So yesterday's post asked you to walk a mile in the shoes of the person calling for help.  We may joke amongst ourselves about some of the more ridiculous-seeming alarms we go on, but those wry comments on the failure of someone to be able to say, shut off the water to their house when there is a broken pipe, should be kept among us as much as possible.  Just because we have been graced with some common sense doesn't mean everyone has and I'm sure there's a day when you'll need help and hope nobody is making jokes about you as well.  Today, however, let's talk about when leaders fail to make good choices.

In keeping with the spirit of the lead paragraph, some people don't even realize they need help, and instead of pointing at them and laughing, we should be showing them the way toward enlightenment.  I don't think that all people who make poor decisions do so out of maliciousness; I really think that poor decisions often come about because of feelings of insecurity (the subject is afraid they will look bad), ego (subject believes they are right), misinformation (subject does not have all the facts), and for other reasons.

Take, for example, this situation shared with us through Dave Statter's site at STAT911.com, where a non-firefighting Fire Commissioner is making a big deal out of not being permitted to use emergency warning lights on his POV. The decision was made to not renew the permit required for this commissioner to have warning lights on his personal vehicle.  The commissioner made interesting comments to the media about the situation, basically threatening the officer, who happened to be exercising some common sense.  The facts of the case are pretty much immaterial; this is an internal issue that has become widely publicized because one individual feels like he didn't get his way.  From the website Courant.com:

The standoff started in January when Rickis, then acting chief, decided not to renew Davis' state-mandated permit to use flashing blue lights on his vehicle, even though he's had the lights for years.  "It was against the law [for Davis] to have it," Rickis explained. "You have to be an active firefighter. It had to be done."  Davis, 64, a Blue Hills Fire District commissioner for 13 years, acknowledges that he retaliated by taking away the department-issued SUV that Rickis uses to respond to fire calls.  "My dumb-ass assistant chief took it upon himself to discontinue my permit," Davis said. "I took his vehicle away because he had no authorization to do what he did."

Just because you THINK you have power, doesn't mean that it is automatically so.  Here is a Fire Commissioner, involved in a petty fight with an officer because he didn't get to leave the blue lights on his car.  If this commissioner had REAL power, he would not have been in the position to have this happen.  There would have been mutual respect between he and the Assistant Chief, good communication, and this may not have ever come to light.  Instead, we have conflict.

Frustration is more often than not, borne of perceived powerlessness.  Frustration leads to many problems, problems that cascade away in the opposite direction from sanity, while traveling through anger, retaliation, and often enough, violence.  As a leader, by having mutual consideration for others includes engaging them in conversation, in understanding their situation, and being able to discuss differences with at least some respect or even just professional courtesy.  The commissioner might very well have a good reason for having blue lights on his car (but aside from the "power" trip it sounds like he gets from having them, probably not).  This guy sounds like he has a real problem with people "not respecting his authority".

While all challenges can be solved by communicating and working together, there are plenty of barriers to communication, and there are plenty of reasons people can give for being irrational.  If you are dealing with someone who can work with you to solve problems, you can avoid issues like these pretty easily.  If not, you have a lot of work ahead of you.  In fact, it may even come down to your having to leave that environment if things get bad enough.

If you always make the "right" decision, you will always have the force of "right" on your side.  This commissioner is so delusional that he thinks that people will listen to his ranting; the Assistant Chief has the power of reason on his side.  Like I said, not all the facts are probably presented here, but even if the commissioner did have the ability to do something to the Assistant Chief, he certainly isn't going to be able to do so now.

Might does not make right.  Doing what is best for the people you serve, your real bosses, does.  If you make decisions based on what is truly good for the community, if tried in the court of public interest, you will always prevail.  The challenge is that this can sometimes be a tricky line to walk.

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It may take extra time that you don't think you have. That time may seem very valuable. The shortcut you take may seem like it saves those precious seconds. But I have seen in my life, many times when those shortcuts have proven catastrophic, and in most of those situations, I look at them and wonder, had someone taken a few extra moments to do it right, what the outcome might have been.

