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FHZ On The Road – Upcoming Classes through Task Force 1

I’ve been really busy getting the home ready for the holidays. In the meanwhile, though, here’s an update on where and when I’ll be in your part of the world:

February 19-20 – Command for Company Officers, Ballardsville FD, Crestwood, KY (near Louisville)

March 8-9 – Command for Company Officers, Canyon Lake, TX

March 10-11 – Incident Safety Officer, Canyon Lake, TX

March 26 (one day class) – Command 101, Johnson City, NY (near Binghamton)

I expect to continue working with Ron Richards and Task Force 1 to present some really dynamic programs. There are also some real quality courses being presented that I am not teaching, and you can see those class offerings in this link. and I even have one in the works that I’ll hopefully be offering beginning in late Spring 2011. If you are interested in having me come teach or speak at your event, I’m happy to work with you, or point you toward Ron who can help set up some really nice programs with multiple instructors, if that’s what you are looking for.

I hope to have a nice post here in a few days when things settle down but it looks as if everyone else seems to be carrying the load right now just fine. Until then, thanks again for reading and I hope you are having a great holiday season.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on December 14, 2010 • Filed under: change, command, Command & Leadership, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, Major Incidents, News, professionalism, Training & Development, training-fire-rescue-topics • Tagged: Ballardsville, Binghamton, Canyon Lake, change, class, Command 101, Command for Company Officers, Crestwood, education, EMS, Fallen Angels, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, FOOLS, Hilton Head Island, incident command, incident management, Incident Safety Officer, Kentucky, leadership, Louisville, management, Mick Mayers, New York, opportunity, Ron Richards, South Carolina, task force, Texas, Training

Residential Fire Sprinkler Comparison

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

Credibility

One of the biggest problems the fire service has is its credibility. I received multiple e-mails over the past few weeks about a confined space training near-miss that in reading the information, I found to be pretty troubling. Once again, it appears (at least from the published report) that training can get pretty hairy, especially when there is a certain amount of complacency among students and instructors. But it goes to a deeper question: When training, at what point do we raise our hand and say, “Hey, something doesn’t seem right here”?

When we engage in fire, EMS, and rescue activities, we are participating in what is considered to be an extraordinarily dangerous setting. In training, we have the ability to create scenarios that test our students, but we as course designers must consider the alternative outcome to successful completion of a task, and by that, I am referring to failure. When someone is unable to complete a task, or the environment becomes too daunting, or unforeseen events occur, there has the be the ability to directly swing into normalcy (read: safety).

In burn buildings we provide extra exits and in high-line rescue training we continually monitor redundant belays. Whatever the topic, we intentionally build our scenarios to consider the “what if?” events that might occur. While crawling through an active 18-inch pipe might provide a “confidence building” exercise, what is the plan if someone gets stuck? Or in the case at hand, weather creates a very real scenario? Thankfully a greater disaster didn’t occur. But while in confined space situations we must “train in representative spaces”, and nothing provides more realism than using the spaces themselves, we are also obligated to monitor those spaces and aggressively manage safety concerns for personnel.

When an instructor is telling you to do something that doesn’t seem right, there is also an obligation on the part of students to respectfully raise a hand and question the scenario. Unfortunately, not every instructor out there is experienced or dedicated enough to insure that the proper learning environment is provided and adequately managed. As real professionals, we need to not only do risk management on the emergency scene, but in training as well. There are plenty of instructors from whom I have taken a class, only to walk away shaking my head. If I am responsible for hiring instructors, I at least qualify them myself or seek the advice of colleagues who have worked with those people before. Our business, however, is too dangerous to leave the teaching to amateurs. Look for credible instructors with a history of work when you are trusting someone with the lives of your personnel. We kill and injure enough of our people in real situations. There’s no reason to do the same when the urgency doesn’t exist.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on December 1, 2010 • Filed under: change, customer service, education, EMS Topics, FEMA, Fire Prevention & Education, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, government, leadership, motivation, National Fire Academy, planning, politics, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: change, education, executive fire officer, FEMA, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, Mick Mayers, motivation, National Fire Academy, opportunity, planning, politics, professionalism, research, risk reduction, South Carolina, Training

Successful Coaches Match Schemes to Personnel, Not Vice-Versa

Hilton Head and Bluffton, SC firefighters training on structural collapse.

When you don't have the resources internally, develop partnerships.

Successful coaches don’t force a system down the throats of their personnel without a very good reason. Instead, through careful evaluation of skill sets, they point their personnel toward positions in which they will have the greatest impact.

I’m a huge football fan. I’m impressed by teams that are able to recruit and develop personnel to fit their particular schema. But there are also those who try to take a scheme they have bought into wholesale and refuse to adjust based on what their personnel can and can’t do.

If you wonder about what I’m getting at, look at it like this: If you are a fire chief in a small town or suburban department and insist that your department uses tactics employed in the big urban departments, I would suggest that you objectively evaluate the success you have with that and consider using different tactics. Truly urban fire departments can bring resources to bear quickly. Urbanized areas often have great water supply and relatively short response times. In a lot of departments around our nation, we don’t have an unlimited amount of companies to throw at an incident. We don’t have great water supplies everywhere. As a result, we must find alternative delivery methods.

