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Ask The Chiefs: Some Pretty Good Career Advice · B Shifter

• 0:39
  Speaker 1: You know they used to be the newsreaders so they would read the newspaper to you.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, so you could kind of follow along.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, here's the nation, here's Valley and State sports weather.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: And they were reading the Arizona Republic and Gazette, and now there's no more newspapers so they're just like reading Internet headlines.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: So you think what?
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then when my wife goes to her meetings in the evening, I'll watch the Antique Road Show.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: That's pretty nice, but yesterday I watched a John Wayne movie while my wife was out of the house.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: What movie did you watch?
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: It was the Sons of Katie Elder.
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Oh my God, on the Rotten Tomatoes score.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: I guess that's a big deal.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Sons of Katie Elder has 100% rotten tomatoes Awesome Western.
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: So that means it's 100% good.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Yes, 100% good.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, dean Martin, john Wayne, yeah, it's really good.
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: I like John Wayne.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: I do too.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you like Westerns.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: I'll sit around in my hat sometime and watch.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: I got a couple of cowboy hats, If he's you know, I'll put a hat on and watch him.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: I'll come out.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: What the hell are you doing?
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: Are you like Elvis?
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: Do you have a .22 with you too and you play along and shoot the TV occasionally I don't have a real weapon.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: My wife took that, but made them out of cardboard and we wrapped them with aluminum foil.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: They look pretty good.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what did you think of the movie?
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: You know I'm not joking.
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: What do you think of the movie Hellfighter?
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: That was good.
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, remember that one, john Wayne.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: He was Red Adair, red Adair, yeah.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Remember that one.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he got pinched by the dozer.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: Coll.
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: Remember that one?
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he got pinched by the dozer.
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, collapsed his lung.
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this is no place for a lady.
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: And I thought it was so cool because if you worked for Red Adair you got a red Cadillac.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Really.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: That was his take-home vehicles for his people.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: I did not know that they were red Cadillacs, yeah.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: Oh wow, they kind of portray that a little bit, but that was real life.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: God bless him.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: He was an.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: American hero.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: They said Red Adair flew over the oil fields of Kuwait Just sobbed Really.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: They said no, I don't know what you're going to do.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Good luck, See you later.
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: They used those methods, though, because they were blasting them.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: The best one there was a show they did on PBS about that and the Russians put like a jet engine on a tank and they they drove it in and blew out the fires with it.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: It was tremendous the shit people were doing.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: But it was a deal where they got all these firefighters and said hey man, we got all these oil wells burning.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Whoever can figure out how to put them out, we'll pay you X amount.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: And I remember Carl Sagan at the time said the earth is going to end because of all these burning oil wells and they're going to burn.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: For he thought years and within six months to a year they were all extinguished, every one of them.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: And you thought, well, and they did it.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: It was money, you come and put this out, we'll pay you X money.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: And you thought, hey man, there's the carrot and that's it.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It was done.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: How'd they end up doing it?
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Old ways, new ways, blowing them out, tanks, I mean.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: There was groups all over and they just kept going around and around.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: They figured out pretty quickly this is what works.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: They were laying hoes from the Gulf, miles and miles of supply line going out, so they had water sources and they were just barraging them.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: So they're really pretty easy to put out once you get the tactics in place to do it and all the infrastructure and just go from well to well.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: And it became, then it becomes a monetary deal where they're hooked up with the oil companies and it's so.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: It's an amount of money that they're, the oil companies are going to get rich and the companies putting the fires out got rich.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: So it was and it was done quick.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: So Carl Sagan just he never worked in the fire service, I guess it would take millions and millions of gallons.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: Wasn't he the millions and millions guy?
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: Exactly, he made the record that they put on the Voyager out in Spain.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: Okay, yeah okay, the millions and millions Exactly.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: He made the record that they put on the Voyager out in Spain.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: Okay, the ridiculous thing they had at FDIC this year was a 12-inch water main on a truck and it was one mile of 12-inch hose that was loaded in this giant truck.
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: So if a water system went down you would lay that over the road and New York City bought one.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: Like while we were at FDIC, new York made a deal and bought one of these things.
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: So you know, it's so funny.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: You see this stuff there.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: It's like somebody's going to buy that.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: We were doing business in the Gulf, houston, the channel industries, and they had those setups, 12-inch hose, and it all was like soft and would stick together.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: The couplings weren't hard and it was the pressure that kept the hose from coming apart.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: And it was very low pressures.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: They were moving, because 12 inches I mean probably 10, 20 PSI, they're pushing tens of thousands of gallons of water.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: I'd use it to fill my swimmer In like five minutes.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: But they had it on a flatbed and they could lay hoes.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: They're kind of talking about the golf thing, shit man.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: That was probably 30 years ago and then it was all on semi-flatbeds.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: And then they had big super pumpers on semi-flatbeds with giant guns like three-inch pipes that were just going.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: They were 25 feet long, jesus Christ, it was just Cannons.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Well, and it was all specific to the oil industry there.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: So you know, whatever they spent on that was just loose change in the cushions for them.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: So and they said, no, this is how we get.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a water main and we set it up over here, over there.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: Sweet.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: Don't start the foam operation until you have enough foam.
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: I think of that one all the time.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Gunter yeah.
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: Hey, you guys want to do a question today.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Sure, all right.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: Sure we love questions, so I've got two different kinds of questions.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: Are you going to start the system?
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: You already got us going, we got us going.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: We've been talking on we are on the air, Terry.
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: This is the way to do it.
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: The on the air light's on.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: What do you think?
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: happens around here.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: Oh, I don't look at the lights, I see lights.
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: I hear whistles and see lights all the time and I introduced us already, so everybody knows who Greg is.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: Weren't here for that part either.
