B Shifter
Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
The Silverbacks Give Advice for a New Fire Chief
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This episode features Nick Brunacini, Terry Garrison, and John Vance.
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This episode was recorded at the AVB CTC in Phoenix, AZ on April 17, 2025.
Creating a positive fire department culture drives better service both inside and outside the organization, ultimately leading to safety and success for everyone involved.
• Culture is more powerful than rules, regulations, and SOPs in guiding behavior
• A "Way" document preserves cultural values and helps transmit them to new members
• Effective customer service requires treating firefighters well so they can treat citizens well
• Organizational boundaries must be established and enforced consistently to maintain culture
• Safety culture requires accountability at all levels and cannot be overlooked by supervisors
• New fire chiefs should build on organizational strengths rather than change things for change's sake
• Leadership should focus on personal power rather than positional power to gain true buy-in
• Training and operations must align under a common vision focused on the work
• After-action reviews help reinforce cultural values through honest assessment without blame
• Good crews will intervene to help each other maintain professional standards with customers
Remember, you will resent and resist any supervision you receive that you don't need. Good leaders understand when to provide guidance and when to get out of the way.
All right, welcome to the B-Shifter podcast. It's John Vance, Nick Brunicini and Terry Garrison here hanging out bringing you the podcast today. Fellas, how you doing.
Speaker 1Good, yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, thank you for asking. All right, good man, we're here. It's Arizona. The weather is going to be in the high 70s today. Yeah, it's good, yeah.
Speaker 2So what's what's new in the world with with you guys, I haven't. It's been. It's been about a month since we sat down and did a podcast.
Speaker 1Well, we're working on our Silverback Leadership Program, we're working on function number three, which is inside-outside customer service, and what we have narrowed that down to really is it's about culture. How do you create a culture of customer service, right? So we talked about in function number really it's function number two but chapter number, or function number one but chapter number two we talked about the work. We talked about core services and added value and how, why that's important to an organization. So now we're kind of focusing on the taking care of the firefighters, so the firefighters can take care of the customers.
Speaker 1That you know, that whole symbiotic approach to delivering customer service inside and outside. And what we're deciding is that culture really is the big deal, Right? And people used to come to Phoenix and say how do you guys do this? What was the culture of the entire organization that was created by Brunicini and moved through labor and management, and it was just a culture of delivering a service and really providing it added value. So we're going to talk a little bit about how you do that in inside, outside customer service on.
Speaker 2Uh, the 15th, we put out in the buck slip and I want I should have given you a little more credit for terry and I didn't. Um, but did you read that? The?
Speaker 1way, you did a good job, and it's not me that you would give credit. Bruno, our, our first, go ahead with what you're going to say, and then I'll add on.
Speaker 2Well I, so I I read the phoenix way, yeah, but I didn't really. I sat through a class that you did, talking about how to create that document, so, and that was back at Notre Dame, you know, 15 years ago or whenever it was that you came out there and taught, and after that I was like I want to do this, and it's not to legislate the culture, but it is more to preserve the culture and and to pass on to those new people, like this is the way we operate and this is the way that we've agreed over the last eight years and that's really the document that I put together was a compodium of all the meetings and talks and agreements that we had with each other that this is the way that we're going to operate. This is our motto, this is our mission statement and this is why all those things like firefighter empowerment- no, and you did a great job in your article.
Speaker 1I was going to tell you today and I think the key to that is if you can't write down those things and then share them with the organization, it's not going to happen. So being able to write that down, put in the document, the way you did the Minnetonka.
Speaker 2No one gets it right, that's okay, sorry.
Speaker 1The way you described the way you did a great job. But Bruno did that for us and really it's not a fire chief and you explained this very well but it's not a fire chief sitting down and writing that and saying, hey guys, this is what we're going to do it. But it's not a fire chief sitting down and writing that and saying, hey guys, this is what we're going to do. It's an organizational process that takes place. That includes labor management, firefighters, engineers, fire captains, staff personnel Everybody's kind of got to adopt that. And whenever you are moving forward some process like that, where you want people to adopt it, you've got to get their input Right and then they get buy-in. You know all those words we talk about in management and leadership, but it really does work by getting their input and then moving forward with it. So you did a great job.
Speaker 1Thank you, I appreciate that, but it started with Bruno many years ago. I just stole what he had done and, in fact, one more thing about that is that I think that's really where I was most happy when I went to Houston is that the labor group there there was a guy, kanan, who was the labor president, and he got on board with that right away and we were able to move that forward and I couldn't have done it alone as an outside fire chief or or even as an inside fire chief you can't process that alone. But I was able to get with Canaan and we were able to take that through the process and get buy-in. It took several months to get everybody's input and then we ended up with a product that the organization supported.
Speaker 2We ended up with more people on the outs with the organization because they weren't buying into our values. And again, that wasn't chief-driven or even senior officer-driven. That was oftentimes driven on the company level. That a captain would come to us and say this person just doesn't align with what this organization is all about, so you have to have the buy-in is all about. So it's really you have to have the buy-in. You can't you just can't write pretty words on a piece of paper and expect it to happen, because it doesn't happen like that. It needs to be authentic.
Speaker 3Well, you use those documents to harmoniously align, like the informal and formal leaders in the thing.
Speaker 3So the instance where, like the companies come to you or individuals come and say, no, I'm not going to do this, I don't believe in being nice to people or that we exist to do work, or whatever it is, well, those people essentially are deselecting themselves. Then so either they can join the fire department or they can leave the fire department. But over the years you notice that there's a very vocal minority that will try to run the fire department from the backseat of the bus and say no, no, no. This is what I believe in and this is what we're going to do, and a lot of it's just political nonsense. They're doing it's stupid little parlor games and I think the number one indicator of how, what kind of place the fire department is to work for, is how the leadership deals with that vocal minority. And so documents like the way and customer service and the leadership thing we're doing no, we're going to align our business with the work we do. I mean, that's just what, that's the way it works, that's what we're here for.
Speaker 1No, I think you're right. Once you identify those organizational boundaries which is the culture and how you're going to operate you're going to have a small group of people that are going to say oh yes, so those are the boundaries. Let me see what happens when I step over that, and they will purposely step over that. You better be ready for that and have a process in place to help them back in or have them keep on stepping out of the organization.
Speaker 2So one of those things are going to have to happen.
Speaker 1But once you identify those boundaries, those aren't soft boundaries, those are pretty solid lines that this is a way we're going to operate. We're not going to tolerate, for instance, somebody being mean to a recruit firefighter or a probationary firefighter. We're not going to disrespect the customer, those kind of things. And once you establish that and then hold people accountable I think that's the key and nobody's surprised by when you do hold them accountable. They're surprised. They should be surprised when you don't and somebody continues to act up and nothing occurs.
Speaker 3Well, I think it depends. That's really the difference between different organizations is how they manage that piece of it. So ineffective, out-of-control organizations the fire chief tends to just they don't manage around the work, they manage around their own feelings and identity and ego, and so a lot of times they'll put up with poor behavior because they think that there's somehow, if I overlook your shortcomings, that's going to create gratitude on your part for you to exist as a mediocre member of this organization. Well, that's not the way it works. And when you overlook that, all you're doing is getting shit on your shoes, basically, and people will kind of figure out pretty quickly okay, this is what the boss stands for and this is what they don't stand for.
