B Shifter
Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
The Performance Improvement Model & Accountability
This episode features Nick Brunacini, Terry Garrison and John Vance.
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This episode was recorded at the AVB CTC in Phoenix, AZ on February 12, 2025.
This episode delves into the critical role of accountability and improvement in firefighting leadership. Our hosts discuss how setting expectations, providing training, monitoring performance, and fostering a positive culture can enhance team dynamics and operational efficiency.
• Exploring the positive aspects of accountability
• The importance of setting clear expectations
• Training as a foundation for success
• Monitoring performance without micromanaging
• Building a culture that values personal responsibility
• Community engagement as a facet of accountability
• Transforming perceptions of accountability in leadership
• Developing processes that support continuous improvement
Welcome to the B Shifter podcast John Vance, nick Brunicini, terry Garrison and today we're talking leadership stuff, as we like to sit down with our silverbacks and discuss that.
Speaker 2:Speaking of silverbacks, Sit down with our silverbacks. Well, you guys are the silverbacks. Silverhead, I have no hair on my back.
Speaker 1:We were watching an old video in class today and it had Terry in it with a lot of hair. I'm going to pop this picture up here for our YouTube videos. Do not do that so people can see, but this will be the video that our viewers see right now that's a 1990s haircut right there that barber seemed really happy when I left. You were like kid and play. You were going pretty high on that one.
Speaker 3:I got angel flight pants on with my uniform right there. I love the lighting. It's like a halo effect.
Speaker 2:I don't know where that came from. You know what that was you. You did that. That was a PFN deal. Back then, you did that. That was a PFN deal. Back then you were doing that.
Speaker 3:Well, no, that could have been anybody. It may have been Mummer, oh yeah, it could have been any of us. So yeah. Pay credit. We were shift commanders then. Right, yes, yes, and then I wasn't involved in the creation of any of it.
Speaker 1:That was 2004. Post-2004.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was in a trance on the B-shift.
Speaker 2:Man, I must have had my last 20 years.
Speaker 1:Those have been some hard years. You've had a few fire chief jobs, a lot of miles there.
Speaker 1:I think the fire chief jobs put the miles on. Hey, before we get started, September 30th through October 3rd, we are going to be in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the Sharonville Convention Center for the 2025 Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference. You can go to bshiftercom and sign up for that and get more information. We have five pre-conference workshops, including a safety workshop. We are going to be doing a Mayday workshop, strategic decision-making workshop, expanded command operations and we are going to do a CERT lab there as well. So for folks who want to get the message from the lead instructors pure blue card that's an opportunity to do that and then hang out for another two days as we'll be doing the general conference on October 2nd and 3rd. You guys will be there doing the silverback class once again, right? Yeah? So you know, come on out to Cincinnati and we'd love to see you there, Get signed up and go to bshiftercom to do all of that.
Speaker 2:That's a great venue. Oh yeah, it is that whole setup is really nice yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a very convenient and friendly, and inexpensive too.
Speaker 2:So that's one of the reasons you don't have to go outside for four days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can just learn. And well, we got to cross the street to go to the brewery once on Thursday for our happy hour, for our social times.
Speaker 2:You know how people when they walk towards that they walked a little bit different when they're leaving and coming back across the street again.
Speaker 1:That's when their IAP went to an IPA. Well, today we are going to talk more about leadership issues, and one of the things I was curious about is accountability and improvement. How do we get accountability out of people? How do we make improvement incrementally and drive that improvement? And you talk about the performance improvement model. It's kind of like the continuous improvement model. So let's get into that and talk about how we can drive change and improvement within the organization while also holding people accountable.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I said it before is that back when I was a firefighter, a fire captain, a battalion chief, deputy chief, we would always hear Bruno talk about process and he used the heck out of the word process. I mean, there was a point in my career where I was like why does he keep saying process? Because I actually didn't understand how important process was. And he would always refer to use. The process and that's what we're talking about here is you have a process for improvement. So it doesn't matter what you call it, whether you call it the accountability model, the continuous improvement model, like we are with the AAR program, or you call it the performance management model, which is what Bruno originally called it before we bastardized it a little bit, but it's interesting. But if you go back to that whole accountability, you know accountability always seems to have a negative connotation to it. And when I was a fairly new fire chief, I went to Oceanside and same thing happened in Houston and in Glendale when I was a fire chief is, as soon as I walked in there was a couple different groups of people and one group would say, hey, we need to hold these guys accountable, and then they would leave and another group would come in and they would be speaking about the ones that just left the room and said we need to hold these guys accountable. And it seemed like to me the accountability word was thrown out there a lot and basically all they wanted me to do as a new fire chief was to pick a side and then beat up the other side for whatever reason. It's like, no, I don't think I'm going to do that. So I started looking at accountability and really Bruno's performance management model. It's like what kind of process can I use here? And, being a B shifter for all my years, I tried to simplify, which really is not a complicated model, the performance management model. But I just kind of tried to simplify and I came up with a four-step accountability model which was the same as the other one, just a little bit simpler and I use different words. We'll talk about it here in a minute. But what the accountability model did is that when I was trying to hold somebody accountable, or when people say hold somebody accountable, there was excuses that came along with why somebody wasn't being held accountable, and there was really four excuses and we talked about it. It was like nobody ever told me, set expectations. Nobody ever trained me. You got to train them. I've been doing this way for years and nobody ever said it was wrong. You got to monitor performance. And then the last piece is accountability, both positive and negative. Right, because negative reinforcement excuse me positive reinforcement is holding somebody accountable. Thank you for doing that and keep doing that. We need that. So that was what I kind of came up with in Oceanside.
Speaker 2:And then when I came back and started working for Nick and I saw the performance management model, which is more complete. It's got a few more steps to it. Then we just kind of layered all that together, but it's it's. It doesn't matter what you call. It's been brunicini's performance management model the whole time and it works. So when it's a process of improvement, that outlines the entire process from the beginning to the end. And then it's a continuous cycle, because once you identify what behavior is, you've got to go back to the beginning again and continue the process again. So we could go through the steps of the model, if that's what you want to do, unless Nick's got something to say about the model on the front end before we do that.
Speaker 3:If that's what you want to do, unless Nick's got something to say about the model on the front end before we do that. Accountability is a kinky word People, I mean, I don't know but there's not a better one. Really, what it is is it's doing your job is what it boils down to. Did you do your job or didn't you do your job? Well, the accountability piece of it is really this is the system or the process we're going to use to analyze what just happened, and really it was kind of designed for after action review.
