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The Just

Who are the wise? Who are our leaders? Are they the ones who always open their mouth when a question is asked? Or is the wise one he who listens and encourages you to answer your own questions? Leaders don’t always have the answers, but a good leader knows where to get them.

Just because someone has been around a while, just because they are the “most experienced” on the shift or in the department, that does not make them a leader. If they use that experience to mentor others, or to educate, or to nurture the careers of others, those are things that make you a leader.

A true leader does the right things, all the time, even when they don’t have to. They convey goodness, they exercise restraint, they maintain their cool, they are patient, and they are fair. Being the “smartest” or the “biggest” or the “best looking” does not make you the leader. When one is magnanimous, when one is happy for the success of others, when one shares their knowledge and their experience, then they are a leader. Those are the characteristics of leadership.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 16, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, courage, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, response, South Carolina, teamwork, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

America Burning – A Belated 40th Birthday Wish

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As my family and friends will tell you, even being one of the most connected guys on the planet does not result in timely birthday wishes to your loved ones. I think it has more to do with the many spinning plates I have going rather than indifference or the constant pleading of alarms I set to remind me. Regardless, it happens. I like to think that it is one of my many endearing but frustrating qualities.

So my belated 40th birthday wishes to the job-changing America Burning report comes as no surprise six days later (I wrote this Saturday morning for my usual Monday posting). America Burning should be mandatory reading for all firefighters. The report painted a picture of the fire problem in the United States at that time. Some of the changes that came about as a result of its influence were the creation of the United Sates Fire Administration and the National Fire Academy and the nationwide push for smoke detectors, as well as more aggressive fire prevention efforts directed toward children.

Chief Glenn Gaines, in his Mutual Aid blog post How is America Burning 40 Years Later? reflected the other day on what this meant in our battle. We were up against increased numbers of fire fatalities and fire loss compared to other industrialized nations. In the 70's, our cities were burning. Our rural areas were burning. Fire death and injury, compounded with fire loss, was significant.

My brother and I read this book when it first came out. Understand that I was nine and he was eight then, and this is NOT light reading material. But when my father, who left it sitting around, caught us reading it, he turned to page 10 (the picture of "Susan"). Pointing at the picture, he bluntly told us, "This is what happens when you play with fire."

At the time, the fire death rate for children under five was three times that of the rest of the population. The picture on page 15, a smoky silhouette of a child who died from inhalation of smoke and toxic gases, illustrated a heart-breaking reality: our most vulnerable didn't even stand a chance unless we could warn them of the danger. The fire service leaders of that time realized we had to elevate our efforts to engage this problem.

Many of you weren't even alive when this report hit the stations (maybe even some of your parents weren't either), but it was a very graphic expose of what we faced. Another book from that time, Dennis Smith's Report From Engine Co. 82, gave an account of the job as it existed while our ghettos were burning. This book may have inspired more of us to become firefighters than America Burning, just as Emergency did via television, but the reason why is because of a lot of the same issues we face today. Fighting fire suits us; we are brave, macho, sardonic souls who see a burning building and snort "Just another job." And we take care of business like it is another day at the office. The suits and sheep see us as Gods among mere mortals. Kids see firefighters and realize they don't want to be stuck in an office when they grow up; they want to be a real-live superhero. The problem with this, however, is that things have changed and we need to evolve with those changes. Not only has the venue changed, but the mission has as well.

These are tough emotions to put aside, but put them aside we must. Building construction and fire loading is significantly different. There are more lawyers scrutinizing our every move. And of course, every year there are attempts to shut down the National Fire Academy or to minimize the USFA budget. The politicians are trying to squeeze every last penny out of our budgets so they can fund trips to Argentina or give the money to the banks. There are higher priorities than saving lives and protecting property, my brothers and sisters.

We have to fight the challenge of protecting our communities with intelligence, not with rhetoric. The way to defeat an enemy is not by engaging one on one, but by observing for opportunities and deciding when you have the best tactical advantage. Philosophically, that runs completely counter to our "mano y mano" psyche. When someone comes at a firefighter with a problem, we bow up our chests and say, bring it on. We can face down anything. Look at yourself, boys and girls, it is absolutely true. That is why we can continue to do more with less. It's like a perverse little game of "You can't beat us by cutting us." It's why we are so special. The problem is that this is a war of attrition; in asymmetrical warfare, you either need to change your rules of engagement or plan on getting picked off one by one.

We can't keep playing the game by rules that have changed. We must be smarter than they are, and the "they" in our case isn't just fire, but the forces that align to maintain life safety as an ongoing problem: lack of smoke detectors or fire sprinklers, substandard construction practices, lack of education and human nature, and always, the constant threat of staffing and budget cuts to support our mission.

If we are sincere that we want to protect our communities and serve our fellow man, the game has to be elevated. Hanging on to tradition is important from the aspect of honoring those who have sacrificed before us. But just as the military studies and discusses Napoleon, Clausewitz, and Sun Tzu, modern-day warfighting tactics are applied to those precepts to conquer enemies. We can continue to honor our predecessors' valor and heroism without engaging the enemy in the tactics of those days.

Take a moment and read through America Burning and the subsequent report, America Burning Revisited. Understand where we really must focus our efforts. And lets use the means at our disposal: scientific and technological advances, information sharing (especially through networking on the internet and through our local, state and National Fire Academies), and good old fashioned education. We are a modern fighting force and we should be embracing that, rather than running away from it.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 13, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, FEMA, leadership, News, Training & Development • Tagged: 1973, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, America Burning, Argentina, banks, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, courage, Dennis Smith, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, Fire Chief, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, Glenn Gaines, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, National Fire Academy, opportunity, politicians, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, Report From Engine Co. 82, resources, response, South Carolina, teamwork, Training, Twitter, United States Fire Administration, USFA, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Confusing the Message – My Apology

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It has become apparent to me that an apology is in order for more reasons than one. I'll be succinct since the volume of comments, both via e-mail and on the site have led me to the conclusion that my original message was mistaken, and then in replying to that, even more so. So if you only make it this far, just know I am sorry for the confusion.

Let's begin with a few caveats and I should probably post this with easy access for all to read: First and foremost, Firehouse Zen is my blog; I am the only writer and the only one to blame if there is an issue on here. There are a number of reasons for that, even though I frequently get individuals who want to write a piece for the site. It's just my first policy and I'm sticking with it. So as much as I appreciate the offers, I have consistently declined. I will link to your article if it is appropriate, I will paraphrase and even quote you, but all posts are mine.

Second, I have had a rule that regardless of the issue, we remain relatively civil. This wasn't an issue here, but I have seen it happen elsewhere, so I always like to get it out there for everyone to see. There is room for discussion and dissent, but the moment things get out of control, I'll shut down comments. But that said, if attacked, I will return fire, not out of policy but because I am human, and I usually regret it later. But let nobody think I am a pushover because I am open to different viewpoints.

And lastly, because this is where I want to focus on for this instance: Firehouse Zen is not necessarily a "tactics" blog. I will talk tactics all day long, which is part of the reason this is not a tactics blog, as I have a finite time to write what I do. But the focus of this blog is leadership and change, not just in the fire service, but in the world. That's why you get an occasional political observation or a rant on society. So if I use a tactical issue as an example, you may have a differing opinion on it and I will entertain discussion, but I'm not going to let that genre hijack this blog. There are lots and lots of blogs out there talking tactics, and mine is one of very few talking about the sociology of leading. In fact, it might be the only one, although I'm sure I'll be corrected if I am wrong.

So to the issue: I respect the differences of opinion in regard to this specific research, or rather (as it is becoming more clear to me) the scientific process in replicating the experiments in a particular instance, resulting in data some observers felt was flawed. I guess if I had asked more questions in reply rather than assuming an attack was going on, I could have drawn that conclusion. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

But let me also be perfectly clear: the science from the UL study bears out data that is pertinent to how we do the job, and the comments observed that sometimes it is THIS logic that people use as an excuse for not doing the entire job. And I believe they are right about that as well.

Exterior streams have gotten a bad rap for as long as I can remember. I remember my own father talking about the changes in operations when he made chief, forcing his department to stop engaging from the outside and going in and digging it out (this was in the 70's). For you who might not realize it, that was also concurrent with the advent of SCBA and better PPE. And all that being said, I am a supporter, fan, believer, lover, etc. of interior attack. It is the most effective tool for finding and extinguishing fire in a structure where the seat is not obvious and we do not have structural conditions that contradict entry. Was that well said enough for you?

However, and this is a big "however", this method of delivery came at the almost total exclusion of exterior streams except in defensive operations. I know that I personally instructed firefighters (because of my own bias, what was taught, and of course my incorrectly conducted personal observations) that we shouldn't use exterior streams because they "push fire". Nothing against my instructors and mentors, but they beat this into me (sometimes literally) and while I still love them dearly, I realized some issues later that you may understand has colored my perspective on how to lead.

In the 90's, though, I did something interesting. I went back to school. In seeking a degree, I took a class that reminded me of the part I always loved about the job. I like physics. And in taking physics at the collegiate level, I realized some of the things I was understanding about the science of fighting fires didn't add up. This was reinforced not too many years later when in the event of making changes in the way we operated, a class on fireground management actually caused us to do some small scale demonstration burns and proved to us the logic in that "streams push fire" was not sound. So over 12 years ago, our department began to implement and train (at the MCAS Beaufort burn building) on transitional attack. The result was that on fires like in the picture above (courtesy of my good friend, Chief Ed Boring), we implemented these attacks with astounding success.

I will admit, not everyone has gotten on the train, even in that length of time. But the ones who did were very successful in how they were stopping fires. The addition of Class A foam to our attack in the past ten years has even more so increased our effectiveness and, (knock on wood) we stop them where we find them. But there is also the need to consider stream choice. We use breakaway nozzles in our department so we can utilize a solid stream, and honestly, that is my weapon of choice. The short version: if we roll up and fire is showing, we hit it quick (very quick), then we go in and dig it out. The use of foam to do this makes that first stream lethal (to the fire) in its delivery. More often than not, within seconds, we can be in there with reduced interior issues.

As one brother commented, in balloon frame and really, in almost every structure fire, there is a need to go interior and seek fire in the voids. And I agree completely. And exterior streams aren't going to solve that issue. But the use of an exterior stream (given fire conditions are present) will make the building more tenable for entry and is a means of checking the forward progress of fire.