Speaker 3And, and you see it, I mean it's all over the news with. You know, something bad happens in the, in the fire department, and the first thing the fire chief does is shows up and cries over it or or some kind of, some kind of act that doesn't support fixing whatever the problem is. So things are just allowed to get more and more dysfunctional and that's a product of just poor leadership. Basically, I really think sadly there's more of them than there aren't across the fire service. I mean, you just kind of look at the world today and what's going on and you just scratch your head over some of it and you think this does not connect to the work we're doing. Why are we doing it?
Speaker 1Well, I think that word way is chosen was chosen by Brunicini pretty specifically, because this is the way forward, without getting too cosmic or religious about it. But this is the way we're moving forward, the way we're going to act, but actually the way we're going to go, the direction we're going to go, Like it's both a noun and a verb.
Speaker 3Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1So I mean, I think that was perfect. So if you get off track and start heading in a different direction, you need to get back in, and there's people that it's with safety, and that's. The other thing, too is that this has to do with culture. It has to do with culture of how we treat each other and how we treat the customer and how we treat our resources, but it also has to do with safety, and I think that's what we're doing too is we're adding safety back again to the Silverback Leadership Program, and the inside-outside customer service has a safety component to it, also to the way we're going to act on the fire ground, the way we're going to do our job and do it in a safe manner and provide that service to the customer.
Speaker 3Well, executive level safety is when you're responsible and you lead the organization. When part of your work occurs in IDLH hazard zones, it is your responsibility to ensure to create the systems and training and everything else support so the members of the organization survive those encounters.
The Phoenix Way Document
Speaker 3Like their ongoing safety and survival is part of the regular incident operation. It's embedded into it because it's a hazard they face every day, potentially. And so you've got to run the fire department in a way that causes everybody who began their shift to finish their shift. So then there's a lot of obstacles to that. A lot of people think, well, no, it's noble to die in the line of duty, and you think that's a misdirected thought. Right there, we don't have an SOP that says here's the noble ways for us to die while we're on duty. There's none of that, and if you took that to the authority having jurisdiction, they would probably send you to a psychologist pretty quickly and say why do you want to kill the workers? That's not what we're here to do. We're here to deliver service to the customers. So there's a disconnect, and I mean it's hundreds of years old, but you know those are the things that the executives who manage the fire department that's part of their job description is to keep the workforce healthy, at least so they can deliver the service. You'll notice that when there's a mayday that occurs on the fire ground, we're not delivering service anymore. That all goes away. Everything goes away until we solve the mayday. So to say, okay, we're going to risk ourselves because that somehow puts us in a better light or makes us feel better about ourselves or, you know, the survivors feel better about it.
Speaker 3We both are familiar with the fire department that used to hire twice as many recruit firefighters as they needed to start an academy. So if they needed 20, they'd hire 40. And then they would fire half of them during the academy. And we asked the fire chief why do you do that? He says, well, training thinks that when you get rid of half of the firefighters in the class, it makes the other half feel that much better about themselves that they were able to survive the gauntlet. Well, what's that cost? I mean, it costs twice as much to train twice as many when you only need half. So why won't you just hire people that you're pretty confident? Because back in those days you had a pretty big herd you could select from, so you had no shortage of candidates. I always thought the accomplishment.
Speaker 1The first accomplishment was getting hired and making it to the training academy, because you had to go through quite a gauntlet to get to that. Yeah, I mean, that was a year-long process, 5,000 people and they hired 40 off the list that I was on 43 of us. I think I was probably number 43, but that felt like an accomplishment.
Speaker 1Now, I wasn't going to obviously stop there. None of us were. That got us in the door and now we needed to move forward and prove that they made good choices. Right, yeah, so yeah. But to hire and then to get them geared up. And, like I said, I was in an organization once where you didn't get your actual fire helmet until you got out of the fire academy. You got a plastic helmet, because why would we spend money on helmets for guys that were gonna? So I mean, it affects everything. When you hire people knowing that you're gonna fire half of them. That's just. And you know, if I was an hr director or a finance director within that organization, the city or jurisdiction, I go no, no, what's going on here? You guys need to get better at your hiring process because your training academy is going to be what it's going to be.
Speaker 3Well, that sends a message to everybody. Starting is okay. The way we're going to manage this is we play a lot of games in the very beginning.
Speaker 3And those are all just designed to build up our self-esteem and confidence and egos. So in fact, it's all artificial and fake, is? We pretty much do this as window dressing so we know who we're going to keep and who we're not. I mean, when you get into the politics of hiring a recruit class as many of the people in that class are connected to up into the food chain somewhere with people that are going to say no, no, no, you may fire half, but my people are on the other side of that line. A lot of the last names are the same.
Speaker 3Yeah, we have had recruit class in Phoenix and they I don't know at what point but they said you have to have like a company ID for your recruit class. And this particular class had a lot of relatives, of direct descendants of very high-ranking people and there was enough in the class that they went to their captains. They said we want our fire recruit shirt to say the lucky sperm. And they said no, we can't do that, that's inappropriate.
Speaker 1But you said just so we can kind of cover that whole topic right there about hiring family that because their family doesn't mean they're going to be bad firefighters no I mean they got the jump, like you were saying. At one time somebody had talked to you and you'll say better than I do, but you were hired. Oh yeah, choose kid gets hired. Well, you were reading uh firehouse magazines in the shitter when you're six years old, because that's what your dad had yeah, I mean he learned about the fire service and that's what you wanted to do early on.
Speaker 1So yeah, because you were the fire chief's kids, you shouldn't get knocked away from the process. Yeah, and there's organizations that used to do that.
Speaker 3I don't think they do that anymore well, truth be told, I really didn't want to be anything when I was growing up other than a Chevy pickup truck. That was kind of my. And then, when I became old enough to know that that wasn't a viable option, you wanted to be a pickup truck. Yeah, that's what I wanted to be when I grew up.
Speaker 1I wanted to be a sandwich. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3Oh, a watermelon would have been great that was my favorite thing in the world, but at some point you figure out well, I've got to do something for a living. You know I tried this and this and this and school sucks. And so you just look, that's a pretty good gig. They work one 24-hour day and they've got two days off and they spend most of their money on cars and hanging out together and having a good time, and then the rest of it they just waste on things like pensions and other stuff.
Speaker 1But you knew about the organization. Oh yeah, you didn't go in blindly.
Speaker 3Oh, no, no, no, I knew more about it than the captains who were training us at that point. See, and that wasn't so much for my dad, it was for working for other firemen in a position where you could serve alcohol to firefighters.
Speaker 1You were a bartender.
Speaker 3Yeah, so that was really better than getting a master's degree in mental health. Is becoming a bartender in four or five years.
Speaker 1So the way back to your original kind of where we started is no, it's important.
Speaker 3The way with liquor.
Speaker 1Because if you have that document out there and that's part of the hiring process there was a time when we said, okay, you're going to study this, but you're also going to take this. This is the expectation for the organization moving forward. That helps in the selection and the hiring process. So you use that throughout the entire organization, right?
Speaker 2Yeah Well, and I would go through that during the orientation. So however long the orientation was in the first couple of days, I would sit down with the new group.
Speaker 1Oh, the fire chief did that with you.
Speaker 2Yeah, I would sit down with everybody and say this is what we figured out, the way that we're going to operate. And if you are going to stay here, this is the way that we expect you to operate and we welcome you into this. But it's got to be. This is the way we do it.
Speaker 1And they all say yes. And then you watch them and it's not always yes, they say yes, but you can identify pretty early on the people that are going to help others, see, but I'll go back to what you said earlier, vance.
Speaker 3It's like your captain goes back and says, well, my engineer won't do this. Well, you know that, going in, it's the older people that say, no, I don't. If you get that from a recruit, that's the easiest one to fix it all Say oh, I'm sorry, we made a mistake. There's the door, you leave. Yeah, you don't work here. I mean, why would I plant weeds in my garden that are just going to keep sprouting? It's like no, I know.