Speaker 3:Critique is what they called it back then. In fact, that's one of the boxes in the performance management model. So you got to start with like your job, okay, what's my job? Well, you're going to describe your job in the form of an SOP, because we use the SOPs as kind of the catalog for all of this. And then this SOP is we're going to have to distill this down because this is the way we're going to train you in your job. So like for a young firefighter. It's like doing task level work. So like establishing a water supply. This is how you take a hydrant. We got an SOP for that. Well, when you're going through the academy.
Speaker 3:The accountability piece is just the recruit training officers, teaching young candidates how to take a fire hydrant, how to hook up a water supply to a fire hydrant. Well, that becomes the deal. And they do that a number of times and then they figure out okay, this is what this is, this is the purpose of doing this. This takes water, this puts water to the fire truck so we could put the water on the fire. So it's really that simple.
Speaker 3:But when people say accountability, they think, oh, I'm going to need a lawyer, or I'm going to go to jail because you're going to hold me accountable for something, or what you're going to do is you're going to I didn't do it, but you're going to hold me accountable, I'm going to be the fall guy for this thing. It's like, okay, somebody is going to get the credit, who's going to take the fall, who's going to be accountable for this thing? So I wouldn't let the word accountability. In fact, if you got a better word, that'll work. Please send it to us and we will replace it in a minute, because for well, the old man was dealing with, he didn't even put it in.
Speaker 2:For that reason, no, he didn't like the word.
Speaker 3:He was talking about it at the end because there wasn't another one. There's not a synonym for, you know, holding them accountable.
Speaker 2:So if you look at that first step and now we'll start with the model but the very first step is the establishing the SOPs, identifying what the work is.
Speaker 2:And, nick and I, if you look at the silverback leadership, the very first function that we have after introduction is identifying the work and, as we're going through this accountability model excuse me, the silverback leadership we're starting to talk about. We had a great conversation yesterday about the worker and the work and the workforce and how they have a contract. That's your contract. So when you get hired as a firefighter, you're contracted to do just like anybody else who goes out and uses their skills to deliver a service is that's the contract agreement between the firefighter and the organization. So the first front end of that is with the SOGs, sops and then establishing those expectations. That is the initial contract and that contract goes from firefighters, first-line supervisors, managers, fire chiefs I think the city plays a role, the jurisdiction Having authority plays a role and everybody's kind of aligned within that contract. So that's the first part is establishing expectations or understanding what the actual work is that you're going to perform.
Speaker 3:Well, you take three months to train them. So ahead of that it takes a year or two to select them. I mean, that was the biggest part is okay. We got to make sure we have the right people that are going to be the future firefighters for our department. And then, once you hold the test and do whatever and you do your selection process, then you run them through an academy and that's where you train them in the SOPs they need to know. So basically, you're training them to the firefighter one and two level, so they need to know all the task level stuff. So that becomes the deal.
Speaker 3:But ahead of that there is an employment agreement between the employee and the employer. So it's work. I mean, it's an occupational thing, and that's where you have SOPs that describe all those task-level chores, if you will, that they have to be able. The task-level actions that we take at the incident scene, See and that's a critical fire category, Critical fire ground factor are the actions that we can use and as you promote up through the task and to the tactical and strategic levels, you have to have an expert understanding of that, because that is what you're managing, the work you're actually delivering.
Speaker 2:So whenever you ever heard John, you'll love this. Have you heard a firefighter say I didn't sign up for this?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And what are they referring to?
Speaker 1:Having to do something extra like community paramedicine or home visits or checking a smoke detector.
Speaker 2:Added value yeah, added value, it's really customer service yeah so when you hear that, are we having a training academy where we spend three months spraying water? They're already EMTs. So we don't talk a lot about the EMT response system. They're already trained in that. And Nick always likes to say that's the same emergency EMS system throughout the entire country. So everybody kind of understands what that work looks like. They want to be in the fire department. You spend three months spraying water and then they go out and they spend a lot of time going on EMS calls. Well hell, I didn't know I was going to go on this many EMS calls. Well then, you didn't pay attention, you didn't have your eyes focused in the right direction, because that's what we do most of the time, right? So, as fire chiefs, part of that service contract that we have with the employee is we've got to be realistic up front and say, hey, you're going to get to go to a fire, but you're going to go to 40 EMS calls before you get a chance to go to one fire.
Speaker 1:Yes, Nick used to say I took a thousand blood pressures to go to this fire. You know, that was my payoff, right yeah, and we used to say we take it one further.
Speaker 2:We said a fire captain's job was managing the tactical fun at a fire, because it was that's what it was right.
Speaker 3:Well, and that's the other part of it we're a maladaptive group of people because we run towards something other people are running from and there's a recreational aspect to that. There always has been it's a fun thing to do, yeah, so if you're afraid of going into a building on fire, you shouldn't become a firefighter.
Speaker 2:Nobody likes to drive slow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, we don't drive slow to the fire so and that's really kind of the deal. So that becomes a challenge. In fact, that's the biggest safety challenge that we really face, I think, as a service, is managing what we're doing on the fire ground, and you know I've been beating the balls off of this forever. As you look at the services we provide, there's four main areas there's EMS, there's fire response, there's hazmat and there's TRT. Of those three of those service types we do not maintain. We maintain SOPs for them, but we're not in charge of those task-level training programs. Other people are Like the medical community is responsible for EMS, the hazmateers of the world are responsible for hazmat content, the concrete whisperers are all responsible for the TRT piece and there's standards there. So when you're doing a high-angle rescue, there's certain knots and different tactics and tools that you use that you have to be well-versed in and they check you off on those before they'll let you do those operations and then you have to maintain your skill sets there. So there's ongoing continuing education. The only place that really doesn't exist in our occupational world is for structural firefighting. So we're heavily into like SOPs and the rest of it. So I mean because we have to make those training programs. So we've been doing this forever.
Speaker 3:We're like departments customize, they have to take blue card and overlay that on their deployment capability, right, that's kind of what drives what their incident operations are going to look like, especially the tactical and strategic levels of it. So, doing that, we say you go ahead and do that. Well, it's odd, because then they get away from the program like totally, there's no accountability there. It's like, well, no, we do blue card, we just do it this way. And you're like well, you don't stage. Well, yeah, we don't do that because we got to get it to the scene quicker. Well, that's, a tenant of blue card is is you got to as certain things are built into it.