If you fail to admit this to yourself and choose to ignore the need to develop other abilities, you will continue fighting the same battles with the same results. Develop vision and understand that there are other ways to do the job you do and to provide the service desired by your community, by getting them to help solve some of these issues. Open up some planning sessions to the public and solicit ideas. See if the people you serve have ideas that can provide resources you didn’t think were available. If anything, the participants will enjoy learning more about what it is we do, as well as to educate the public on the things we really need.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on November 23, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Funding & Staffing, leadership, motivation, planning, politics, professionalism, revolution, Training & Development • Tagged: Bluffton, change, customer service, disaster, economy, education, EMS, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, football, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, officer, opportunity, planning, politics, professionalism, regional, resources, response, SC RRT-4, SC-TF1, South Carolina, team, Training, US&R

Be Proud, But Humble

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

Perception

We all have a job to do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on November 3, 2010 • Filed under: change, command, Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Fires, government, leadership, motivation, politics, professionalism, rebellion, rescue, revolution • Tagged: career, change, conflict, controversy, customer service, education, EMS, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, internet, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, officer, opportunity, politics, professionalism, South Carolina, terminal, troll, volunteer

Fixing The Unfixable

Even the strongest, when faced with constant exposure to the elements, can be destroyed. Pick your battles wisely.

It happens from time to time that my inner cynic works its way out and is usually capped with a phrase I like to use in moments like these, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

Despite being positive and embracing enlightened discussion, there are occasions where no matter what you do, no matter how well-intentioned you are, you can be overwhelmed by the short-sighted. Call it a failure to appreciate the venom behind those served by the status quo, give the numbers of idiots a certain amount of wiggle-room, and you can be sure that they will find a way to hurt you. People who sincerely want the situation to remain the same and will do anything to keep it that way, will use character assassination, marginalization, threats, and on occasion, harm, to keep real leaders from instituting change.

According to Chongyam Trungpa Rimpoche, “Rishi is a Sanskrit word which refers to the person who constantly leads a straightforward life. The Tibetan word for “rishi” is trangsong, which means “direct” and “upright.” So this term refers to someone who leads a direct and upright life by not introducing new complications into their life situation.” When a leader who exhibits these traits comes into our lives, we need to embrace them. However, more often than not, our leaders have flaws, just as we do. Unfortunately, these flaws are often used by the contrarians to gain a foothold and steer those on the borders to their own side. If the weak-minded are unwilling to look at what is best for the mission and unable to side with those on the side of right, there isn’t likely any saving them anyway.

There are situations where the individuals involved simply deserve themselves and until a leader can rise to the position and have the necessary backing, there will be no improvement in the condition. It is at these times when things will continue to be so bad that it will require things to get even worse before someone is given the power to make things right. In those cases, a total recalculation of culture is required, which won’t happen without a major offensive with enough firepower to establish an indisputable beachhead. At this level of failure, however, it often requires people to die first.

There are situations in life where the smart thing to save your self, your sanity, or everything you worked for, is to walk away. There are situations where trying to save a completely dysfunctional organization is like trying to use a hand-pump to stop the Titanic from going under. If you find yourself in a situation like this, it requires a serious gut check, and a realization that you can’t fix the unfixable.

There are a few things that you should raise the stakes for, like your faith, your family, and your country. But when faced with an unwinnable scenario and a lack of resources to fix the problem, sometimes it is best to save what you can save and live to fight on another day. As a leader, strive to become rishi and when you are met with your failings, try to resolve them through truth and acceptance. In this you will make yourself less assailable. But ultimately, even the rockiest and most imposing shore can be destroyed through the constant battering of the waves. Be resolute, but not to the point of total loss.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on October 25, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, motivation, News, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution • Tagged: change, conflict, customer service, FHZ, fire service, government, Mick Mayers, politics, professionalism

Increasing Tempo and Decreasing Resources Equals Frustration

If we all pull together, there's no telling what we can achieve.

We have, in emergency services, always been in the business of doing more with less. It’s our creed. But there comes a point where we are expecting the outputs to exceed the inputs, or we are shoving more input in than we can possibly output, and in either case, something is going to blow. This can be written:

Where t = tempo, r = resources and f = frustration: ↑t + ↓r = ↑↑f.

When we reach the result ↑↑f, it has been often expressed with an expletive and a raised middle finger. To illustrate, let’s think about this like a mall parking lot, shall we?

In the preferred scenario, we have a goal and in order to achieve that, we have to put something into the process to make it occur. If we have our theoretical parking lot, so long as the number of cars that go into the lot are equal or less than the number of cars exiting the lot, there won’t be a lot of pain. However, when the balance tips and the number of cars entering the lot exceed the number of cars exiting, there will be quite a deal of anger, especially if the input of cars continues to exceed the available number of spaces and a bunch of mouth-breathing numbskulls drive around the lot aimlessly, exponentially adding to the confusion. In normally high-performing organizations, situations like these can evolve into frustrating moments when we continue to expect more and more for less and less, without considering that what we have is a definite resource issue. In those finite resources, of course, we are referring mainly to time and funding.