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: wow, I dubbed that in okay I was gonna go just lay down again so I've got a couple questions, but this one is uh, this guy works for a medium-sized fire department.
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: They have 80 full-time people and he says that he has a fire chief who is anti-training and will not approve anybody to go outside of the organization to train.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: And he wants to know what he can do outside of the realm of requesting training from the chief and getting it funded to learn what is going on.
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: And he said you know, this really affects their organization because they are stagnant and they are practicing old ways.
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: He says they're about 15 years behind all of their mutual aid partners.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: So what advice do we have for somebody who has a non-progressive chief but he desires to be more progressive and have some career development?
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: They have no union apparently.
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: I don't know You'd think there'd be an opinion.
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: It depends on what state you're in too.
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: You could have a union in North Carolina where this would be very typical, and I'm not saying people are uneducated in North Carolina.
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: It's a right-to-work state and they're not going to even bargain for that kind of stuff Not interested.
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: I was just talking to somebody on your sidebar, somebody recently in one of the classes, that they were getting their collective bargaining rights taken away in their state.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: It was one of those states where they're taking away collective bargaining, but that's aside from the point.
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: So what would you say to somebody who needs to?
• 8:27
  Speaker 4: You know they want to develop as a firefighter, as an officer, but they don't have the backing of the department.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: I think that I would probably go to the neighboring departments that are progressive and see if we can join some of their training.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, the chief is a chief.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: He gets to make that decision that he doesn't want to send anybody to outside training, and I don't agree with it.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: But that's probably where I would start.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: I would start by asking those partners if there was something they could join in on so we can learn more.
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: You know, I just think about here.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: We are on a podcast and it goes right into your home or workstation, right.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: So there's opportunities out there to get classes online or podcasts or whatever.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of free information out there.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: He could gather a lot of information on his own.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Don't go too far, right, yeah, but he could gather a lot of information on his own, just kind of watching what's going on and the current trends, and that.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: I know it's a pain in the butt if you're doing that by yourself and nobody else is doing that with you.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: That sounds kind of dangerous in the long run if you're the only one that's learning the new techniques or the new methodology.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: So you just wonder why the fire chief would think like that.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: You're right, the fire chief could pretty much do what they want.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: But we also had a podcast the other day about and this isn't the answer either, but this is an answer is that you know, if you don't like your department, go to another one.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: If it gets to the point where it's unsafe.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: We've got young firefighters now that are loyal to the career but not loyal to the department.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: So the chief doesn't like training, he's anti-training.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Do they do EMS, this department?
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Let's assume they do.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Let's assume they do.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Well, they have to train.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: They don't have a choice.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Because in every single state you have got to do continuing education to maintain your medical certs.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: And most fire departments, if you lose your medical cert you can't ride the truck anymore.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: So this, it's obvious.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: This guy's fire chief's an idiot.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: So you can't run the fire department, say we're not going to train.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: So that's the first problem.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: The second is when the fire chief says that and Greg said it, he's the fire chief and he gets to say that.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: So that's what's going to happen.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Typically those people don't do well and stick around very long because they're negative and they're haters, basically for whatever reason.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: That's why he doesn't want training.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Well, the medical community doesn't care and they're the ones that do that training and approve it.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: So when I was doing this we would go to they put us through PC every year, phoenix College, yeah, the community college every three years, and that's where we did our at least EMTCE.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: And you're not an EMT anymore, it's mostly paramedics and that's even more advanced than what we were doing.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: So if they do hazmat same thing.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: You have to maintain your training and certification to be a hazmat response team.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Technical rescue same thing, you have to maintain training to do that work.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Well, structural firefighting is the one service that the fire service does, that.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: There's no anything regulated training.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: In fact, greg and I were talking about this the other day.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Osha is getting into that.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: 1910 is changing.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: They're not coming out when something happens.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: They'll come out ahead of that now and basically what they're doing is adopting all the NFPA standards behind it.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: So now let's say this is going to go to completion.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Osha ends up with this.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: If you're in an OSHA state and they come, the example you used was show us your incident command training records.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Show us your engine company operations training records.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Well, this fire chief won't believe in that.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, you don't, chief.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Here's your citation.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: It's going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars now to be stupid.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Well, the way that gets fixed is that goes to the chief's boss and then the chief is looking for another job somewhere later on because they say this is not the way you run.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Imagine if the airline said we don't believe in training the pilots and keeping them up.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you couldn't do it, you couldn't do it.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: So I don't know where they get these fire chiefs who think that they're going to keep this from happening.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: That I have five bugles.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Well, those are going to hurt when somebody takes those bugles and puts them where they belong with that person.
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: At least somebody takes those bugles and puts them where they belong, with that person at least so well, we were just talking about that fire department that we were before we rolled the mics where the top four guys all just got fired.
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and luckily justice was served, but you do have a lot of that out there that was beyond ignorance, right?