Speaker 3In fact, that's what the whole hiring process should be set up to do is to support intake and the right people that will do the work. That's it. So the guys I say guys the members who refuse to abide by that, I think are just being assholes for the sake of being assholes, like you can't tell me to be nice, you're not my mom and you're like well, obviously you don't have one because you were never taught to be nice, so you never got these lessons. And we're serious about this. And if you you've said it before in these things you can manage people's attitudes and behaviors because they they show up in in um actions. Well, exactly, so like incorrect action is based on either poor training or a shitty attitude or two of the major ways that you get crossways like that.
Speaker 3So, like an older member of the organization, well, let's say that the new fire chief says, no, we're going to redirect this and we're going to go off the work. Well, that's going to be harder, because you may have a bunch of people that said, no, the old system, we could be that it didn't, this wasn't the goal. This was the goal over here, whatever that happens to be. So now the challenge becomes pulling the workforce in that direction. Well, you're going to have the like-minded that help you right, and so they're going to be pushing too. So the mixture of the old ways and the new ways is you got to have some patience with you do.
Speaker 3So you got to say okay, I understand that we haven't always operated this way, but the old ways cause these problems and we're going to fix them by doing this. So we're going to be somewhat patient getting you over here, but just like if you're fundamentally an asshole all the time, you're going to deselect yourself from the organization. That's what the way says is your behaviors are running counter to us delivering the best service we could deliver, because you're always you upset people. You show up on calls we talked about in the last deal. We're like you got the guy settled down but you gave him a cigarette and that made him calm, and then the paramedics showed up and derailed it and you're like no, no, no, no, no. Two firefighter paramedics don't get to do this to the scene. You're not cops. So, uh-uh, quit acting like it. So, in fact, maybe we should send them that way. If they're too mean for us, maybe they could go over.
Speaker 1We're going to end up with them eventually.
Speaker 3Yeah, one way or another.
Speaker 1So every item in the way has to have a why explained to it.
Speaker 2Yeah, and that's what you were getting ready to do there.
Speaker 1When you were talking, I was thinking, yeah, you've got to explain the why. So with some of the people who have been around a long time, like they called them? I think they called them old heads, Dinosaurs. No, they just call them old heads.
Speaker 3They've been there a long time. Oh geez.
Speaker 1Dinosaur just doesn't want to move. Yeah, dinosaurs are, or as your guys have just been there a long time, so they're senior members. Yeah, they're senior members, but you've got to have a reason why. For the young people coming in, this is why we do this. And for the old people, here's why we're changing to move, and you said it very well. I mean, it impacts a whole lot of things within your city, your jurisdiction, your fire department, your community. Your forthcoming pay raises, your relationships with people on the street.
Speaker 3Well, those are all tools that the leaders use to get the organization there no-transcript, see and these are all cultural documents, which is more powerful than rules and regulations. So the culture is the bottom line. This is the way we do things around here, despite the SOPs, the rules and everything else. So, like culturally in a system, let's say that nobody stages. We just, culturally, have never staged at the scene of fires. Well, that's something you need to change.
Speaker 3If you're going to kind of implement a system where you can manage a single incident action plan, well, you're going to have old heads say, no, we don't.
Speaker 3And so you explain, like you said, why you stage, and they think, well, yeah, I understand all that, but we manage this in such a way where we don't need to, and you're like well, do we really? I mean, all the problems we've had over the years, I can track back a fair number of them to the fact that we don't operate with a single incident action plan and everybody's kind of their own boss on the fire ground. So that's just as an example. So what we ended up doing is they created the way for just kind of the culture of dealing with each other and the public, and then they created you were the chairman of that of the safety guide the green book, and saying no, in fact one. This is the way we manage ourselves and we hang out and do our business together.
Speaker 3The safety book is this is the rules. These are the rules that you cannot break. In fact it says in the book supervisors are not empowered to overlook infractions of these rules. You have to enforce them, because when you don't, people can get injured and killed and that's horrible and we don't want that to happen. So that kind of becomes the leadership piece of that of getting that through.
Speaker 1And the great thing about that book, too, is you said I created, but I was actually the facilitator.
Speaker 3You led the effort to produce it, so what?
Leadership and Organizational Boundaries
Speaker 1happened is Bruno called me in one day as a new battalion chief. He said I got this idea of a fire response that starts in preparedness all the way through to when we leave the fire scene. And these are the stages I think are critical. He goes can you go out and meet with every fire captain in the organization and get input into filling in these areas? So I said, oh yeah, great. So over the next few months I met with every fire captain in the city of Phoenix, groups and then individuals that would be like a couple hundred. Oh yeah, it was wonderful. So we would have.
Speaker 1I mean, there I was working for the fire chief and I was trying to accomplish this and the battalion chiefs would sit in on it, but I was looking for the people who actually did the work and led the organization. So they had the first, first input. Later we went back and got firefight engineers input put in battalion chiefs, but we started with fire captains and it was wonderful because they filled that in. So you know what are the important things as part of a response when you're driving there and they would give what they thought was important and every once in a while they pretty much lined up. There wasn't a lot of surprises, but every once in a while there was, but the one that the statement that you said was the best statement is that on the very front end of that book is that? You said it very well. I can never say it exactly correctly, but my dyslexia gets in the way of my thought process. But it's supervisors are not empowered to overlook safety procedures and command officers are not empowered to follow up on those safety violations.
Speaker 3They are empowered. Command officers have to follow up.
Speaker 1Command officers have to. Yeah, they don't have a choice. So what happens? Is it kind of says when you make a mistake, I'm going to tell you you made a mistake and then we're going to help you through the process. Now, nowhere in there it says you're going to beat the snot out of them and it's not recoverable and there's no second it says you have to terry like 75 of the time.
Speaker 3Uh like, in an after action review, the member just rats themselves out it says I shouldn't have done this, and then you're like, in fact, you almost have to do the opposite.
Speaker 1Say no, no, no, no it's easy for this to happen.
Speaker 3This is why we do it this way and this way instead of that way, and yeah, after action report or after action was part of that. Yeah, and you would tailboard or major Exactly. A quick review of how did this go. What parts could we fix? What parts don't need to be fixed? You just yeah, yeah, it's just a good practical thing to do after you deliver the work.
Speaker 1So we're gonna that's gonna that document and the other the way, and then you've when you, we can add yours in there because it's got a little different style. People have different styles, but we'll add that to our silverback leadership program and then people have access to that. We'll probably talk a little bit about it during our conference in October. Maybe hand out something to do with that.
Speaker 3You know. The other one we need to find is the customer service guide. I'd like to see that, because at the same time. So we started the way. It's just okay. Here's the culture of the Phoenix Fire Department. This is the way we treat each other. This is the inside, this is the inside. And then we use the same family, supportive, work-driven approach on the inside, on the outside, so it all matches. We don't have to be schizophrenic to deliver service, so we're not treated horrible on the inside, and then we're expected to be really nice on the outside. So it all lines up. And then what was crazy is then the next was okay, that's good here, now we have to define the rules so we don't get killed and blown up. And that's really good. And while that was going on, the union of all people said okay, this is what the service on the outside looks like, this is why we're here. In fact, what they really said is this is what we negotiate your benefit package on, is you doing this for the customer? And then we go back and then talk to the customer's reps and then they give us raises, base. So this is a food chain. This is how we monetize. This is the union. So what we did is over.