This does bring up another point, about "spraying smoke". I believe in cooling the smoke to dissipate the heat and avoid flashover. But if I'm not standing there with you saying, "You need to hit that", its a little hard for me to explain what gets sprayed and what doesn't. I would say that if it is coming out under pressure, if it is dark, thick, boiling smoke, it needs to be cooled. But this is where that solid stream comes into play again. If you consider the flow path to be out that opening, and it more often than not, is, then use of a solid stream is not going to close off that ventilation point. It will disrupt the thermal balance, it will cool the gases, and it doesn't "block the hole". What you are doing is buying time to avoid having a flashover occur.

So in conclusion, while I believe the intent was to educate that perhaps in this case, there was miscommunication on my part, the lesson to take from this is that questioning the findings of research is not bad, in fact, it is encouraged. It is through questioning the research that we learn, and if the science can stand up to examination, it makes it valid. That is, in fact, exactly what the fire service needs to make it more professional. But it is the way in which we do it that is problematic. I understand we are not all researchers, and those of us that are have over 200 years of tradition to fix, so you can say we are busy. But the way in which firefighters have questioned science isn't necessarily conducive to discussion.

It may seem like us to be obvious, but it clearly is not. This is why there are applied research papers being done at the Executive Fire Officer level and why more and more of us are taking a more scientific approach. But resistance to findings because we have done something a certain way for years and it "seems" to work is not a good practice, mostly because what "seems" to work often ends up catastrophically, if not today, then very soon.

As things progress, we must advance our own science and through intelligent discourse, we can all be better and safer. Thanks for engaging me and hopefully you all continue reading my humble ramblings.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 8, 2013 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, courage, Ed Boring, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, National Fire Academy, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, research, resources, response, science, South Carolina, teamwork, Training, transitional attack, Twitter, UL, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

No Trash Talking – Follow Up

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When someone opposes my viewpoint, I usually take pains to understand their perspective. I value other observations on the issues, provided they are respectful of others and also consider alternative perspectives. A few weeks back, when I posted No Trash Talking, I suggested change should be embraced if the science recommending the change bears it out.

Before I go there, however, I did get feedback from others who pointed out other factors like balloon frame construction and the fact that not too many compartment fires go without void space involvement. And as these observations were respectful and pertinent, I really appreciate them. I will quickly reply to that as well: I don't believe for a minute that structural firefighting can be limited to exterior attack. But that being said, the science defends that we can effectively mount a transitional attack without fear of pushing a fire through the building, if anything, to check rapidly progressing fire conditions. In those situations, I would utilize the quick knockdown then transition to digging out fire in void spaces from inside if warranted.

I did get a comment to that post, however, that I wanted to discuss. I am going to admit that each time I went to address it, my post sounded like I was delivering a public spanking. But this was the comment and I do at least appreciate that they included a link to their own article:

Do not lump all of us who oppose this movement as being stuck in the past. Myself and others are more than open to advances in our field. Our problem is when information is cloaked in political propaganda, when the ideas presented do not make sense based on current scientific evidence, and when “new information” is really something we have all known for years. Don’t just assume that we are uneducated, stubborn naysayers who have nothing substantial to add.

No matter how I phrased it, I found anything I might say could be construed as heavy-handed. However, after taking a moment to re-read the comment, I went to the linked article from the commenter. At that site, I then read the article written by Chief Shane Ray in Fire Chief magazine that he was referring to.

The goal of this post is to clarify that I do consider that anyone who would refute scientific evidence without any substantiating counter-argument to be uneducated and stubborn. And yes, that does infer that those who oppose the movement (in the case of my post, that of the use of quantifiable and measurable data to develop fire tactics) are stuck in the past. I am not saying that contesting a finding is inappropriate; I am saying that constesting a finding without anything other than your personal observations is.

Let me repeat: I never have said interior attack was not an option. I said (paraphrasing) that given a choice between applying an exterior stream and an interior stream, if both are equally effective, we should use our head and opt for the safe one over the relatively unsafe one, especially if we can get water on the fire faster from the outside than on the inside. Regardless, the post wasn't even about tactics, it was about the reluctance of people to change when change is warranted. But since we are going here, let's do it.

Let me make it perfectly clear. Research conducted by a number of sources found the application of exterior streams on compartment fires did not “push” fire, either onto victims or throughout a building.

I have another paper due and not much time, so I’m going to cut to the chase. My immediate literature review involved going straight to the UL report Impact of Ventilation on Fire Behavior in Legacy and Contemporary Residential Construction (Kerber, 2011). There are other studies that Chief Ray cites in his article and they all provide the same observations. So for the sake of time, let's just use this one right now.

The UL report identified the methodology: Fire was allowed to grow to approximately peak burning rate before the stream was applied. Temperatures were measured 30 seconds before stream application, during the 10 seconds of the stream being applied, and then 30 seconds after. The crews operating the streams specifically attempted to push fire and hot gases into exposure rooms while not putting water directly on the items burning in the room.

There was no evidence of the fire being pushed into the surrounding rooms. Temperatures tended to decrease and temperature increases that did occur after water application were minimal. Fire progress was checked and external water application had no observable impact on what would have been considered tenability of the building. The results of this research were pretty obvious: when water was applied from the exterior, it did not push the fire, the streams did not create an untenable situation, and it did check fire progress.

Chief Ray can defend his own article, but I didn’t see anything in his observations that were unfounded. To me, the derisive references to “spraying smoke” didn’t consider what Chief Ray had actually said, as his article actually referred to spraying smoke in the context that cooling the fuel (smoke is a fuel) might have beneficial effect, and if it didn’t hurt the situation, then it wasn’t a bad idea. Obviously the commenter has problems with the science of cooling fuel, but we have been doing that since I became a firefighter in 1980.

I began to defend all the other options and how transitional attacks seemed to work, etc. Then I realized that none of this evidence based nonsense was going to make any difference to some people. The author shared:

I have already discussed in previous articles why I do not agree with making fully prepared crews stand on the sidewalk and fight a fire from the safety of the exterior. It flies against every responsibility we shoulder as firefighters. It continues to be used as an excuse to cover up for lack of preparation and training.

So let’s talk tactics: If the research shows that a quick exterior application of a stream will check fire progress, not result in a substantial increase of interior temperatures, and improve tenability for occupants in less time than it would to deploy an interior line, find the fire room, and attack the fire, you STILL want to make the interior attack? Why?

The author states that the purpose of his article is to “expose the other side of the argument.” I am wondering then, what is the other side of the argument? He says his rebuttal “isn't packaged as nicely and doesn't include pictures of myself, but it is from the heart.”

Well, here's where my comments are going to hurt some feelings. My answer is that it is time we stopped thinking with our “heart” in regard to tactics, and started thinking with our head. We have the FDNY, the Chicago Fire Department, and Underwriters Laboratories conducting research that all agrees. His contention is that putting water on fire coming out of a window is bad, but other than his feelings as to why that is wrong (and the fact that it runs counter to verifiable, observable evidence), we have nothing.

I support differences of opinion, so long as your opinion is voiced respectfully. When you try to make me and others sound like an idiot, well, I have problems with that, but okay, I can even live with that. But when we are talking about what is a best practice for the job, will save firefighter lives and is scientifically shown to not result in adverse effects, and you say you don’t like it, well, you should probably just keep your opinion to yourself.

I had a whole bunch of other stuff to say about this, but I'm simply not going to go there. As a chief fire officer, when I give someone an order to do something, it is an order based on what is the most effective means to bring resources to bear on a problem with the most chance of success and the least amount of risk to completing the overall operational objectives. I’ll highlight it for you: It has nothing to do with what is in my heart.

My job is to save lives, protect property and the environment, and to do my best to bring everyone home in one piece. If that requires an interior attack to dig out the fire, then we'll suit up and go get it. But if there is a more effective method, well, I don’t care what tradition says about heart, responsibility, or courage, the science trumps it. I could care less if that sucks the fun out of anyone's day. We're not doing kumbaya here. People's lives are on the line. Let's act like it and do the right thing.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 6, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, change, Chief Shane Ray, Command & Leadership, compartment fire study, conflict, consensus, courage, education, effective, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, exterior streams, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, NIST, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, research, resources, response, South Carolina, teamwork, Training, Twitter, UL, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

We Can’t Know What We Don’t Know

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Recently I read an article written by a yoga instructor-trainer as they reflected on the state of instruction as they knew it. He made an interesting comment about how he and his team had been involved in a great number of instructor certifications, but how he felt like the certification training failed in one major area: in “teaching teachers to teach yoga”.

His observation was that in certifying these instructors, the methods resulted in a great amount of fear; fear of getting it wrong, and the course delivery, as a result, became flat, formulaic, scripted. Their methods so caused their instructor candidates lose the creativity and energy found in experimentation, in learning from their students, or focusing so hard on the product that they botched the delivery. They were focusing more on not embarrassing themselves than on passing along knowledge.

I see a number of fire and EMS instructors who are the same way. As an instructor-trainer myself, it has always been a source of frustration for me when I am faced with candidates who don’t KNOW the material they are supposed to be passing along. They read the book, they took the course, they checked off the check-offs, and now they were supposed to understand the nuances of a subject they were barely intimate with and communicate it to someone else.

To me, it is no wonder we have some of the issues we face in today’s emergency services; in many cases, the people doing the teaching are learning from those who weren’t inspired themselves. They might have the desire to teach, but what they are sharing wasn’t shared correctly to begin with.

I recall a discussion with a Captain once about a new Lieutenant who, in his first few shifts, had proven to be a megalomaniac. Well, maybe not that bad, but it was pretty bad. I said to that Captain that I wasn’t surprised the Lieutenant led his crews like a tyrant. He learned to lead from his own supervisor, who was themselves a tyrant.

How can we expect anything less when it is the only existence they know?

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on May 2, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, courage, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, response, South Carolina, teamwork, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Who Really Is The Face of Terrorism?

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In a little research prior to a possible paper on terrorism, I was looking at the history of terror in the United States. Technically, it goes all the way back to our beginnings, when "radicals" belonging to the Sons of Liberty tossed 45 tons of tea into the harbor. As you can quickly see in that one single case, "terrorism" is defined differently. I guess it just depends on whose point of view you happen to take.