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: yeah, well, it was criminal what they were doing.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're not going to get into that, but I'm going to say that that department probably didn't train very much.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: No, they didn't.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: It was obvious and they were against it.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Well then, that's the same place where they had the May Day and they wrote the guy up for it, basically because we just don't do that around here.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, OK, that sounds good.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: It's interesting because what 60, 70 years ago, bruno left the phoenix fire department for a short period of time and he was authorized to leave with the leave of absence, but he went to go take classes at oklahoma state university basically to get a bachelor's degree in fire protection engineering and because his fire chief was one of those that's like no, we don't want to learn anything.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: We don't know college boy well, no, the chief at the time let him go that was.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: That's why I said yeah, that was dean, uh-huh.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: Oh, okay, I thought holsner no holsner was.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: He wasn't the fire chief then, so holsner always hated him because he went to school.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, hey, college boy he came back and in fact, not a lot of people know this, but Holsner became the fire chief.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Alan Brunicini competed for the same job and the city manager told him no, you're too young, you don't even have 20 years on yet, and the other guy's got 30.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: So what we're going to do is make the old guy the fire chief and you're going to run the fire department and he's going to get through, and then you're going to be the next fire chief.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: So those two had an adversarial relationship from the start.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Well, back in 72, 73 is when this happened.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Well, there were different personnel rules then, and a lot of them had to do with physical violence in the fire service.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: And so if you had a disagreement, a strategic disagreement, and that's kind of what happened.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: And so at one point Chief Holsner told his secretary never let him anywhere near my office again, I'm afraid, when he comes in the building, because they had got to know each other very intimately that way.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: Physically for a moment.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that became the thing, and it's like no, this is the way it's going to be.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Because they had got to know each other very intimately that way, Physically for a moment.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that became the thing and it's like, no, this is the way it's going to be.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: It's a wild, wild west and it was and it kind of see, you see, it's hard to do it from the middle.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Well, he was close enough to the top where it's like you're going to stay in your room and this is what the rest happen with your friend.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: If somebody needs to take the dinosaur fire chief out and put somebody enlightened in that understands how service works, is there a way to challenge the status quo in a situation like that without career suicide?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: what about?
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: I mean you said I think you said there was like 80 people in the department and terry had mentioned, you know, having to do stuff by yourself.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: But I would like to think that there'd was like 80 people in the department and Terry had mentioned having to do stuff by yourself, but I would like to think that there would be 79 other people that would.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: A few of them that would want to maybe go out and look for other training with their partners, so it wouldn't be a one-man show.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Or if he has to be a one-man show, then again what Terry said I'd probably be looking for a different job.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: The poison and the lowest common denominator seems to be very contagious in these organizations, and I don't know the details there, but I will tell you.
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: Look at the non-progressive places, like the department that referred to themselves as the FDNY of Minnesota and yelled at the guy for calling a mayday.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: That was contagious within that organization.
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: There was all kinds of people that were supporting that and a few hangers on that still do that they're trying to figure out what to do with.
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: So yeah, those organizations get poisoned.
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: Then it takes forever to turn them around.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: The fish stinks from the head down right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: And I don't know what you do, but to answer your question, is there a way to outperform a fire chief when you're pretty low down in their organization, captain or firefighter?
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, whoever it is, I don't know how you do that.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: Everybody has a boss.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: Fire chief has a boss somewhere, but really we talk about it all the time.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: The fire chief's real boss is the organization, the firefighter.
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: That's who they should work for.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: This guy doesn't give a shit about the organization you could tell, because he doesn't want to keep them safe.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: He doesn't want to improve their service.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Well, it's not even keeping them safe, it's just doing your job more efficiently.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's really kind of why you do what you do.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Improve it, Otherwise we'd still be using buckets and they'd still be paying us with candles and shit.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Continuous improvement.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're looking for continuous improvement, exactly.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Our apparatus keeps evolving and getting better.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Kind of our method should too.
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: I think sometimes and I sat in an interview panel where somebody from a major metropolitan fire department had applied to be a training chief the question came up what have you done to prepare yourself for this job?
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: And the answer was my city didn't expect me to do anything, so I haven't.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: And the person was interviewing for whatever reason, we won't go into that.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: But it's incumbent on you to prepare yourself for a lot of the things that if you wanted to be a doctor, you have to send yourself to med school at some point.
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: If you want to be a lawyer, you have to send yourself to law school at some point.
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: If you want to be a fire chief or maybe a battalion chief, or you have to go out and take it on yourself sometimes and say you know what, this guy is not going to be around forever.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: So I'm going to go to that associate's degree program, because when I do that it's not just the program that you're participating in, but it's also you're surrounding yourself with people who are seeking further knowledge.
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: So then that becomes your network and your support group and those are the folks who are going to get you over the hump until they get rid of that fire chief and things start to change in your organization.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: That's what I would say.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: But you've got to own some of it.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: You've got to get off the front porch of your own place, that's great advice.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: Well, and if you work on a company, you can do task-level training.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I mean you're on duty 24 hours or whatever your shift is and whatever time you can make during the day, you can go out and do whatever task-level training you want to.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: I mean you don't need the department backing to do that and props and everything else, but that's fine for task-level stuff.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: But to get into tactical-level training, that's something that has to happen on a battalion level because it takes multiple companies and then it's got to be hooked together strategically because we all operate within a single incident action plan.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: So you would think that in that food chain.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: But you look at, like the training curriculum that's built around NFPA standards like Fire Officer 1, fire Officer 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: None of that applies to actual work that we do, the service we deliver.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Let's say it's all the peripheral stuff to get us.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: There seems to be what they're focused on, which I think you're putting the cart before the horse.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Be what they're focused on, which I think you're putting the cart before the horse as you look at the work you're going to do and say, okay, how do we support the training that goes in to delivering this?
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: And then like the back end, the deployment system with logistics and everything else and support in the workforce that actually delivers the service.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So I think a lot of those especially like this management model that the question comes from is that fire chief is more concerned with running the paramilitary part of it, and just a good order of maintaining the fire department is what they call it.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: It's obedience and behavior and following the rules that individual sets.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: So I'm the king and you have to do my bidding now and you're like well, what is that?
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: Even Just obey me, basically is all they're looking for.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: Bruno said don't confuse obedience with competence.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Well, what was the timeless tactical truth yesterday that we talked about Getting gratitude for?
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: allowing incompetence.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what this guy's expecting?
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: No, you follow the rules.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you can lay hoes or advance attack lines.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: You think, well, that's it, does it for the buildings on fire.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of what they're paying us for.
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: All right, so I've got another question.
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: I think we helped that guy as much as he could.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: Good luck to that guy.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: I think we helped that guy as much as he could.
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: Good luck to that guy, yeah.