If I were to build you a house, and money was no object, time was no object, and you didn’t care what it looked like, I would have absolutely no problems putting you in a home. If money were no object I could buy what I want; pay myself what I want; I could hire people who have built homes before; and any number of resources I could possibly need, I could get, if you know what I mean. Likewise, if time were no object, I wouldn’t worry about how long it took for permits, or whether or not the subs were there on time. And of course, if you didn’t care what it looked like, I could build you a tent and charge you several million dollars.

When we begin to place limiting factors on the outputs, there occurs a correlating increase in pressure. As managers, it’s easy to delegate. There are plenty of managers out there, however, who delegate without consideration for the resources needed. It doesn’t do us any good to keep throwing more plates in the air for our subordinates and expect the outputs to remain consistent. It’s the theory of laminar flow: the more pressure you add, the more chaotic the environment and the less effective the output. You need to either decrease pressure, add capacity, or increase the size of the discharge.

The most challenging part, however, is remembering that the personnel you most trust with pulling off clutch moves are the same ones who tend to get loaded and loaded until they reach a snapping point. These are your high performers who won’t dare tell you “no” because they really want to succeed and to help you to succeed as well. It’s important to discuss the workload with these individuals and if you find you have to back off the heat for a while, make it happen. They’ll appreciate your recognizing the situation and in allowing them to adjust their pace, may be able to come back stronger in the long run. But keep beating that same horse and I can reassure you, it might take a while, but when it does go down, it won’t be peacefully.

Your job as a leader is to continually evaluate the situation and adjust. If additional resources exist, you can add these, but unfortunately, that isn’t a likely scenario. So it comes down to heat if we want to increase the outputs. As leaders, we have to constantly assess whether the heat we add to the problems is sufficient, or too much. If it is not enough, things will go at their own pace and may never be accomplished. Too much heat and you run the risk of backlash. But the right amount of heat creates change. And if change is what is required, you are going to be the one with your hand on the throttle. Manage it wisely; it’s a temperamental machine sometimes.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on October 12, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, Training & Development • Tagged: burnout, challenge, change, conflict, customer service, education, EMS, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, frustration, girls lacrosse, heat, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, motivation, officer, opportunity, parking lot, planning, politics, professionalism, resources, risk reduction, safety, South Carolina, team, tempo, work

The Disincentive for Responsible Reporting (Tax and Spend Socialists)

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

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

Constant Combat

There are people I know who are in constant conflict. We aren’t talking about warriors; we are talking about regular people who, from one day to the next, always seem to be involved in one event or another in which they feel like they must choose a side and fight. Every day, every shift, they are irresistibly drawn to drama.

Even if it isn’t incredibly stressful at first, after a while, it is. It’s like a constant stream of water wearing away at you until eventually you realize the rift it has created is now a canyon. We have to be selective about our battles. Constant battle also gives others the impression that you are a belligerent. Others may only choose to approach you in a defensive posture. If you wonder why you are always in conflict, this could be the issue itself. Constant combat numbs you to battles that really do require a fight.

Conflict occurs when values and perspectives contradict. Conflict is inevitable. Conflict is often necessary. Conflict motivates us to participate and to be productive, but conflict is a problem if we can’t manage it. It is said that people who are obstructed are out of balance. The consistent imbalance is bad energy and it only produces more bad energy.

Good leaders must maintain balance; the only way to achieve that balance is to be open to more ideas, even the ones you disagree with. While I’m not saying you have to embrace them, you should still understand their perspective, as it will help you to understand your own perspective that much better. And while you may think you are right now, perhaps you can see where the other person has issues with your argument, or may even see that you don’t have all the facts. No sensible argument should be built upon a fallacy.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on September 27, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, fire service, Firefighter Nation, leadership, motivation, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: change, conflict, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, Mick Mayers, motivation, officer, opportunity, professionalism, South Carolina

Vest-Wearing Yard-Breathers

I am one of them, so be nice.

You have likely heard others say, “Discretion is the better part of valor”. This is actually a misquote. In fact, Shakespeare’s Falstaff said: “The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have sav’d my life.” You have to understand the context in which Falstaff said this, which was after playing dead to escape being killed. His justification was that words like “honor” and “valor” will get you nothing once you’re dead. Falstaff’s suggestion implies that feigning death in this situation, which was a cowardly act, was defensible because what good are those terms if you are dead?

There is a certain argument made by people in our profession that indeed, having a safety mindset is, well, cowardly. There is a belief that the goal of the reflective vest-wearing, “yard-breather” population is to deprive each and every one of you out there of a draped casket and a bagpipe escort, that ‘tis much better to serve you and your company up as cannon fodder and damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. If you want to meet the objective of a LODD funeral, I suggest that at least you do it for a good reason. Unfortunately, given the statistics, that’s the least likely way you’ll go down in our business.

While there are excesses in every aspect of our lives, and I’ll grant that the safety officers sometimes come up with some really less-than-fun approaches to our jobs, you aren’t serving any purpose to get killed in training, except to inflate the LODD death statistic every year. If you happened to be one of the valiant 343 who died saving the equivalent population of several small cities, to me, you are a hero. If you happen to die because you refuse to buckle your seat belt, to me, less so.