I doubt anyone, however, equates terrorism as we know it today with an act of throwing goods into the harbor. Things have escalated considerably in 200+ years and now in 21st century Boston we have this reprehensible act of violence. We don't know the specific issue that sparked this act, but this defines "terror". Terror, in that these bombs were not just intended to get someone's attention about the unfairness of a point of view. No, this act included what were certainly anti-personnel devices, placed in a concentrated area of non-combatants, and positioned for maximum effect. This act was a cowardly act, striking at defenseless civilians in order to make some kind of a point.

I believe in peace and I believe in perspectives, but I'm afraid I'm not a pacifist. I personally believe we should seek who it is who chooses to harm the innocent and root them out. Suffice it to say, if someone were to hurt my loved ones, I would pursue them to the ends of the earth. While I earnestly strive to maintain peace and open-mindedness, and I profess an extraordinary amount of tolerance for other people's viewpoints, that all ends when you choose to escalate with force against me.

I struggle with my innermost being when I advocate for a return to civility and understanding, then see zealots deciding that whatever it is they stand for is more important than peaceful co-existence. I, like most Americans, stand for justice. We believe in equality. And we may have our own closed-minded radicals, but the majority of Americans abhor those extremes. When a certain group of individuals decides to plant a bomb among us, they have declared war against us and everything we stand for.

As I mentioned my research, I find that there is evidence of violent or extreme action being taken by almost every faction and belief. As I mentioned the actions taken in defense of independence, there are also many cases of "terrorism" documented for all kinds of causes. To the Left, before you talk about right-wing extremism, let's discuss the 1920 Wall Street bombing or the Black Panthers or the SLA. On the Right, don't leave the discussion without consideration of the white supremacy movement and of course, Oklahoma City and abortion clinic shootings. But I wanted to address a differently handled case of civil disobedience.

When I was learning to drive years ago, I practiced in the parking lot of the General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, PA, so this event is very near to me. Those of you who are my age may remember that this is where the "Plowshares Eight" took non-violent action, broke into the facility, damaged missile nose cones, and poured blood onto documents and files. This is an act these days probably considered terrorism.

The big difference here, and something maybe people should understand, is that these individuals had a tremendous passion for what they considered to be a crime against humanity. But instead of bombing something or shooting at someone, they took action against inanimate objects. They made a point without hurting people, at least not physically.

For those who proclaim they are indeed "peaceful", this is a lesson in real peaceful protest. Likewise, there are many cases in history. Gandhi staged sit-down strikes. Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus. Lech Walesa led the Solidarity movement. These were all effective means of protest without killing others. Strapping a bomb to your body and walking into a marketplace doesn't say "peaceful" religion to me. It says intolerance. It says the ends justify the means. It says that you aren't interested in living respectfully of one another.

Let's look at the Amish, for an example. The most traditional of their beliefs maintain community with a separation from secular society, yet they maintain a peaceful coexistence with others. If one participates at its most fundamental teachings, they have very strict rules but function (relatively) without interference from the rest of us. I would bet that there is a certain amount of frustration on certain aspects of the interface between their "world" and "ours", but while that may be so, I could be wrong, but I don't recall any outbreaks of terrorism on their behalf. They genuinely believe in peace and non-resistance.

I don't believe for a moment that Islam in and of itself is a violent religion. I read The Koran and I don't find it any more violent than The Bible. But I don't hold up The Bible and proclaim literal interpretation anymore than the parts of The Koran that extremists say defend their actions. I'm not a religious scholar, and I might even come across as slightly heretical, but I believe on a planet as small as this one, in order to survive, we have to learn to live together.

I don't feel like you have to agree with me, but I ask you to respect my beliefs, just as I may not agree with you, but I respect yours. As I said before, if you choose to ramp up your insistence that I listen to you at the point of a gun, I insist that I have the right to defend myself. And if you screw with me, don't expect that I'm going to take it lying down. If you choose to engage in warfare against me, you have to understand that your choice has consequences. In the United States of America, we proudly allow anyone to live within their beliefs and that we have the right to express ourselves in a manner of our choosing. If you want to live like a radical, then go somewhere where you can live like that and let the rest of us live our own lives. But while I choose to be respectful of your choices, and am happy to leave you alone, I will be civil with you. And yet, if you shove me, I WILL shove back.

If people really believe they belong to a peaceful gathering of individuals, then they need to be prepared to defend that with their actions. Failing to do that doesn't, in my opinion, buy you any credibility. Any religious institution that fails to push their extremists into the street and expose them when they preach annihilation of "non-believers" is, as far as I am concerned, culpable. That goes for any religion, any cult, any group. Silence is not an acceptable means of solving this problem. Exposing the intolerant and the extreme to the rest of the world is.

As Gandhi said, "Be the change you wish to see in the world." If you believe in peace, then let's see it. Put your money where your mouth is. If you are in an institution that advocates violence against non-combatants, then you have a responsibility to notify the authorities. And don't cry persecution when, avoiding that responsibility, we have to come looking in order to protect our way of life.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 25, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, News • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, Boston, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, courage, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, General Electric, government, guilt, Hilton Head Island, integrity, Islam, just culture, just leadership, King of Prussia, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, Mount St. Mary, opportunity, pacifist, Plowshares Eight, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, response, South Carolina, teamwork, terrorism, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

The Measuring Contest

2 comments

In the fire service, when we ask someone about their department, one of the first places we go with the conversation is call volume. Of course, “How many calls do you get a year?” is only the feeder line for what we really want to hear: “How many FIRES do you get in a year?” How do we measure the worth of our department? In how many working fires we happen to fight in a year, that’s how. It’s kind of the same as asking a soldier how many battles he has fought, or a ball player how many games he has won. How do I know you know your job? By how often you happen to do it, I guess.

There are some firefighters who, asking these questions, tell me stories that would only mean to me that very soon they won’t be telling the same stories, because it won’t be long before they run out of fuel in their district. But worse is the citizen who, agenda apparent, asks how many fires we have a year and infers that there is a correlation: x (number of fires) = y (quality of equipment).

Not beating around the bush, what I should have said was: “So what you are wondering is, if we were a REAL fire department, we’d be burning down a lot more homes, right?” Or if we were a really good organization, we’d have many more dead people. Or more HAZMAT calls. Or perhaps more rescues. As someone who really believes in what it is I do for a living, my problem with that idea is that the volume of serious calls doesn’t measure departmental success, it measures community failure.

Let’s go back to the beginning of our careers, either as paid or volunteer firefighters, and what was it you were told? We were told that our primary mission was to PREVENT fires, to PREVENT injury and mortality, and to PREVENT disasters. What? You didn’t take that conversation very seriously? That seems to really be the gist of it: We know what we were told, we understand it makes sense, but it’s not the reason we became firefighters. We became firefighters because it looked cool in the movies, or because we have some kind of belief in the heroism of the job. We never really bought that prevention nonsense. We like to bust shit up and go where everyone is running out from. You can’t do that when you are preventing fires.

Perhaps, though, we should actually be measuring how bad your department regularly burns down room and contents fires because it is indicative of poor skill, or by burning down so many taxpaying businesses it indicates your resources aren't sufficient for the job, or by having so many alarms it indicates lousy codes or enforcement. Maybe we should be looking at how many people don’t actually walk away from an encounter with your emergency medical care. Or how many HAZMAT calls you have that evolve into county-wide disasters.

I have said before that we should start hitting up the insurance companies for funds. After al, they have a huge stake in this. When we save a building or a life, we are saving them money. Wasn't that the premise behind the early 18th Century fire brigades? Instead of municipal taxes exclusively supporting fire suppression, the insurance companies should maybe back off some of those exorbitant bonuses for their executives and invest in fire protection to a better degree.

There are many reasons why buildings burn that we have no hand in, like the condition of the buildings, the amount of fuel loading, and the intelligence of the occupants who put a pot of oil on the range then go down to the store for cigarettes. But ultimately, if we want to measure something, maybe we should be comparing what it is we save compared to what it is we protect. If we want to see how good it is we are doing, I think that the number of times our community doesn't suffer loss should be a better goal. It is, after all, what we signed on for.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 22, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, courage, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, insurance, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, response, save, South Carolina, teamwork, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Reminding You of Why We Are Here

1 comment

As things change, so must we. If we fail to evolve, we become unnecessary, irrelevant, or even extinct. Especially since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, workplace development has improved efficiency and those who understood the changes and made adjustments to them thrived, those who did not, were left by the side of the road. Firefighting is a lot like that, except that we have the emotional ties of a very highly-respected tradition chained around both feet. Once the populace catches on that it is cheaper for them to protect their home through automation they can trust, we will no longer be in business.

One of the main reasons, I would speculate, that we have not been simply replaced by automatic sprinklers is not because the general populace respects firefighters. It is because Joe Citizen is afraid of a head activation flooding all the floors of their home like what happens in stupid characterizations seen on TV or in movies. If all we have to do is come mop up after an activation, firefighting isn’t going to be the issue; water-removal and restoration is. So perhaps that is our avenue to survive.

But the point of my coming back to you all twice a week (for the most part) is to coach you all in survival by brainstorming ways we can provide a better service. The most logical way to do so is to leverage the collective brainpower of those who work with you. And the only way that will ever bubble to the surface is by having leadership that engages, encourages, and demonstrates transformation. That's where I come in: helping you to understand and embrace transformational leadership.

Being a leader that guides people not based on preserving their jobs but on what that job actually is – serving others – THAT will preserve jobs. Because as departments that have incorporated all-hazards response have found, there is plenty of work to be had, it’s just not necessarily in fighting fires.

People need individuals and teams that can see a problem and “bring what they brought” to develop a workable solution. They called us because they lacked resources; tools, knowledge, skills, and/or manpower to solve their problem. Our job isn’t firefighting, our job is problem-solving. As was brought up by a comment in an earlier blog, "The Fixers", we aren’t firefighters, per se, but emergency service technicians. And even then, that’s a reach, because not everything we go to solve is an “emergency”, as I am reminded each time our crews go to help someone get off the floor and back into bed.

I am reminded of a firefighter saying to me once, “Why do we go to these calls? They aren’t emergencies.”

My answer: “They are to the person who calls us.”

