHZ requires you to maintain an open mind. Even if you don't agree with both sides of the issues here, understanding the contrary view permits perspective and in some cases, deeper understanding of the root causes of things we consider trouble. For an example, consider the recent road rage incident that seems to have piqued a considerable amount of interest. While I in no way sanction what was done, nor think it was a mature or acceptable way to handle the situation, realize that in many cases, feelings of frustration manifest themselves in angry, retaliatory behavior.

Who among us has not experienced anger at the inconsiderate moron who fails to pull to the right when we are well behind them, permitting us a free lane on the way to some emergency? Even in your personal automobile, how about the idiot who not only signals they are going to take a right turn, but then shoots across to two lanes of traffic to make a left? Like he couldn't just make the wrong turn, make a u-turn, and make things right?

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 victim story they happen to choose this week. The reality is that while reacting negatively to those who act in error is not acceptable, neither is the act that sparked the reaction in the first place. Perhaps if our nation's law enforcement would start hauling off people who run red lights; who make erratic and unanticipated turns without use of a signal; those who drive too slowly in the passing lane, who fly down the shoulder to cut to the head of a merging line, or those who fail to pull to the right when an emergency vehicle is asking for the right of way, perhaps you might see a considerable decrease in road rage.

The base cause of indignity is usually the result of inconsiderate behavior. Someone flaunts the rules and disregards the normal values of society, and the enraged individual is angry at the injustice of the situation. I would be willing to bet that if anyone could write a ticket (not that I am an advocate of that), you'd see a lot less road rage.

Why? Because if there were a non-violent method of resolving the conflict, I would be willing to bet that people would take that option. The problem is that there is no resolution. The enraged individual feels as if there is no way the situation will be resolved, they feel the injustice of the situation, and they act out in frustration, sometimes regardless of the consequences.

Now let's take this a step further. Think of a non-driving situation in which you were pushed to the edge…Was this reaction a result of powerlessness, of frustration evolved from conflict in which you were victimized and felt no method to resolve your issue? Perhaps it was an automatron manning the phone at your credit card company, or the cashier at Wally World, or the cable guy who doesn't show up when he says he will. You percieve a lack of power to change the situation and that lack of control becomes overwhelming. Over time, you may even be willing to act on it, in such a possibility, even inappropriately.

So what is the solution for our version of road rage? Education? Humorous attempts to enlighten the inconsiderate sometimes work, as in this fine example from the Tuscaloosa Fire Department. Other attempts like this one from Eugene, Oregon and this one from an agency I can't read on their final slide aren't as memorable (IMHO) but still get the message across.

But the more in-depth solution would be for individuals to maintain less distrations in their vehicles (phones, texting, and radios come to mind), and more overall awareness (simply paying attention to the fact that you SHARE the road with others). And likewise, the way for you to avoid conflict that cascades into an intractable situation would be to step back for a second and understand the other person's perspective, and recognize that your escalation of the incident, although it may very well be warranted, is pushing you and the other party toward a battle that someone is going to lose.

Conflict in life is inevitable. Conflict escalation and intractability is not. Be one of the first on your block to be the voice of sanity and work to understand, not to react.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on June 26, 2011 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, politics, professionalism, rebellion, safety, Training & Development, Vehicle Operation & Ambulances, Videos • Tagged: anger, change, conflict, consideration, customer service, Dave Statter, driving, education, empathy, EMS, eugene, FHZ, finger, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, go right, government, Hilton Head Island, idiot, inconsiderate, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, moron, motivation, officer, opportunity, politics, professionalism, red lights, risk reduction, road rage, safety, South Carolina, STAT911, tips, Training, tuscaloosa, understanding

Shut Up

7 comments

Do you know what this is? No? Then shut up.

According to my children, “shut up” ranks up there with the worst of the “bad” words a primary school child is forbidden to say. Not too long ago, I used that phrase and here again today, “shut up” is the only rebuttal appropriate for a comment I was reading on a major media site.

This post has nothing to do with the actual article, though. In fact, my viewpoint on the situation is irrelevant. The reason I am saying “shut up” is that in a lot of comment and “letters to the editor” pages, the compulsion for someone to take away any doubt that they were an idiot outweighs any prudence or embarrassment that they are, in fact, an idiot.