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: I think at the end of the day, you're going to have to keep pushing wherever you can push, impact your circle of influence, like Nick says, and eventually, if you can't, you've got to get a plan B and maybe go someplace else, or at least look at the longevity.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: Bruno used to say the last thing on that he goes if you don't like the way things are right now, wait a minute.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so wait a minute because that boss will probably hopefully be gone.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: But in the meantime, don't just sit on the couch, like you said.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: Go out and try to get your own information on the podcast or neighboring departments, or read a book, read NIOSH reports, Whatever you can do to help you get better at what you're doing.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Well, vance, we're in the training business.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: We have been for a while now and it's kind of common to see this.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: It's like departments will come in, they'll do it for a while, they'll improve.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Things are going well and it's like okay, we've been doing this for a long time and we've got this where we want it.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: We're going to switch and go do this now and we're going to focus on that.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Well, the problem is is when you stop doing this, it starts dropping off.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: And when you look at kind of the requirements of our training I'll go back to it EMS it's like no, you don't get to ever stop doing this.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: And I my whole career it was five to one or 15 to two inch and a half to two inches.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I mean I knew how to do CPR all day long and every three years I went back in and showed them I knew how to do CPR.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Well, you have to do that to deliver those services and I'll go back to it the more you train and keep those skills up.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: When you get on an airplane, I want a pilot who passed his simulation.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I do not want a pilot who did not.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: My old man used to say give me a brand new airplane and an old pilot.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: I'm like nah today, old man, we want an older airplane and an old pilot.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: No new, nothing with Max on it.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I know yeah.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Anything with door bolts, I'm out man.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: So there's a group that lost way.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and it quit being about building airplanes.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: No, it's going to be about getting the shareholders their money back.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: They just locked out their fire department.
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: Did you see that Boeing?
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: No, boeing has a private fire department.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: A fire brigade.
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and they're trying to bargain with them right now and they just lock the group out because they're private and they can't.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: I don't think they have the same wildcat laws as we would in municipal service.
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: They call it wildcat strike.
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: If we went on a strike but Boeing locked them out.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so Boeing put them on strike, they didn't lock them out.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: They were doing informational pickets and they locked them out for the informational picket.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Boeing whistleblowers they're like.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Boeing has turned into like.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin.
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: I wonder if we should just edit all this out.
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: I don't want to end up getting a visit from the men in black you notice, I haven't said it.
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: Terry and Greg have been the smart ones on this one.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: Oh, vance, they're going to get one of us.
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: So this guy, this DL, wrote in and DL said he listened to a podcast where Nick said his favorite position in the fire department was battalion chief.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: This person's currently a company officer and they want to become a battalion chief because you said it was one of your favorite positions in the fire department.
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: What's your pretty good career advice?
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: He's asking for pretty good career advice to make it to a battalion chief within his organization.
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: Well, or her I don't know if it's her within his organization or her.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's her.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I guess, you should start with taking the BC's test, and so that's going to kind of take you from a task level supervisor to a tactical level manager, basically, and an IC, a strategic level IC.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: So that's what I would focus on is doing that as well as you could, because that is in my mind, that's why I love being at BC, because that was the front of that job.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: That's what you did.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: It was your position responsibility to make sure that everybody that went to the incident left, so that's kind of what we were charged with, and then to put the fire out and deliver service and all the rest.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: So that was very enjoyable.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So I think for me I had been a company officer.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: I was like 17 years in my career, so I'd been a firefighter for about seven years and a company officer for about 10.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: So I had enough.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: I felt like enough experience where I could move in and do that role.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: For me, one of the reasons I took because I had never planned on doing it, I was going to be a company officer forever, because that's where true men were.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: You know, you did what you did and yada, yada, yada.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Well, I had worked for enough BCs over a period of those 10 years that I thought I'm done and in fact if I keep doing this I'm going to retire early, just because it's not working anymore.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: So at that point I thought I got to take the BC's test.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: That's the only way to protect myself against the BC's.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: So I took the BC's test and I thought, you know, and I thought it was going to be OK.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Now I'm a chief and this is it's going to change everything.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: It just made it better, as once you figured out no, I still work in the field, I'm not it.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: It was kind of what you made it, because some guys and girls, when they got promoted is, I mean, it was all about the white shirt and the shiny badge.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: And I'm the chief now and my name is, uh, chief brunicini and I I said, well, no, no, no, my name's Nick and you're Jimmy, and you put all that and no, we're not doing that here.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: And so I wore T-shirts and brush pants and I was just.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: I was a battalion chief in charge of a battalion, captains were captains in charge of fire stations and firefighters were in charge of deliverance service, and that's kind of the way I saw it.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: We're all part of the same food chain and now it's good to have rank because that eliminates the people that can screw with you.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: So when you become a battalion chief you're exposed to deputy chiefs.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Well, I found that deputy chiefs were a lot more comfortable screwing around with company officers where there was a battalion chief between them.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: When they were directly exposed to the battalion chiefs it was too raw, they wouldn't, and then it became a whole different thing and you were kind of on the same team.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Then at least they felt that way, so it was good.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So really the BC's position became like the connection for the administration down into the workforce and was really so.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: You're almost like a pio for the administration, as far as that goes a little bit, and you had all lived and worked together so you're kind of all the same family.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: So a lot of that is like preparation to take the bc's test, because now you've your kind of reputation precedes you.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: So people see, like when I became a BC, if I would have started enforcing uniform policies and shit, people would have said, oh, this is different, he has changed.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: So I didn't do that.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: I mean I didn't need to.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: I just so, and that's my pretty good advice.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: I guess you guys will decide if it's pretty good or not.