While the historical issue between response to rescues in New York City is frustrating and sad, since it seems to me to be the confluence of a power struggle and turf battle, instead of celebrating a terrific save the other day, instead we have this tragedy to contend with, as shared with us by Dave Statter on his blog.

I have always learned and always taught that when lifting, we "crib to the lift". And while the spreaders are not the desired lifting tool, I have used them before and they have worked just fine. I preface that, however by explaining that I am also passionate about physics and when I have used spreaders, I also understood that the force applied must go somewhere, and if the load isn't stabilized, the force is going to create motion we don't want. In this case, the force displaced the object alright: lateral to the support (the spreader) and with nothing to support the load (cribbing) the load went to ground (and victim).

I don't care if you are FDNY, ESU, or anyone else. I have seen this very same shortcut taken before in departments that have had identically catastrophic results. I also recall other times when the load has shifted on the column, in one case, three stacked air bags.  In this case, the firefighter, who happened to also be the salesman of the lift bags and should have a little expertise in their use, himself was killed.

There's a lesson to be learned in every tragedy. Aside from the physical principles that apply to all of us here on this planet, there's another very important one. Driving recklessly, failing to wear your seatbelt, not wearing proper PPE, not paying attention to overhead power lines, and in this case, not providing an alternate column to support the load via cribbing, all might seem like they are saving precious seconds, but failing to do the right thing the first time, ended instead in tragedy.

Take a moment to ditch the emotion and be the professionals you are. Do the right thing the first time.

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

Individuals have given themselves the freedom to make poor decisions, then be let off the hook because we shouldn't "judge" them, or because their mommy didn't hug them as a child, or whatever victim story they happen to choose this week.  The reality is that while reacting negatively to those who act in error is not acceptable, neither is the act that sparked the reaction in the first place.  Perhaps if our nation's law enforcement would start hauling off people who run red lights; who make erratic and unanticipated turns without use of a signal; those who drive too slowly in the passing lane, who fly down the shoulder to cut to the head of a merging line, or those who fail to pull to the right when an emergency vehicle is asking for the right of way, perhaps you might see a considerable decrease in road rage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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People love to hate hypocrites. When a person or a group allows their reputation to be portrayed as one of honor and good, and then that trust is betrayed, then their actions can be seen as patently hypocritical.  Those are the people who do things like run on a platform of family values, only to be shacking up in South America on taxpayer funds.  Or doggedly pursuing impeachment of a President for being adulterous while engaging in their own adulterous affair. Or the religious who rail about the wrongs of homosexuality, only to be having a few of those relationships on their own.  One of my least favorite college football coaches, who has led under the premise of being forthright and wholesome after his claims that he knew nothing; Well, maybe he knew a little more than nothing.  And of course, there is this Weiner saga that continues to keep playing.  

Since the firefighter is held to be an example of virtue, bravery, and service in the name of the community good, when one of us fails, we can expect it to get serious play.  And in this day and age where so many people are looking for heroes, when we get it wrong, we get it wrong in a big way.  The backlash continues to flow as it seems like from one day to the next, one or more of our own pulls a new rabbit out of the hat and ends up with their mug shot splashed across the front page.

I also like to read the comments in the stories as Statter and Firegeezer where a number of our brethren sanctimoniously proclaim the fallen as garbage and a disgrace to the uniform.  But really, here's where it really gets ugly.  Check out the comments on this article from the Las Vegas Sun.  You can also check out the whole story there as well, but one look at the comments and you can see that the idea of the public singing our praises as "heroes" has been replaced by angry, bitter tirades against what we do not only while not running alarms, but even while providing our service.  And I don't even know what it is that these guys may or may not have done to draw this kind of fire.  I don't know that they did anything wrong or they have just found themselves poorly positioned in the center of a taxpayer backlash against spending.