What gate opened up to motivate these morons to chime in with their obvious, ill-timed, or just plain stupid observation? And to make things even more traumatic, in a lot of the news, the victim’s privacy and anger over the event, the hurt and embarrassment visited on the perpetrator’s family, the shame felt by coworkers, colleagues, etc. far outweighs the absolute insanity of “anonnumus” posting that “maybe it was the victim’s fault”, or “Obama’s birth certificate” was involved, or our mystery writer expounds on their experience being similar to when their front porch fell and killed all their dogs.

Apparently, none of this outweighs the need to be a public dunce. Perhaps part of the problem in anonymity is that people feel compelled to say what they think, which in this and more than a few other cases, isn’t much.

Back to us, though. I did see a similar reaction to several April Fool’s posts on FireRescue1.com. In pulling the page back up tonight to link at it, I’m amazed that seven days later there are still people who don’t stop, read the whole article, then read to see what others have said, before posting their own completely moronic response. “Shut up”, remember?

While the headline drew me in that day and my initial reaction was “WTF?” I was happy that I take a lot of what anyone says at face value anyway. Of course, I then took the time to read the entire article and got all the details prior to opening my mouth, or in this case, tapping out a comment that would expose my ignorance. You would think that the Mayor’s name in the one article might tip you off. Instead, a few of our own read what, two sentences, and type.

I can appreciate the pent up rage and frustration felt by those of us trying to maintain a positive image of our business. And I too see red at some of the statements made by politicians, the media, and others. But before posting your manifesto, do us all a favor and save us the embarrassment of having to explain the joke to you.

I guess the same could be said about my blog, but if you will take careful notice, I rarely write a rant. Want to know why? Because first, unless I am there, I don’t have all the facts. So I prefer to read things and believe there is probably more to the story. Secondly, even if what is said or done is really inflammatory, I give credit to the writer for putting their own personal spin on it, regardless of whether the bias is intentional or unintentional. So sometimes the headline is being written to draw us in and sometimes, it’s to pick a fight. And certainly not least, I believe that there are plenty of places on the internet you can go to if you want controversy, or negativity, or anger. I’m trying to provide a forum. I ask for people to embrace ideas they don’t necessarily agree with. You don’t have to own it; I just want you to look at it.

Before going off on someone, perhaps these people should write what they think, then save it. Walk away and if you still feel compelled to share it, then do so. But think about what you say, especially when all you plan to say is stupid anyway. Your fifteen minutes of fame may be your only fifteen minutes. Make it count.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 7, 2011 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, fire service, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, politics, professionalism, rebellion • Tagged: anonymous, Bush, change, conflict, editor, education, EMS, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, FireRescue1.com, government, Hilton Head Island, idiot, leadership, letters, management, marketing, media, Mick Mayers, moron, motivation, Obama, opportunity, politics, professionalism, shut up, vision

Haters Need Not Apply

3 comments

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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 24, 2011 • Filed under: change, command, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, fire, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, firefighting, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, News, officership, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, safety, technology, Technology & Communications, training-fire-rescue-topics • Tagged: anger, brotherhood, change, command, communication, conflict, controversy, customer service, dialogue, education, EMS, enlightening, environment, FHZ, fire, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, firefighter, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, groupthink, Hilton Head Island, instantness, internet, leadership, management, Mick Mayers, motivation, opportunity, politics, professionalism, pseudonym, public, rescue, society, South Carolina, subject matter expert, truth, tuscon, victim society, whackerdom

But Wait! There’s More!

1 comment

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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 11, 2011 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, firefighting, funding, Funding & Staffing, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, News, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, Training & Development • Tagged: budget, Camden, change, conflict, council, customer service, depression, disaster, economy, EMS, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, Gary, government, Hilton Head Island, layoffs, leadership, Lion King, management, marketing, media, Mick Mayers, motivation, officer, opportunity, past, planning, politics, professionalism, Pumbaa, resources, risk reduction, South Carolina, team, vision

Hogs To The Trough

10 comments

I have heard a constant refrain for a few years, as you have probably heard too. With the economy the way it is, the constant drum beat sounds from those who want to radically downsize government, and there is a certain irrational cry from those who resent firefighter pensions and salaries.