Speaker 2:That's a blood pressure, a blue card?
Speaker 3:yeah, exactly yeah establish yeah, but well, no, we don't like that, so we're not going to do it. And you're like well, do you take blood pressures? Yeah, but we don't. We don't want to, but we have to.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, yeah, and why do you have to? Because it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 3:Because it's part of the job. You can't do medical EMS without. That's just an element of it.
Speaker 3:So it's like strategic management. That's the biggest thing about the safety for blue card. So you know, are you we're managing offensive tactics or defensive tactics, and that also includes the placement of where firefighters are. We use the strategy so the firefighters can more effectively kill a fire. In fact, a pure blue card operation is you get fire control in the first four or five minutes of the incident operation. So all these people say, oh, blue cards this, and that they're full of shit. They have no idea what they're talking about. Blue card, you know the most, the quickest, because there's a system, a process you use to do size up when you get to the incident scene, where you're going to take a whopping 30 to 90 seconds to size that thing up, to figure out okay, this is where we need to attack it first, so it'll go away in the next four or five minutes, and then everybody else coming in gets assigned to it based on that incident action plan.
Speaker 2:I just remember the most exciting part of our job and people would fight over that nozzle so they could put water on that fire. That's what we wanted to do. We wanted to put water on the fire and knock the fire down. Yeah, and there was fist fights in the front yard. The strongest guy got the nozzle right, um, or the quickest, and now you have people kind of arguing that they don't. That that's not no, we don't.
Speaker 3:We. We're going to fight over to who searches first or who who, who, who ventilate and you're like no, no, no, no, no. That goes against all best practices. In fact, if you're doing that, you're not, you're not doing, you're going to flunk the performance management model piece of it You're going to identify. No, we didn't get what we needed here. The service delivery was goofy.
Speaker 2:For these reasons, so if you look back to the model, which is you're going to hold somebody accountable on the back end, you can't hold somebody accountable on the back end unless you go through that first step of identifying what expectations are, and the best expectations are those that are written down in SOGs or SOPs right, I just want to make sure. And then you take that and then you train people to that. And what Nick is absolutely saying is, if you had to put those four areas of work up that firefighters do, three of them absolutely have somebody saying this is how we should do it consistently throughout the country, but when it comes to hazard zone operations on the fire ground, we seem to spin around and fly up each other's arse no, whatever reason, terry.
Speaker 3:They didn't say should. They said will. There's not should in that that the ems directors didn't say you should do this when they're training paramedics, they say you will do this, you're working under training paramedics. They say you will do this, you're working under our orders.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So there's the should gives the option that you have an option. What if it's shall?
Speaker 2:Yeah, shall it's shall. Yeah, yeah, you would be a good attorney. No, shall is different.
Speaker 3:As a fire chief you know the difference between shalls and wills and shins and maybes Well, read an NFPA standard. A lot of it's. What's crazy is like they're implementing the system, the performance management model, in the mid to late 70s in Phoenix Arizona, and so they got a big fire and the system's newer got a big fire and and and they're the systems newer. And so what happened and if you're watching the silverback things you see it is is avb promoted, he became a captain and he started implementing this kind of process for his crew and station he worked with and then when he promoted again to battalion chief, he did it for the battalion. And then he says it, like I said, if you go through the programs you'll see this. And he says when I became the operations chief, none of them had a choice, they were all doing it because I ran the whole thing then. So that's how they implemented it. So what they would do is they would do an incident review of a bigger incident let's say a second or third alarm, the paint store fire. And early in the system, let's say they only had SOPs for like level one, staging and doing an initial rating report and then taking command and managing the strategy. Well, they want to talk about the tactical deployment of companies when they come in, because that's what all of it's about is, what's the best way for me to execute tactics? And they said, no, all we're going to talk about is what we got procedures for. I said if there's not a procedure, we're not going to talk about it because nobody's been trained in it. So we'll spend the whole first 90% of this thing going over the existing SOPs we have and how well that worked. And then on the back end, we're going to talk about where we need to improve in the future and that may capture some of the stuff we don't have SOPs for, and we'll start crafting those. And so everybody understood okay, this is we're like in the first 15 minutes of this two hour movie. So we got to write more. And it's not that it sped up the SOP production anymore, but people understood the value of it then of saying, no, if we're, we got to write it down so we can train other people to it.
Speaker 3:About the same era he's talking about, somebody in FDNY wrote a ladder manual for about the same time mid 70s, mid to late 70s and he said that individual, they had to hide because the ladder companies were coming for him, because you told the world our secrets and that's. You don't get to do that. This is our culture and we invented this and a lot of us had to give skin for it, and now you just shared it with everybody. So that's rather cultish and self-defeating that attitude. Because you know that's really, and if you're watching Silverback, as the old man says, hey man, the more you give away and make them do, the more power comes back to you is what happens. So trying to keep it secret, you're that's, that's not, you can't use it. It's no good then.
Speaker 2:So you know it's interesting, because establishing those expectations and people who come visit us when they would come to symposiums and it's like, are you guys really doing all that stuff that we're hearing about with the we didn't call it added value then Are you guys really doing all that be nice stuff and they would come and they go cheap. You really are and we've told stories about some of those things here. But what it was is is Bruno created that added value as an expectation. And then when you, when you lay out that as an expectation and then there was even some training, we're into the second step of the model. But when you establish those expectations, you don't have to have an SOP for all the ways to add value. All you have to do is say, on the expectations is added value is not only encouraged, but I expect it as a fire chief, I expect added value is not only encouraged, but I expect it as a fire chief, I expect added value. And then that's what he saw, that's what he got, and then that was reinforced through positive, positive reinforcement, sorry, and that sets the culture up and when, so when people would come here, they're like, well, how did you guys get to this? The culture is set up based on the expectations and then you train towards those expectations and that's what we had. We had a fire chief the new early on, and it's almost.
Speaker 2:We talked about the kindness conspiracy. It wasn't always obvious. Uh, he would. The way he would present it it. Oh okay, that's what we're doing. We're going to treat everybody. You don't have to qualify, and this is part of the training is when we would talk about how we would present our service. We would say okay, the patient doesn't have to qualify for your service, they don't have to smell a certain way, they don't have to be sober, they don't have to act a certain way, they don't have to smell a certain way, they don't have to be sober, they don't have to act a certain way, they don't have to look a certain way. They call us, we go out, we help them, we solve their problem. Now, they're not allowed to hit us, not allowed to strike us, but they shouldn't have to qualify for our service.
Speaker 3:And that was a setup of that. That's the very best thing about a fire department and that's really what makes the firefighter's job the greatest occupation that's ever existed is. We truly are the most apolitical organization that exists anywhere, let alone the government, but in private business too, because of what you just said, and people say, oh, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. No, we both worked at a fire station where to the south of us was about a one square mile county complex that included a mental institution and then a prison for the criminally insane. There was the highest security prison in the state of Arizona and we would go there, I don't know, once every two, every six to nine months. We'd end up going into that prison and you're dealing with people that cannot be in society anymore. They're just, they're too. They're horrible human beings.
Speaker 3:In fact, most of them shouldn't be alive to be honest, you're at the cave of silence of the land, that's who's in there, and so we would go in and we would deliver, like I remember a patient having a heart attack and it was an old man and you're like I don't know what you did, but they slapped the shit on him and they did the thing and we treated him like anybody else that was having a heart attack. And then we took him to the hospital and like eight guards and handcuffs and the whole thing and they had mirrors and dogs, but we get him in the hospital. We're kind of breaking away and doing our shit and getting ready to go back in service, and one of the guards is like, and he was almost like the same way we were, but you know he made a comment to the nurse about the person and you're like, oh my God, you know, kind of describing his past history Bad guy, oh, horrible, wretched, be careful. Yeah, it's like oh my God. But you know, afterwards you're like, well, we did the right thing. We showed up and we did our job. They call 911 because somebody was having chest pain. We went there and we did what we were supposed to do. I mean it didn't matter if they were the president, the Pope or a pauper, I mean it didn't matter if they were the president, the pope or a pauper. So that's why the world loves when you see a fire engine. It makes you happy inside.
Speaker 3:It's like there is somebody that will firefighters never leave town. I used to say we're the last ones to leave, we don't ever leave. If the town is going to burn to the ground or flood, we're going with it. I remember Katrina. Our USAR team picked up a New Orleans firefighter and he was detached from the New Orleans Fire Department. They all were. He says they told us to go to high ground. And he says I lost my crew like the night of the storm and I've just been wandering around. And so he hooked up with the Phoenix USAR team and then they picked up a Coast Guard guy who actually had a gun.
Speaker 3:And that's where they started with, you know, trying to drop off these evacuees they had into places. And the local law enforcement was like no, get them out of here. This is, we're not doing this. And they're like well, wait, we're feeble, you know so it didn't make sense. You know it was kind of a weird deal, but it showed that hell. Just recently in Los Angeles, la, firefighters never left. In fact, when it goes to shit, they say none of you can go home, we need you. So they all go in and they stay and they try to make the community safe so life can go back to normal again. That's what our job is. So I mean, that's where the accountability is. Just doing your job is being accountable. There's got to be a softer word for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I think the process once again sets up people for success, because you tell them their expectations, you train them on how to perform that job.
Speaker 3:Terry, it's the only way to get success is to go through a process like this.
Speaker 2:It's so important to have the process and it's so important for you, if you're a fire chief or a boss out there and you're trying to improve performance on whatever level, have a process, and then the best thing to do is explain the process you're going to use to the people that are going to be in the improvement piece. So, if I'm telling a firefighter, here's what's going to happen, I'm going to tell you once again what I expect from you. Do you understand that? Okay, you need training on it. Okay, I'll give you a little what I expect from you. Do you understand that? Okay, you need training on it. Okay, I'll give you a little bit of training on it. Okay, now go out and do the work. Oh, you did the work. Okay, we'll come back here, because here's the areas where you need to make a little bit of improvement in. Here's the areas that went really well. That's the accountability model.
Speaker 2:And it goes back in the system again.
Speaker 3:You do that together, though, like an after action review, they're all everybody's just saying this is what we had and this is what we did. So it's kind of like here's the conditions, here's the actions, and see like you use that model to train people. That's really what it is is. You're training individuals. So whatever it happens to be, whether it's hose, lays or IVs or dealing with other human beings it's all got to be part of the training piece of it, because that's how you I mean you indoctrinate people, you train them, and then I think what your culture becomes is what the leadership, how the leadership manages the accountability piece of it. That becomes the culture, that drives the culture of the organization.
Speaker 1:If I could. On top of that, though there and I think about a couple of employee surveys we did for employee engagement, and the word transparency comes up a lot. We want transparency and I really equate that to I want to know what's expected out of me and that's why we did things. You know, if you don't have an SOP, you have a document like your fire department's way. You've done that several times. It was done at Phoenix Fire, we did it at my old fire department. So it lays out more of the esoteric things like the added value. So people know that's expected out of them. So, going into it, so you don't need an sop necessarily. But it's really good to have written down how the culture of the fire department functions because you know even even something as broad as uh, survive, be nice, you know those types of things. So they know it's like hey, you know we're, we're supposed to be nice in our jobs. You know those types of things.
Speaker 1:So they know it's like hey you know we're supposed to be nice in our jobs. You know it's expected so, because you will have people that come back to you and you know a lot of times the accountability isn't that hard to hold people accountable for their performance on the fire ground or an emergency scene. It's harder, with all the other work that we do, to hold them accountable.
Speaker 2:What we talk about we were having a conversation about it today is when firefighters get in trouble, it's usually not because they're performing the job in a poor way. It's because they're treating their fellow firefighter or their customer poorly in a way that it's going to. If somebody read that on the newspaper what that firefighter did either to the customer or to their fellow firefighter, it wouldn't be a pretty day for the fire department. And that's where we get in the biggest trouble. The organizations that have problems with culture and with really creating that cycle all the way through, from the beginning to the end, is the people that do the training get. They treat the trainees different. It doesn't match what the X. We're going to tell you. We're going to be nice to each other, we're going to support each other, we're going to do this, we're going to do that, and then they go to the academy and they get treated like shit and that that's. That's not a good match, right? That's like telling somebody do as I say, not as I do. So so the academy and we've talked about this on our last show the academy really needs to be connected to operations because of the way that people will be treated at the academy is the way those firefighters are going to treat people on the street. It's got to be all aligned up.
Speaker 2:That's another reason to have a process. So even everybody understands a process. You don't get to play outside the process. The process creates the boundaries outside the process. The process creates the boundaries. You go through that, you go through the process, so you stay within the boundaries and learn to be effective within the boundaries, but nobody gets to be. And we have people. Well, that's just so-and-so. He's been here a long time. He's an asshole. He's always been an asshole. Well, no, we, we can't allow that.