Just yesterday, my own organization happened to be fighting a decent sized brush fire in a residential area.  With all of the coverage of the devastation in the Arizona wildfires you'd think citizens would be praising a fast, aggressive response; instead, at least one TV news report (not the one cited) pointed out the "inconvenience" of residents not being allowed to their homes until the fire was declared under control, and I corresponded and talked with a few people with very similar complaints.  Fortunately, all of my interactions were positive and once explained, the individuals were at least a little more grateful.  But what we have always taken for granted (that the citizens see us as positive, upstanding members of the community), has been replaced in many jurisdictions as our being selfish, lazy, and out-of-control.

There's enough ugly to go around right now without our own people bringing it down upon us.  It is up to each and every one of us to weed out those who continue to give emergency service a bad name with their negative attitudes, their arrogant behavior, and their me-first mentalities.  The good name and the "hero" portrait of emergency service, like it or not, came about because we put it on the line for our neighbors, we genuinely cared about our community and serving others, and because we were always seen as hard-working, blue collar people.  When a firefighter said something, they shot straight, but it was said with concern and compassion.  We have always been about getting the job done, no matter what, no matter how dirty or dangerous, but without bitching or complaining or pointing out each others' faults.  This is not how we work today.

Let the politicians, TV preachers, Wall Street CEOs and the other scumbags be the hypocrites and punching bags.  Each of us should be serving as a positive example of how to do this job, volunteer or career, and without acting like a bunch or amateurs and whackers.  Man up (that includes our sister firefighters as well) and do the job, and while you need to educate the public in what we do and how they interact with us to provide a team approach, don't call attention to yourself for doing it.  Just do the right thing and we'll all be fine.

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We get facts before making knee-jerk decisions on the incident scene. Why do we fail to do this everywhere else?

I sat down to write this not to defend the man’s actions, but to reflect on the collective anger of the masses.  I actually picked up the story of the firefighter refusing to respond to the Tuscon shooting incident not off of Statter, as many of you may have, but from a news aggregator on Twitter.  I immediately went to the story and while I had to wince at what occurred, I was even more disappointed in the troll activity, which didn’t take long to build.

Before I even went to see what our beloved Fire News blogs like Statter, Fire Daily, Fire Critic, et al had to say (and what you all had to say), I felt it important to say this piece about what went on in that fire station that day.

Unless you are a Tuscon firefighter or officer who happened to be in the room at the time, YOU DON’T KNOW.  You can speculate, you can imagine, you can insinuate, and you can opinionate, but the long and short of it is that YOU DON’T KNOW.

Was the firefighter wrong for not responding?  Given what I have read so far, and in my opinion, yes, as I believe that it is important as a professional responder to put my personal feelings aside when called to duty.  But I wasn’t there.  I have no idea what was going on in the station.  I don’t know what was going through the firefighter’s head when he got the call.  I don’t know what he knew, or what he believed he knew, and I don’t profess to understand what he was going through.  But we are dealing with human beings, and not machines, and on occasion, events transpire which cause even the most hardened “hero” to individualize the situation and for whatever reason, experience emotions that we can’t assume are rational or even explainable.

There have been many documented cases where someone froze in the heat of battle because of some emotional trigger.  There is a great piece on the differences between choking and panicking that Malcolm Gladwell writes about in What The Dog Saw.  Conversely, there are those who were emotionally triggered and acted WAY out of character when faced with a traumatic event, by charging suicidally up a hill to single-handedly take on a machine gun nest, or diving on a grenade, or lifting a heavy object off of someone, when none of those actions were really planned or even considered.  The human mind is an amazing place; some of you should visit it sometime.

Those of you so quick to judge should consider walking a mile in someone else’s shoes sometime.  For all we know, the individual involved may have been short-timing it.  But you know, on the other hand, he might not have, either.  When you know for sure what was going on, feel free to share it with us.  Until then, maybe you should STFU in the hopes that if this, God forbid, happens to you someday, you won’t have your guts pulled out and spread to the four corners of the planet like some many of you are willing to do on a regular basis.

I’m willing to hear what happened and keep my opinion to myself instead of trying the guy on the World Wide Web.  Kangaroo courts went out of vogue back around the time lynching was considered to be a crime against humanity. Get the facts before making a judgment.  It’ll pay off in more ways than one.