A while back, Captain Schmoe over at Report on Conditions spelled it out best (but for some reason I can’t find the specific post), illustrating that our collective hubris has signed our own death warrant. When Fred Taxpayer sees one of the brothers trucking down the road in his Gasguzzler 6000 pickup, towing a boat with three engines on it, laughing because he only works one day out of three, it doesn’t sit well. Especially when that same individual is scraping to make ends meet, can’t figure out where he’s going to get the money to feed the kids, and might not even have a retirement anymore. Do you really find their resentment unfounded?

Recent firefighter layoffs in Camden and Gary, while extraordinarily tragic, illustrate a fundamental issue: people generally aren’t lashing out at the politicians, they are blaming the Union. And while that may very well be unfounded, it is happening, and that is a tangible reality. Why should we care? Because we did it to ourselves.

It’s not a matter that we do or don’t deserve decent salaries and good benefits, it is a matter of our failure to educate the public, to work with them and include them as part of the solution. After all, it was their own elected officials that agreed to these contracts in the first place. They can argue that they did so at the point of a gun, but the reality there is actually that these benefits were often hard-fought for and given grudgingly, so whatever these individuals were able to obtain, it wasn’t exactly handed to them on a silver platter.

Furthermore, like those of us in departments that don’t enjoy the fruits of collective bargaining, we are all lumped in together with the stories like the one illustrated above as a prime example of why we don’t deserve this compensation. I, for one, live in a nice home. But its a home my wife and I ate a lot of waffles and PBJs to save for. We have three children to put through college, but so do a lot of people. I drive an eleven year old truck with 130,000 miles on it. In no way should this be construed as complaining. I don’t make a fortune, but I think it is a fair salary for what the community gets from me, and although I wish I made more, I also understand the realities of the situation. And I have friends that are firefighters who have the truck and boat and etc., but they have in one case invested wisely, in another case happened to parlay their talents into a lucrative side job. Yet another one though, has squandered his money and overextended himself. So it is, just as it is everywhere else, the same.

When we engage in bragging about how good we have it, we’d better consider the consequences. There is a backlash that still rages on against our existence, and it doesn’t stop at the career folks either. If the public percieves that your service doesn’t have value, they will cut it back to where they feel it deserves to be funded, plain and simple. The other parts of public service enjoy a certain paranoia about the public, where those emotions about losing those services are much more tangible. Lose the trash pickup? No cops? Sewer backing up? They will choose and what they will choose is to fund that which they are the most concerned about losing. Since you don’t have fires next door every day, nor does everyone in the neighborhood end up in the back of the ambo regularly, do you believe that when we’re lining up to get our share, that there’s a reluctance to cut our budgets? Not often. The public may complain a little when they see on the news that the Mayor shut down the fire station on the corner, but that sentiment is usually over by the time American Idol comes on.

We can’t continue to take for granted that the public knows why we are there or what we do, or what would happen if we lost manpower, equipment, or other tools. This is the time to insure that the buyer is aware of what they are being sold, and is happy with the return they continue to make on their investment. Yes, that’s called marketing and while that might be a dirty word to some of you, it too is a reality. You can choose to ignore the need or you can get up and do what is needed. We can’t wait until stations are being closed and people are being laid off to insure the message is shared. Anything after that is sour grapes. We can’t scream “people will die” if we didn’t do anything to reinforce it in the minds of the population ahead of that moment.

To the general population, our indifference to their situation while flaunting our current compensation packages is a lot like Marie Antoinette telling starving Parisians, “Let them eat cake”. And you know how that story ended. The backlash against government spending isn’t going away and if we don’t evolve, don’t be surprised to hear this story repeated over and over again until we do. Would you rather change under your own terms or change at the end of a pike? It’s your call.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 8, 2011 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire, fire service, funding, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, News, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, Training & Development • Tagged: change, conflict, customer service, economy, education, EMS, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, opportunity, planning, politics, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, vision

Residential Fire Sprinkler Comparison

2 comments

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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers 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: change, customer service, education, FHZ, Fire Marshal, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, Joheida Fister, leadership, management, marketing, media, Mick Mayers, motivation, opportunity, politics, research, residential, risk reduction, safety, South Carolina, sprinklers

Be Proud, But Humble

2 comments

I work for a pretty damn good fire and rescue department. Take this link shared with you all from SCONFIRE. You like that? That’s us. And by us, I mean my department, the one I’ve worked with for the last twenty-eight years. And in two other links, you’ll see that this is us too, “Going Green“, and here, where we are going “High Tech“. Props, as always, to Grant at SCONFIRE for sharing these stories.

