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Hypocrisy

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When a man will condemn others but will not subject himself to the same ethical standards, that, my friends, is a hypocrite.   We talk about people living in glass houses and the logic for their not throwing stones, but we often fail to hold people to their statements that they made to get them to where they are today.

When a man will say that a project is a waste of time, yet take credit for it when the project is being hailed by the media, that, my friends, is a hypocrite.  Likewise, there are “leaders” in this world who like to trumpet their budget cuts and their saving of taxpayer funds, despite being warned that their efforts could prove dangerous, but when things do go badly, they slip free of any blame, and those people are also hypocrites.

When a man will make claims that he has accomplished something spectacular, but won’t permit scrutiny of his claims, is that man a hypocrite?  Shouldn’t we, if we have indeed done an amazing deed, be willing to permit people to look into our claims, to see just what it is that we have done and how we can replicate that “success”?  Hypocrisy is claiming you are all about something, when really you are not; so if you make claims of expertise, shouldn’t you expect critical review of your work?  If it is truly what it is, it will stand up to the examination.

When people go around pretending to be leaders by making claims of their honesty, they should in fact be honest.  If they are about being a good steward of taxpayer funds, they too, should be actually doing just that.  If they think that their cost-cutting efforts are actually beneficial to the community and they prove to be wrong, they should be willing to take that heat.  And when we say we are professionals in what we do, we should permit others to review our works and determine if they hold up to a critical examination of the content.

Change freightens the entrenched and the hypocritical; the entrenched because of their anticipation of loss and the hypocrites, because they will be exposed for what they are when the light of truth shines in.  If you are one who embraces change, it’s probably because you know you don’t have anything to lose.  If you are what you are and you do what you do, and you practiced your art and you learned from the masters, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain from change.

Posted by on July 6, 2009 • Filed under: change, command, credentialing, DHS, FEMA, government, leadership, motivation, NIMS, officership, politics, professionalism, rebellion, rescue, revolution, SAR, US&R, USAR • Tagged: , , , , , , ,

The Past Will Continue To Haunt Us

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I’m supposed to be working on my final Executive Fire Officer paper but in doing some literature review, I came across a voice from the past.  I happened upon a copy of “The Fire Chief’s Handbook” from 1978.  Now to someone like me, 1978 doesn’t sound like too long ago.  But putting it into perspective, there were no CD or DVD players then.  As a matter of fact, the Walkman hadn’t even been out yet. 

1978 was 31 years ago. That’s a long time for a lot of things, my friends, much less for a book. But here I am, three decades later, reading this paragraph:

It is not difficult to convince a community that attention should be given to certain technical aspects of fire extinguishment.  It is much more difficult, however, to convince a municipality that increased knowledge and skill in management have now become necessary to insure the most efficient use of resources invested in protecting life and property against fire.

The discussion goes on to say that “until recently, fire protection in most of our communities had been a relatively simple and catch-as-catch can affair”.  Wow- so thirty years ago, you’re saying there was actually some discussion about increasing requirements and demands?  Sounds like a familiar argument.

So I guess when I hear someone balking at the needs for higher education and a new approach because our industry is evolving into a more complex environment, I guess we’re still talking about things we were talking about, well, when disco was popular.

I think I’ll make this short and sweet because I’ve got a lot to do, but isn’t it odd that what was considered the seminal book on fire service management was pointing out then what we still haven’t accepted now?  I’ve said several times before, that the fire service will go into the 21st Century, like it or not, kicking and screaming even, but as our world evolves around us and things change, if we continue to resist change, we ourselves will become an anachronism. As long as organizations and leaders think that the fire service will go on without turmoil by just sticking your head in the sand and hoping it will all go away, it won’t.  When you come up, the world will be telling you that if you don’t evolve, you may not survive.

Posted by on May 25, 2009 • Filed under: change, customer service, fire service, leadership, motivation, planning, professionalism, rebellion, revolution, technology • Tagged: , , , , ,

Rebel or Revolutionary – You Choose

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As posted from my blog at FirefighterNation.com with some updates:

With all of the change going on in the atmosphere, I was contemplating the difference between being a rebel and a revolutionary. It seems to me that there are plenty of firefighters who are a little mixed up and don’t understand the difference. The problem is that while revolutionaries effect change in a situation, rebels simply refuse to obey.

Why should that matter? When we are agitating for change in our current situation, being a revolutionary suggests turning or moving, which is hopefully a positive thing. Rebelling doesn’t suggest anything positive at all. I know firefighters who think that their rebellious actions suggest something courageuous or heroic, where I am suggesting that those individuals aren’t any of that at all. In fact, many of the “rebels” I have encountered are resisting change for good because it upsets their version of the status quo.

If you are pushing against the status quo in order to make positive change, you are sure to meet with resistance from those who are comfortable in that little rut they have dug. Anything you may do to move them from it is going to be perceived as threatening to their happiness and they may lash out at you. They are not going to understand your motives or they may not want to understand. Things may even get dangerous, for your career or for you personally.

The winds of change are blowing and we can either flex with them and survive, or resist them and be broken off at the trunk. We in emergency services need to understand our entire environment and be revolutionaries, to think about things in ways we never thought of them before, for the good of our profession.

Posted by on November 26, 2008 • Filed under: change, firefighting, leadership, motivation, officership, rebellion, revolution