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: But be a good captain, right.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: So be the best captain you can be and that starts with being the best firefighter and then start developing your personality that looks like it fits in with the rest of the organization being nice to people and being trustworthy and all that kind of stuff that we talk about, which I absolutely believe in.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: When you do that at the lower ranks and then you do that as a first-line supervisor, then when you decide you want to move into the managerial, the tactical rank, you already kind of have your personality set.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: And some of these guys they decide I've seen it over the years it's like they're this way and now it's like, oh, I want to be, to be a supervisor, so now I got to act this way.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: We shouldn't have to act anyway.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: You should carry that because you were always yourself regardless and I think that's the thing is be the, be the, be a good fire captain, learn that job and then, uh, carry that personality with you how you get along with people and talk to people and treat people and look at the customer, look at the work we do all that.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: Always keep that work as your primary focus and the workers that do it, and then move into that next rank by maybe watching another chief officer that you really like that seems to do it, who gets it, and you don't got to ask them a lot of questions.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: It's not like you're going in and you're't got to ask them a lot of questions.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: It's not like you're going in and you're interviewing them.
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: I tried that when I first went to.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: It's like I'm going to interview these guys.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: It's like, no, I shouldn't have done that.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Just watch them you'll see.
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: Oh okay, well, that's kind of how that works and then prepare for the promotional process.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: But this whole deal with ah, damn, garrison, when youison, when you made battalion chief, you did a 180.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Because you don't want to hear that?
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: No, you don't want to hear that.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: You did a 180.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: He changed man.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't want to hear that.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: So you just be the same person you are and you just kind of learn the job.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: If you've already got your personality skills down and your competency, then you've just got to get more capability.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: In the next position.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: You can focus on the the black and white stuff without having to change yourself.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: That's my pretty good advice to just kind of move up that way and uh, I think you know honestly with nick.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: So people would tell you Nick never wore a uniform as a fire captain or a firefighter, let me finish, okay.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: Well, he never wore it as a battalion chief either.
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: But he never tried to go out and be the uniform Nazi either.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: And when he needed to be in the right uniform, everybody would tell you he was in the right uniform.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: When he was out in the public talking to the customer, he was in the right uniform.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: When he was out in the public talking to the customer, he was in the right uniform.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: When he was doing the job in the hazard zone, he was in the right uniform.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: What they would see and hear is the one or two times where he was in that one uniform at the fire station, which was very attractive on you, thank you.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: I've never seen a war that way.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: And then you'd hear that rumor get out.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: But no, I think you've got to be consistent in your behavior as you move up through the ranks and don't do the switch 100%.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I totally agree with that.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: You've got to be that approachable person from the beginning.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: You've got to start that early in your career if you want to make it continue up with it.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: If you want to make it continue up with it when you get to the opportunity to take the battalion chief tests and the credentials that you have to have before you get to it if there is any in your organization then definitely do all that stuff.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: But never forget where you came from.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: Don't ever forget, like Nick said where Terry talked about the uniform thing don't change who you are.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Be the same person all the time.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Mentor your people In my career Terry mentioned you know, pick the battalion chiefs that you wanted to be like.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Well, I didn't have very good role models.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: So I had to make a checklist of everything I didn't want to be.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a role model.
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: It's an extra.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: But I mean there's the good and the bad.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: So I think that you've got to watch the good ones and take everything you can from them, but watch the bad ones and make sure you don't ever do what they have done, because they leave a mark forever.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: And I think that's it.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Remember why you took the test, and that was always kind of the thing that stuck in my mind.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: The reason you took this is because you didn't like being managed like this, this, this and this, whatever it was, and so don't be that.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: And you didn't need to be.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, you almost had to go out of your way to be an asshole.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: It was just so much easier to be nice and then when you wrapped it around the work, that was the way that you would context your relationship with everybody it's okay, this is my job, this is your job.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: So you talk about accountability.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: That's accountability.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do my job.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: You're going to do my job.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: This is your job.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: So you talk about accountability.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: That's accountability.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do my job.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: You're going to do your job.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: So I love that.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: As a company officer, when I had BCs like they would come around and say, no, you're going to do your job.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, I am, sir.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: So for 10 years I was a company officer, worked in a busy station A, b and C B shift during my career had one citizen's complaint out of our station.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: The other shifts had one every two to three months, so I was going round and round with the battalion chief who was challenging 100 percent.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: He was a child, a moron of the first order, and so we're going back and forth and the union's getting involved and everything else.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: The deputy chief comes in and made that statement and I hadn't heard it before.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: And he says well, you know, if we're looking at this and this and they'll got to see the whole picture and this is.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: And so he went through it and I thought, okay, why am I sitting here?
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: And there are four more captains, a shift and C shift, and they're getting one of these every two or three months Because they're dressed nice and you're hauling me in front of.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: And so I kind of looked at the deputy chief and just don't say anything else, and we're all going to leave and you're going to go back to your station and I'm going to microwave this one.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: That's a good way to stop that.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: I just shut up Okay, and pretty soon.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: A couple weeks later we had a new BC and you're like okay, wait a minute, yeah, I'm still here, so pretty soon.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: They kind of figure out well, okay, those guys, they'll take care of their business.
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: So soon they kind of figure out well, okay, those guys, they'll take care of their business and yeah, so got to live to fight another day, and that was it.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: And that's what.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: I had watched this my whole career and so I had seen everybody in the fire department and I knew what you could get away with and what you couldn't get away with.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: And I thought, if you do these behaviors boom, boom, boom and you line them up, that these guys, that these guys do is, you're rolling the dice every time.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: And so if I avoid this stuff over here, I can live happily over here.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: See, but that's because we had a leadership umbrella that valued the work and the outcome and they used to say we evaluate performance at the finish line, so that's who.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: So people would say why do your firefighters have such long hair?
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Well, because they like having long hair.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Well, some of the men have hair like girls.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: They hate barbers.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: And I remember the fire chief says we're not running a beauty college, we run a fire department.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And he says those people with the long hair will whoop your ass and treat you and save your life.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Go, screw with them.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: Your grandmother wants those guys treating you Exactly.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're honest and trustworthy human beings who like having long hair.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: That's what we got here, buddy, but that goes to that question.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: No, I don't believe in training.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: You need to cut your hair and you need your uniform to be a little straighter.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Sure, that's how it is.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: So I'm writing an article right now that I'm using Bruno's information from his no-brainer management and it's Bruno's hierarchy of engagement and I was working on that today.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: And what he did is he lined up kind of the activities of a leader and he starts at the and the way this lines out is you got he lined it up with um ready, get set and go, and the ready is uniforms, appearance and um and those kind of things.
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: And then the next part is get ready, is maintenance, training, inspections, that kind of stuff.
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: And then it gets down into the actual doing, the work, the safety, the treatment, the customer, and you line up those to work, the safety, the treatment, the customer, and you line up those.
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: And what he says in his book is that leaders will kind of hang around the area where they feel most comfortable and that's kind of the Peter principle piece of that.
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: And leaders that aren't very effective and don't want to spend a lot of time down here in the strategic decision making hazard zone area will spend a lot of time down here in the strategic decision-making hazard zone area, will spend a lot of time up here in appearance, and these are the guys that will tell you you got the wrong color socks on, but they're not going to have a discussion with you about risk management or hazard zone operations because they don't feel comfortable there.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: They spend a lot of time up here.
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: That's that fire chief.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: That fire chief in the first question doesn't want you to learn because he doesn't freaking know yeah, and he doesn't want to have discussions with people about things that he or she doesn't know about.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: But this hierarchy of engagement that Bruno came up with really and you'll see that coming out, but it lines it out really well Knucklehead leaders spend a lot of time worrying about appearance and uniforms and then kind of, when they gain more competence, then they're really into inspections and using white gloves and crap like that.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: But the best leaders, the most effective ones, will actually lower down and talk about hazards on operations safety.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: They'll be the guys that will do really well after action review because they can talk about the specific work and not about the goofy shit on the front end.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: See, but there's some lunatics that live in the operations world.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: Because they think they should.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: So what they'll do is they'll a lot of them should have stayed a company officer.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: So when you have, like, an ops chief who responds to the incident scene of a structure fire and let's say they get there 15 minutes into it, well, they don't have in many fire departments.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: They are there to more evaluate what's going on.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: They don't have in many fire departments, they are there to more evaluate what's going on.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: They don't have an active role in the strategic tactical task.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: Now if you're the ops chief, you may go in and be the senior advisor.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Let's say so that's your choice.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: I'm the ops chief, I show up.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: I was a shift commander, I reported to the ops chief, right?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: So I'm in the command van being the senior advisor.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: Steve Kreiss shows up, he chief, right, so I'm in the command van being the senior advisor.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: Steve Christ shows up.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: He's our boss and he does the hey, what's going on?
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: X, y and Z.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: So we interface based on the incident we're at.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: There's other examples where the ops chief shows up, puts on a helmet and a ladder belt an axe belt rather and then they walk around the incident scene like there's some kind of senior roof shepherd who's there to I don't know, whatever they're doing, they're filling their own cup up, because that's what they're.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: They don't have a role.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: They're just kind of the traditional statue with the white helmet in the front yard.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's our statue of our strategic statue.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: We can all feel better about ourselves.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's great.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: So sometimes it was easier dealing with the administrative chief, because they they like the district commanders would come in the command van.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: All they would ever want is a par, because that was a checkbox.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: And they, ok, I got a par, I'm fine, I can go back to sleep.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: You're like no, it's not part time, buddy, we still haven't gotten fire control.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: And you're like I want a par, I order you.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: And finally, garrison hit me one day and said said, just shut up and tell him he's got a part.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: And I'm like no, I'm gonna choke him to death, because this is my command post, so we can all have our own.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not always right either, vance you know sometimes I'm an idiot, but and that's good that you have like a?
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: Senior mentor come in that tells you, no, you're gonna do this, and then we're gonna okay.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, sir, anyway that kind of becomes a thing, so they can leave yeah exactly.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: Well, I'll take it all the way to the end.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Out of the Southwest supermarket thing, we figured one of the things we needed to change was organizational.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: We needed tactical, strategic bosses.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: All the time District commanders were administrative bosses.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: So put the shift commanders back in right.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: So that's what they did.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: So we transitioned over about a year and a half two years from a district commander staff deputy running operations to 24 hour shift commanders running operations.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Well, at one point you got to get rid of the district commanders.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: They had to go away.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: At some point they said we're not going to do some hybrid double model.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Shift commanders run the whole thing and works better.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: District commanders you're going to go off and be something else.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: So when they're doing that, christ calls.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: He says ops chief.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: He says hey, you caught the car buddy.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: District commanders are gone.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: No more district commanders.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: It's like he says they're all going back out to the field.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I said is what he says is battalion chiefs?
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: A lot of them.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: He says some are going into staff positions but half of them are going to be BCs.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: I said well, that's so.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: I turned union president.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: I said you can't demote them.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: He says oh, they're not demoting them.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: He says they're still going to be deputies, they're getting deputy pay, but they're going to be BCs.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: I said well, you should have run that by some of us first.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: He said well, why?
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: I said because I don't want to be a shift commander, I want to go back to being a BC.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: That's my, that's where I belong, with shift commander pay.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly yeah, and I'm selling back too.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: So, anyway, he says nope, going back out to the field and he says this is like Wednesday.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: He says you got them Friday, something like that.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: We're going to have them, they're meeting at the CTC and you're going to tell them what they need to do as VCs.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: Train them.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: I said OK, so when do they go out?
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: He says Monday.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I said so, they're going to spend four hours with me and then they're going to be strategic ICs again.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: I said that's okay.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking that's not the way this works, but all right, what do I know?
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: He says yeah, yeah, just get them ready.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: So anyway, friday comes and we're there.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: They come in and they're mad because we got the car and they're old, and we're there and all the.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: They come in and they're mad because they're, you know, we got the car and they're old and we're new and yeah, we're the pretty pigs at the time.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: So the first hour they just like just are throwing rocks at me, me and Whaley are up there.
• 44:49
  Speaker 3: They were all our bosses.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they were they were.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, half of them had counseled me at some point and probably wanted to write me up and just couldn't because they didn't know what to write me up for.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: So, anyway, we go back and forth, and so I listened to them for a while I'm patient and then they started.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: They said something that pissed me off, and so we're arguing now, and so there's a, there's a pause, and one of them says hey, all kidding aside, we're kind of nervous about Monday.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: They said we've never we haven't done this.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: Some of us for 20 years haven't been out in the field and we have no idea what you lunatics have done with operations now that's on deck, and your strategic things and your decision making models.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: We just, we just haven't been in that world, and and we're going to be BC's Monday, and I'm thinking I don't know what to tell you guys.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: There's not a four-hour class that's going to make you a second-alarm BC, it just doesn't.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: And so you're just shaking your head and you're like, well, they know the basic routine, they just haven't been doing it.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: And so Whaley's sitting in the back just getting ready to say something nasty and I thought, well, I've got an aide, and half the time I run the fire, the other half he runs it.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: It just depends who gets to the vehicle first to drive.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: The other guy's the IC.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: So usually what that means is, at night, lynn Whaley's in command, because I'm up all the time and I drive him to the fire.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking you're all going to be BCs and you all have a safety officer aide.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: So I thought, oh, class is over, man, two hours and you're ready to go.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: And they're like what are you talking about?
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: I said you all have an aide, yeah, and they all named their aid.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: He's a great guy, like I mean I already talked to him.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: No, you're the aid, and maybe it was tom stanley.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: He says I'm driving and I mean he likes shazam and it was like he had an epiphany.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: He said, like not a whole paragraph.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: And he got up and left.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: It's like I don't need anything else with that idiot.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: And they're like this is brilliant.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: And so we kind of we broke.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: I mean it was lunchtime, we're done, so christ calls.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: He said how are you, like six o'clock, how your class go two hours.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: They're ready to go, buddy.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: What'd you do?
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: I told him to drive your aid, the highest paid engineers in the system.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: He says that's genius.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: That's not.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: Well, I did yeah.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: It just kind of came to all of us at the same time.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: You can't give the credit to anybody, and the ones that gave a shit learned the job they all did.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Three months later they were and they would tell you you guys are just bamboozling everybody.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: What you do isn't that complicated.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: And you're like, oh, you've done a house fire where you sat and listened to your okay asshole.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a pallet fire burning lighter on tonight next to a nursery.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: We're gonna, yeah, see what you think about that.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, division boss, uh-huh, so it, but it was terry's right, it was so really.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: We ended up hugging and kissing at the end.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: We were good friends nobody, there was no assassinations and it was all because of the work, that's what.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: We were good friends.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: Nobody, there was no assassinations and it was all because of the work, that's what.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: And we were good to go.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: You went in that two hours.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: You went from hating them to feeling bad for them, to being their buddies.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, helping them out.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, man, it was.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: It was like being in the military and I've never been, but you know, the Navy maybe is what I would have been good at.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I could swim like a sunbath when I was younger or float Sometimes I'd sink it just depended, depends how witchy you were that day.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: How much full of shit you are.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: You float, you sink.
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: Hey, I want to give a shout out to the B-Shifter Buck Slip.
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: We have a weekly newsletter we put out.
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: If you want to subscribe to it, just check our show notes there put out.
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: If you want to subscribe to it, just check our show notes.
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: There's a link to subscribe.
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: This week you had 17 tips Terry did from.
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: Bruno, I thought it was a brilliant article.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: I don't give you enough compliments.
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: Oh, that's very nice.
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to compliment right now, but it is a nice guide.
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: Great career advice.
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: So we're talking about career advice today.
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: I think there's some great career advice in there to pass on to others, so nice job on that one Thank you, and you don't have to.
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: I won't take those accolades, because that's Bruno right.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: So it was his list, for it was his list that workers say about their bosses that if they saw that list they would be more effective as a boss.
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: It's kind of the workers giving it, firefighters giving advice to their bosses, and then I add a little verbiage to each of it.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: But that was his list and that man.
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: It works today just as well as it did 10, 15 years ago.
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: That was actually from the no Brainer Management 2003 copy and I didn't have to change anything.
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: I just had a little verbiage.
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: It was awesome.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: So thank you for him, thank you.
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: It is free to get those If you want to be in on all the stuff that's going on with silverback leadership, because just about once a month there's a silverback article at least, and everything else we're doing.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: Look at the show notes, subscribe to the V shifter buck slip's free and it's right in your email box every Tuesday, so take advantage of that Today's Timeless Tactical Truth from Alan Brunicini Don't ever confuse a hazard zone for an amusement park.
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: I love it and vice versa, as we say how does that play?
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: out when people mistake the hazard zone for an amusement park.
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: What is an example of that for folks who don't know?
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: Well, you know an amusement the first thing I think of is in an amusement park they have all the rides, but if you look at it real closely there's little fences around the unsafe areas of the ride and there's specific areas where you should enter and then you should act accordingly when you're on that ride or in that area, and then you should exit where the exit sign is.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: And any time you start wandering around where you shouldn't be, you see those guys who get hit with the, the bucket or some something crazy like that happens to them.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: So for me, that's the first thing I thought of just the logistics of a hazard scene, how we enter it using our you know our model of staging and all that.
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: But really physically, how we enter it too.
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: Now, with all the what we know about the leeward side and the windward side and some of those.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: So just physically, how you enter into the hazard zone, how you exit.
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: That's the first thing that hit me on there and I'm sure these guys will have some more to say about that.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the first thing that came to my mind was, you know, the amusement park being like a clown show and and, uh, when we're at a hazard zone we have to take that very serious.
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: It's not can't, it's not all fun and games we got to.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: We got to do the work and and make sure it gets done right so everybody stays safe.
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: That's the first thing that came to my mind it's exciting, it's exciting work.
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: Uh, there's a sense of uh, adventure to it.
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: Uh, it's almost I equate it to like jumping out of an airplane or scuba diving, except you're inside a burning building, so you're operating within an atmosphere that is more dangerous than scuba diving or skydiving because you can burn to death.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: So, and our service, historically, first water was the deal, as we would race to the incident scene to put first water on the fire, to crawl in underneath the smoke and the thermal layer and all of that.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: So there's, the problem is, is it's not an he says it's not an amusement park, it's a burning building and it will kill you.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: So you have, you get that sense of excitement and exhilaration, but, as Greg said, you have to execute your job and kill the fire.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: You can't.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: It's not a training deal, and I, we've, we've all been in deals where it's like, okay, we knocked it down and you just let it get bigger again and you think it's yeah.
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: So there's, there's a sense of that that yeah, you can't, you gotta you gotta wrap it up.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: I guess I gotta wrap it.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: And the last thing is that.
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: So I went to disneyland with my wife and my daughter and my grandson and the first thing we did on the way in is take a picture of ourselves in front of the mouse and then we took our picture of ourself on the way out this whole taking pictures of working fires.
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: If you can don't do that, because, honestly, that's somebody's house, that's the other difference.
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: Right, this is somebody's property.
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: They lost everything they own.
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: It could be a business and that business may not have another start.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: There's a whole lot to that.
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: We shouldn't make every, every fire.
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: We go to our own little scrapbook for a picture.
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: That's one of my pet peeves and that's going to have to jump on top of that.
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys have a comment on that and you could disagree with me, but that's my oh, I totally agree with you.
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: We don't hire photographers unless they're your PIO.
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: If the PIO is there or the person who's authorized with your department to do your press, whatever that is, they take the pictures.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: If you're the driver operator of ladder one, you are not there to take pictures.
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: That's not your job.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: No, and we don't have to take the pictures anymore.
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, because no matter what you're doing, somebody's got a camera.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: Before you even get back to the station to clean your equipment, it's already on social media, exactly.
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: But don't be the four firefighters smiling in front of the people who lost everything.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Well, and I think that all started from training burns Right.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: It's like okay we're going to burn the house to the ground.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: So we do like five or six fires, yeah, exactly.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: And then everybody stands and the things burn and you take a picture.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a training site and that's nobody's house, that is property that we're using to educate firefighters, and then it's going to the dump and then we have this picture at the end.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: That kind of freezes the moment for us.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: But then when you take that out into the field, like you said, it's other people's stuff.
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: No, we don't go and take pictures like that.
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: Well, an example of what Terry was talking about that happened very recently was the guy who snapchatted live at a fire when they had a fire with entrapment and they never went in to rescue the lady.
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: They never put water on the fire, but he snapchatted and go oh man, it's a burner today.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: He ended up losing his job and there was a lawsuit.
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: They sued the fire.
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: But he's Snapchatting and going oh man, it's a burner today.
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: He ended up losing his job and there was a lawsuit.
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: They sued the fire department too.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: But those are the kind of things that happen.
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: The other thing I've seen happen is people trying to use their new whiz band technique or tool when they're not considering it's somebody's property.
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: Right, just think about it.
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I specifically had somebody break a glass shower with their Halligan bar because they could not, because they needed to.
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: It was just something fun to swing into.
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: It wasn't my department, it was a mutual aid department that was there, but it was a house in my jurisdiction.
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: So you know that house is not there for you to practice your new swinging techniques and figuring out how to break glass.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: You know we do the big box workshop and since we started there's video that goes with it now like helmet cams.
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: So a lot of it is footage of firefighters making interior attacks in well-involved Home Depots.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: Or you know large box stores with sprinkler systems that are compromised for whatever reason, and, man, some of that is just tremendous visual training material.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: It's because you're watching smoke and trainment come.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: I mean smoke's 20, 30 miles an hour coming into the building and you're like, no, you guys should not.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: You're in a weather system right now.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: You know people we used to talk about fire tornadoes back in the day and you're like you're going to be in the middle of one of those inside that big box here in a minute.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: So there's a lot of some of it is good and we should be using to educate ourselves in those kind of situations.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: But that is a whole different thing than doing high fives and doing a big eight by 10 of.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: You know Mrs Smith's house burning down the street.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: That's a whole different thing.
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: In fact, I would think Home Depot wants us to use that to become more effective at the scene of fires in their properties.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: The last thing the Home Depot Corporation wants is firefighters hurting themselves over something?
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: Those kind of tactical situations.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: Probably all of them, do you guys?
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: have anything else before we wrap it up?
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: Thank you Good job.
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: Greg thanks for hanging out today.
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: That's what?
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all good fun.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: Man, I like your hair color.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: At least he's got hair, it works.
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: This is like a cleat clinger, it is a nice thick head of hair.
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: You guys all have hair, except for me.
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: You got a good head, you got a hooshy.
• 58:19
  Speaker 4: Thanks for joining us on this, b-shifter.
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: Don't forget, our conference is coming up September 30th through October 4th in Cincinnati, ohio, the Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference.
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: Go to hazardzonebccom to sign up Until next time.
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to B-Shifter.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Woo-hoo.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to V shifter.