There’s a lot more. But I’m not here to brag. I’m here to tell you that while “pride goeth before a fall”, pride is also necessary to motivate your personnel, and a little pride can go a long way. If you are going to implement change in your organizational culture, there should be a reluctance to be where you were and a desire to go where you are going. You can quote me on that. But pride has to be tempered by a few things, reality being one. Knowing that even the best are fallible is another.

It isn’t easy. We have had our bad days just like everyone else, and we continue to have bad days just like everyone else. We too have people in our department who, given a million dollars in a briefcase, would be upset that it wasn’t on a silver tray. I certainly don’t view everything with rose-colored glasses, although some people might believe that to be the case because I’m not talking about the negatives, but discussing the positives. We have challenges and I have personal challenges. But instead of seeing these as roadblocks, I see them as opportunities.

If you know me well, you know that I am actually a deep-seated cynic. But I have been places where I have found such turmoil and trouble that I know I have absolutely no right to complain. Unfortunately, I have been in a lot of these places. Conversely, I have been in places where they have got it right. They may not have every resource they ask for, but they make the best of what they’ve got and they remain hopeful and optimistic, knowing that each day brings them another little piece of the puzzle they can work toward completion.

There’s a fire department in a neighboring community where the Fire Chief used to be my chauffeur, a long time ago. This guy gets “IT” and he has done everything he can do to infuse “IT” into his people. When I ask his personnel how things are going with “Big Daddy”, I have never heard a single one of them complain. They are upbeat and positive about their department, about where they are going, and about the leadership. They make things work and they have fun doing their jobs. And that Chief isn’t just letting people come to work and play checkers either. They train often, they do all the jobs we do short of ALS transport, and all kinds of other things. These people have a lot of pride in their organization and it shows.

I am extraordinarily proud of my department and most of all, of the people we work with, and the people we work for. The community here is generally pretty proud of their department also. We get a lot of letters of thanks and praise. We get awards. Our Town Manager pretty much says we stay off his radar, and that’s a good thing. But it’s not all sunshine and roses and it’s important you know that.

There is being proud and there is being delusional. While we are very honored to have our team and the resources entrusted to us, we also realize that at any time, at any instant, things can go wrong. We realize that one saved building isn’t a far stretch, maybe nine or ten minutes from being a total loss. While our community relies on the entire system to be good at what we do (through education, prevention, protection, service delivery, and customer care), one slip in the well-oiled chain can wreak havoc on the entire machine.

Not that this is a good time to be paraphrasing Brian Kelly (the head football coach at Notre Dame), but he tells his players that when they are on the field, they are 1/11th of the team. If everyone does their part, things will work according to plan. When someone doesn’t, someone else has to do MORE than their job to take up the slack. We can be as proud as we want, but if one person lets us down, we are all toast. For those reasons alone, a little humility will go a long way when things don’t go as expected.

We tell people in our organization all the time, if you screw up, own the situation. Raise your hand and say, “My bad” and we’ll do what we can to fix the problem together. None of us, most of all, me, is perfect. We’d better be ready and willing to say, “I’m wrong, I’m sorry” when it is warranted. Our informal motto is, “Do the right thing”. When you have that kind of an outlook at all times, it can solve many equations.

If your own organization is reaching and it seems frustrating, know that everyone, including the Phoenixes and the FDNYs and the Metro-Dades and the Fairfaxes all have their days. Just like our department has, and I’m sure your department has. The element of success, however, is to ride out those days as an intact team, absorb the problems, fix what is necessary, and move forward. Don’t dwell on the problems, learn from them and move on.