Speaker 3Like this leads up to like 2006, 2007, where the economy boiled, the Wall Street destroyed the mortgage industry and the whole world was going to go to shit hungry. Well, so we get there, and then one of the like poster children became firefighters salaries and pensions. And they were like how do firefighters make this much? And who authorized these pensions? And you think, well, we negotiated them over the last 25 years based on the service we provide and what the citizens wanted, because they're kind of in charge. So well, that's all good and well we understand it. But we have to beat you to death now because we need a sacrificial lamb in this whole thing, because we can't hold Wall Street responsible for destroying it, because the politicians allowed that to happen. So, anyway, it all comes back together, but the way out of that is just keep doing your job.
Speaker 1Well, nick, every service delivery encounter you're being evaluated.
Speaker 3Oh yeah.
Speaker 1So the best thing to happen is for a supervisor to ensure that the performance goes in a positive direction so he or she can fix that on the front end if they think something's going to occur. The worst thing that can happen is that a customer tries to fix you by evaluating you. You talked about your service at a car dealership. Yeah, every time that I go to McDonald's with my grandson or go to a car dealership or go to a grocery store or whatever, grandson or go to a car dealership or go to a grocery store or whatever I'm, I'm, without knowing or not, I'm evaluating. How is this person who's working? They're treating me as a customer. We all do that, but for some reason, as firefighters, we forget that that same thing is occurring across the table from us and those people are judging everything we do. Why wouldn't we want to?
Speaker 3well, sometimes we think that when we show up to deliver service, that we're like just doing somebody a favor, hero, yeah. And they're like well, no, we're going to come out and evaluate your real need, of your emergency and we'll let you. No, no, no, no man, that is a government. That's the typical government stereotypical approach that everybody hates.
Speaker 1That's a driver's license bureau.
Speaker 3Yeah, exactly, that's not who the fire department is as we show up, and if your emergency really doesn't require us to do much, that's what we should do then, and that includes not scolding the customer for calling you. Just explain to them. Okay, this is going to be.
Speaker 2Maybe drink some more water, get better sleep at night, whatever you can to kind of get them in a yeah, I've had firefighters that are surprised when they're not getting hero worshiped on calls and it's like they're having a bad day. Man, I mean, don't expect every call to end with a pat on the neck. You know we get a lot of pats on the back, but I think firefighters some firefighters get to the point where they feel like they're entitled to this adulation every time they leave the building and it just doesn't happen and we have to educate them on that too. Like you're going to go to people having bad days and they're not going to treat you very nice. Get used to it.
Speaker 1I think that's a real bonus and having a crew of I don't think police officers have that. I think they work singularly and when they have a bad day they just there's nobody to go.
Speaker 3Hey, hey.
Speaker 1Hey, we got a crew there and I've had you've told stories about how your crews helped you. I've had my crews help me. It's like, hey, terry, let me handle this one. Why don't you back away? A little bit right. So that's, I think, because most firefighters they'll correct the other. If you, if you make that an organizational, cultural, important thing to do, other firefighters will say, hey, step back a little bit. Let me take this one.
Speaker 3If you, as a leader, don't give a shit about that, it's probably not going to happen at the lower level where people will correct each other because it's not important well, one of the indicators of a healthy crew is that they keep doing that like, like, reinforcing and helping each other out and, as the boss, like, if you notice, okay, I'm doing some, it's starting to get to me, I'm starting to twitch again, but the crew isn't intervening on my behalf anymore, so maybe I have taken this too far.
Speaker 1Taken the crew with you.
Speaker 3Yeah, well, and they're like well, no, we're. So I mean, there's a whole set of critical factors, of just getting through the day socially, of kind of figuring out, okay, this is where we're at and this is where we need to be. And you know, this is how I moderate and mediate myself in the thing.
Speaker 1I had a driver when I was a battalion chief and a shift commander.
Speaker 3Sid Norwood.
Speaker 1Vietnam era veteran go out and smoke near their vehicle when I go talk to people, and he died a few years back, but anyway, he was my moderator too. As a chief He'd go hey, terry, come here, you weren't very nice to those guys. Hey, these guys. So it's always nice as you move up in the organization. As a fire chief, who do you count on to tell you when you're being an asshole, like you know? Your spouse probably will, but she's not at work with you, or he's not at work with you. But really, organizationally, you need to find somebody that you can uh and don't rely on a police chief, because they will yeah, yeah, yeah, not another.
Speaker 3That's like relying on the budget director for yeah.
Speaker 1But somebody within your organization would be nice that you had somebody that can tell you, and don't be offended if you have. I had Miss Pat Ogilvie in Texas and she would walk in. She was. She was a woman who had worked for with four or five fire chiefs in Houston Fire Department and she would come in and tell me what she thought of the way I was treating people and she was pretty much in line and I would thank her. At the end of the day I'd say thank you, miss. In fact I talked to her on the phone a couple days ago. I haven't seen her in 10 years and we still stay in contact and every time I do I say thank you for helping me through.
Speaker 3She's from Houston, right? Yes, she's still in Houston. Well, terry, you can tell the bosses in Houston need to talk to her some more. They're not doing as well, she would tell you exactly what.
Speaker 1And she was respectful, and she was Miss Pat.
Speaker 3Maybe Miss Pat should be the fire chief. That's awesome, we all need that.
Speaker 2I've had that the opposite way. It was during COVID. We had to let a firefighter go. I mean, this guy was a probationary firefighter. The first fire he goes to he jumps on the back of his captain and he's like he's going to ride his captain into the fire. That just one of many things that this guy. It was just the wrong profession for him.
Safety and Service Alignment
Speaker 2And sometimes I always say we miscast people, right, people under roles they shouldn't be in. So it's during COVID. We've got the face masks on and I'm sitting there with the operations chief, kevin Fox, and shout out to Kevin because he kept me on track for this one, because I had the opposite problem, right, I've got a bleeding heart. I feel bad for people. So we sit the guy down and say, hey, it's not working out. You know we've had all these issues. And he has a tear come down and he goes wow, this is the second job in a row I've been fired from and I start feeling for the guy. So I make eye contact with Kevin and Kevin just shakes his head like you keep going and it's like okay yeah, don't talk, look at the spot.
Speaker 2So we ended up, you know, going with the plan, but Kevin regulated me because I think if that would have been on one-on-one conversation, I might have given the guy a fourth or fifth chance, whatever chance he was on, and it wasn't going to work out.
Speaker 1It clearly wasn't going to work out. And you know along those lines is I've seen fire chiefs that their command staff won't tell them what they're thinking. They won't tell the emperor he has no clothes right. We're seeing what happened with that, and don't tell the fire chief that you disagree with them. No, you've got to tell the fire chief you disagree with them. Isn't that why we're here as a command team? It's a team.
Speaker 3JV, you talked about firefighters who show up on calls and they're somewhat taken aback that they're not idolized as the hero. As I showed up and I've got perfect teeth and in great hygiene and you know, I've got the love in my heart and the whole deal. Well, that becomes fatal when it's the fire chief that is thinking OK, this is all about me. It's almost like entitlement is okay, I'm the chief now and now I'm entitled to do whatever the hell I want as the chief, and this whole organization has to support me to those ends. And you're like no, no, no, no, no. You have completely screwed this up and now you're going to take them down a place you don't need to go.