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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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If you search this blog for discussion about leading with values (I even linked the search to make it easy for you),  you’ll see that values were specifically mentioned in at least eight articles, not to mention all of the other times values were a peripheral part of the discussion.   Like it or not, organizational values define organizational culture.  These values help guide you in times when hard decisions must be made under ambiguous situations.  When organizations lack defined values, or personnel don’t understand them as the gospel truth, they don’t always reflect those values when challenged. If you have never implicitly discussed your organizational values, your personnel will revert to whatever values conform with those of the group (think “B” Shift) or scarier, their own beliefs (which you have no ability to predict).

While the article by Chris suggests that the Rules should be concise and bulletized in format, it is in that suggestion related to firefighting that I see these “rules” as reflecting our values in considering the risky nature of engaging with a particularly dangerous enemy.  I challenge each of you to read more about this and ask yourself, as well as your leaders, questions that help refine what to do in those emergency situations, especially as they involve our own organizations.

While we value the service we provide to our customers as being our highest calling, there comes a defining moment where we must place the welfare of our troops at a higher level, especially when it comes down to fighting a “lost cause”.  I am willing to personally take a calculated risk to save lives, but I am NOT willing to take a risk personally, or to expose each of you to a risk for the sake of a body recovery or to fight a structure that will be written off anyway.  I am as aggressive as they come when it comes to firefighting, but I value my personnel higher than any property, and I think we all need to think that way about how we choose to engage at these incidents.

But it is in this that the problem is apparent; we have made a decision to discuss our values in regard to emergency operations, but have we defined our organizational values when they come to day-to-day operations?  In many departments, the over-arching statement seems to be, “Use common sense and logic when it comes to making decisions”.

While I agree one-hundred percent with that statement (and that approach may very well save your life some day on an emergency scene), when we have recruits (and in that, I’m lumping Juniors, new volunteer members, etc.) making value-based decisions on day-to-day things (like when they are unsupervised or in situations where they are asked to show initiative), have we really done a good job of reinforcing our belief system to them and demonstrating a positive example by living those values ourselves?

Take setting fires, for example.  While we (and society) continually insist that firefighters setting fires is wrong, is the culture around your organization such that going to fires and “fighting the red devil” is more important than community service?  Is it more apt to say that personnel walk around moping about the loss of call volume?  Are members who seek to demonstrate their commitment to the community challenged by the lack of calls to demonstrate that commitment?  Why is it that we are in this business, anyway?  If the answer is to run around in a uniform and drive fast down the road with lights and sirens on, well, we all know that only represents a finite amount of our jobs (and it’s not like I want someone who thinks that’s a good reason to be an emergency service provider anyway).

While it seems pretty intuitive that setting fires is a bad thing, when you are dealing with people who already have a less-than-mature attitude and a challenge to their belief system, you set yourself up for disaster.  If you really want to avoid this type of incident occurring in your organization, one of the basic things that should be done is to engage personnel in activities OTHER than fighting fires/running calls.  If you want to find out how committed these personnel are to the community, give them day-to-day assignments that include non-emergency prevention or participation duties- just have them man an engine and go show the flag at the local high school football game, or go spray water for the kids on a hot day.  Anything to have them prove their worth OTHER than running hot and exerting their “auth-or-it-tie” (it always loses something unless you hear Cartman saying it).

Organizations who find themselves struggling to recruit or to get people to do their jobs must evaluate if there is a gap between what the leadership defines as valued behavior and what the membership (or potential membership) defines as a valued behavior.  If there is a gap, someone had better define the expectations, or the expectation will be that everyone is entitled to define the organizational mission according to his or her own needs.  If that is the case, I’d expect to be reading about you on STAT911 or Firegeezer some morning soon, and not in a good way.

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Teams must get adequate direction to insure successful outcomes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I’m not advocating continual monitoring of the “pre-hospital dead”, although I would hope that this is a good case for the medically affiliated that we need to insure pulslessness and apnea, and confirm asystole in three leads (and print it).  That is called triangulating your facts and documenting them in the hopes things don’t change later (like the person is actually alive).