We must make snap decisions daily that involve life and death. Sometimes we make good decisions and sometimes, things don’t go as expected. In the eyes of some, discretion suggests cowardice, but to me, discretion suggests a good command of resources and appropriate application of force to create leverage, thus defeating an enemy. Napoleonic conflict didn’t go out of vogue because it was effective; instead commanders realized the solution was impossible if there were a finite number of live bodies available. Thus, there was a practical need to change their approach.

If I may appeal to your rational side, if safe practices are really just sucking the life out of you, then try thinking about it from the perspective of your survivors. When you go off half-cocked and do something you think might be “heroic”, the rest of us often have to clean up the resultant mess. You may be off to Valhalla or whatever it is you believe in, but the rest of us earthbound souls have to pick up where you left off, get the kids to school, pay the bills, go to other calls, etcetera, etcetera. Like it or not, when you tap out 5-5-5-5 on us, life goes on down here. If you want valor, talk to a mother supporting several young children on a firefighter death benefit, or those same children who must go on and now won’t get to see Daddy at Christmas. Those individuals represent valor to me.

Discretion is, in truth, the better part of valor, if you are of the belief that there is more to life than another parking lot. Sometimes it takes more courage to push on. If you can’t see that for yourself, put yourself in the shoes of those who have to deal with the aftermath. If you’re not going to be safe for your own sake, do it for your family. There’s nothing heroic about making dumb choices.

While the vest-wearers may have a job we don’t like as much, in essence, they are there to protect ourselves from ourselves. We have to pull back on the reins sometimes and that goes against what some of you all might like, but honestly, we need a much more mature attitude from everyone on the team when it comes to approach of our most dangerous situations. Like we football coaches say to the youngster who has just done his best T.O. imitation in the end zone: “Act like you’ve been there before.” If we can all exhibit calm, cool, professional behavior, not only will we conquer every emergency, but we might live to talk about it later.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on September 20, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: change, customer service, EMS, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, football, Hilton Head Island, incident management, leadership, LODD, management, Mick Mayers, motivation, NIMS, officer, opportunity, professionalism, rescue, resources, risk reduction, safety, South Carolina, Training, vest, yard-breather

How Far Outside Your Box? Frontiers Around You

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on September 14, 2010 • Filed under: change, command, Command & Leadership, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, firefighting, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, motivation, officership, Patient Management, planning, politics, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, Technology & Communications, Training & Development, US&R • Tagged: change, conflict, customer service, education, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, frontiers, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, obsolescence, open mind, opportunity, paradigm, planning, politics, professionalism, research, resources, robot, short-sightedness, South Carolina, status quo

Living Up To Chief Croker’s Ideal

Chief Croker, FDNY

Chief Croker, FDNY; Image from the New York City Fire Museum found on the Croker Fire Drill Corporation website

When Chief Croker suggested that in our choice to become firefighters, the act of professing so made us heroes, and everything after that was in the line of duty, I respectfully take exception to that. We aren’t due heroic respect because we ARE firefighters, we are due this respect when we do the job in the manner of our calling. To maintain that respect requires us to be noble, virtuous, brave, and compassionate. Lacking those, we are just someone who happens to be tagged with a job description we can’t meet. Anyone can put on the uniform. It’s living up to the traditions and expectations of our predecessors that makes us either valiant or heroic.

Suggesting Croker was wrong would be misstating his intent. He was pointing out that the profession, at the time in which he served, was a profession of heroic service. Things haven’t necessarily changed, but taking his quote out of context, which seems like some of those among us seem to do, would be a disservice to all. In this day and age, we have a number of people among us who don’t share Croker’s opinion of “The Job”. I say this because these mutts are quick to quote Croker, insisting that because they are a firefighter, the public should bow down and kiss our collective asses, but these same people fail to recognize reciprocal suggestions of sacrifice or humility or valor, except where they choose it, and on their terms alone. Saying because you are a “firefighter”, you are a hero, means that even the slimeballs who set fires because they’re “bored” and happen to have filled out a membership somewhere get to hide under the badge as well. I just don’t buy that.

I’m not hip to those who choose to wrap themselves in the flag of our profession but won’t do anything but criticize others as well. If some of these trolls really had respect for the job, they’d take the time to mentor and provide positive help for their brothers, rather than subjecting them to public ridicule on a regular basis. I guess every niche on the internet has a moron drooling on their keyboard, waiting to attack. When I read some of these comments in places, I just want to let some of them have it with both barrels. I have long learned, however, that doing so would require my lowering myself to their level, and honestly, I’m not interested in that level. Try being a real professional and setting an example of leadership. Any idiot can tear something down; it takes skill to build a masterpiece.

There is no reason why insisting on a higher standard for our profession should be indicative of less-than-valiant behavior. It occurs to me that when someone elevates our expectations anymore, we have someone from the peanut gallery shouting what a real man he is because he doesn’t use incident command, or safety vests, or whatever. Likewise, we have those who think that it’s okay to just plug along with no expectations of excellence whatsoever, and they fail to understand their need to grow, and continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. You two groups are made for each other. Leave the rest of us out of it. Call yourselves something else, because you are giving firefighters a bad name.