Even the best have their moments, but if you take the time to reflect on what you have accomplished, realize how far you have gotten, and look forward to the trip ahead, the pride in that journey is a significant motivator to keep the team together. Pride acts as one of many force multipliers. Like any other tool, use it carefully.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on November 9, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, Training & Development, US&R • Tagged: change, conflict, customer service, education, EMS, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, officer, opportunity, politics, professionalism, rescue, resources, SC-TF1, South Carolina, team, Training, US&R

The Disincentive for Responsible Reporting (Tax and Spend Socialists)

7 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on October 9, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution • Tagged: change, chaos organization, customer service, disaster, disaster management, economy, EMS, EMS Topics, failure, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, Funding & Staffing, government, Hilton Head Island, insurance, Kirschenbaum, leadership, management, marketing, Media Relations, Mick Mayers, motivation, news, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, resources, risk reduction, South Fulton, subscription

Subscription Emergency Services – Your Classic Tea Bag Scenario

11 comments

These aren't free.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on October 8, 2010 • Filed under: change, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Funding & Staffing, government, insurance, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, News, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution • Tagged: change, chaos organization, customer service, disaster, disaster management, economy, EMS, failure, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, Kirschenbaum, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, planning, politics, professionalism, resources, risk reduction, South Fulton, subscription

Customer Service: A Bad Concept?

10 comments

I was thinking about customer service in our profession and considering recent conversations by some of our colleagues recently who reject the term. A bit of enlightenment came to me while listening to a reading to a segment of the radio program This I Believe.

The subject was Ruth Cranston, author of World Faith: The Story of the Religions of the United Nations. She spoke of achieving the insight that all of the world’s religions, despite their differences, were united in very similar tenets of how to live with our fellow man. Even when there is constant disagreement with how we go about our daily lives, she posited this about the commonalities of religious belief:

They [the world’s religions] taught the unity of all life; the interdependence of all men; love and service to fellow man; help, not exploitation, of the weak and backward. They taught nonviolence and non-injury. They all taught purity of life and of motive, simplicity of life too, and that true riches are within. They taught the worth of individual man and the ability of every man to rise to higher states of development than we are now experiencing. They taught the immortality of the soul and the building of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth.

Her suggestion was that despite the worship or belief in which we practice, we experience several common denominators that should bring us closer together rather than farther apart. While a lot can be taken from that paragraph, it seems that like I say constantly in my forum here is that we as emergency service providers have more commonalities than differences. In fact, those of us who are true believers in what we do as a profession probably understand that the phrase “customer service” is just a name we put on a concept in order to define it.

Of course, the belief of a higher calling to serve is about those who are truly in this and believe in this as a profession of service and enjoying the benefits of the occasional adrenaline rush, in contrast to those who are in this for the adrenaline rush and enjoy the occasional effort to serve, and even then, if that subject comes up at all. I say that because it is my observation that a majority (if not all) of the problems we have in emergency service can be traced back to those who fail to see this career, whether you are paid or volunteer, as one in which we should serve rather than to be served. It is this entitled mindset, that we are automatically due respect because we wear the badge, which causes problems.

The term customer service is probably pretty cynical, when you think about it, because it might suggest to the casual reader that the ideal we seek is all about making sure our profession enjoys the financial benefit of such service. In fact, as emergency response personnel, the term “customer service” embraces the concept of all that is considered good in mankind, in that we realize the worth of others and we seek to serve those in need of help, despite their social status. While we can quantitatively point out that having a customer service attitude benefits us in public support, there should be a much more altruistic reason for our embracing that belief.

There are two schools of thought in the “anti-customer service” camp. One, of course, is that the public doesn’t have a choice, therefore they are not customers. The second goes along with my statement that what we do is so much more than a client relationship. I have argued that the public does have a choice, as Chief Alan Brunacini did much more so before I have here. But the latter discussion bears some serious consideration. Is the concept of customer service too simplistic? Customer service could be construed as providing a real effort only when we stand to gain from that interaction. It might be perceived that the service we provide is done only because we expect a return on investment.

While remembering conversations with Chief Brunacini as he advocated the benefits of customer service mentality as a method for obtaining taxpayer support, I also recall that he never said that the concept was exclusive to that expectation. If you remember, the overarching mission was to “Be Nice”. While that’s good for marketing, it’s not something you can force down people’s throats and expect it to happen magically. He advocated a cultural shift in his leadership that was summed up in two simple words, therefore easy to remember and easy to implement. The customer service mentality, likewise, was easy to relate to.