No, what I want to discuss is that in all kinds of places where we need to make a decision, even though something appears to be true right now, it might not be in a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days.  Conditions change and regardless of the origin of the facts you hold dear, they might not always be accurate facts.  The response to this ever-changing environment isn’t to throw up your hands in frustration (like my children and firefighters seem to do sometimes), but to re-evaluate your situation and to flex with the new conditions.  There’s a quote attributed to Whitey Ford I heard years ago (and of course, I can’t find my source now) and I have to paraphrase it because I don’t remember it exactly: “Don’t make up your mind about something until the moment you absolutely have to; it may be that by the time for coming to a conclusion occurs, the conditions may have changed.”

People who worked with me closely before I made Chief probably recall my frustration with schedule changes, personnel changes, equipment and apparatus changes that occurred over the course of a shift, often with no warning.  Now as a Chief Officer, I have a different perspective on the situation because I now have to step back and look at “the whole forest”.  I now understand how and why some of those “course changes” have come about and I also see why frustration with those changes is counterproductive.

As firefighters, we deal with changing conditions on scene without too much drama.  We know Murphy is a constant companion and if anything, we are surprised if everything goes RIGHT on a scene.  No incident is “textbook”.  But because we are good at our jobs, we flex with the new situation, understand it, and make whatever we have work.  Why we can’t do that in our daily operations, I guess, is my question.

If there’s anything I know about myself, it’s that I know I am not a patient man.  In fact, I’m probably one of the least patient people I know.  I also know I don’t have a lot of tolerance for less-than-excellent performance.  But part of maturing and growing involves experience, and experience shows us that there are many changing elements that occur over the course of a day, and a life, and reacting to them rather than soaking them in and understanding them (and then solving the problem) isn’t productive.  In fact, it is stressful and irritating to those who we have to live with.

I have a lot of personal growth and understanding to continue working toward and I wish some of this stuff would have been shared with me when I was a firefighter and a young officer, but it wasn’t.  I now have that benefit of experience, though, and it is my responsibility to share it with you all.  Take the time to understand the situation and instead of criticizing, find benefit in the lessons we learn and resolve not to let mistakes happen again, or at least in the environment we personally control.

Get facts before making critical decisions and don’t dwell on them too long, because in many cases, the facts will change before you even get a chance to decide on them.  Take decisive action when necessary, and when not, take considered action, and always, always, continue to re-evaluate the situation. By understanding your surroundings, you will be safer and your life richer for it.

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Although I have a lot of pride in my contributions to the fire service and I continuously strive to be as good as I can be, I certainly have no delusions that I am the best, and even if I were, I certainly wouldn’t make a quote like that, knowing what kind of fire that will draw on you.   Although I am no psychoanalyst, it is this type of personality who we see from time to time in our business that really worries me.  These types seem to exhibit a serious need for being the center of attention, just like with the clown haircut, the clown car, and the clown attitude.   But there’s a big difference from being “on top” and being “over the top”.

There’s a reason why people can’t stand showboating. It’s a graphic statement of “it’s my world and you are just living in it.” Maybe some of you love Chad Ochocinco and T.O. Most of us (like I do) think it would be nice if they just disappear. Especially when you consider for as much talent as they might have, if not for the blocking of the line, the accuracy of the pass, and the playcalling of the coach, that talent is useless. If you think you’re a fire service God, think again. This job is as much about team as any job, if not much, much, more. A lack of teamwork on the field means someone doesn’t succeed. Lack of teamwork on our part might mean that one of us dies.

Personally, I’d rather be a good player on a team of good players, where our collective efforts produce excellent results. I like sharing that feeling of accomplishment with others. But being on top alone is, well, lonely. And when things go bad, if you are alone on top, regardless of how good you are, people are a lot less likely to throw you a rope on your way to the bottom. After all, you’re the best, remember? Let’s see how you get out of this one alone.

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