Speaker 3:We got has companies and everybody knows who they are. They make a run. Their first point of business is to be on the scene the least amount of time to end that call as quickly as they can. It's just a waste of my time being here. Nobody's bleeding to death in the building as they're on fire, so we used to hear that all the time. You're not on fire and you're not bleeding to death.
Speaker 3:We're leaving and I'm like, well, man, you're kind of a douchebag. That's so like if you called like your dishwasher had a problem and you didn't want to take your dishwasher apart and you called a technician to come fix it, and they show up like two weeks later to fix it and it's some simple thing that took them two minutes that you could have done. They don't say you're a stupid son of a bitch, why'd you even call me? What they do is they give you a bill for a hundred dollars and say thank you very much. Here's a sticker. If you need me again, I'll be right back. Yeah, you know. In fact, I'll be faster because you're a customer now.
Speaker 3:So that's, we don't do that. Well, we do do that, but there are people who work for our organization who don't have that same feeling that everything it's like, no, it's a waste of my time. It's just it's like, well, you shouldn't be here. Somebody needs to engage you. Your boss needs to engage you to make that more. But we've all managed them in our careers, you know you said something about the dishwasher.
Speaker 2:So if the world was in line with the way it should be, firefighters are respected because the way they treat people and come in and solve problems. Yeah, can you imagine if every plumber, whoever went to unclog your clogged up toilet, treated you the way that we think firefighters did? A little added value? There'd be people cheering. Here goes a plumber. I love those man. I can shit safely in my house no one another plumber's on the job.
Speaker 1:They've got my backside 100%.
Speaker 3:I love those plumbers. Like your friends and family they all have people in their lives, professionals, that they feel that way about. Like certain healthcare people, they're just, oh, the greatest nurse ever. That's what we all aspire to be.
Speaker 2:That's kind of the accountability piece is just to be a little bit better Before I get beat too much up on the plumber compared to a firefighter. I realize firefighters put themselves in positions where they get you know, they can get injured and hurt and die and we get to do some things that cause us to be kind of heroic, because I don't use that phrase that much. I don't think we're heroes, I think we get we. We get in positions where we have to do some pretty, um, heroic type things.
Speaker 3:I saw more heroism in my fire department by like senior leaders that did like the, the esoteric stuff vance is talking about not taking attack lines. Yeah, I mean, that was, that was a race. You're okay, we're all in here now. We're all so brave. No, we're sick in the head. We just love this. No, I mean, who wants to run into a place that it'll kill you instantly or give you cancer later on? It's just, it's an odd mix be it a B-shifter.
Speaker 2:You know, those really smart plumbers are the ones who call themselves like the firefighters, and put the ones who call themselves like the firefighters and put, yeah, yeah, there's one in every city Plumbing 911.
Speaker 1:And then they get an old ambulance at an auction to make it their plumbing. There's one in every city.
Speaker 3:Phoenix Air Department. I'm driving here today and they're building a house around the corner between this building and my house and I go by and they're putting in the HVA system and that's what it is. It's all Phoenix Air Department and it's painted just like a fire truck.
Speaker 1:That's you're like hey, why not Powerful brand? Well, yeah, you know Bruno used to say if we, if corporate America, could bottle the goodwill and the feeling that we get, they would.
Speaker 3:They would tap into that every day day the telecommunications industry 30 years ago made a three digit phone number for all of us. If you need the fire department and anywhere in America, just push these three buttons.
Speaker 1:Who else gets that? I want to get back to the performance management model, but I just have something else to bounce off you guys on the. Is it my job? Is it not my job? So a friend of mine who's an operations chief very small fire department they added battalion chiefs. They've only had them for a couple of months, they're not very busy and the fire marshal asked one of the battalion chiefs hey, could you go out to this occupancy and help me out by? They need to change the Knox keys out in their box. He said this is a brand new battalion chief, not my job description. I didn't sign up for that and I'm not going to do it. You know he could have added some value to that fire marshal who he might need at three o'clock in the morning for something, but instead gave him the bird, said he wasn't going to do it. What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:I mean, the guy didn't ask him to pull sharp objects out of his arse or something. He didn't ask him to do anything degrading or degradating what's the word?
Speaker 3:Degraded. Yeah, I'm the Norm.
Speaker 2:Crosby of the fire department. But it's like, yeah, I think if somebody asks you in a kind way to do something and we all do it all the time yeah, and it's something that you have the time to do and it doesn't cause you any problems, help each other out along the way. Apparently he was asking that for a reason. Now, where did that go, though? So I'm interested on the backside of that story. So he said that You've got this young battalion chief who says that so how does that? Where does that go from there?
Speaker 1:I don't know exactly what he did with it, but I know that the way and they kind of we influenced each other on job descriptions and the way I always looked at job descriptions is the thickest, most complicated job description really was the firefighter job descriptions. And the way I always looked at job descriptions is that the thickest, most complicated job description really was the firefighter job description and then they got thinner as you go up in rank because there's a lot of things that you really can't put into that job description. But as the fire chief I should also be able to perform the functions. If not, you know I'm not physically doing it, but in in the job description as a firefighter there is something about customer service and and you know just doing good, you know helping out or whatever it was helping each other.
Speaker 2:now there was a city here, a fire department here who several years ago, um, um, the their city council didn't think they were busy enough so they had them start to dig ditches and do cemetery landscaping. That's bullshit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's not within. No, no, no.
Speaker 2:We're not saying that here on this, that we should do everything everybody has.
Speaker 1:But having a functional Knox box is going to help your fire company at two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would make sense.
Speaker 3:You know we were doing a deal and it was a political ploy within our fire department and we were and we were going on a lot of calls with PD like EMS calls, and PD had to get there. First there was the incidence of violence, right, and so stage for PD is what it was, and so you'd have to wait for PD. Well, and then it became a deal that the companies, certain individuals on certain companies, didn't want to do it anymore, because it was mostly you wouldn't do anything at them. The police would find out, it was a nothing deal or whatever. So very rarely.
Speaker 3:But one of these individuals was high up in the union and sat on one of the committees and so he made the suggestion during a committee meeting that you know, if this is such an important call for us to go on as an engine company, as a task level responder, is we think that there should be a battalion chief on it also. So, for whatever reason, because there weren't battalion chiefs in the room when this decision was made, that's what they did. So we started going on PD EMS calls like single company deals. Well, that lasted for about as long as it took for the chiefs to get together to have a meeting to say, no, we're not doing this anymore.