Our job as leaders is to communicate our mission. That communication requires not only our shouting it out there, but the return acknowledgment that understanding has been achieved. The mindset of “customer service” is palpable. We understand it and we know what is good customer service and what is bad. We can easily empathize with a customer who is frustrated with a certain way in which their matter is being handled or appreciate the sincere gratitude experienced by a customer who is receiving excellent service. For the purposes of defining an accepted approach to interaction with the community, it helps to be able to frame those interactions in a manner in which we are familiar. So while, yes, our delivery of service is much more than the interaction of a salesperson and a client, it provides us with concrete objectives by which we can measure our outputs. It is pretty easy to say, “Fire Went Out” and check the “Good” box. It is much more difficult to say, “Obtained Confidence of Taxpayer”.

Our job can be seen from a purely pragmatic standpoint, one in which we have been tasked to provide a service and we must efficiently produce results. Or we can say that our job is that of serving humankind with compassionate and ethical assistance when they are most vulnerable. In either case, the ultimate measurement is the same; as Cranston implied, reinforcing “the interdependence of all men”; loving and serving fellow man; and helping, not exploiting, the weak and needy. It is our charge to insure whichever path we choose, we do so with the understanding that we are there to serve.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on August 30, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, funding, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: Alan Brunacini, Be Nice, change, customer service, disaster, education, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, officer, opportunity, planning, politics, Ruth Cranston, This I Believe, World Faith

Dedication to Customer Service

7 comments

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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 18, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firefighting Operations, Funding & Staffing, General, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, Patient Management, planning, politics, professionalism, revolution • Tagged: change, customer service, education, EMS, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, media, Mick Mayers, motivation, opportunity, planning, politics, resources

To My Facebook Friends

1 comment

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”.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 2, 2010 • Filed under: change, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, General, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, officership, professionalism, US&R • Tagged: change, customer service, education, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, opportunity, politics, US&R

What Defines A Successful Outcome?

3 comments

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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 9, 2010 • Filed under: Command & Leadership, customer service, fire, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, News, officership, planning, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: Dave Statter, definition, education, fire service, Hilton Head Island, incident management, leadership, Mick Mayers, Missouri, opportunity, risk reduction, SC-TF1, success

Mixing EMS and The Fire Service

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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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on March 20, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, News, officership, Patient Management, politics, professionalism, revolution • Tagged: change, education, EMS, EMS12-Lead EKG Blog, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, Mick Mayers, opportunity, Star of Life, Washington

Almost Good Enough

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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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 18, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, Media Relations, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, revolution, safety, Training & Development • Tagged: change, credentialing, disaster, economy, education, fire service, government, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, NFPA, opportunity, politics, risk reduction, safety, standards

Values

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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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 14, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, Fire Rescue Topics, government, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, News, officership, politics, professionalism, revolution, Training & Development • Tagged: Bud Bilanich, customer service, fire service, government, Johnson & Johnson, leadership, management, media, Mick Mayers, motivation, opportunity, politics, recruiting, retention, risk reduction, toyota recall, Tylenol, values

The Fixers

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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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on November 12, 2009 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, firefighting, Firefighting Operations, HazMat, leadership, Major Incidents, Media Relations, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism, rescue, revolution, Special Operations, Training & Development, US&R • Tagged: disaster, fire service, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, motivation, opportunity, rescue, South Carolina, US&R

Turtles, Circumstances, and Change

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Just 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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on September 25, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, fire service, Firefighter Nation, General, leadership, Media Relations, officership, professionalism, revolution, safety • Tagged: change, education, fire service, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, media, motivation, safety, South Carolina, turtles

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?

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on September 5, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, Firefighter Nation, firefighting, leadership, Media Relations, motivation, officership, professionalism • Tagged: fire service, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, motivation, SC-TF1, South Carolina

The Case For Credentialing – The Argument

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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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 30, 2009 • Filed under: command, credentialing, DHS, FEMA, General, Media Relations, NIMS, planning, politics, professionalism, rescue, safety, USAR • Tagged: change, credentialing, disaster, FEMA, government, incident management, kind, NIMS, rescue, type, US&R

The Case for Credentialing

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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.

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

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.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 29, 2009 • Filed under: customer service, DHS, education, fire service, funding, government, leadership, Media Relations, politics, safety, Uncategorized • Tagged: CDC, disaster, heart attack, marketing, media, mortality, politics, risk reduction, safety, starvation, swine flu

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