Speaker 3Is it's about the work this organization does not? You being in charge of it? See both of us, we've all worked for fire departments. None of us work for those fire departments anymore and they still exist. So to think, okay, I'm the fire chief and this isn't going to work without me is horseshit. Alan Brunicini quit being the fire chief in 2006, and the Phoenix Fire Department kept going on. They never stopped existing. So that's kind of what you owe. The organization is an employee. It's like no, I'm going to come here. I'm going to be a valued member of this, I'm going to do my share of the work and then I'm going to be a positive element, moving forward and leave this in a better place than I found it.
Speaker 1No, what was that old saying? Success isn't final, yeah, and failure isn't fatal. And so you see some people where they promote so they can do less, yeah, and really promote to do more, so you can. And you hear, you hear people say that what do you want to promote? I want to do more for the organization. I'm going to have a bigger impact and I want to reach a group. That's the guy you want to promote. What do you want to promote? How much do we make? You know that guy you don't want. But I think you're absolutely right. There are people that get into those positions and they think, okay, now I can rest, I don't need to do anything. And fire chiefs go from organization to organization doing that and they don't last very long.
Speaker 3Well, I don't know. I see it a lot because we've been doing this for a while now. We're like 30 years into this. So we deal with fire departments and those fire departments are all made up of firefighters and chiefs and whoever. Well, the example I keep using is we're doing blue card and the North San Diego County and all the departments are showing up to go through it and it was like a year long. We did three or four trainers during that time.
Speaker 3Well, one of the first groups came in right before class started. I met a chief from another department and he says hey, you know, I just came by, blah blah blah, say hi. And one thing I said well, how many you got in class? He says none, we got nobody in class because our fire chief isn't a big fan of what's going on here. Okay, you know, we heard a lot of that. We still do. So, like a year later, same group of people, third class guy hey, how you doing? How's your chief? Blah blah blah. He says I got four guys in class. I thought, well, your chief? He says, yeah, the chief's gone, I'm the chief now. So, and that's what happens. And you see it. Well, that works the opposite way, like blue card Okay, we do blue card. And then you come back and now we got a new chief. He hates blue card.
Speaker 3You think, well, okay, that person is the chief for a while. They go away. Three, four years later, hey, we're back. So you're like so you see, okay, these people are transitional. They're, like you said, head coaches in the NFL. So once they go is then it opens the door to do like, okay, we can make some changes. Now we can improve the organization, do whatever we're going to do, and off we go.
Speaker 3So it's pretty bad when your tenure as a member a valued member of that organization, is they throw you a big party because they know as soon as you clear the door, they get better. It's like they're gone and now we don't have to dance to their ego anymore and we can do what we need to do as an organization. So I mean, that's just well, those people go off and they're the least self-aware. They're like, well, I left another mark. And you're like, yeah, just like, you took a shit in the middle of the apparatus bay and walked out the building, buddy, that's the mark you left on the organization. So we've all worked for fire chiefs. We're like, yeah, the good chief, and then the one behind that was more based on their own personal screwed up psyche. And you think, well, this isn't sustainable because none of us feel that way about you. We think you're a moron, so we're not going to covet and do the rest, we're just going to go off and do the work.
Speaker 1And the way we survived, that was by focusing on the work, yeah, and continuing to be nice and continue to treat people. The work is the truth.
Speaker 3That's the only way you're going to be set free. So you figure out okay, this is what we do. And then people try to minimize that. Oh, we don't do what we used to. We used to really make a difference and now we go on these stupid calls. No, when something bad happens in the community, we go all the time. We are the community. We never leave the community. If there's a natural disaster coming to town, the on-duty shift's going to ride it out. They may hunker down or take high ground and try to ride it out, but they're not leaving the zip code.
Speaker 2It's there More than once I've been in the basement of a firehouse when a tornado is going through town and you know so much so that then you get members of the community to stop at the fire station because they're seeking shelter, yeah, and you're telling them, hey, we might have to leave, but you can stay here as long as you want. Yeah, this really is a good segue to our question for the day.
Speaker 1We do have a question. We have a purpose, yeah.
Speaker 2And I think it brings us up to it beautifully. So we have somebody who wrote in and asked us hello Silverbacks, I enjoy your podcast. Thanks for sharing your experience and wisdom. I am a new fire chief who is taking over for a legacy fire chief who is retiring after over 20 years at the helm. Our chief has left our organization with great resources, a healthy culture and a roadmap for the future that includes additional stations and staffing. You often talk about the lack of leadership, but what advice do you have for me, not only to continue the great stuff our retiring fire chief was doing, but also establish myself as the new leader of the department? Sincerely, mr Green Chief. Green Chief. What advice do we have for the Green Chief?
Speaker 1So, by the way, congratulations right on your new position, and what an opportunity to follow somebody who did some great things and not have to come in and fix everything, because that's no fun either. But I would think of that person in a little bit. I'll start here. I know we'll all go around the table, but the first thing I thought of is IC number two. Coming to an incident, you got a hazard zone, you had the IC number one. Everything's going really well. Ic number two comes in. They need to check and verify from their position. Now they need to reach out, get more information on what they thought was going well.
Speaker 1Talk to a lot of people. For instance, I would gather information from the labor group, from firefighters and from staff members and then also your bosses. But you gather more information because there might have been some things that you didn't know that were occurring, that weren't occurring exactly as great as maybe you thought they were, and you can improve on those areas. Or you can say, yeah, that's a great area, I'm going to keep moving in that direction, and then you have conversation with those people about that and then you're going to kind of look and see. You know, just go through that kind of a decision making model with them. But you know we, we change command I see number two to improve it, but you know we changed command IC number two to improve it. And when you come into that position you have an opportunity as good as it is, as well as everything's going to make some improvements in that with your own style. Don't change your style, but certainly don't throw things out and just make change just because it's the right thing to do, because it feels good. And it sounds like he doesn't want to do that. It sounds like they want to keep the program moving forward. But also go back to each one of those programs and ensure that they're moving in the right direction, because what happens is and if they still have momentum because now you got a chance to take a program that's been in place for a while, whatever that is, and add some new energy to it.
Customer Service Encounters
Speaker 1If it's something that's like customer service is happening really well for that organization you're a new guy you could add some positive energy into that and move it forward and get some more input moving. You could do that within that whole system there. So I would go back and I would take the time to check everything, make sure that what I thought was occurring was occurring, and then outline small improvements. But you don't have to just throw everything up to make your mark. In fact it's better for that guy coming in if he just takes his time and really moves that organization forward off the other guy's mark.
Speaker 1And I would just like wherever I go as a fire chief, wherever I've been, I take brunicini with me. I have brunicini right here and I throw him out all the time because everything that I learned from him all the, the programs, the way to treat people, how to interact with government officials, how to speak to firefighters all that comes from Brunicini and I would throw his name out there and I would use that as and I think any Phoenix firefighter who's gone on to be a fire chief and you've heard me say this before owes it because of Chief Brunicini.
Speaker 3That's where you went to school. Basically, it's no different to say I got my master's in business. He's our mentor.
Speaker 1Now I did things different. I had a different style sometime than him.
Speaker 3But you were taller.
Speaker 1I was taller so I could see further, yeah.
Speaker 2And.
Speaker 1I got wet first when it rained.
Speaker 3Exactly.
Speaker 1But I do. I think that person's got a great approach and we'll talk about it more and more. But the first thing I would do is like an incident and you're coming from the field, you got that number two position coming in is reevaluate everything. Go through that decision-making model organizationally and make sure everything's lining up the way you want it to go, and then improve on all those areas. Is that too?