Think about that the next time you are performing a task for a citizen that you don't really want to be doing. While we like to believe it's all lights and sirens and saving babies and scantily clad women, it isn't. It is about helping others when they don't know what to do. As Bill Carey pointed out in that comment, kids don't grow up wanting to be "emergency response technicians", but wanting to be "firefighters". And the reason why isn't necessarily because we fight fires, it is because they grow up knowing that if they are in trouble somehow, a firefighter is someone they can count on.

For that reason alone, you should be proud that when someone is in need, they call for a firefighter.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 15, 2013 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, Backstep Firefighter, Bill Carey, blame, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, courage, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, response, South Carolina, teamwork, The Fixers, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Unsafe Until Proven Otherwise

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I look back at my years as a firefighter and paramedic and recall once being held at gunpoint by an irate patient. This was back in the early 80's and things were a little different then. While I feared for my life, it was more out of the belief that the gun she was brandishing could go off rather than the prospect of us being held hostage. She was upset at her husband and she was (looking back on it) more angry at him than frustrated with us. Fortunately, an alert dispatcher was on the other end of the radio and asked "10-61?" to which the only acceptable answer was "Affirmative". My officer at the time keyed up and said, "10-4, ma'am, everything is 10-4 here!"

Law enforcement was quick to arrive on scene and like I said, back then, hostage negotiation was more along the lines of one of the officers telling her to put the damn gun away before someone got hurt. She did, she went to jail, and we lived to tell about it.

I went forward from that night being a lot more aware of my situation. While later I became a commissioned law enforcement officer (for a while) and learned even more, after that night, at least, I paid more attention to not permitting anyone to get between my crew and the exit, watching people's faces and hands, and lighting up every space I was working in.

These days, incidents like those would have gone much differently. But these days, the evil is a lot more intense.

While I happen to be a gun owner and I believe in my Constitutional rights, I am concerned about how adding another gun to a situation is going to play out if I were permitted to start carrying a sidearm on duty. I don't honestly know if that's a good situation. And while I am a peace-loving and open-minded individual, I am also aware that I have been in positions where I felt threatened and yet was able to negotiate a less-than-violent outcome, whereas had I been armed at the time, the situation might not have ended up so well for the person I was dealing with.

Maybe this is an opportunity to look at a number of things, like the availability of body armor, or equipping personnel with less-lethal means of dealing with violence. I'm not saying I have the answer. But what I am saying is that until we can prove a scene otherwise, we need to approach with greater caution these days. Simply walking up to the front door, standing in front of it and knocking loudly is not what I consider good technique. Ignoring the presence of weapons in a room is not acceptable. And these are all things I have seen seasoned personnel do in my career, and when pointed out, got this "Are you kidding me?" look.

The point is that if you can PREVENT an incident from getting bad, you need to. Being observant, keeping a low profile, and taking in the surrounding clues can go a long way toward never letting things go south to begin with.

While this latest incident in Gwinnett County, GA will be dissected and we will learn lessons from it, I don't know how we could have ever prepared for a situation like that faced in West Webster, NY. But while those incidents are extraordinarily tragic, they happen less so than the violence to providers faced daily around the nation. And while these very newsworthy incidents illustrate very deranged individuals exist out there, they only scratch the surface of what we have to deal with every shift when we interact with people who are intoxicated, angry, high, delusional, or just have a chip on their shoulder. And these days, there are a lot of those people out there.

If you don't know how to protect yourself, seek assistance from your local law enforcement agency for tips on approaching subjects. Be careful going into places where you can't get out of and never let anyone get between you and the way out. And establish a procedure in case things do go bad and the individual can figure out that pushing that little red button isn't going to be good for them. Be proactive and hopefully, you never will have to deal with situations like these.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 11, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, News • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, breaking news, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, Georgia, government, Gwinnett County, Hilton Head Island, hostage, integrity, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, New York, politics, positive, professionalism, resources, South Carolina, Suwanee, SWAT, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, West Webster, zen zone

Children

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"It is not for the master of Iaido to control his enemy by his actions, but moreover to control himself and then to defeat his enemy, and to do so in every eventuality, a sudden and decisive sword strike concludes the operation."

My children, being children, want to manipulate and squirm their agenda through any manner of pleading, puppy eyes, and hugs. Being a parent, however, I know that capitulation is not necessarily an option. It's not that I don't give in from time to time, but if I were to let my children simply run amok without structure, well, you know how that ends. So for me, "no" means "no", not "well, maybe".

Our subordinates, being adults, don't do the same thing. Or do they? Isn't flattery, collegiality and fraternization the same thing? It is the matter of using the familiar in order to gain advantage. And with equally tragic results, I see how officers who permit that behavior fare, with constant disciplinary battles and personnel who are less than effective.

It is my hope that my children and my subordinate officers see my style of leadership and recognize that while it is difficult sometimes, good leadership requires self-discipline. We all are faced with moments where it seems like the easy way is the best way, but down inside, we know that there might be a profound difference in the outcome if we take that easy way out. It might be something as acute as an injury or death, or it might be at the loss of a lesson that the individual will take with them for the rest of their lives.

Find the strength to maintain your composure, stand your ground, and then put the issue to rest.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 8, 2013 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, children, clausewitz, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, discipline, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, Iaido, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, sword, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Courage

2 comments

Courage is a commitment to something bigger than yourself. Fear is often considered the opposite of courage, but I would suggest that fear is an important part of courage. Courage comes when you are more afraid of the consequences than you are of failure, of injury, or of death.

People often do things that are considered courageous to others, but they themselves see as routine. So I would suggest also that it really depends on your perspective. The reason we see things differently comes from education and exposure. To the untrained eye, charging into a fire requires a lot of courage. To us, we know that we can do things like stay low, or shut doors behind us, or position a line at the stairwell to protect our egress. We train in fires and we go to many fires, so all of that helps us to maintain our own perspective. The danger still exists, but we have learned to live with it.

Our acceptance of the danger, however, should not be confused with complacency. Complacency is laziness; complacency is disrespect of the conditions. We may get conditioned to live with the danger near to us, but we should never underestimate its unpredictable nature. We may think we have all the facts, but sometimes we do not.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 8, 2013 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, courage, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, teamwork, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

#FRED

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By now you have probably seen my insinuation of something interesting via Twitter, a la #FRED. A few weeks back I was listening to some chatter and it popped into my head as an idea to examine further, where I see a round-table session on the future of emergency services. It apparently has some traction because I have heard from some of you all pretty regularly about it. But while I envision what it could be, I just don't see it in the same format as what a bunch of people seem to keep suggesting, so I figured I'd write about it in more length here and see what pops up.

First off, I see that the issues of emergency response are very similar. Someone has a problem that exceeds their resource level, be it knowledge base, ability, skill, equipment or whatever, and we have the means to help them. So while the service we provide differs between fire response, rescue response, emergency medical response, or disaster response, these are all areas in which our shared resources make a difference in the community. Thus, FRED.

Now before anyone asks, "Where is law enforcement?" I will tell you. When I came up with this I didn't see them involved, but now I don't even know and have been thinking that especially in regard to homeland security, we need to be closer partners than we already are. So maybe we need to make room at the table for them too. Or maybe all of this is wrong. The question is, do you have an open enough mind to the possibilities and are you willing to share ideas, not ridicule, and not be an elitist? Do you have the ability to check your ego and be willing to believe anything is possible?

When we were building the South Carolina US&R Task Force, I had a philosophy I shared with the other principals in the formation of the team and they embraced it as well, which helped us get to where that asset is today. I wanted to see our group be inclusive rather than exclusive. I envisioned that if someone really wanted to be part of the team, whether they were in a small department or a big department; career or volunteer; EMS, fire, or both or none; or regardless of prior experience – we wanted them. We wanted desire to commit to excellence over technical skill because honestly, if you have the desire to do a great job but not the skills, we can teach you the skills. If you have skills but a crappy attitude, there's not much I can do to change your crappy attitude.

Likewise in this endeavor; if you want to learn, this is going to be a forum to do so. But it's on a grander scale than whether we get a new fire truck next year. The vision I want to discuss is what we see the future of delivering emergency service to be.

I have begun to research some places in which we can host a round-table situation and how to best moderate it. It might be a panel of individuals, it might be sessions leading up to a grand session, or it might be something I haven't thought of personally and you will come up with it. But the storm of change is coming and no matter how hard the sparrow beats his wings, he can't stop the rising winds. I think we have the readers on Firehouse Zen who get it and really want to be the agents of that change.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 4, 2013 • Filed under: change, leadership • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Are We Off Limits?

1 comment

Nobody on this planet can ever accuse me of not having a heart and soul steeped in the tradition of the fire service. And an LODD is no laughing matter. But when the satire site The Onion lampoons a fictional firefighter who dies in the line of duty because he sucks at his job, is it really worth the collective ire that I'm sure will arise from it?

It's satire, and while you or I may find it distateful, it's not like the site says that firefighters themselves are idiots. If you choose to read the post, the story is that this fictional firefighter survived in spite of his complete incompetence, failing to wear turnout gear, etc., but the reality is, it is satire. The Onion has tackled virtually every celebrity and institution on record, including every known religion. So what makes the fire service off limits?

What isn't satire is a real LODD. And what isn't a laughing matter is the real issues behind a number of the causes of these incidents, which seem to me like an annual recitation of what we tell firefighters not to do, yet, they do anyway. What should be the routine fire becomes a nightmare because we neglect to use a means of accounting for our personnel. Or we fail to recognize the signs of imminent collapse. We lose firefighters because they fail to wear seatbelts, which after the number of appeals to correct, should long be a non-issue anymore, yet it still happens.

So while the fictional "Stuart D'Abarno" rushed into buildings without his PPE, nearly died during training drills, burned his hands on hot door knobs, backed into things with the apparatus, and set grease fires in the station kitchen, we have real-life people who do these things with and without consequence. And that is incompetence defined. And you know, if they die in the line of duty, instead of saying, "Wow, what a screw-up", we celebrate them as heroes.

We should instead focus our outrage on the real people who make the brotherhood look bad by their lack of professionalism on a regular basis. We should actually be glad that The Onion didn't decide to take on some even more embarrassing moments for the fire serivce, like firefighter arsonists, or fire chiefs taking from the till, or firefighters getting caught running a prostitute ring out of a station. I mean, really, isn't truth stranger than fiction?

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on April 1, 2013 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, LODD, News • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, clausewitz, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, LODD, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, satire, South Carolina, teamwork, technical solutions, The Onion, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Spring Cleaning

2 comments

Sometimes I start a blog post and don't like how it sounds, so I may bench it for a time where it sparks my interest. I started this last year and just came back through it again.

I was thinking about a time where I was helping a family "in need" to spruce up their home. We were doing a lot of work to the person's yard and some interior patchwork, but I remember wondering how this home got in this condition to begin with. There were members of the family standing around and not so nicely critiquing the effort a stranger was making on their own time, out of their own pocket, to fix up their family home. I also remember I was thinking, if it was so important to you, why didn’t you step up and fix it yourself?

While there are any number of things we can talk about in that regard, I’m just going to share this one today. It is the reality that we can polish the outside of the house and fix the cosmetic damage, but if the foundation is unsound, it’s just a matter of time before the place falls apart anyway. Given the short amount of time we were spending, this home would become acceptable for a period of time, but the overall neglect of the structure for many years only doomed it to eventual failure.

If you truly want organizational success, putting a shine on everything is nice, but the heart of the issues lie at the hearts of the people involved. Together, all that we do, especially in the promotion of our core values and our mission, all works together with shiny fire trucks and ambulances, the uniformity of deployment, procedures, etc.. to create a strong structure. But without the strong foundation of shared values, the organization will not be a lasting success.

Efforts to progress should be positively directed forward, not looking backward, except in an effort to gain perspective. Even then, our look in the rear-view mirror should be brief. If we stare at the rear-view long enough, we are bound to crash into what is in front of us.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on March 28, 2013 • Filed under: leadership • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, charity, clausewitz, cleaning, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, home, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Listen To What You Are Saying

8 comments

So I'm sitting here, taking in a lot of the nonsense circulating on the internet today, thinking that the buzz is the same as always, just insert a different name this week. However, and this really does fold into our ongoing discussion as well, there are a number of individuals who have learned the art of inflammatory language and like to insert it as desired, whether or not it is apropos to the discussion. In some cases, the statements are one-liners thrown in simply for impact; some, though, are more like a hand grenade into a crowded room.

I happen to know a little about conflict. There is such a thing as escalation of conflict in which the rhetoric continues to ramp up on either side until it becomes an intractable situation. Nobody will give ground on either side because doing so would, in their eyes, admit defeat. Let's take the situation that seems to be the issue du' jour, going on this week in Miami-Dade and courtesy of my buddy Dave Statter.

In no way do I condone the officer's actions in the video. In fact, the first few times I watched it, I could see the event unfolding WAY before Smart got to the videographer. It was easy enough to see that he was ready to make his point and that he did, to the point of embarrassment. You know what though? I have been in his shoes before and I know how frustrating it is when you have some gawker taking video or rubbernecking at something, especially an emergency you are emotionally vested in, like a serious accident or when a kid is involved. But the way he handled it, as we have learned from Dave and from Curt Varone, is not just ill-advised, but a violation of the photographer's First Amendment rights.

But while the rest of the nation was hanging Capt. Smart out to dry and even having some punny remarks on his name, one or two individual comments were drowned in the flood. And while any attempt at perspective these days is considered siding with that party, the reality is that those comments indicated a little observation that there very well might have been prior history. And when one poster indicated that the videographer's YouTube page included just such evidence, that's where I went.

I suspected that the YouTube page referenced was going to pull up a plethora of Miami-Dade hate, and so it did. However, I don't see any name attached to the page that matches the name of the videographer in the LZ episode. The YouTube channel pointed out belonged to "305whistleblower", and I refuse to link to it because frankly, the many videos racked up on there are obviously those intended to inflame and agitate the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue folks. I don't know what the guy's problem is, but it is apparent he has a beef with the department.

So let's now put the shoe on the other foot. You are an officer in a department where some troll is following your trucks around making it clear that you are "wasting taxpayer money" and "resuscitating donuts" (his words). You happen to be working a scene where you have to fly out your patient, and given the nastiness of the gloves, I'm assuming it was a trauma patient. Of course, one of the flight crew looks over, sees somebody filming everything, makes a comment like, "Man, we're on video." And given the amount of adrenaline already flowing (and I'm not talking about into the patient), everyone goes on high alert. There is no "flight" response; we are Type "A" take-charge individuals, which I'm sure a line officer in one of the nation's finest fire departments has to be. It is all "fight" and he makes it clear by the way he strides across the field.

In the meanwhile, the videographer (and I'm giving him the benefit of doubt as NOT being 305trollboy, but an innocent member of the public, because I have no evidence otherwise) sees this and stiffens his own resolve. After all, here I am, taking a video of a helicopter landing in a field, which is pretty cool stuff. I am on the other side of the street and cars are passing in between me and them. If it is safe enough for all these people to be standing around out here without a care in the world, I should be fine. But the first firefighter comes up and makes it clear the issue isn't safety, but the videotaping. Well, guess what? The videographer has the right to videotape it, just like the people do all the time when they see something of interest, so long as they are safely out of the way.

And then along comes Capt. Smart, who is obviously emotionally off the edge by the time he gets there. And I don't need to narrate it; the result is an intractable situation in which neither party is going to win.

I'm going to ask you to do something interesting. Just go to Facebook or Twitter and take note of the comments that bound on language inciting overthrow or accuse the President of the United States of conducting some anti-American agenda. While I think it is interesting that there are those bent on protecting the United States from armed invaders, immigrants, and other riff-raff are also those who are saying the things most against our own democratically elected government and advocating, in some cases, violent change. Does anyone expect that productive discussion is going to come out of this kind of language?

Go to any website where any point of controversy is discussed. If anyone is actually reading it, within moments sides are taken and any effort at reasonable and considered discussion becomes uncivil and names start getting called. Like the discussion I have been throwing out there recently about the wisdom of an interior attack in a building where tenability is in question and to be honest, the application of an exterior stream for fire control makes more sense. This makes my simple observation a target of response; despite over thirty years of aggressive (and admittedly, in a lot of cases, stupid) decisions, I am now a "pussy".

We are never going to come together as a society at this rate. Lines are drawn over any little slight and the knives come out. Anyone that says something against our views is automatically "the enemy". Whatever happened to being able to say, "I don't agree, but I am willing to listen?" And then, in the spirit of being a better person, listening to see what you can gain from the discussion. If anything, you can find better arguments for your own position by understanding what it is that troubles the other party. Or even if you were able to listen for a moment, you were able to convince the other person that YOU are right? Drawing lines doesn't establish anything other than telling the other party there is no chance that anyone will achieve an agreement.

I will reiterate what I said: Capt. Smart let his emotions dictate the situation and he lost the battle. I don't agree with what happened. But before the internet pundits flock to his public beating, remember that before Dave and Curt's educating us on these issues, all of us were not only willing to take Capt. Smart's position, we believed it to be our duty to do so. And not long ago, the screaming would have been different, but we learned this was not the case, so we changed. And we need to also realize that there are other factors at play here, factors we have no idea about.

Before you all jump to execution for someone who does something wrong, perhaps we should take a breath, consider the different perspectives, and then decide. There is nothing wrong in learning about what to do and what not to do, but the rhetoric has got to quiet itself. The hysteria is really out of control and I see this coming to an end that won't be pretty.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on March 25, 2013 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, clausewitz, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, Curt Varone, Dade, Dave Statter, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire, Fire Law, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Miami, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, rescue, resources, South Carolina, Statter911, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, YouTube, zen zone

Zen Shorts

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Saturday I was scheduled for a day off and then the plans for that day changed. Instead of canceling my leave, I just decided to do nothing for the day. For me, "nothing" still involves something. So I caught up on some correspondence, looked over a few drafts of blogs that have been sitting, then went for a two-hour run.

While it was a beautiful day, it was a little windy, so it wasn't exactly what I consider a leisurely run. But instead of being glued to a computer monitor, there was need to step away for a second or two and breathe.

Humans tend to do things not necessarily conducive to their safety when pressed to the limit, and the breathless voices telling us we need to go, go, go must be silenced sometimes. So today, instead of facing the masses of sheep trying to figure if they will be dying by hurricane or by earthquake (or both), vacationers were heading for the beach, the outlet malls near my home were full of consumers, and I was concentrating on making my footfalls as silent as possible.

Find peace in nothingness sometimes. That kind of break is important for us all, and in our business we never seem to do enough of it.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on March 21, 2013 • Filed under: change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, clausewitz, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Circle of Personal Transformation

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Going for a paddle is my work. While the IRS may not agree, my logic is if I get paid for it somehow, it is, and when I am out in the kayak, I am experiencing, I am taking in new ideas, and I am observing my surroundings. Since Firehouse Zen is a continuous story of asking questions and my “business” is also to ask questions, it must be. And while I occasionally get paid in the coin of the realm when I generate content, it is more important to me that I am getting paid in finding truth about myself and the people who surround me. It is a constant effort of take and give, give and take.

When I was a young officer, I believed my role was to have the answers. As a chief officer nearing the end of my career, I realize that my role is actually to ask questions. Paradoxically, when I was a young officer, I fought continuously to take in as much as I could. Now I find myself giving it all away. And while I sometimes wonder if I should be out at all the fire and emergency service expos, conferences, trade shows, and etcetera, I find that the experiences I continue to have outside of the usual places seem to be growing my library of knowledge. But that isn't sharing, that's taking, so I have to keep finding ways to get that message out while maximizing my opportunities to learn more.

As you probably already know, lightning follows the most direct path to ground. But to use this analogy in the context of being able to draw and channel that energy, there are factors that must be met. You have to be present when the energy is accumulating; then there has to be a lack of resistance; there has to be a conduction of the energy and permission for it to flow. If the energy slows, if it encounters resistance, it creates heat, it creates damage. It might even stop and find a new way to go to ground, destroying what can’t contain it. As a "student of the game". you have to be present in thought, willing to listen, and willing to understand.

Lightning isn’t a thinking thing, a living being. It is simply energy, generated somehow when there is friction, and seeking a means to go to the earth. Learning isn't a thing we can touch, but it is "energy" in that challenges are identified, "friction" is generated, and we have to find a way to solve the problems. Being open to new experience creates growth.

