Management Sciences

From reading accounts, both on and off line, it is evident that too many fire officers still don’t “get it” when it comes to dignity in the workplace. I believe that is one of the fundamental factors in this ongoing blight on the profession that many of us hold near and dear to our hearts: we still have too many officers who don’t manage their fire station like a workplace in 2013.

It’s like the weather: everyone talks about it. “It” is the culture of the fire service in the United States of America. We hear it, we see it (in print and on-line), and we talk about it. Lately, what’s most prominent in this communication is: We need to change the fire service culture.

Photographs and other imagery that predominantly portray female firefighters as sexual objects first, and firefighters second, communicates a very powerful “marketing message” whether men and women in the fire service choose to accept it or not. (Don’t think so? Just ask any marketing professional “worth their salt” what they think).

So the next time you get the chance to “talk shop” with an old firefighter, just remember that what you hear may help you to get "old" one day. I'm not trying to preach, just offering what I think is some good advice. Be safe out there guys!

Was wondering if you could do me a favor and list what you believe to be the most significant changes/trends in the past 10 years of the fire service.

Not so fast! Are you still telling your stakeholders what YOU need or are you telling them what THEY need? In his best seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the late Stephen Covey calls this “seeing the issue from the other person’s frame of reference and crafting your message so that it comes back to them through their frame of reference.”

Growing up most of us have probably been told, “You only get one chance to make a good first impression”! This is also true in the market place for any business, organization or individual.

Let’s “cut to the chase”, shall we? We've got many paradigms in the fire service that we need to “break" and one of them is how we seek resources to get the job done.

Is your department consistently faced with an inadequate number of qualified and properly equipped firefighters arriving at the scene of a structure fire? Are your people launching an interior fire attack solo, or with only another member with them? (We know this is happening every day in the USA, don't we).

Think it’s not important to your efforts to recruit, hire and retain the right people? Here’s an Fire Prevention Demoanecdote from one of my fire service colleagues on Facebook, Firefighter Irene Silknetter Fitzkee, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania: