Latest / B Shifter / The Silverbacks on Perspective (Part 1)

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The Silverbacks on Perspective (Part 1) · B Shifter

• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the B Shifter podcast.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Just getting on here real quick to let you know this is a two-part podcast on perspective.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: We split it up into two because, quite frankly, we had a very good, productive, long conversation and we wanted to make sure that it was digestible to everyone who likes to consume the B Shifter podcast.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: So here is part one of us talking about perspective.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the B Shifter podcast.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Today you have John Vance, terry Garrison, nick Brunicini in the studio here at the Alan V Brunicini Command Training Center in Phoenix, arizona.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: How are you, gentlemen, doing today?
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Very good, very good.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I'm doing as good as he is.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as well as he is.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I'm going to use proper language.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: That's good to hear I'm doing well also Very well.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Very well he is.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to use proper language.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: That's good to hear I'm doing well, also Very well, very well, thank you, not to get into politics.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Well, we won't get into politics.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I was watching a hearing the other day, and I couldn't imagine it was a hearing on education, and the English that the Congress people and senators were using was not at all proper.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So you do much better than they do.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Oh you know.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: So one day when my grandson came home and for some reason he was convinced about when he was about eight, that the word stupid was a bad word Like you, don't call people stupid, that's like a bad, that's as bad as saying a cuss word.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: So he came home and he said a kid said a bad word in school today.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: And I said what did he say?
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: He said he said the E word.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: I said the E word.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: What's the E word?
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: He goes ignorant.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: I said, let's talk buddy.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, ignor buddy.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: So yeah.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Ignorant the E word.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I used to convince my sister that there were curse words that didn't exist.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: I'd make them up, oh nice.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I at one time had her convinced that if she said Guy Lombardo, that was equivalent to the F word.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: So, and then I'd get her to say it, Then I'd yell like mom, she said it again.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: How's her counseling?
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: going now.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, All right Today.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Hey, the topic that we want to talk about and I think there's going to be an article coming up in the B Shifter Buckslip and on the B Shifter website about this is perspective, and the Webster's Dictionary defines perspective.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I'm sounding like Dr Phil there, right?
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: That's how he starts out every episode Perspective.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Now you're getting into politics, Vance yeah.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: People using their language wrong.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: It's more Adam Ray as Dr Phil.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: That's really what my imitation is.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Not like prospective.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Like the Hells Angels, you got a prospect.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: No, no Perspective Okay.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: Pers and the Webster's Dictionary definition is a particular attitude toward or a way of regarding something and a point of view.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And the reason I brought this up for us to talk about and I'm interested in your take on this is we've been looking at these NIOSH reports here that came out in the last month or so and there's been seven or eight that have dropped, and I noticed 75% of the firefighters involved in the line of duty deaths were about 25 to 30 years old, and so these are younger people to the job that and you can read between the lines on the reports leadership failed at some point, whether it was a lack of division, boss.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: There was one in particular where chief officers were given assignments and they refused those assignments.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: The chiefs themselves were freelancing, and then there were people in defensive conditions but they were in offensive positions with master streams in the building and then, you know, inevitably a collapse.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: So I'm thinking about you know what messages aren't these guys getting?
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: And the other thing that I wrote about in the article and I just want to get your take on this is there are a lot of people in leadership positions that want to be cool, and the way that they're relating to the younger firefighters is really meeting them on their level, instead of bringing them up with their perspective and passing on a lot of very hard-learned lessons.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: You know same thing.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Nick and I were at the airport, at FDIC, and we were surrounded by a bunch of guys that had defund, nfpa and these shirts on, and all those standards, whether it's an OSHA standard or an FPA standard that has to do with safety was written with the blood of somebody at some point.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's reasons for that Perspective.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about us passing our perspective down Before we do, would you give that statistic again, because you said it kind of quick, but I want to hear what's the percentage of the young folks?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: What would you?
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: What'd you say?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: well, I about half of these reports at least had had, uh, out of the seven or eight had 25 to 35 year old firefighters.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, and in this particular time.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: So that's, that's just a sample of what I saw.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: No, that's important right?
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because perspective is contagious, right?
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, you think about that, how the influence, and I think that's the whole key to leadership.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Right, if you talk about leadership, you talk about the ability to influence people to move in a certain direction.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: By influence I mean, hey, you want people to want to move in that direction.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: That's influence.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: That's not forcing somebody to move, although sometimes leaders have to force somebody into a certain direction but I think we have a responsibility to influence our young firefighters.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Chief officers have a responsibility to influence those people that work for them, and it kind of everybody works for somebody and I think that's the key.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: So for me, when you said perspective and it's in the way you described that it makes a lot of sense that we need to always do a better job with that.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And I see organizations right now that I used to work for, where being the leader means being a cool guy, to go along, to get along and I've been accused of that personally.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Is that?
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you're just a good?
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: No, I, I'm nice to people, like Chief Bernasini was nice to people, to people but, yeah, I feel like I had certain standards regarding firefighter safety and customer service that if you didn't meet those standards, then I would hold you accountable and I would still nice at the end of the day, but you're going to do it this way and there was a clear understanding.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: So you know, we talked about, I think, not long ago, about how we set the culture, and I think this is all once again about culture and how a fire chief and how the leaders have a responsibility to set the culture.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: And then how do you do that?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Because you create the culture for your organization, right, nick?
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, perspective changes throughout your life.
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: So I read something the other day.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: They said the wise of each generation learn the same truths.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: Well, as you learn and absorb more knowledge, it changes your perspective.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: So there were like the leaders in our organization.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: So there were like the leaders in our organization.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: One of them said the older I get in this position, the less regard I have for property, talking about structural firefighting.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: So they kind of and I think their perspective is all their experience combined and kind of the way they view things.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: So your perspective changes as you gain more and more experience.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: It should.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: And we all kind of start young and enthusiastic and thinking that, ok, this is what this looks like and for me to be accepted by the group, this is the way I have to manage myself.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: And then I think over a period of time you learn like, okay, that I understand the group think, but it's not always right and this is the way to correct that and move on.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: And in these podcasts you keep talking a lot about the process and systems.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: Well, that is the way I think.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: The older you get, the more experience you get, the more you rely on those systems, because that's the way you connect the team of people.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: So in firefighting is a team activity, so you have to manage it as such.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: But you know, with those three levels and everything else that we've talked about in blue card, so those three levels and everything else that we've talked about in blue card so, but a lot of this, like when we came up, there was a certain perspective, because our department was always changing, was always moving forward in some way or another.
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: There was there wasn't a whole lot of static stuff that people hung on to.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Now, you know, being a good firefighter looked the same, like on the task level, and you would look at some of those folks that you would say, okay, that person's a good firefighter.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: And then you like to sit down and actually define it though, say, okay, well, what's that mean?
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: Even Well, they're very fast, they make quick decisions, they always put the line in the right place, they put the fire out, kind of a thing.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: So you know they're aggressive.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: All those like little buzzwords that we love to this is first, one second counts, kind of stuff.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Well, I think the more you go on and the more you watch it and do it and learn it, you just become more of a, you go from an apprentice to more of an expert view of the thing, especially when you look on those three like the task, tactical and strategic levels of what goes into a fire attack.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: So I think operating in a system where you do after action reviews in the name of improving future operations, is that that puts the right motion in place to keep everybody moving forward.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: Because I think what happens is when you stop doing that and you just, it becomes static.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: Then the noise echoes and it gets too loud.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: The task level, this is the rah-rah.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: You think no, that is uh-uh.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: You're not.
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: 90% enthusiasm and 10% labor is kind of what we're looking for in this thing.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: You have to temper it because of where we're executing all that and places it'll kill you.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: So to kind of get back to your point is like you're talking about people wearing I don't believe in regulating us in any way or staging, because we have to get there and take immediate split second action to keep all this you know the world from burning down.
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: And when you really look at it you think, ok, yeah, there is a place for that and that's our pre response kind of readiness.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: But once we get to the scene, you've got to base your actions on what's actually happening, and I guess the most recent example I'll use so we use this system to do our work, keep it effective, keep everybody safe.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: Well, if you've got a building that's, let's say, in the community and it's had a couple fires in it, and the owners of the building say we don't want this building anymore, they fence it and they're going to the city to get a demolition permit to remove it from existence, they're going to haul it to the dump and then they're going to build a new building there.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: So this building sits there for a period of time and now somebody somehow catches on fire at night.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: Fire department responds and then everybody acts like it's an open, functioning daycare center that we have to go in and get all clears on immediately because there's children dying in there.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: No, this is a vacant, abandoned building that's fenced.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: That when we had to break through the fence and then the building's still secured.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: So if we go in, the only people that are going to be in there are firefighters and you have a defensive fire in it.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: So let's say the IC calls out and says it's defensive, but nobody's managing the thing and at the end of the incident you end up with.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: You talked about an IOSH report.
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: So somebody takes action offensive action in a defensive fire and it costs them their life.
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: Well, you need a pretty mature system.
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: Well, first of all, to keep that from happening, because that's really where the rubber meets the road in the thing.
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: But first of all to keep that from happening, because that's really where the rubber meets the road in the thing.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: But if it does happen, you have to have a mature system to somehow recover from that, to keep that from happening in the future over and over again, because of these emotional cries to shape the department in a certain way and you think this really isn't doing us any good.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: So I mean you could just using that scenario.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: There's like criminal liability at the root of that for the leadership of the fire department and in fact this has happened in cities where the city, after the report came out, the city met with the fire department and said you can't do this anymore.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: If you take this action, the city is not going to pay for it, so you're on your own at this point.
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: It happened in Baltimore a few years ago, where it was a defensive fire.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: They took action anyway and the city finds out later on, they say well, what are you doing?
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Well, you know we have to.
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: So now you have these people representing the fire department that don't have.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: They're representing themselves.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: They don't represent the members of the fire department.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: We do not want politicians regulating how we fight fires, so we got to be smarter and do it the correct way.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty tough when the mayor has to run the fire department.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: You, don't want that.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: You know what I found in the way you started and I agree with everything you say, obviously because we grew up in the same system.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: But that whole deal where doing your job as a leader and holding people accountable is not synonymous with being nice.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: And what Bruno did really well is we had a system, a process, and you can use the accountability process.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: You could use a performance management process, whatever, and that held people accountable.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Because it just say accountability, because it's simpler Set expectations, train people to do the job with their expectation, monitor their performance as a supervisor and then hold them accountable through some sort of after action and then learn from that and then put that back in the system and start again.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: He had that process, but then he layered on top of it.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: Be nice as you're doing that, because when you're nice, people will listen to you and they will respond better than when you're an asshole.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: It's just that simple.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Have you ever responded as an asshole.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: Have you ever when one asshole?
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: meets another asshole, you you've got a room full of assholes.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: It's like an arms race of a-holes, exactly.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: And then we all wonder where all the shit come from you, think well, yeah, so I think when people start talking about that's, I think that's what they confuse too, and they're also, if you just layer on top of that, when you get into the IDLH and the hazard zone you need and Bruno used charts and graphs and gauges so well and I could just picture a graph where you got the hazard zone and it lays out like this and it's like one.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Like it is is right, here, it's the most dangerous place you could do well.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: You need to be a leader, more there than any place else in the system, right?
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: So we go back to our fire station, say I'm a, I'm a fire captain and a supervisor, and I go back to the fire station.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: I don't need my own plate and chair at the table right, I don't need that, but when I'm, and you know what, we'll talk about the tv and it's all democratic at the fire station.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: We'll talk about what we want to eat, all that kind of shit.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: We'll even decide hey, you guys, what do you want to do?
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Today?
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: It's a saturday.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: We got to clean the truck, but what else we?
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: That's all good stuff, but when you get on the fire ground, it needs, needs to be autocratic, and I think what happens is sometimes our young leaders confuse that and they take that let's get along, go along to get along attitude and they process that on a fire ground because there's nothing.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: A young firefighter wants to do more with an axe than swing it.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: And we saw that many years ago when we had that fire and guys got hurt because we had a young firefighter that had an axe.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Defensive fire walked up to this giant warehouse that's on fire and decided I'm just going to remove the wooden lintel around this door, took his axe, hit it and the entire brick wall fell down on him and a couple people.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: But that was an action that he felt like he should do because he's a young person and he wants to do something.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: I showed it, I showed it, but he had a supervisor there and that supervisor had another supervisor there and they all allowed that to happen.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: Well, even more sadder was, there was a safety officer standing there watching it.
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it was.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the system.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Everybody was like well, it's not my job, it's like well, whose is it then?
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's three people here that should have stopped this and nobody did.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: So I think what's happening is all this gets wound up.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: Like the guy in Texas used to say, we get wound up on a stump on this one.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Because I think they're confusing with the fact that we talk in blue card a lot and we're going to talk about this in leadership a lot, that you should be nice to your employees.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but those are two different things.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Let me so most, and nice means kind, but the most unkind thing you can do, bruno would say, is what Is accept poor performance Is to let a guy get themselves, guy or girl get hurt on the fire ground or get screwed up in the system, or allow them that the whole system is there to support the worker so the worker can support or can serve the customer.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: And that's what that whole system's about.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: All the cancer support, all the, all the annual physicals and all that is to take care of a firefighter so they can treat the customer.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: And then in that system we have leaders that drop the ball and they don't support the firefighters by telling the firefighters, hey, get the hell away from there, or hey, don't do that, or hey, on your days off you probably think about what you're doing because you're showing up late here 15 minutes every day and you're smelling like alcohol.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Let me help you out here.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: All of that is being a good supervisor and a good leader.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Well, bruno used to talk about having a class just where we're going to practice saying no, and he was using this metaphorically, but he said that all officers need to practice saying no.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: No, you're not going to go in there because that's defensive fire conditions.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: No, you're not going to swing the axe at the lintel because it's going to fall down on you.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: No, you can't have that stripper take a picture with you at the fire truck.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: You know whatever that no was, but we're just not very good, especially new leaders, saying that we need to practice it and make it OK and you don't got to be mean.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: when you say no, you just say no.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: You know, and he had that yes-no card that we're going to use in part of our leadership training.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: We're going to talk about an actual card that will help people go through the process of learning how to become a better leader by using a yes-no card.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: The first time you say no to anybody in your life, um, they may be surprised like why, why do you say no?
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I think we need to explain why we're saying in the hazard zone.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: There's no time to explain, it's autocratic.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: I say no, get the hell out of there.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: We're defensive.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: What are you doing?
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: You're creeping up.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Remember we had to deal with creeping.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: But later on, people get used to you saying no and it's like oh, he said no, but he's not mad at me, he doesn't hate me, he's not going to write me up, he's just saying no because it's the wrong thing to do, and I think we do got to get better at this.
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: Well, what was the other one?
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: Don't expect gratitude for accepting mediocrity.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that was the other piece.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: Well, I'm not going to be tough on you.
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: You know we're just going to overlook this because it wasn't anything bad that really happened.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: So that just kind of sets the stage for a future bad thing to happen.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, you know, vance, it's almost like the last podcast we did.
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: We talked about that strip mall fire and, okay, we're going to attack this aggressively because that's who we are and you know, that's our identity and the rest of it.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: You think, well, okay, that's all good and well, but you know you can attack the grizzly bear, but once it wakes up it's going to kill you.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: So that was one where the boss showed up and said, no, get out.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: They changed the strategy.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: Well, them doing that saved the five people that were in there.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're alive today because they did what they did.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: So the problem, I think, with the fire service is we don't hear about that.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: The one we look at is where the outcome's just wretched, that somebody died and you're like, well, okay, I see, and that's where we were fortunate in our careers, is we did this enough to get a lot of those examples where you're like no, every like, when people took giant risk at fires.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: There was a fire one day.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: I was a firefighter, it was an engine three's, first two areas on C shift and they and they ended up with like they pulled three, a family of three or four, the mom and two or three kids out of a like and it's cooking man, and every one they pulled out they all died, every single one, half were alive at the scene, but they all ended up dying.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: And Engine 3 was I mean, they were smoking, getting them out.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: So you know they did what they.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: But it was one of those very rare fires where you got there and it's like okay, here we are, we know they're there, this is what we're going to do, and they did it.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: Once they got them out, the thing was defensive, they knocked it down with that guns and then you know it's probably a thousand square foot house and they knew exactly where they were, yeah, and it was.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: But it was the deal.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: And I remember afterwards because you know, that's kind of a thing where you, okay, all four of them are dead.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Here's what you know.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: This is what I did at work today.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: But I remember Engine 3's crew was like the next shift they're all at work and they weren't.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: You couldn't tell and you thought this is and it's because of the system that we operated in and everybody.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: But when you tore that call apart and really looked at it because we walked through and saw the thing and talked to everybody, we're very familiar with it and you're like there's, it's amazing, you were able to get them out, but that just kind of showed the consequences of the hazard zone that we operate in.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: So I think those kinds of things.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: So that was one set of experiences.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: And then you fast forward a few years to another where it's like, no, we're in a commercial building and this is what we got going on and it's offensive, but there's too much, there's too many defensive things going on.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: We're going to reload this thing for a minute.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: I remember you pulled everybody out and it was, and they're all like why do you do that?
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: You're like, well, OK, they put the fire out two minutes later is why he did it.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: You guys were not doing smart offensive work, and so the boss showed up and interrupted that by making it more effective.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: That's kind of, and so the system's predicated on that, where it's like in the beginning, it's all task level bosses there, but is that incident continues to evolve.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: You get more and more senior officers that should OK, we're five, 10 minutes into this and this is where we're at now and they can kind of so again, the system reinforces itself periodically throughout that incident as just kind of as a product of just time and evolution.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: You know, bruno said it a lot and he said it, but it needs some explanation too.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: A supervisor, a fire captain's job on the fire ground is to manage the tactical fun.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: Remember when he said that, and I always like that because it is fun on the front end of the fire.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it is that he needs to manage that in a way that they're getting their job done.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: It's like it's fun to go out in the front yard and play football with your friends until you take a ball in the cojones.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Now it's no longer fun, and that's the key is you got to watch, somebody's got to be watching what's going on, and the supervisor needs to do that.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: But if they, if you have a captain and I'll go back to your question your, your perspective piece if you have a fire captain who is only being the leader in the hazard zone and not being the leader at the fire station, you got a problem.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Or if you got a captain who's being a asshole leader at the fire station every day, with his own plate and his own whatever they do out there, and then he can't manage the hazard zone, you got a problem and both those things are taking place out there.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: And or you may have a chief officer who thinks that they promoted to the rank of chief so they can manage a particular fire station.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: That's not their role.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Everybody's got to play their role all the time, from the moment you show up all the way through, and sometimes that role isn't fun, but that's your job as a supervisor, as a leader, is to make sure, especially with the young people man you've got to, is to make sure, especially with the young people man you got to.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: And I think young people are so resilient that if you, I think if you just tell them the right thing to do, tell them why, when you have the time, the discretionary time to teach them why you're doing it, I think they'll hang on to that and they'll take that throughout their career.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: But what happens is we don't do that well enough.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: We make a lot of assumptions about people's perspective.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah Right, and that's that's why I think one of the problems is well, a lot of us.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: the system is you got to operate within a system that prevents a lot of that from happening.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: I remember early in my career it was the first station I worked at and there was a BC that ran out of there and his partner was gone.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: So I was the young guy, they moved me over, so I'm driving him around and he's imparting all of his wisdom on me and then you got to the second line.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: Well, and he was talking about how good we were as a fire department.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: And he says you know, if we have it to like a first alarm, four engines and two ladders, he says we will put the fire out.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: Like 90 percent of the time it just goes.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: He says we get enough people there and we do the right set of things.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: We get enough people there and we do the right set of things.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: And he says but it's my experience that when it goes beyond that first alarm, he says so like you get a second or third alarm.