Speaker 3:Well, it happened to be the union guy, a union vice president, said well, I just wanted you to know what it was like. And you're like well, you're keep rolling and if you need us, upgrade the thing to a first alarm and we'll be rolling. So otherwise, just do your job and we're going to hold you accountable for it, which is he really didn't want to hear and you're going to keep. He says so, we're going to keep going on these. Well, yeah, that's the way it works.
Speaker 3:When the police call for us, we tend to respond. That's the way it works. When the police call for us, we tend to respond that's the way the bread's buttered. So when you call for the police, we get really upset if they don't come. So let's do in kind what we expect them to do. So that's an example. Now, if the Knox box guy it was just a favor the guy was looking for will you help me for an hour? Do this and it's not like. Ok, I want you to do this. For the rest, I want you to take this part of my job and do it forever. Job description.
Speaker 3:Well that's a whole. No, that's not the way that works. We can help one another in the thing which is yeah, really, yeah. So that's what I so really, if the BC's boss I'd call them in and say you know, you shouldn't be a dick to people, that you're kind of an asshole, jimmy. So, and I think you can say that if you're on a first name basis with people and I mean, that's really what you want your boss to kind of do is make you successful, and sometimes that means you have to control yourself in certain ways, and sometimes your boss telling you that is helpful, I guess.
Speaker 1:So back to this process. We started with an SOP slash expected behavior, expected performance Then we have to train on it. So, however that training looks whether it's looking at the document or out there physically training then we do the work.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And then once we evaluate the work somehow, how do we evaluate so?
Speaker 2:the work has to be done, right, someone has to do the work and then the evaluation is just monitoring. You know somebody, like when a firefighter does something, a fire captain should be watching a firefighter not micromanaging and all those words that we could use, but just watch somebody and see how they're doing the work. Like, even if something is an EMS call, is watching a firefighter how they treat grandma in the back room? Is he being an asshole or is he really being nice? Is he being kind? That's it. We watch him on the fire ground. When we're, when we whether we're fighting a fire or whatever we're doing we're watching the firefighter do the work. So the supervisor everybody has a boss. The supervisor needs to watch the work being done so they can give some feedback, whether it's positive or negative feedback. So back to this monitoring performance.
Speaker 2:A fire company it's a team sport, right. And whether the senior firefighter is monitoring the performance of a young firefighter, whether the you know, everybody kind of helps everybody out. That's the best way when everybody's kind of watching everybody else. Now we're talking about it in a formal sense here, but firefighting really is a team sport sense here. But uh, firefighting is a. It really is a team sport and you've been on you've. You know there's been fire fighters and young fire captains and that young firefighter. I remember we had our incident over here on the west side where we had a horse trailer on its side and we just happened to have a. I was a fire captain, we just happen to have a firefighter who was a cowboy. The trailer's on his side, the horse is inside it. What the hell are we going to do? I got to skip and he was able to get that horse out off his side and up.
Speaker 3:The traffic. Loved that, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:But everybody has expertise.
Speaker 3:There's a ton of plumbers that are firemen Heroes Back to of plumbers that are firemen Heroes Back to the plumbers. What they do is they figure out customer service, and that's what they do. They say no man, you go in and you're nice, I can make $200,000 a year fixing leaky faucets, just being nice to older women. And he says they call me all the time, they make me lunch, I'll pay them.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, I guess that's what I want to make sure that, like so, when we're talking, there's formal monitoring and supervising, but then there's just helping people out along the way too. I mean helping each other out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, yeah, I don't think that the fire prevention guy wanted the BC to do his job. He just wanted some help or company or whatever.
Speaker 1:I don't know, just don't be a jerk. I think they promoted the wrong person into the job. That's what the discussion is.
Speaker 2:It sounds like there were some issues before Probationary period is a good time to find some of those things out.
Speaker 1:I always say miscast. We casted the wrong person into this role. Peter Principle yeah, well, you need to bring somebody else in. So then, after we had, after we monitor, then we adjust. How do we adjust what? What? What does adjustment look like?
Speaker 2:that's, that's the holding accountable, that's the true holding accountable, where you say, hey, this is positive, keep doing that, this is negative, don't do that, but you here's an example of adjusting is uh, we used to have hose, bed covers, diamond plate.
Speaker 3:They make them at resource management put piano hinges on one on the sides of the truck, hook these things up, and then they were, uh, pressed in a way where they had lips and they met, ouch. And so what happened is you would, they would catch. They had lips and they met. And so what happened is they would catch, they had ridges on them. So, as hose is coming off, you're laying a supply line, it catches a coupling. So now the coupling is stuck.
Speaker 3:Well, you've got a fire truck that's going 25 miles an hour and you're holding a humit valve Whoops.
Speaker 3:Well, if you're in the line of fire and that human valve hits you, you are dead.
Speaker 3:So we started in my academy class they're like well, no, you've got to change the way you take the plug, because we had that happen like three or four times, and so this was a little informal deal. And so what ended up happening is we had a safer way if something, if your line caught up, it just pulled it out of your hands and it couldn't hit you. And then eventually they said no, you got to take these things off, take these stupid homemade hose covers off. The resource was putting them on because they got diamond plate for nothing and they I will put them on every truck, you know. And then we can stand on top of the hose bed and you know it's more stable and you're okay, whatever. So but there's the part where you said oh, we got a problem. You figured out this isn't supporting the work in any way, it's unsafe. And then it led to a couple improvements, and one of them was modifying the apparatus to remove obstacles to the hose coming off.
Speaker 1:And that's really the revision part, right yeah, where you revise and then you go back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's usually the way it goes most of the time, In fact, most people. If you just tell them hey, this was a little screwed up here, and it's typically a lot of times not even their fault, they're just wandered into the wrong situation and took the wrong actions, whatever that was, or they thought it was something different.
Speaker 2:If you read Frank Lieb's book, the Cornerstones of Leadership although I read that again, all those stories that he said, I'm probably overgeneralizing too much, but it was about monitoring and adjusting Every one of his was a story where he came upon a situation or he had a supervisor come upon him doing something, or a crew, and that supervisor or he would adjust the crew, whether in a positive or negative way. Some of his stories are more positive, where it's like, yeah, keep doing what you guys are doing because this is working out great. In fact, let's, let's make this into a sog when we get back, because this, this, uh, what was the one that he tells about with the, uh, the escalator?
Speaker 2:the wood escalator yeah, and he said, hey, we're going to take this back. The ideas you guys had make perfect sense on the deassembling this and and releasing releasing the poor victim from it and his stories are all about, it seems like that monitoring piece and then adjusting and getting it back into the system.
Speaker 3:I don't think it's any more complicated than the way you manage an incident action plan.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because you're the IC. You're sitting there and you think, okay, I got the lines in place I need, I got my attack positions established, the fire should be going out. Well, if the fire doesn't go out, there's a reason and it's like, okay, I got to do a set of things to figure out why this isn't working. And then, once I have that information, then I've got to come up with some kind of solution and usually it's just okay, change this, do this, whatever it is. So you're using that same system to manage just your day. It's the scientific method Stop, observe, figure out what's the best way to fix this, take some action and then analyze. Okay, how well did I do here?
Speaker 3:So a lot of this is the leaders know there's attorneys out there who specialize in figuring out. You did this wrong because you didn't go through these steps. That's negligence and that's because of the importance of our work and what we do. That leads to very that's where your risk is is not performing or not doing what you say you're going to do. Well, there's a lot of exposure financial exposure there later on. So I mean that's why we're all certified in our EMS, whatever that is. That's the only way a fire department can operate. If we just sent a bunch of witch doctors, it's probably not going to go well.
Speaker 2:And if you just look at that, after action review part we've all been there. Where you have a fire, everybody knows what happens in the fire, what happened, there's no secrets, and you have a supervisor, battalion chief, district chief, whatever the incident, commander number two comes up and he wants to review that incident and he says everything's fine, you guys are okay, nobody got hurt. You lose respect for that guy because you know there was an opportunity you could have, because I don't think everybody's so thick. Then if you would have said hey, you know what would have worked better If this information on a 360, or when you guys communicated that, or as the IC number two, what could I have done better to help you guys? But when you just get up and you didn't monitor that's a part of monitoring, the accountability part you have to watch and then you've got to respond.
Speaker 3:It hits you right in the face, You're responding. You've got smoke on the horizon. The first three companies, each one of them, laid a supply line. They said it over the radio. Lay a line here. Lay me a line. Lay another line, I get there. I'm IC number three. Really, I'm the senior advisor. I got there ahead of the BC, so I took command and we're doing the after action review. Nobody laid a line. Three story apartment fire on two levels, no supply line. Okay, Well, I don't want to be unpopular with the guys. Clue me in. Where are the supply lines? Well, well, fire went out. Fire went out. Ah, ah, ah. And Fire went out. Fire went out. And where are the supply lines? You're liars. Don't lie over the tactical channel.
Speaker 2:We talked about that the other day when we talked about being kind, and Brunicini said it the most unkind thing you can do is accept poor performance. Yeah, as a supervisor, don't expect gratitude for overlooking incompetence yeah. So when we talk about monitoring, there's a way you can train. I mean, that's what we're doing with the AAR is training people on how to do an AAR. Well, you can do that within any place in the organization.
Speaker 3:Well see, the beauty of it is because you use the process. The AAR is no different than the initial size up and strategic decision making model. The strategic decision making model is just a bend and twist on the performance management model. It's the same thing.
Speaker 2:Here's a wonderful statement. It was in our firefighter safetyival Guide in the 80s. Was it 80s or 90s, Bruno? As a new battalion chief, he says you're going to have this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was in the late 80s or early 90s.
Speaker 2:One of the very first, and it was. We went through an entire cycle of an incident, a fire incident.
Speaker 3:Eric Victor had Farrah Fawcett hair back then.
Speaker 2:Yeah right and the statement I'm going to hopefully get this right. He says that supervisors are not empowered to overlook safety issues. Battalion chiefs are not empowered to not act upon those when they're overlooked. Like you didn't, you had to act on it. So when you start talking expectations a really great thing about using this model when you start out talking about using expectations in the model and where you fit, you get to talk about and if you don't do it, don't be surprised if I call you on it and it's like people aren't surprised, like, oh, you're surprised because I could you. Are you guys surprised when, when you said you laid a line and I get here and there's no line, are you surprised at that? I'm a little irritated by that because we're missing something on the front end of this thing they're killing me, jimmy, they're killing me.
Speaker 2:Right, my brother, I loved him. He said it today hey Terry, don't get mad at me, but can I borrow 20 bucks? Hey, Terry, don't get mad at me, but can I borrow 20 bucks?
Speaker 3:Hey, mike, don't get mad at me. But no, who got mad? Mike always got mad. And then he'd whoop your ass and take all your money, take everything.
Speaker 2:Bastard. But you've got to set the expectations up front and part of the expectations are in the accountability model, or whatever you want to call it. The performance management model is if I see something when I'm monitoring it, I'm going to call you on it Now. You don't have to be mean about it Now. If you see it more than once like we've had fire captains who didn't go in with their crew, they stand out in front of the yard with their coat open on the radio and they wouldn't go in with their crew early on, is I made that person a permanent IREC? Okay, you don't get to go in with your crew, you're going to stay outside, in fact, because how would a fire captain feel every time their crew comes out? Hey, what was it like in there? That's got to be a terrible Right. So you know that guy didn't like going into fires.
Speaker 1:I think some of this model too. This isn't secret sauce. This model has to be talked about and we talked about it probably every meeting we had for 13 years. It's posted in the fire station. People know that the model exists and they know this is the process we're going to follow. So I really think the power in it is educating everybody on the model and letting them know this is how we get better in the organization.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Go ahead, Nick.
Speaker 3:Well, the safety, like the safety SOPs, going back to the safety guide, they weren't. They said these aren't SOPs, these are rules, we enforce these as rules. Others, as you had as a company officer, you didn't have to lay a supply line if you're the first one in because we had staging in the second one and you know. So you could work through that and say, well, you know, tactically, maybe next time lay a line. It would have been a better choice here. And generally, yeah, you're right, it probably would have been. And then the next time they lay a line. But there's other, like safety deals that it's like no, you don't get to run out of air in a building anymore. So there's certain things that it's just no, stop it. In fact, that becomes emergency traffic over the radio.
Speaker 2:You need a radio you need air, you need a plan, you need an assignment, all those things.
Speaker 3:You've got to stage, you've got to be part of the system, because that's how we protect one another, outside of delivering the service even.