These parallels exist in our everyday being and provide us a way to relate to what is going on around us. Just like a funny story, when we both laugh, we have a shared connection and we can relate easier, we can begin to speak the truth. And like the world around us, there are ways to illustrate what we are experiencing that are graphic, that are relatively tangible, but these stories actually open up our minds to other questions. And that’s the way it should be.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on March 18, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, effort, ego, Emmitsburg, EMS, EMS Topics, energy, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Grotto, Hilton Head Island, integrity, Jesus Christ, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, lightning, management, Maryland, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, picture, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, Shrine, South Carolina, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, transformation, Twitter, values, vision, world, zen zone

No Trash Talking

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Cicero said it best: "We do not destroy religion by destroying superstition." In fighting fire, however, if you suggest at all that doing things differently because the science indicates a better way, you'd think we were saying that the Earth was actually round.

Oh, yeah, that's right, the Earth IS round. Really, it is. Think back to those boring days of middle school, where we learned that the world being round was suggested by individuals who were then persecuted for suggesting such a thing. And in the fire service, it is true, that if you suggest doing things differently because the science says so, you too, are considered a heretic and burned at the figurative stake on the internet. Just read the comments and you shall see, it is true.

My father had a pretty serious heart attack this week and fortunately, was seen, evaluated, and sustained intervention for his potentially lethal LAD obstruction. He is snoozing peacefully at his own home in his own bed as I write this, courtesy of the modern miracle of medicine, for something that in my own lifetime, pretty much would have been a death sentence. The side benefit of these little disasters, however, is the chance to have side talks with my brother, who is on the cutting edge of the fire service in his own right, only he doesn't choose to have a nifty little blog like I do to talk about it.

We were talking about some studies in regard to the application of exterior streams to rapidly moving interior fire conditions, something that is seen to some in our business as being, let's see, "cowardly". As I said, however, as much as I too like to roll around in the heat and byproducts of combustion, from a purely scientific standpoint, it makes better sense to apply streams to the fire from the outside to control the fire quickly, rather than try to engage it automatically from inside. Rolling around on the inside of a burning building is not only hazardous, but in some moments, unnecessary, to achieve what it is we need to do.

Now this is certainly an oversimplification of the scenario, because there are other factors, but my point is that regardless of the science, there are those who profess to be immersed in the state of the firefighting art who think that just because they too like to get in and be "one with the Red Devil", that it actually makes sense to do so. And I am not saying (in this post) that it is right or wrong.

What I AM saying is, that we have many who resist the suggestion that change is warranted, not because of any other reason than their desire to do things the way we have always been doing things, and more often than not, because the changes being suggested happen to conflict with their mental image of the dashing, courageous firefighters of old, leaping into the flames and carrying out young damsels in distress and anything else that happens to make good headlines, like Fluffy, or a case of really good wine.

I guess that in the opinion of some, my father's heart attack might have been better off addressed by the liberal application of leeches, or bed rest and opium. But then, people died pretty often from things in years gone by that they don't die from today. You know: that science thing.

We can continue to keep our heads in the sand about advances in research, but like I have said, simply addressing the art of fighting fire from a fiscal aspect (and not an emotional one), each of my firefighters represents not only a living human being, but an expensive investment. And while throwing bodies into a battle without regard for how many lives are lost might have been the way you win wars in the pre-Napoleonic days, we realized that wars of attrition were more practically won through strategy and prudent use of resources, being that the losses were faced by the other side, not our own.

I have been batting around some ideas for the "vision" of fire, rescue, emergency medical service, and emergency management on the FHZ Twitter feed lately and getting some interesting comments via hashtag "FRED" (#FRED) and maybe its time to have some more open dialogue over what we should or should not be doing in our quest to save lives, property and the environment. At any means, I see this as opening up conversations that will be uncomfortable to some of you, simply due to the reactions I see when someone suggests doing things differently. But perspective is a funny thing and unless you open your mind up to a different alternative, you are doomed to only see one way of doing things. That one way isn't an issue if things are going perfectly, but every time I see an LODD that could be prevented, I'm thinking that isn't currently the case.

What do you have to say about this? Are you interested in a new reality? Are you interested in doing things better with less of a chance of losing more brothers in unnecessary and inefficient charges against an unwinnable situation? Or are you okay with the world being flat?

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on March 11, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, leadership, safety • Tagged: #FRED, activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, Cicero, clausewitz, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, Earth, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, flat, forward, government, heart attack, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, LODD, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, NIST, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, safety, South Carolina, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, Twitter, values, vision, warfare, world, zen zone

Je Ne Sais Pas

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Of the words in the English language, "I don't know" are three of the least helpful. When I took three years of French, the first sentence I memorized was "Je ne sais pas" and for good reason I could remember it, because I still, to this day, can't speak or understand the language (however, I understand "No sé" just fine, although I do speak a little Espanol).

When I am asked a question for which I don't know the answer, I learned a long time ago to not pretend to know. Someone with a huge ego might be troubled by admitting they don't know the answer, but in reality, I think most people would rather find out you don't know something when you tell them so than finding out when you tell them something they think to be true and find out you are clueless later.

We have all had these kinds of "knowledgable" people as our supervisors before. We usually just say they are full of shit. And the sad part is, everyone on the floor knows them and thinks the same thing, that they are full of shit. This deluded individual keeps walking around the station, thinking everyone respects them, and in truth, everyone thinks he is a total dumbass. Personally, I'd rather know you think I'm a dumbass than be walking around thinking everyone thinks I'm a God, but really thinks I'm a dumbass. I don't know.

I get asked questions about how to deal with these types a lot. It's one of my most popular questions, next to "How can I create positive change in a negative culture that doesn't want to change?" And can you guess what my answer to both of these questions is? Yes, I do not know.

And I say I don't know not because I haven't been able to deal successfully with these types in my career, but because in every case there are differences in context that are hard to understand. I can offer all kinds of helpful advice, but the reality is that I don't, in fact, know. How can I know if I am not in your shoes? I can be empathetic, but every individual brings a different dynamic to it.

There is a passage by the martial master Zhuge Liang in his commentaries on The Art of War that says, "To overcome the intelligent by folly is against the natural order of things; to overcome the foolish with intelligence is in accord with the natural order." To me, if you are interested in creating change and have good reasons for doing so, there should be an easy way to make things happen. But this doesn't always work, and for no good reason sometimes.

I take the approach that I can control what I can control in this world and anything outside of that little realm, I can't worry about. I can try and make positive change happen, but while I can drag the horse to the water, I can't make it drink. Unfortunately, some people can not find it in their heart to change. So that brings us back to what we asked to begin with.

There are, unfortunately, situations in our lives that don't seem fair. Sometimes these situations are completely out of our control and some of them can be opportunities for change. But that doesn't always pan out the way we'd like. I can think back on times when my choice was to wait things out and in doing so I missed opportunities for growth and conversely, I can remember times where I chose to move on and found that things improved when I left.

These are personal choices and we have to make the best of our current status and try to make good decisions based on realistic observation, assessment, and consideration of the options. I believe that it does because it has for me more often than not. Assessing our next step works well if we can maintain objectivity and if we don't, and make decisions purely on emotion, they tend not to work out so well.

I wish I had all the answers, but I do not. I have many questions I want to ask myself and know that nobody else has the answers either. All we can do is continue to strive to be good, fair, and seek continual improvement and when we don't know something, simply say, "I don't know." Then together try to find a solution.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on March 4, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, clausewitz, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, Je Ne Sais Pas, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, Sun Tzu, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, values, vision, warfare, zen zone, Zhuge Liang

I Am A Bully

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Curt Varone wrote an excellent post on the Fire Law blog today on the concept of cyberbullying, this after a firefighter posted photos that could be construed as unflattering and might even go on to be considered hateful. He even presented this poignant question: “How do we, as members of the Internet community, draw our own lines about what is and is not fair game when it comes to humor, satire and parody?”

So, after reading the post, I replied about how much I enjoyed the article and how it seems, to me, to be an issue of maturity and self-control, which we will talk about in a second. After hitting the send button, I watched the extraordinarily funny video on the “People of Walmart” that he used as an example, and thinking it to be a good illustration of why I prefer not to shop at Walmart, I shared that video on my Facebook page.

I then sat and sipped on my triple espresso and began to write a sanctimonious post on how bullies were ruining the internet, blah, blah, blah…

The funny part about being introspective is that when you begin to practice it, you see yourself in a whole different light, and each time, you begin to see it more quickly (as in, before regretting it, sometimes). As I began to write and speak about how people are different and we needed to be a little more appreciative of differences in individuals, it occurred to me that by sharing the Walmart video, I wasn’t any better than anyone else. Not only that, I was a hypocrite, which is precisely the one thing I don’t ever want to be.

Curt asked this of us:

“Can we protect Jayden [the subject of the post] and still have our funny Walmart photos? Is there a line that can be drawn that makes one OK and the other not?”

In my comment to Curt, I stated: “I think that a lot of problems [in what could be considered cyberbullying] could be traced back to maturity and some personal self-control [sic].” Not a very well written sentence with the redundancy, but you get it, I hope. My point, however was that there have been plenty of times where an inappropriate comment or reply has crossed my mind, something that in context might have been funny, even between me and the subject, but then I thought better of it.

I believe, of course, that there is nothing wrong with sarcasm, cynicism, or even good ol’ fashioned sophomoric humor. But the bigger question has always been: Do I want this attributed to me?” Or do I want it to be seen by people who see me as being above that? Or is this how I want to represent Firehouse Zen? Or the greater emergency services culture?

I said in that comment that it “almost” seems to me to be the equivalent of handing a child a weapon. Given the outcomes of some of the more publicized events (suicide or retaliatory homicide), maybe that isn’t so far of a reach. The child doesn’t necessarily understand the power they are holding. They don’t have a grasp on the gravity of the situation. With the pull of a trigger, they can launch down an irrevocable path with unbelievable repercussions. The child may mean absolutely nothing in doing so. The action might even be the result of mishandling the weapon. But regardless of intention, it still does damage.

The pro-gun folks could have a field day with this discussion, but it is completely relevant: How do we regulate something with so much power to change lives, so that those who don’t understand or can’t appreciate the outcomes don’t end up with the ability to hurt others? Do we take it away? Do we restrict access? Or is this truly an adaptive issue we need to address not through a technical fix, but through a change in culture? I don't believe an across-the-board ban on internet speech is any more useful than an across-the-board ban on weapons. But the million dollar question is how do we manage to protect the vulnerable from those who mean them harm, regardless of the context?