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: He says those never go well.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: You're like well, why don't they?
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: He says just, for some reason, the fire is so big, there's a set of things happening and it makes us not as effective and we start doing things that just don't make a lot of sense.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: Well, like 20 years later, thinking back on what he was telling me that day, it's like yeah, he's talking that there's no tactical supervision on the Phoenix Fire Department because we're so good on the task level of getting there very quickly and eliminating the hazards that when that doesn't happen, we don't have a routine for upgrading the attack positions anymore.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: We just put more task level companies in it and it has.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have a positive effect.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: In fact, more often than not it has a negative effect.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: And it's because there's no tactical supervisions.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: And people would say, well, yeah, there is the captain of engine 22 was the sector boss, and you're like, okay, where was the sector boss?
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: Well, they're inside attacking the fire.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: So there's no entry control going on.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: Well, we know the stage.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: And then we're outside and then later on is what we do on deck?
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: And you're like there's no tactical supervision there.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: So I have multiple task level crews with no tactical boss.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Well, you don't need one because they're so smart and you're like it has nothing to do with that.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: Those are two different things task level effectiveness and then tactical supervision.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Once you get the first two or three task level units and they're not solving it, you need tactical supervision to reload the thing, to read, align what's going on within that division.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: So and we see that over and over Well, we live the first two thirds of our career with no tactical supervision and then something happened.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: We had a big recovery process and then, over a period of a year, we looked at it.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're really smart people, vance.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: It took a year to figure out this simple thing.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: That's slapping you in the face for the last 20.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: Oh, tactical supervision.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: He talked about strategic, tactical and task.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: But there's only a strategic level and a task level.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we were good at those two.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: And then we saw the difference in the command post.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: So once you started using the 2nd BC to take over the division the active division, it's like in the command post it got like almost slow to the point of bored, like strategic boredom was setting in and Younger BCs had a problem with that.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: They said this isn't exciting, like it used to be.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: They said no, it's because your partner's running the division.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: You don't have to run the division and the whole incident now.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: And you can't really run the division at this point because it's overloaded with task-level resources and there's no one there to tactically take control of them.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: So when something goes wrong, it explodes and you can't manage it anymore.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: Goes wrong, it explodes and you can't manage it anymore.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: So this is kind of this is what you depend on the senior leaders to do to fix these things.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: So what happens in these other fire departments where, like, the 22 year old firefighter goes in and talks the 50 year fire chief into doing a bunch of stupid AMBO staffing model tactics?
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: Well, if we just get there and we're men about it, it'll all be better.
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: And you think, no, you've got somebody who's inexperienced, who's emotionally driving everything that's going on in their life based on their own ego, their own frail human ego, and now we're going to run the fire department on that.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: No, Well, Nick, what you said is absolutely true.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: So the way you describe that hazard zone with the tactical level, the task level, the tactical and the strategic, that's the way organizations should work also.