I’ve been seeing more and more of the rhetoric lately and much of it coming from a select few. But amazingly enough, I’ve also been seeing more and more people lately choosing to call out the boorish behavior and point out that while we are all capable of making a poor decision, its those of us who find good lessons and earnestly pursue sharing education with others that I choose to call “brother”. I’m proud of you guys and its people like you who deserve the kudos. You guys are the real heroes among us.

So if you want to strap on your wacker belt and have at it with a someone because they chose to share video that we could all learn from, have at it, Slappy. While you are portraying yourself as the Nation’s Numero Uno Bombero, the rest of us are quietly toiling away and doing the job. Perhaps instead of being the best firefighter (because some of you are so infinitely perfect), you can all form a fan club for yourselves and trade war stories. There’s a term we use for that group that involves an involuntary movement and a geometric figure that I can’t describe on my G to PG-rated blog, so you’ll have to figure it out for yourselves.

In the meanwhile, if you truly want to honor the legacy of Chief Croker and the bar he set for us, you’ll be real heroes. If you’re a salty vet, you’ll take one of these young bucks aside and show them the ropes. If you’re the new probie, find a mentor you can respect (and others do as well) and learn at the foot of the master. In either case, the people I consider exemplifying valor are those individuals who honor the profession and set a positive example for others not only in a burning building, but at the medical calls, doing inspections, dispatching, maintaining apparatus, and every other job necessary to do The Job.

The rest of you special ones who think you’re so great, someday too you may screw up and when you do, you’d better hope everyone else is a little more forgiving. In case you didn’t know, hubris isn’t a type of shrubbery. Remember: “Pride goeth before a fall”. Don’t be the next casualty.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on September 6, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, In the Line of Duty, leadership, motivation, officership, professionalism, seatbelts, Training & Development • Tagged: change, Chief Croker, conflict, customer service, education, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, hero, Hilton Head Island, honor, incident management, leadership, management, Mick Mayers, motivation, NIMS, opportunity, professionalism, risk reduction, valor

Customer Service: A Bad Concept?

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

How Hot Does A Barrel Fire Have To Get For Proper Helmet Crustiness?

The Legend.

I have been very busy. So in a recent Firehouse Zen post on our Facebook page, I asked what subjects you all might like to read about on FHZ. One popular request was from alert reader Pete, asking “How hot does a barrel fire have to get to make your helmet look really crusty?”

Well, Pete, in answer to your question, I’m not quite sure, having never done that myself before, but I’m sure there’s someone out there who could answer that question for us. But the subject begs another question like “How crusty does someone have to look to you before you feel like they know what they are talking about?” I have found, for example, in the individual with a dozen patches on his or her coat, an inverse relationship between the “advertising” and how much I trust their “experience” on the scene. When I was young, I had the patches. Fortunately, I had some real jakes pull me aside and explain just how squirrely that looked.

If you are a young firefighter (or an old one looking for some real guidance) truly looking for a mentor, instead of looking for who has the nastiest looking gear or the most patches, maybe you should just talk with some of the informal leaders of the group and find out who THEY really respect. Watch their faces when Chief So-and-So speaks: if even these guys are listening and soaking in what is said, then you can trust that they believe that person is a leader. If they look like they’re not paying any attention, chances are the individual may have a title, and may even have the education, but maybe not the street cred to back it up. That kind of observation is much better at judging who’s “been there” than looking at the amount of garbage melted on their lid.

Note the helmet in the picture. While some of you may understand that the helmet is upside down (to better protect the ratchet system), some of you more insightful ones might wonder why I have an upside-down helmet as my featured photo/logo. Well, it’s because the useful part of the helmet isn’t the shell, the truly useful part is the space in which you put your head. So while some of our brothers are obsessing over the proper level of carbon on the hard part up there, what would be a better thing to concentrate on is what is filling the hole, when it comes to deciding who is the best person to look up to.

While taking really good care of your protective ensemble is important, there’s nothing wrong with a little smokiness to show you have been there. But the truth of the matter is that even though someone may LOOK the part, it’s what is under all that crust that really counts. So skip the barrel burnishing and earn your look the old fashioned way; safely but aggressively, taking reasonable risk to save lives, taking a little risk to save property, and none at all for the already lost. Get in there and get it, but don’t be stupid in the process.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on August 27, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, motivation, professionalism • Tagged: burned, education, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, helmet, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, Mick Mayers, motivation, officer, ratchet, risk reduction, safety

A Little Safety Parable

You too could be roadkill. Photo courtesy of aanimalcontrol.com

You too could be roadkill. Photo courtesy of aanimalcontrol.com

So I’m walking from our house to the beach with my three daughters. There’s a road we have to cross in between here and there that’s pretty busy. On occasion tourists come flying around the curve, not realizing that there’s an area where you have to cross (although it’s not a marked crosswalk). While no one has been hit at that spot in the 29 years I have been living on the Island (that I know of), I know it’s a bad section that you can’t see around. It occurred to me today when I was making that crossing that it’s a lot like the risk we endure as firefighters.

I had the opportunity this weekend to read a recent article on Stat911, that seems to have created some serious wailing and gnashing of the teeth between people who call themselves brothers. Honestly, it was pretty sad to me as I read these comments. I admit, it is a little bothersome when a video comes out and a number of people point out the obvious mistakes made, but as I mentioned in an earlier article here on FHZ, we should be looking at things that go wrong and learning, and resolving to keep from repeating events that maim and kill our brethren.