I have no doubts that there are plenty of malicious individuals on the internet. I see them every day, cowering behind their keyboards, making references, creating innuendo, spouting about subjects of which they have no knowledge, and doing so without repercussion. There are comments I read that frankly, make me think to myself that I’d love to meet that individual and push their f***ing teeth in.

But while the internet is not for the weak of heart, it provides us the ability to share information that we couldn’t do before. With the “send” button firmly pushed, I can converse with people in foreign lands, people who I would never have met, or may not ever meet, just because of the issues of time and place. The thing I can see as being a precious tool that has changed my life can, honestly, also be used against me if someone so chooses, and with my being able to do nothing about it. So just as we don’t go walking into saloons with revolvers strapped to both hips without expecting a fight, there are places and people and conversations to avoid on the internet as not to cause yourself to be the focus of someone’s “weapon”. But honestly, I also don’t want to be a cyberbully either, so I must resolve to be what I say I am and not contribute to the distribution of the same material.

In reference to the Walmart video; it IS funny. It is accurate in that these people have gone into a Walmart and been photographed in public. And I concede that if you do these things, perhaps you open yourself up to a certain amount of criticism or ridicule. But on the other hand, I found it pretty tragic as well. Really, who knows if some of these people aren’t suffering from an emotional disturbance or simply are clueless about how they look or what it is they are doing. Like I have heard said, “They obviously don’t have friends or a mirror.” You know, really, we should be instead grateful that we aren't ourselves suffering the same fate.

One person may not be able to change the world overnight, but we can at least give it our best shot. Being human, I realize that I can’t control everything, but I can control myself and be a responsible individual and a good example for my family, friends and colleagues. And while I may laugh, I need to do so in a way that isn’t mean or hurtful to others, despite how viral the laughing might be.

Watch where you are pointing, because tomorrow, the pointing could very well be in your direction.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 25, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership, News, Technology & Communications • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, Curt Varone, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, Fire Law, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse, Firehouse Zen, forward, friend, government, gun, gun control, Hilton Head Island, homicide, integrity, internet, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, responsibility, South Carolina, suicide, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, troll, values, vision, warfare, weapon, zen, zen zone

The FNG

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I was someplace the other day and ran into this guy who I remembered from my very young days as a rookie firefighter. I was in my Class A, which has a few shiny things on it, as well as 32 years worth of Maltese crosses on the sleeve. So I guess I looked moderately important, I don't know. But the guy Introduced himself and asked me if I knew who he was and I responded that I did. And he proceeded to act like I was his new best friend, because he cornered me to chat for a while.

Unfortunately, the reason I remember him is because when I was a rookie firefighter, he wouldn't give me the time of day. Fortunately, I am well past the point in my life where I would have held that against him. In a way, even, I feel sorry for him. When I retire, I would hope people spoke of me fondly and reverently, but in this case, I'd bet not many of my colleagues knew who this individual was, nor did they care. He was pretty important in his time, but I also remember the wedges he drove between people in order to further his agenda.

As a brand new member, I remember that I had time and energy to contribute and I wanted to be involved, yet my help was unwelcome. I know now that it had more about my being a firefighter than about me personally (this was in a third-party EMS setting), but it still stung at the time. This brings me to the question of how we treat our new personnel. While it is one thing to accord a certain amount of ambivalence to the new guys until they can earn your attention, it is a whole different issue to just be disrespectful and dismissive. Remember those guys who had a little power and exerted it on you just because they could? The ones who were big fish in a small puddle and the way they got their power fix was to take it out on you? That, my friends, defines bullying behavior. That, my friends also defines a hostile workplace. These days, not only is it boorish behavior, it is against the law.

I am not saying you need to have a group hug and a round of Kumbaya. A good leader should simply be fair, understanding, and even objectively detached, while being there to guide and mentor. You don't need to be the FNG's new best buddy, and in fact, that would be a huge mistake. You need to be the designated adult supervision, which means you need to act professional and display behavior you would like to see emulated by your new member.

So while my ego may have suffered a bruise over the years, I lived to tell about it. I can even laugh about it now. The good thing I took from it though, was that I wouldn't treat other people like that and if anything, like any other bad situation, instead of dwelling on it I learned to grow through it. Be open-minded and receptive to lessons learned in adversity, and it will make you a stronger leader.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 25, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership, professionalism • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse, Firehouse Zen, FNG, forward, friend, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, Kumbaya, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, values, vision, warfare, zen, zen zone

It Can’t Happen Here

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Our prayers need, right now, to be with our brothers at Bryan (TX) Fire Department in their loss of two valiant men, both of whom perished in the line of duty. We need to also support the two firefighters who were also part of the Rapid Intervention Team that went in and they too, were injured in this fire.

I am not well-versed in the operations of the Bryan Fire Department or their reputation. I can say that I have read some articles on their operation and have been impressed with what I saw; I have been to their website and they look like a progressive and forward-thinking organization. They do a lot of the same things my department does and are roughly the same size department as the one I work for. We run about the same number of calls, if my department were to have a "consistent" population (we have an "off-season" that causes a slight dip in response numbers). I would bet their people are a lot like the people I work with, and I'd bet their chief officers are a lot like me and my colleagues as well.

My department uses accountability and incident management practices that are considered to be the best in our business, and our culture is such that we use them daily, routinely, and intuitively, from the newest firefighter to the Chief of Department. We have modern equipment and we have high standards for our personnel. We are not "safety nazis"; we foster an aggressive approach to fighting fire and dealing with emergency situations, but there is a difference between "aggressive" and "arrogant". Safety is important, and we believe good situational awareness and good practices will keep us out of trouble, even when operating in harm's way. From what I can tell, the Bryan Fire Department is one of these types of departments as well.

We don't shoot from the hip at our department. For the most part, we try to take an unemotional approach to solving the problems we face on scenes. We get facts, we do the job, and we are proud to say that combined with our codes enforcement and fire prevention activities, we stop fires where we find them. When someone has a heart attack, between community involvement and everything else that makes up our team approach, we save them. We have more good days than bad ones, and that is always a force multiplier. I'd bet Bryan Fire Department is the same way.

As you can tell, I can identify with these guys and I have a lot of respect for their organization. They are, like a number of departments out there, just like the one I work for. But while I would like to think it can't happen here at my department, the difference between things going well and things going catastrophically, sometimes, is a crapshoot. You can do all the right things sometimes and it just takes one element to spin out of control, and tragedy ensues. I don't know all the facts about this situation, but I know this: we must try to give our people all the chances at success as possible in order for them to have any chance at all. No raindrop believes it is responsible for the flood, and you wouldn't think a tiny bird could bring down a jet airliner, but small things happen and result in big consequences. Everytime a brother goes down in the line of duty, it is imperative that we learn from it, so we don't have the same thing happen again.

If you really want to honor the brotherhood, you will walk away from all this with the idea that we must hone our art, we must pay attention to the details, and we must embrace changes that give us the opportunity to go home to our families at the end of the shift. While we have those among us who would climb into a dumpster fire to put it out, those of us with a respect for the conditions present at any emergency understand that we risk our lives to an extent just by responding to calls and there isn't a reason sometimes to increase that ratio of risk to reward. But when we do, we do so with a skeptical eye and we always remember we are sending our brothers in to do a job where they are already, often or not, outmatched.

God Bless our fallen brothers, Lt. Eric Wallace and Lt. Greg Pickard, be with Firefighters Mantey and Moran in their recovery, and especially watch over the Bryan Fire Department and their families during this time. Whatever you do, never say "it can't happen here". Learn the lessons from this and many other incidents, and resolve that while these situations might very well happen outside of our control, we at least won't go down without a fight.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 18, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, Command & Leadership, leadership, Line of Duty, LODD, News, safety • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, Bryan, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, education, EMS, EMS Topics, Eric Wallace, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Greg Pickard, Hilton Head Island, integrity, leadership, learning, LODD, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, positive, professionalism, resources, safety, South Carolina, teamwork, technical solutions, Texas, thought, Training, values, vision

Change Your Mind

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When I was very young and was grappling with the nuances of the language, I used the word "loathe" to express my "dislike" of something. I'm pretty sure I didn't use it to describe my feelings for my siblings, but my memory isn't that good. My mother, who I think I got the writing gene from, explained to me the difference between "loathe" and "don't like", and with that, I understood the subtleties of one more word in our language.

In this spirit, I'm trying to be helpful. When you express your disagreement with a fellow human being, it is not the same as saying you don't like Brussels sprouts. The growers of Brussels sprouts may not agree with me, but Brussels sprouts don't have feelings, or at least none that we are aware of yet. They don't have children that look up to them. They don't have colleagues and friends with whom they have to maintain some mutual relationships with. So saying you "hate" Brussels sprouts doesn't have immediate impact. Expressing your opinion of the worthlessness of Brussels sprouts, unless you are the President of the United States, doesn't create a change in the popularity of them.

When speaking of others, when you say that someone is different than you, that is an observation of fact in many cases. When you say they are stupid or backwards or simply wrong, you are basing that observation on your own perspective, and while you may feel strongly about that emotion, you also may very well be wrong. And then who is the stupid one?

The debates we entertain in society these days don't seem to be anything other than shouting matches for the intolerant. There is a lot of merit to the understanding that in a lot of cases, when one opens their mouth, very often they expose their ignorance. As these arguments are hashed out not over reasoned discussion but inflammatory sound bites, one must really look at the way we choose to talk to one another and the damage it is doing to us all as a society.

I think it is very important to hear the thoughts of others. This would be great if those thoughts were framed in the context that they are your thoughts and you are interested in trying to educate others. A statement that you understand that and you are interested in hearing alternate viewpoints is valuable when you are engaging others. But unfortunately, where the discussion is left open and unfettered, where people fail to remain on point, they use not only poor reasoning, but in some cases, slanderous, unfounded, and utterly ignorant rhetoric. While this may be acceptable to some, and maybe even in a perverse sort of way, to them, amusing (a la Jackass, where we watch individuals making stupid decisions and laugh at the consequences) in my observation it is simply permitting the type of attitude that evolves toward less than desirable outcomes.