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: Right level the tactical and the strategic.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: That's the way organizations should work also.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, so as a fire chief you I just remember the departments I was in my goal that one of my primary goals firefighter safety, customer service, but what I want to do as a goal was to get the the whole department, operating as one department so that every shift wasn't.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: That's a full-time job it was yeah, that's a great goal.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, every fire chief should have that goal.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: But only if it's like the right operation, because there's like two or three operations going on, you pick, okay what.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Some of this and some of this?
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right here.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: This is what this looks like when I was in in oceanside and I had three shifts and one battalion chief.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: That was difficult.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: It's like you three battalion chiefs need to operate the same way.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: Here's a strategic message.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: You take it out on the tactical level and have your fire captains process that on a task level.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Now you try that same thing in Houston where you have 22 districts, which are the same as battalions, and four shifts.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: That's difficult, but as a fire chief you can't say it.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: You can't shifts.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: That that's difficult, but as a fire chief you can't say it.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: You can't think that it's impossible, you just got to think it's difficult.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: I remember bruno used to say something like it's not your fault, but it's your problem.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: So when you're a fire chief, things that happen are your problem, not your fault, always right, sometimes they are your fault, but um I I think that's the key to how this.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: You're talking about perspective and how you manage that perspective is there has to be an overall cultural perspective and then you have to have the processes in place.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I think the accountability model works well.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: I think when you use the organizational flowchart as the organizational communication flow chart, it works very well.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: But everybody has to be communicating up and down the system.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: People have to be listening.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: But the whole thing can break down at any level.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: I've seen it break down with fire chiefs that just show up in their muscle shirts and think their brains are gone.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Those people are gone and everybody knows it.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Their brains are gone.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: Those people are gone and everybody knows it.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: It could break down at the command team level where you may have one command member who sees a weak fire chief and tries to go off on their own and kind of create their own culture within the organization.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: I've seen it the biggest place.
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: I've seen it work.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: The worst is at the tactical level, where you got battalion chiefs or district chiefs and they're managing their own district, their own battalion.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: They said, no, I don't give a shit what they say downtown, we're going to do it this way over here.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: That's when it that's when you're going to have problems.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're different fire departments different fire department.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: But it needs to be well.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: That's because the fire chiefs letting it happen.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: They may not even know it's happening or even care that it's happening.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: Usually they don't.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing about it is, you've got to care and then you've got to look for it, right?
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Because?
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: that's what fire chiefs do.
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: That is your job.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Well, as one of my goals of that being everybody on the same page, then you think, okay, if that's my goal, I need to go out and see if that has taken place, and not all fire chiefs do that.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: It's like what is actually happening at my tactical level?
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: What's happening with my command team, what's happening at the tactical level?
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: And then let's visit some fire stations.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: And, by the way, when a fire chief visits a fire station, they're going to act completely different.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: It would be nice if firefighters would just you know, but they're so respectful they're not going to tell you exactly what's going on.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: So you Well, that's the same if any chief visits.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter if the fire chief.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: it's just more amplified because they're the five bugle, but when their BC comes there they're acting different.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: So they got to pay attention to what's going on and really help each other out.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: But the message needs to be the same message.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: I mean they do it in the military, right?
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: So every once in a while you get a Charlie company who will get out in front of everybody and that becomes a problem, because then everybody has to go save them.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: That's what happens on the fire ground.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: You get a company that gets out of whack freelancers, moves into a wrong area, doesn't communicate where they're at the IC, doesn't know the position and function of that company.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Same thing happens organizationally is you may not know what's happening out there, but you got to try to pay attention.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: That's your primary job.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Not to pay attention to the freaking city council and the mayor.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: They're going to be okay.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Pay attention to the fire department and the people that you're responsible for.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: All right, that wraps up part one of Perspective with myself, John Vance, Nick Brunicini and Terry Garrison.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: We will be back next week with part two of this special podcast, talking about leadership and the perspective that we can lend to firefighters within our organization.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Join us next time for the B Shifter podcast.