Conversely, instead of saying how stupid some of these people are, perhaps we should offer some constructive criticism and offer suggestions on methods that would help solve the problems, rather than lowering the bar into that angry pit of accusatory language. And when we generalize about whole departments or organizations based on a squirrely few, we aren’t doing anything other than trying to piss one another off. I agree 100% that some of the repeated actions (or inactions) taken by other firefighters that endanger themselves and their their colleagues are a little infuriating (like refusing to wear a seat belt), but like the point I have also made over and over again, people aren’t going to learn when you rub their nose in it, they will learn when they see the logic in changing.

But back to my story. There is, of course, risk in crossing the street, but we accept that risk when we go for a walk, don’t we? As a pedestrian, we take a calculated risk every time we go out in the road, but it doesn’t stop us from doing it. In fact, walking in the middle of a busy street is exhilarating. There’s a certain adrenaline rush when you run out in front of moving cars.

As a responsible father, however, I’d advise against running in front of a moving car. I’m sure I’d get in a little trouble with my wife, the law, and probably get a few death threats if I just let my children run out in front of cars. If my four-year-old got struck by a car there, after having just let her run out there, knowing the risks involved, wouldn’t that make me a little bit liable? But given the logic espoused by a few of my more enlightened colleagues, I suppose I am overreacting when I tell my girls it’s a wise idea to look both ways at that intersection. After all, no one has ever been struck or killed here. If I insisted on having the street marked with lines and a sign, I might be construed as overreacting if you ask some of these folks.

I eat risk for lunch. I eagerly chose to pursue a fire service career because it was exciting. Even more so, I focused my whole career to concentrate on special operations. I’m the Deputy Director of a US&R Task Force. I used to teach high-line rope rescue, and hold internationally recognized instructor certifications in SCUBA and water rescue. I hold NPQ and IFSAC certifications as a HAZMAT Technician. Two of my favorite hobbies are mountain biking and skiing. I’m not in the slightest bit worried about taking risks.

But there is a serious difference between taking stupid risks and calculated risks. Firefighting isn’t Jackass. We have a serious job to do that involves serving the public, and using our personnel as cannon fodder doesn’t do the job. If you take a risk and die trying to save a life in our job, I’ll be the first one to sing your praises. If you take a risk and die trying to save a burning trash pile, I’m sorry, I’m not impressed. If you get burned because you failed to use the safety equipment we provide you, I guess my first question will be, why wasn’t it used?

I think some of the plastic vests and hard-hats are a little much sometimes, but I can understand the effort to make ourselves more visible and to avoid having something clonk us on the head. But as a leader and chief officer, I also know what can go wrong, what can go seriously, seriously wrong, and to ignore it because I’ve never seen it first hand would be folly. And to just turn my back on personnel who fail to use good safety practices, knowing what the outcome could be, would be negligent.

Quit the name calling and sand throwing and act like grown-ups. You can argue that it’s just “ragging”, but it’s not. The language some of you all out there are using is just plain wrong and malicious. And it certainly doesn’t represent your side of the argument professionally at all. I can give people crap all day long with the best of them, but that’s not what some of you are engaging in. What you are engaging in is simply destructive behavior, and it’s one of the reasons why our profession isn’t always taken very seriously. The only people we are hurting here is ourselves.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on August 7, 2010 • Filed under: "accident prevention", change, EMS Health & Safety, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, In the Line of Duty, leadership, Line of Duty, LODD, motivation, officership, professionalism, safety, seatbelts • Tagged: change, conflict, Dave Statter, education, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, Hilton Head Island, incident management, management, Mick Mayers, risk reduction, safety

Stuck In The Past

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on August 3, 2010 • Filed under: "accident prevention", change, command, Command & Leadership, education, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Fires, government, leadership, LODD, Mass Casualty Incident, motivation, News, planning, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, safety, Training & Development • Tagged: administration, Billy Hutchinson, Brad Baity, Brandon Thompson, change, Charleston, Charleston 9, Charleston Fire Department, command, conflict, Earl Drayton, education, EMS, FHZ, fire, Fire Daily, fire prevention, fire rescue topics, firefighter safety health, firefighters, firefighting operations, Firehouse Zen, fires, health, Hilton Head Island, leadership, line of duty, LODD, Louis Mulkey, major incidents, Mark Kelsey, mass casualty incident, Melvin Champaign, Mick Mayers, Mike Benke, Mike French, news, opportunity, patient management, politics, rescues, risk reduction, safety, seat belts, South Carolina, Super Sofa Store Fire

It’s The Minimum

If you didn't have standards, this might be your first out engine. Swan Creek/Emu Creek Bushfire Brigade, Queensland, Australia 2002

Authentic Neapolitan pizzas are typically made with tomatoes and Mozzarella cheese. Genuine Neapolitan pizza dough consists of high-protein wheat flour (type 0 or 00, or a mixture of both), natural Neapolitan yeast or brewer’s yeast, salt and water. The dough must be kneaded by hand or with a low-speed mixer. After the rising process, the dough must be formed by hand without the help of a rolling pin or other machine, and may be no more than 3 mm (⅛ in) thick. The pizza must be baked for 60–90 seconds in a 485 °C (905 °F) stone oven with an oak-wood fire.^[4] When cooked, it should be crispy, tender and fragrant.