There is nothing healthy about poking at something with a stick to see what it will do. I'd bet the Romans probably wished they hadn't been lording their power over the world when the barbarians finally figured out how to cross the Rhine. If you are sitting around, smug in your belief that you are in a position of power, or righteousness, or whatever ego-inflating situation you happen to see yourself in, think again. Conditions change, other vantage points become apparent, and additional factors come into play. Just because you think yourself right today, tomorrow can bring an entirely new way of thought.

Today I went out in my kayak to clear my head and to get ready for the upcoming week, a meditation of sorts. I am by myself, I am paying attention to everything going on around me, and I don't have the backscatter going on that distracts me from one task or another. In these cases, I am constantly listening. I relax and listen to what is going on around me. It is something I began to develop more in watching some of the people I respect greatly, in that they listen and take in what is being said, and then reflect it back, with maybe their ideas on the subject. But they aren't talking, they are listening. They aren't judging, they aren't criticizing, they aren't telling you how to do something, or why they are right. They listen, they relate, and they suggest.

Instead of telling people what you think, maybe you should take a moment and listen to others. While doing so might educate you on these points of view, I would bet that you will also find yourself in a position where people are willing to look toward you as a voice of reason and enlightened when that kind of viewpoint is most valuable.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 11, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, teamwork, technical solutions; brussels sprouts, thought, Training, values, vision, warfare, zen zone

Loser

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In our business, unfortunately, we don't always get to pick when and where we have our battles. I don't mean this in the context of leading, but in the context of response and operations.

Simply said, our overarching goal as an incident commander should be to dictate the conditions, not to permit the conditions to dictate to us. But no matter what, we are on the defense on every call, despite our terminology; we didn't choose to engage in battle at the time, it was chosen for us, so offensive, defensive, or transitionally, we are really always starting on the idea that we defend, even if that defense is an aggressive offense.

Sun Tzu's warnings are clear that a good general doesn't go into battle unprepared. Zhuge Liang's commentaries on leadership suggest the need for picking the place of engagement to obtain maximum effect. Clausewitz cautions that we have to cut through the "fog of war" to get to the real essence of situational awareness. But these classics all are predicated on the general's ability to maneuver out of a situation where they are put into conflict without adequate preparation. We don't have that luxury.

When we are called out after midnight to respond to a structure fire, we are already on our heels. When we are alerted to a cardiac arrest on a fine spring afternoon, we didn't necessarily expect it to happen. We prepare for these events through training, but what we can't prepare for are the contributing factors that led to this disaster occurring at that moment, at that place, and in that context. The fight may already be lost by the time we arrive to the battlefield and we have to keep that idea tucked away in the back of our heads and prepare for the proper reaction to those events. Adding to disaster by refusing to admit our need to defend is the downfall of many a general, and many a fire chief.

On a recent call, my crews were unable, despite extraordinary and valiant efforts, to reverse the outcome. In the past, perhaps they would be more accepting, but in light of recent changes to our strategies, these guys have been enjoying the fruits of their labor and they have been pulling off some amazing work. Today, however, all of that effort was notable, but not able to change what was already writ. I could see the expressions on their faces as they questioned what else they could have done. I spoke with them and encouraged them, but it was obvious, they had gotten so used to winning that losing was just not an option.

Despite our best efforts, we lose from time to time. There are parking lots out there that were predestined, rather than created by failure on the part of the incident commander. People die sometimes catastrophically, with the only possible saving intervention being bright lights and cold steel. Rather than dwell on the loss, it is imperative that we review our actions, determine the things we did right, analyze the things we could improve on, and prepare for the next battle. The greatest sports teams, the most powerful armies, and the most skilled negotiators lose on occasion. The difference between their continued success and sliding into the pit of failure is their ability to look creatively and insightfully to what occurred and to create means of learning from the issues they were presented. If anything, simply maintaining status quo might be a save if the only other alternative was lost ground.

Good leaders find value even in a loss. They may not like it and in fact, should not. But they can look at the loss and see the opportunity to educate and to reset things, if that is necessary. We should never "accept" a loss, but use it for what it is; a chance to grow.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on February 4, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, leadership • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, blame, change, clausewitz, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, education, effort, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, loser, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, parking lot, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, status quo, Sun Tzu, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, values, vision, warfare, zen zone, Zhuge Liang

Your Altruism Is Hereby Noted

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I was reading the never-ending stream of discussion on Dave Statter's site about the AZ fire department refusing respond to a structure fire three miles away from their station because the home was in an area that was not paying for fire service. And we have had this discussion many times before, here on Firehouse Zen, a la South Fulton County and others. And I am constantly surprised at the discussions that go on regarding the "pay to spray" concept, since, by now, I would have thought most communities in our nation would have gotten a clue and done something about it, one way or another, or would stop acting so surprised when it happens again. And it keeps happening again. And again.

When I was a very young firefighter, I remember this very same kind of event occurring with a subscription fire department. I also remember being outraged that something Ike this could occur. Really, we are altruists, we firefighters, and we do this stuff not for the pay but for the love of our fellow man. Right? But, some thirty years later and more jaded and cynical, I wade into this conversation with a dose of reality for you. While it is great that we are all so willing to serve and to lay down our lives for others, there comes a serious discussion that is higher on the food chain than we happen to be. This discussion lies at the feet of those who make these policy decisions, at the jurisdictional level, and with those who claim the fire service is gutting their wallet for all they can get, then act stupid when we tell them all this stuff costs money.

This situation is heartbreaking and I can certainly empathize with the homeowner, my own family having lost everything we had to fire when I was young. But I also know from the perspective of a community activist: if a necessary service or facility is needed in my neighborhood, I work to fix it, or build it, or develop it. I don't sit around and wait for someone else to do it. If I were in a situation like this, I'd work with my local fire department to get them funding. I would help with fund raising. I would be a total pain in the ass to my elected officials and agitate to resolve the problem. But I wouldn't just stick my head in the sand and hope nothing happened.

Please don't take my tone as being disparaging to those of you who feel the urge to help regardless of whether the person pays or not. I certainly believe in selfless service to my neighbor. I am happy to be there in their time of need and regardless of their ability to pay. But I have a question for those of you who are getting emotional: "How many times does it have to happen before the elected officials in these communities get a clue and ensure that sustained funding is provided for fire protection?"

I feel stupid just repeating it, because the subject has been covered SO MANY TIMES; these trucks cost money. The fuel to send them costs money. The equipment on them costs money. The insurance costs money. The protective gear we wear costs money. The station we respond out of costs money. It's not even an issue of paying salaries and benefits; just the most elemental of operations at least requires the means to put out the fire and that requires funding. Do the citizens in these neighborhoods just assume the fire department will pay for these needs and they can get by without paying for the service?

You take a gamble when you decide to go uninsured, or in this case, live in a community who won't pay the bills. While I agree that there are likely some contributing factors, it is as simple as this: If I lived in a community and there wasn't police protection, I'd find out why. If the community leaders refused to help, I would do something about it. Or perhaps (which will make the pro-gun advocates jump with joy) I would arm to protect myself. But I wouldn't keep quiet and accept that I would be without help in the event I needed it.

The real tragedy is that over the history of our nation, when "real" leaders realized fire protection was substandard, or too far away, or wouldn't be available to them, they organized their own fire protection. In this day and age, one could even add sprinklers to one's home, you could be fire safe and maintain your home and property correctly, and if you absolutely had to, you could even provide your own fire apparatus (people still do this). But even if one can't afford to pay a subscription, there should be some alternative solutions, like a community grant to pay for those who haven't the means, or maybe even some work equity to pay the subscription off.

This leads into discussion on the situation in these communities in regard to "service". Volunteerism is a highly commendable and altruistic calling, not just in the fire service, but in many community services who lack the resources afforded to other projects. I volunteer as an advocate for those with Down syndrome; I volunteer to help the homeless and hungry; I served for years with a camp for children who have vision challenges; and I support a whole range of other causes. I would never withhold assistance to someone who needed help. In fact, that is why we are there, to help. But if the people who need the help can't fund the service, it is incumbent upon us, as leaders of these projects, to find out where to get those funds. I may seek corporate funding, or community funding, or tax funding, or pay for things out of my pocket. But the money has to come from somewhere, and if we were in the situation of helping someone who could afford help, I would certainly expect them to have some equity in the solution.

"Pay For Spray" is a pretty derogatory descriptor of the situation. I would bet that the firefighters in these communities are challenged between doing what is right to help their neighbors and the elected officials who chose to abandon their responsibility for ensuring public safety needs are adequate. This is not an enviable position to be in. But frankly, those of you who are so aggrieved by this situation should really consider moving to these areas and offering your services free of charge, putting diesel in using your credit card, and paying the light bill, because it sounds like they would love to have you pay for it all out of your pocket.

Instead of bashing the department's chief for having to make a tough decision, perhaps we should focus the blame squarely on those who created the problem: The taxpayers and politicians who knew they had coverage issues and elected to abandon their neighbors out of convenience. If you have a subscription service, as I said before, you'd better have an alternative plan in the event someone doesn't pay and you have to go into action. And if the answer from the town fathers is, "Too bad", that should be widely known in the community, in the media, and everyone involved, and there should be no shock when it actually occurs, because trust me, it will.

Posted by Michael "Mick" Mayers on January 28, 2013 • Filed under: administration-leadership, change, Command & Leadership, Fire Rescue Topics, Funding & Staffing, leadership, News • Tagged: activism, adaptive leadership, advice, advocacy, altruism, Arizona, blame, change, Command & Leadership, conflict, consensus, Dave Statter, education, ego, EMS, EMS Topics, facts, FHZ, fire rescue topics, fire service, firearm, Firefighter Nation, Firehouse Zen, forward, government, gun, Hilton Head Island, integrity, just culture, just leadership, leadership, learning, management, media, Mick Mayers, mission, motivation, opportunity, politics, positive, professionalism, quote, resources, South Carolina, South Fulton County, teamwork, technical solutions, thought, Training, values, vision, volunteer, warfare, zen zone

Although I am affiliated or employed by certain entities, I in no way speak in this forum or others on behalf of those entities unless I have specifically stated such. Any implication otherwise is doing so contrary to my agreements with those entities. The result is that the observations and opinions by myself or on behalf of Firehouse Zen are not sanctioned by any other entity other than Graffiti Train Sherpa Publications and are protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America.

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