Speaker 2generalized. No, I think that's perfect. I mean, I think a lot of times new leaders want to pee in every corner and leave their mark and show that it's a much different organization. And sometimes maybe you need to do that because the former leadership in some cases and we pointed out a lot was dysfunctional or not appropriate or was taking the organization down the wrong road. But in this case, where it's very positive, I would say yeah, build off the positive things and don't change for change's sake. Don't go in and redesign the patch or get new colors on the uniform, or I need this badge.
Speaker 2And you know we all have this sense of what we would like, right? And I've seen it happen with Chiefs over and over again, where the new Chief comes in oh I like this style of helmet, or I'm going to change the, or I like black turnout gear. We're going to get black turnout gear for everybody. So, yeah, it's like you're playing with other people's money now. So you're going to make all these big decisions. I don't do that, I don't think this guy would, but don't do that, and that that's a human ego path of least resistance. You know, if I can afford to do it, well, I'm going to do it right and don't save. Save it for later.
Speaker 1So what this person is coming into is, I think, more difficult in many ways than leaving. When a guy gets fired Say a fire chief gets fired, or he gets run out of town, or the authority having jurisdictions want to move in an entirely different direction and you sit down, like I did in one agency, and said, well, what do you want? What are your expectations for the new fire chief? And she said I want this, this and this. And I said yeah, I can do that. I sat in another interview and they go I want this, this and this. You go, no, I can't do that. Our buddy, john Hinton, went on a fire chief interview. He wanted to go to this city in northern California more than anything, and the very last question they asked him was about decreasing the number of people on a fire engine to three. Would you do that? And he's like no, he didn't get the job. He's lucky. He knew that up front.
Speaker 1If they would have asked him a week after he got hired, he would have said no, that would have been a problem. A week after he got hired and he would have said no, that would have been a problem. So but coming in when everything's going nice and smooth, it is a little bit more difficult to make your name, If that's kind of show your presence a little bit. But there's a lot of ways to do that, Right.
Speaker 2Well, and you go to organizations where it's not about you, it's about the department yeah, it's about the department and I use this one as an example.
Speaker 2All the time we were just at fdic and a couple of guys from the department came up and visited us charlottesville, virginia. There was a fire chief there named julian tollefero until 2006 and he was the fire chief for 30 years. Very much a bruno kind of guy, I mean. He I'm sure the two had met and talked before because he did I chief, stuffief stuff and everything and was known.
Speaker 1I mean, that's how they may have been from the same island. Yeah, seriously, yeah, sicily. Yeah, they really could have.
Speaker 2But that organization to this day still reflects his leadership in so many ways the way they treat the retirees. You know we were doing a blue card train the trainer there and we walked in and there was black bunning at the fire station. We're like, oh my gosh, you know what happened. And they're like, oh, a retiree passed away. It's something that we do for the retirees. I mean, when do you hear that? And we saw retirees coming in and the young people getting coffee and stuff for them. They were working out every day. They were. I mean, there was just so many positive things going on in this organization and that's because the next fire chief passed it on the next fire chief. I think they've had two or three fire chiefs since Chief Talifero retired and he still comes around, he pulls in and visits with people and it's very much an open environment like that, rather than this is the end of this era. Now we get to do all the stupid stuff that we wanted to do throughout the years.
Speaker 3Well, you guys are doing this from the chief coming in as his chief. I was never that person, so my experience is like, okay, the chief is gone, and now there's a new chief, so what do we expect out of the new chief? Gone and now there's a new chief, so what do we expect out of the new chief? Well, the other part of this is we all knew each other as well as you could know another person Truly. I knew both fire chiefs really really well, and so you have a certain set of expectations. When the new one comes in, and that's not what I saw. Really, I thought, nah, this is a whole different thing. This isn't. This transition between the old chief and the new chief has not been designed around the work we do.
Speaker 3That's obvious, and really the problem there is the new chief disregarded the work pretty much to the point where there was a group of us who had worked quite a bit over the last few years, doing things that we were somewhat proud of and the rest, and thought, okay, this is a valued thing, and then you come to find out that what that was is no, no, no, you guys just did this so you would have this power that we need to take away from you now and they called it shock and awe is we're going to take the fire department over with shock and awe and you're like well, you assassinated everybody in your staff essentially All the chiefs got together and you reassigned everybody and did everything, and this wasn't about the work, this was about you letting us know that you're in charge now. Well, the problem is, we know you really well and you are not really in charge. So I mean, you can't bullshit the people who you rode in the boat with all the way up until you got out, and now I'm in charge of the kingdom. You're like no pal, I can tell you what this is going to look like six months from now, and it's going to be on fire inside and that's kind of what happened. So, really, sitting in the chief seat, you're like okay, if you will hold people accountable for what they're supposed to do.
Speaker 3That's where I would start with, as being a member of the organization, with the new chief coming in is how is your tenure as our leader going to do with my ability to deliver the service that I'm here to supposedly do, because that was the condition of my employment leading up to this is if you could do it on the calls and then not be dysfunctional and too big a troublemaker inside the firehouse. Then you did well. You got patted on the head and they gave you a cookie and said that was a good call and keep that up, and so all of the positive stuff that you were receiving up to the transition of the chief. So, like this, guy is in a pretty good position. It's harder, because it's tougher when you can only fall down.
Speaker 3Instead of like you said we're like okay, now I got to pick everybody up because the last chief was so bad, Well, which is kind of what happened after one chief left and the new chief and then it's been a subsequent. They haven't progressed. The organization, yeah, so, and I think most of the people in the organization, yeah, yeah so, and I think most of the people in the organization. The culture of the organization is the indicator for that. So when the culture is like, no, I'm waiting to get out of here. One of the things we noticed during our 10 years probably most of us where we work is people doing math to stay like past 30 years, and now you don't hear that. It's like no, I'm out of here as soon as I can get what I need to get.
Speaker 2I'm hitting the road man, I'm out the door. I get so bummed out when I see that too the people with the countdowns on their phone where it's down to the second.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, no, they were doing that before I left and I mean, you had well, some, some of them didn't have offices because they were still wondering. The shock and awe piece I'm still no longer. I can't find my position in the org chart, and that was on purpose. Well, that chief didn't. In fact, he's still not doing well, he's still going backwards in things and I think a lot of that is. He just made some bad decisions with who he was going to listen to and, okay, I'll do this, and then they'll love me and you're like no, you were never really. You were loved the day you took the job and then it just got worse. So I think that's one of the things. So what you guys talk about. That's very important for the chief going in, but for most of the organization it's like okay, I have to be supervised. Now that's what you give us.
Speaker 2Nick, did you have hope, though, going into that? Like you know, before shock and awe day happened, you know, a couple weeks leading up to that, did you think like yeah, this is going to be okay or we're going to continue on the way we're doing things, or were there indicators?
Speaker 3there was a lot of uncertainty, but you know, I really didn't care at that point. I mean, we're 10 years, we had our time in it's. You know what are you going to do to me?
Speaker 1it's like being an old inmate. I was surprised. I I thought it would. I thought it was going to kind of keep going the way it did.
Speaker 3Oh, it was shocking off, yeah, but you know so, um not to interrupt the only thing they could, the only good thing they could do is keep a secret.
Speaker 3That's the only skill set they had because, like day two of their deal, it's like wow that I don't know how you guys kept us under the lid, but well done there. I don't know how you're gonna act this out and make this work, but and they, they couldn't. That was. I mean they hit the ball over the fence like the first three minutes and then it turned into a shit show. I mean it's hard to recover. The city is still looking to put the resources in. They need to get response times under nine minutes in parts of the city and that's what you lost is the ability to do the work and over the last whatever period of time like little things they'll make improvements, but it's.