Those were just a few of the standards for an authentic Neapolitan pizza (published on Wikipedia), as recognized and protected by the Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana. Likewise, most of the things you take for granted in the world, with the exception of things like knock-off Rolexes, are constructed from materials meeting standards, are built to certain standards, and if they carry any kind of guarantee of quality or workmanship, must meet performance standards.

Unless your organization is living in a 1950’s time warp, the people in your community, when they call the fire department for help, expect help for many things that exceed the scope of “firefighting”. Regardless of whether your community is staffed with a career or a volunteer department, there are increased expectations on the level of service being provided. I can rationally argue the need for standards on a number of different levels. I will, however, only provide you with this one today; it’s the minimum.

If you want to call yourself a firefighter, there are certain things you should be able to do. If you cannot do these things, you run the risk of hurting yourself, not to mention others. You also run the risk of making an emergency greater than it was when you arrived. As a reasonable and prudent individual with a duty to act, you agree that your “job” (as a firefighter) entails certain knowledge, skills, and abilities to allow your organization the ability to advertise a product. What that product is in your jurisdiction could be limited to fighting fire or could be all-hazards, or anywhere in between.

Your community, in supporting the “fire department”, does so with the understanding that you are what you say you are. The community defines that expectation; if their only expectation is that a group of bubbas show up to put out a fire when it occurs, then maybe you don’t need to meet a standard. If that’s the case though, when insurance companies decide the risk is too great in your community, don’t be surprised when the citizenry can’t get coverage and they hang you (or your chief) in effigy at the town square. And that may be getting off light.

Minimum standards, among other things, define. Since a group of individuals representing different aspects of the world affected by a certain thing decided and agreed on a definition, and that group is recognized by the others affected by that thing, the definition becomes a standard. I could write a standard on constructing nuclear plants and declare it the minimum standard, but since I have no authority or expertise in doing so, my standard would likely be considered meaningless and useless.

For those who aren’t in favor of standards, I’d suggest that it’s not that you aren’t in favor of standards, but what is in those standards and how they came to be. If that’s the case, I’d say that before you make any proclamations on a standard being a “bad” standard, you seek to understand how that definition came to be and how it happens to be the minimum. In many cases, I’d bet that you’d find that others wanted a much stricter or more restricting definition and the end result was what everyone on that committee agreed was acceptable for use or was prudent.

Like I tell the people who work with me, don’t complain about anything unless you tried to do something about it. If you don’t like a standard, feel free to get involved. But the long and short of it is this: standards exist for at least one primary reason, and that reason is to define what something is. In the absence of any other meaningful definition, if something close fills that void, that standard will be the one that defines the subject matter. You can be angry about it if you like, but if you don’t like it, change it.

In the meanwhile, if it’s an accepted standard, you can assume you’ll have to meet it. You can say all day that you choose not to meet certain standards, but if you are like me, you will understand that to not do so will leave you open to a number of things, including liability. The only way to escape it is to lay that decision on the people who are at that payscale: the politicians. But that’s a blog post for another day.

Stay safe and do the best you can with what you have. But remember, the standard is what defines you. If you have no standard, you have no definition, and in that case, a monkey can do your job. Even pizzas are made to standards. If having no standard is what your community believes to be okay, then know that you ultimately get what you pay for, and if your community doesn’t support a department with minimum expectations of members, they shouldn’t be surprised when everything within the city limits are a smoking ruin some weekend.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 28, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, credentialing, education, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Nation, Firefighter Safety & Health, Firefighting Operations, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, motivation, NIMS, officership, planning, politics, professionalism, safety, Training & Development, US&R • Tagged: conflict, credentialing, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, First Due Blog Carnival, Hilton Head Island, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, NFPA, NIMS, rolex, standards, Training

What Does It Take To Be A Firefighter Anyway?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 26, 2010 • Filed under: change, command, Command & Leadership, customer service, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, firefighting, Firefighting Operations, Funding & Staffing, government, leadership, motivation, professionalism, Training & Development • Tagged: customer service, education, FHZ, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, Mick Mayers, motivation, opportunity, resources, Training

Evolution And You

You can choose to keep your head in the sand or come up for air. It's really YOUR choice.

In an uncharacteristic Firehouse Zen moment, I’m going to share some not-so-heartwarming news with you: If you fail to evolve, you will die. It’s not all about cheerleading and mentoring. Some of this motivation has to come from the subject themselves. If you are not intrinsically motivated, you can only be kicked in the head so many times before it’s time for us to move on to someone who genuinely WANTS to succeed.

I am inspired by this post from the New York Times that discusses what is known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect — our incompetence masks our ability to recognize our incompetence. In essence, some people are so stupid, that they don’t even recognize that they are that stupid.

It’s like the contemporary fire officer who continues to discuss his or her lousy computer skills. Do you know one? While twenty years ago, it might not have been a big deal, but virtually everything we do these days as a company or chief officer requires a certain understanding of how to complete forms, create documents and memos, and to analyze data.