Speaker 2:And what Bruno did is he carried that type of mentality where this is unacceptable in the safety. This is unacceptable with customer service. You don't get to treat people like that. You don't get to treat people like that. You don't get to do that. I don't care if the game's on and it's Sunday and it's the Super Bowl. You don't get to be mean to people.
Speaker 3:You know, but taking responsibility for yourself.
Speaker 2:Self-accountability.
Speaker 3:Living in a system where you could do that man. That was the sweetest. I mean we talk about it, it's the old guys going off again. They'll piss themselves here in just a minute. But working there was man. It was groovy. At the minimum you could self-actualize and do things that you probably shouldn't do, but because they didn't insult the SOPs or anything else, they just you became a character more than anything else. You were OK, you had freedom to be yourself, as long as you would do the work and fit in with that crew and not be mean. It was that's the reason. There were what did you say? 5,000 people showing up to take a test for 100 positions maybe. I mean, it was rock and roll.
Speaker 2:It was fun to watch. I don't know fun, but entertaining to watch when you had a crew and somebody from a different crew would work an overtime shift and, for whatever reason, be mean to somebody. It wasn't quite a code red, but there was a lot of hey man, we don't treat people like that. In fact, you don't get to eat lunch with us today.
Speaker 3:It was worse the other way. I mean, you could take the love too far, I guess, but it was oh, we did other way.
Speaker 1:I mean you could take the love too far.
Speaker 3:I guess, but it was. You know, you hear this. Like today, everybody goes to their own little cell and they're all on the internet, which fractures us instead of uniting us and all the rest. Back then it was, we were all in the main room together, committing the same crimes together. It was, you were in. It was a different. There's always a witness. Yeah, it was, I don't know. There was a stronger magnetic bond and then, because the culture was positive, if you were abhorrent to that, that's what you became, and so we talk about Captain Grumpy with the ceramic plate, and so it sounds to me like there's a lot of departments where there's more of him and they run it and you're like no, I don't want to work there, that's not uh-uh.
Speaker 1:And I also think, though and what you guys are trying to help with the Silverback leadership program is there's a lot of fire chiefs and fire service leaders that don't know how to articulate expectations and put that out there and really know how to manage it, because then we've talked about the schizophrenic fire chief. I think that solves a lot of problems. Now you're still going to have the jerks and the bad people and stuff.
Speaker 3:They don't go away. You just have to have the system for dealing with them.
Speaker 1:But if you build a culture and a department, a department that you know the 5,000 people want to come back in line and get to, yeah that that there's a reason for that. It isn't the pay, it isn't, is it? You know? Everyone? Everyone pays around the same people have red trucks, you know it's a. It's the culture that people want to be a part of and that's what people wanted to be a part of in phoenix vance.
Speaker 3:There were classes where half you'd have a class of 30 people and half of them were firefighters from other cities that had 10 to five years on and they said, no, I don't want to work there, I want to come over here where I know what's expected of me and I can fit in to a group that's doing professional development.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you where this really pays off, because it may not be the fire chief. The fire chief may be the greatest person on the planet trying to establish this kind of positive culture, and the process helps. When you got and I'm going to use the fire ground the strategic, the tactical and the task is lined up, because what will happen is, without the process, you could have the nicest fire chief, but that tactical guy, whoever that is, has a lot of opportunities.
Speaker 2:One brick thrower can outperform a thousand bricklayers well, like an errant training officer, yeah errant training officer, whoever it is in the system, and there's the captain supervising the crew. So when you have a process, you talk about the process, you post it, you use it. It lines people up better. You're still going to have problems. We talked later in in silverback leadership about boundary management and how you kind of get people back within where they need to get staying in their lane. Staying in their lane or sending them home, you know, not ever des Deselecting them. We talk about the selection process and Nick said how about deselection?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've done that.
Speaker 3:Well, you talk about selection, bringing them in, picking the people that are going to make the best firefighters, because you're hiring them forever.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean it's you're hiring somebody for 30 years Now it may life has changed occupationally and they don't stay as long, but you got a pension on the back end and there still ain't a lot of pension jobs out there and the mouth breathers haven't been able to take that away yet. And I think it's odd to watch the cycles of this. See, like in Southern California, Los Angeles, right now, if you're a firefighter, you can't buy lunch, you can't do anything. They're just they smother you with love.
Speaker 2:Until that one firefighter brings his whole family yeah, but that's a whole different deal.
Speaker 3:He can do that right Like after 9-11, man, it was off the hook. You couldn't spend the money they were given to fire departments. Seven years, six years later, they are going crazy over the pension here. Seven years because Wall Street cooked the mortgage market to nothing, so it tanked the economy. Firefighters are retiring. Our drop had just matured from five years ago After 9-11, oh no, you need a drop.
Speaker 3:You've been asking for this for so long, you selfless servants. We're giving this to you, we're going to give it to you. Well now, god bless, pat can tell me and you've got all these benefits. He stacked up over the 20-odd years that he was our union president. So we went from here to up here. It got to the point that he said at a labor management retreat we have to put educational requirements to our ranks. He says it's the only way I can justify the pay grades. He says if we don't do it, we're doomed. So then the market melts and it's all. Every man for himself. Everyone's hair's on fire. What's the first thing they went after? Firefighters pension? Oh yeah, and they'll do it again.
Speaker 3:Oh, in a minute, they'll do it every time. It's the last, we never leave, it's, we're here until the end, so it's. And then what happens is you outlast them, and so it just keeps. And I think, as long as we do what we say we're going to do and we deliver the service and we're nice about it, we're nobody, we're at it it's going to take care of itself.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a good point to put the pin in this conversation for today, but we'll certainly continue it as you guys continue on your work. But before we go, Timeless Tactical. Truth from Alan Verdesini. Today it's the five of clubs, and this is a longer one. To a major extent, the command system performs or doesn't perform based on the support and behavior of the ranking officer bosses who operate within that system before, during and after the incident we, we just covered that I know that's crazy, that's it, that's it.
Speaker 2:we covered everything on that. Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 3:Well, you said it before, it's like the out-of-towners would come in and these are like executive chiefs from other fire departments and they're riding along with BCs and the rest and they're there a day or two and by the end of it they're like you guys really do this. Yeah, you guys really do this isn't? Yeah, we do this and that's it and so much more exactly.
Speaker 1:You can have a lot of fun if you just do your job well, guys, it's been a good one. Thank you very much. Thanks for being here today and thank you everyone for listening. We'll talk to you next time on b-shifter.