Speaker 1You know any organization where you think about labor group right. So when I was in Houston I went through a few labor chiefs there and the ones that weren't very successful were the ones that wanted to change everything, the ones that like right now they have Marty linked in there. He's been there quite a while and he wanted to keep things going in a pretty positive direction because things were going okay. He made some changes but he saw, had a plan and took it forward. So I think any leader that goes in don't create change just so you could put your name on something. You said it better than made me laugh.
Speaker 1Pissing in a corner I got a new dog and when I got him he was pissed. It's like what the hell is he doing? He's literally pissing around my house. I had to keep my eye on him. It's like he's trying to mark the territory. A new fire chief going in. Um, when I went to Glendale I made a statement that I didn't realize that I made and it went around the organization and I said I'm happy to be the newest Glendale firefighter, something as simple as that. I really was happy to be a new Glendale firefighter and I met a guy with two years on I said, hey, how does it feel you got seniority?
Speaker 1on me and they thought that was the biggest deal because they were used to fire chiefs coming in and I didn't do it for that reason. I just it's my personality right and they were used to fire chiefs coming and there was a fire chief that I followed in Oceanside who had the largest brass. I mean he looked like a hubcap.
Speaker 3Yeah, for the Cadillac.
Speaker 1Yeah, so you know, are you the fire chief? You should get a bigger uniform, buckle or whatever the hell that is.
Speaker 3He should have worn one of those knight helmets. If he could have, he would have.
Speaker 2I'm sure we've talked about the fire chief that welded the sixth bugle onto his collar brass Seriously. It was a major city that had a lot of suburbs around, and he wanted to show his ass to everybody else, and so he put a sixth bugle on, and I had him cost a maid for $1,500, at the taxpayer's expense, to have a six bugle.
Speaker 3I remember we had our awards banquet one year and the next day the engineer on A-Shift who drove the pumper had got the Firefighter of the Year Award and it was a big ribbon red, white and blue ribbon and this metal that I don't know. It had like genitals on it even and he wore it to work as part of his class, his regular fatigue uniform. He's wearing a blue T-shirt with this metal on it and it was a rough shift. It was a horrible shift change that had tears and I think people said shit on fire. It couldn't have been better.
Speaker 1Being humble as a fire chief is a really that's a good personality trait to have.
Speaker 2Need to be.
Speaker 1And what humble means is listen to people. You don't have the answer to everything. Listen to what people? That's the other part of that. That guy coming in, he needs to listen to people and really he may find some things out.
Speaker 1Listen to the workers, listen to the labor group, listen to the bosses as much as you don't want to hear from some of the uh finance directors and the public works guys and other people that you're working with.
Advice for a New Fire Chief
Speaker 1Listen and get a sense of how you may see one or two little things like, yeah, that needs to change a little bit or I need to tweak that, but you've got to have a reason why you're changing it and the reason should be to improve it. Like I see number two and it shouldn't be. I'm going to change it, just to change it. And the other thing you said when you said we all know each other, that single level entry where we all come in as firefighters, whether you're not in that organization or not, they're going to learn about how you work as a firefighter, a fire captain, a chief officer, is, uh, just be consistent well, yeah, like, well, yeah, like I guess it's one way to say it but the fire, all the leaders in the organization, many of them, I knew well enough that you knew all the felonies that they had committed in their life, I mean.
Speaker 3So you can't pretend you're somebody else. All of a sudden it's like oh no, no, I'm the fire chief. Now. It's different. So, like being the fire chief you've talked about this before Like one of your staff does something stupid, like they're the assistant chief in charge of personnel and all of a sudden they're getting the firefighter of the year award and you're like no, you can't be part of my staff, you're an assistant chief. We you can't be part of my staff, you're an assistant chief, we don't give ourselves awards. This is for the workforce, this is not for us. We don't. Now, if the workers all get together and say, no, we want to give this chief this award for this reason, it's a whole different thing. But if you're the head of the committee, oh, yes, that award should go to me, because I your pad your resume. Yeah, well, that was the last official act he did as a chief. Yeah, so he went back and got to be something else. I mean, that's where he doesn't belong in that position, because it ain't about the organization anymore.
Speaker 1Not when I was there. No.
Speaker 3Yeah Well, yeah, exactly. We're going to stop now with that, probably. Well, one more piece of advice.
Speaker 2I would give, because somebody gave it to me is you're going to get all these ideas your first year or so, Because now you're looking at things through a totally different perspective than what you had before.
Speaker 3You're paying the insurance on it, buddy yeah.
Speaker 2And this advice was take copious notes, write down all your ideas, all your thoughts. Don't act on them, unless it's like a safety issue or something. Then go back and review and see what you actually want to change, especially if things are going good. And that really helped me chart the path for the next 10 years was all those ideas and thoughts and conversations that happened during my first year, because that's that's a fresh pair of glasses that I'm seeing things through Well.
Speaker 3Vince, and the other thing that you did is you didn't have to do so much on the inside of the fire department. A lot of your progress was made on the outside with the AHJ I'm describing. This is where we're at now, and if you want to go forward, this is what this looks like, and if you don't want to go forward, don't do anything, because it's just going to go back. So I mean, you don't? Alan Brunicini said you never stay static. You're either getting better or you're getting worse.
Speaker 1It's like the fire ground, exactly there's no tie. It's hard to tie it to that.
Speaker 3Offensive operations do not take more than 10 minutes. 99% of offensive operations are over within 10 minutes, the ones that go beyond that. You have to have a robust system if you're going to be in the hazard. But I mean, that's just so we all. I got a lot better when I figured that out and say no, there's not a 60 minute interior firefight. That's bullshit made up, noise by people that don't do this regularly, so they're playing dress up no.
Speaker 1You know you made me think of something. So also a new fire chief or a new leader going into whatever, think about be a little more calculated, because you're coming from a position of where, when you make decisions on the fire ground, you you don't have a lot of discretionary time, but as a fire chief moving and you got discretionary time because I tell you it's kind of like if you were ever a medic. The first thing they teach you is when you give this person this medication, whatever it is, it has these positive effects and these side effects, and the fire and fire chief's decisions are often like that is you think, oh, this is going to work out, perfect, I'll just do this here without thinking, oh, how's this impact us over here? So that's when you never I would never make change to a workstation without including those workers input. Why would you not?
Speaker 1If you're going to impact the firefighters work which is what we should be doing is focusing on the work and you think you're going to change something to improve their work, get their input first, because they may tell you oh, chief, here's what that's going to cause over here and I found that to be true in training is that if you don't focus on the work and training and you can chase your arse around in circles in training trying to get the right training person, the right training program. That's why I really like Blue Card is because that instant command training focuses on the work. It's consistent. If you could get that same type of style throughout your entire training system and then tie that to operations where it impacts the work.
Speaker 2And be focused on it. That's the focus of the organization.
Speaker 3That is a huge thing. That should be in fire chief school. It's like aligning the organization.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 3It's because that is a reoccurring problem in many fire departments is the training division has a vision this is what incident operation should look like. So they go down the road and train the department in that and then they get about halfway through and some ranking member of the operations division sits in the training and says, no, we're not going to do this ever. And you're like how can you? You can't. The training doesn't run the fire department, but it runs the fire department. Ops relies on training to train the people that work in operations. So the easiest thing that I think is training fits under ops. I mean that's kind of the way Blue Card got set up. No, the guy responsible for training. He got to fit under operations because he's not supporting. And now it turns into this contest and fight and you're like uh-uh.
Speaker 2I've got several examples of conflict where two equal ranks one was a training officer or the training chief and the operations chief were at battle all the time because they're competing with each other. You've got to have it aligned.