I don’t know of a single department in the nation who is still using a typewriter to perform these tasks, although I’m sure someone will pipe up and claim that distinction. Unless you are some superstar fireground tactician, I don’t know anyone so gifted that they can forgo the skills required to cover the administrative requirements of the job, and those skills include basic computer use. Claiming you can’t work a computer just doesn’t cut it in the 21st Century; if you are so confused by a word processing program that you can’t manage to put out a coherent memo, it might be time for a career change.

But this isn’t a rant about not being able to use a computer. The point is that as times evolve, so do our jobs. You can complain about it and moan about it all you want, but the expectations placed on us as leaders require us to understand and manage change. You may not be an early adopter, in fact, you might be the last one dragged kicking and screaming to the next level, but at some point, you must make the change or expect to become irrelevant. As a company officer, your redeeming skill might have been that you could last the longest in a smoky room without puking your guts up, but now that we have methods to skip that desired attribute, you’d better polish some of your other abilities up soon else you will be yesterday’s news.

We must constantly evaluate our knowledge, skills, and abilities and determine what we can do to evolve. If we fail to do that, we are dooming ourselves to obsolescence. If retirement is within your sixty-day window, that might not matter to you, but if you plan on hanging in for the next few years, I suggest you learn more. You have to be smart enough to realize you don’t know everything and certainly not so stupid that you think you do.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 24, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, General, leadership, motivation, officership, planning, professionalism • Tagged: ability, career, change, computer, contemporary, Dunning-Kruger, education, evolution, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, government, Hilton Head Island, knowledge, leadership, management, marketing, Mick Mayers, motivation, New York Times, obsolescence, officer, Opinionator, opportunity, planning, politics, research, risk reduction, skill, Training

Dedication to Customer Service

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

In Any Change, Timing Is Essential

According to Musashi in The Book of Five Rings, timing is the core principle in strategy. You must adapt your strategy to coordinate timing with your skill, and you must know when to attack and when not to attack. All things ebb and flow and so there is cyclical timing, as in waiting for the proper time to execute, when the energy of the defenses are low or distracted. There is also the benefit of understanding when the energy of the defense is at it’s peak and to use varying methods to either stall, divert, or spread out the defense until the timing can be right. Sun Tzu said: “The victorious army first realizes the conditions for victory, and then seeks to engage in battle. The vanquished army fights first, and then seeks victory.”

I know company and chief officers who have no sense of timing. They’ll go off half-cocked at everything and anything, thinking that by brute strength and a full-on frontal assault, they’ll impose their will on whatever comes along. Imagine their surprise when not only do they get it wrong, but they look bad in the process. It doesn’t matter how right you are (or think you are), if the time and opportunity don’t meet, you will find yourself on the losing end again.

As frustrating as it can be sometimes, the officer must determine which way the wind is blowing and then introduce the change (or proposal for change) when the opportunity presents itself. And I’ll tell people again and again, as I’m telling you now, watch officers who don’t understand this and I’ll bet they’re not perceived as very successful at their jobs.

Just as water flows to conform with boundaries and seeks the most efficient path, so should the officer possess the ability to change with one’s own situation to shift between options when presented with new information. Be aware of where loyalties lie, with the old and with the new, seek the chance to win over those on either side, and be the master of change.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 15, 2010 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, customer service, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, leadership, motivation, officership, politics, professionalism, revolution • Tagged: change, conflict, customer service, education, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, generalship, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, management, Mick Mayers, motivation, Musashi, officer, opportunity, planning, politics, strategy, Sun Tzu, timing, water

Power Is Like A Flame

Power is like a flame. If you hold it too tight, it can smother. If you hold it too tight it will also burn. And like fire, it can be beneficial, or conversely, it can hurt others. It needs fuel, oxygen and a source of heat and likewise, power needs fuel, fresh air, and energy or it can’t be sustained.

When you get power, give it away. You’ll be surprised at how fast it returns to you. In fact, the more power you give, the more it comes back. If you empower those around you, they are eager to return the power to you. Those who hold power close to their heart and fail to share it are doomed to see it die off. If you fail to empower those around you, they begin to resent your power and want it for themselves, and when they get it themselves, they see your example and won’t share it, much less give any of it away.

Those who are confident know that their power actually comes from others and are comfortable with that. In doing so, people are comfortable with handing it to them, because they know it won’t be used against them. When you give power, you gain trust, and trust is the most important element in any relationship, especially with the people you hope to inspire.

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 12, 2010 • Filed under: Command & Leadership, customer service, EMS Topics, fire, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, motivation, professionalism • Tagged: change, conflict, education, encouragement, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, flame, government, Hilton Head Island, leadership, Mick Mayers, motivation, power, sharing

Your Fire Department Bucket List

The ladies dig the sunset at Bryce Canyon.

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

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

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

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Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on July 10, 2010 • Filed under: change, education, EMS Topics, Fire Rescue Topics, fire service, leadership, motivation, professionalism, revolution • Tagged: Bryce Canyon, bucket list, change, customer service, education, fire service, FireEMSBlogs, Firehouse Zen, Grand Canyon, Hilton Head Island, kitchen table, marketing, Mick Mayers, Zion

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