Speaker 1I have to tell you every organization the three that I was able to be fire chief in. First thing I did I had to hurt the training chief's feelings or I promoted that training chief to the executive ops. But you have to align those two and once you do that and you get past that growth process and they start working together under the same vision, the work, so many problems go away.
Speaker 3Yeah, truly.
Speaker 1That was a sidebar, but that was good.
Speaker 3Well, it's one of the things a fire chief has to deal with, and a lot of times JV, those two positions are competitive to be the next fire chief. No, I mean, so you add that to it. It's like no, I'm leaving in six months and they both put in for the job. They're not going to work together. I mean, it's okay, now I'm competing with you and so, and then there's going to be a bill to pay with whoever comes to Chief. And I mean we saw that when we lost one Chief and the new one came, he says, uh-uh, these three guys put in. And you're like, no, they did that so you could get the job. Uh-uh, they have to pay the price now. And you're like, man, you just blew your brains out. It's going to take three or four years to catch up, but you just committed suicide, pal. And that's what happened. I mean I stayed long enough to watch it and thought, no, it's not going to be pleasant at the back end of your life. It's karma.
Speaker 1Good luck to that guy. He's fortunate but he has to be careful moving forward. He's got a great opportunity to improve it a little bit, but he doesn't have to change it completely and he doesn't have to do everything right now. He's got a little discretionary time. He'll see some things he needs to improve. He makes his mark by putting a fire chief uniform on. He doesn't have to march around him Show up.
Speaker 2Yeah, just show up, man.
Speaker 1Play your position within the organization and try not to learn your people.
Speaker 3Just do your job, Like you say you guys say it all the time Process, use the process. Whatever process you've developed, that's the way you make dinner every night. Just keep doing that.
Speaker 1Use your personal power, not your professional positional power, and it'll be wonderful. In fact, it'd be nice if, if you forgot, you're the fire chief sometimes, yeah, and you're just trying to help people you're in charge of making sure the organization can do their mission period.
Speaker 1That's what the fire chief, the only, time I really wanted people to know I was a fire chief is when I was talking to my boss or the police chief or the HR director or the finance guy, I would wear my uniform. So they know now I'm the fire chief. I come across goofy but I am the fire chief of this organization, but as far as the people I worked with and the people that I, it's like they knew you know who I am and they know.
Speaker 3Those people knew what you represented in it. They know where he's going to show up and he's going to say safety and service. That's all the son of a bitch ever says Customer service and firefighter safety. That's what I do. And see, they can't tear it apart. They took our rules, our one page of rules, and they gave it to city legal and they said we don't like those. Why? Because you can defend them and lawyers don't like those. Why? Because you can defend them and lawyers don't like stuff that you can defend. There's not enough of them, but they're too powerful. Well, okay, good, we're going to keep them. Then, if the lawyers don't like them and they help me be better, all right.
Speaker 2Timeless tactical truth. Hey, now, all right, let's do a timeless tactical truth from Allen Bruce. Apparently, there's a fire apparatus that plays this when they go down the street in New York City. Oh tremendous, probably nothing to do with us, just like the yodeling. No way yeah yeah, we just found out about that. Okay, today's timeless tactical truth you will resent and resist any supervision you receive you don't need. You will resent and resist any supervision you receive you don't need. What do you guys say? That's like being married, right First thing.
Speaker 1I read that it's like, oh my God, well, that's any relationship, right, and I'm trying to read it from over there it's any relationship where somebody may be in a position to be your supervisor, but they're not all-knowing. Right, and you need help sometimes from your supervisor, but if I don't need the help and you standing over me telling me what to do, I will resent that. And we do it all the time. I mean, that is something that that isn't. That is true throughout your entire life, right? Not just I, the guy behind you in the car that thinks you're going too slow. I him, because he's thinking he's trying to supervise me. Hey, dude, you can't even drive your own car now you want to drive mine. Get the hell out of my way. I mean, you think about that, but that's throughout your entire life.
Speaker 1You resent any kind of supervision you don't need and people feel especially nowadays it seems like people want to supervise. I'm at the age where people feel like they need to supervise me. Look at that old man. Hey, use the left door. I know what the freaking door to use, dude, I'm walking right, whatever it is, but you throw your entire life. I don't know. I went on a tangent there.
Speaker 3It's micromanagers. Nobody likes working for a micromanager. You're like leave me alone.
Speaker 1You know Well what did Bruno say he said a lot no when he said tell them what they need to do.
Speaker 3Show them how to do it, and get out of their way.
Speaker 1Give them the tools to do it. And get out of the way, yeah. And then when?
Speaker 3they're done, review how it went and make any necessary changes.
Speaker 2Or say good job, yeah, do it that way next time. Yeah, yeah, that's even better.
Speaker 3In fact, a lot of times you'd say both that went really well, Great job.
Speaker 1Next time let's tweak this part of be looked at a little bit different at it. We talked about the training academy. I'm a new firefighter and I'm trying to learn my role. I need you to tell me how to do this. I remember a fire captain, chuck Hudson. I love that guy, station 33, just the most professional guy. I remember going to the firefighters 19 years old at the fire station and we had, um, we had the bathroom where the shitters. You'd sit there and look directly at the pisser in front of you there was no doors on it and he came in.
Speaker 3It was roman style pooping.
Speaker 1He came in and take a leak one day and I'm sitting there as a 19-year-old guy and I'm thinking, oh, this is embarrassing. And he decided to tell me the best way to hold my toilet paper, in case we get a call.
Timeless Tactical Truth Discussion
Speaker 2Oh, my word.
Speaker 1He said Terry, make sure you get some. You pull out a couple bit there, you put it on your lap because if we get a call we're gonna go and I'm like thank you, chuck. And I thought that was really not necessary until the day I needed it.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's like I'm glad I had that role there you know his brother, uh, tom hudson, was the captain taught me how to play pitch. Oh wow, yeah I was a booter at station 10 good good guys oh but there's something he was an excellent teacher.
Speaker 2He literally told you how to wipe your butt.
Speaker 1We're going to get a call here. We're very busy. He said you need to have your toilet paper out sitting on your lap ready to go, because we're not waiting for you. Thank you, captain.
Speaker 2That wasn't a tailboard talk. That was in the bathroom.
Speaker 3I was coaching you in the bathroom, as you were currently in the middle of pooping, as he's shaking it off Because he looked down and he noticed I didn't have that there and he thought that he was going to help me.
Speaker 1I don't know how I got on this. You may want to cut that whole thing out. When I was younger, I never liked the. You know, back in my day, you may want to cut that whole thing out. When I was younger, I never liked the you know, back in my day.
Speaker 2But if these guys knew how these communal bathrooms worked, I mean it was horrible, because I think we all had them. You know, at one point, you know, the same thing is like why do we have five shower heads in here? Are we all actually going to? Is this Porky's? Are we going to all shower at the same time?
Speaker 1You hate when people say the old stuff, but I remember being in the military at the age of 17 and going into the bathroom for the first time and seeing 30 toilets lined up with no walls between them, and you would sit there and your knee would hit the knee next to you. It's like, oh my gosh, I'm in the army now, so anyway that was a long story.
Speaker 3Well, thanks, guys.
Speaker 2We're trying to have fun. This has been a great conversation today, thank you very much. You think so, and I want to thank everybody for joining us today on the Pea Shifter Podcast.
Speaker 3Well, it's been a conversation. We'll give you that I enjoyed it. Well, that's all that matters is we had a good time. Goddammit, We'll talk to you next time.