Tag Archives: leadership

Am I “jumping the gun” on this one? We don’t know all the facts of the case, that’s for sure, but I know one thing from my career in the municipal fire service: You don’t conduct an extensive investigation of an incident, and produce a 200-page report that documents that investigation, because you didn’t have anything better to do.

However, the more I look at news stories involving FEMS organizations that have been “ripped from today’s headlines”, through this “lens”—that of the organizational leader as a curator of organizational culture—I can’t help but feel…something must have been missing from their system of “law and order”.

When you take action to help the citizen, ask yourself, “If called upon to do, can I honestly say that I would have done the same for any member of my family?”

Recently, one of my fire service and LinkedIn colleagues, Chief Cheryl Horvath, wrote about the continuing struggle that women face trying to become a part of the Fire and EMS world in the USA. I would challenge you to read both pieces—keeping in mind that the sexual misconduct and crimes at APG surfaced in 1996—and ask yourself, “How come we’ve not gotten past this kind of behavior?”

I received the following comments in response to my recent piece, The Slow Death of the 24-Hour Tour? The comments, however, were posted by LinkedIn colleagues in response to my posting of the article on the Fire Engineering Group in LinkedIn.

None of us becomes the Fire & EMS leader that we want to be in our career without the guidance and direction and inspiration of those who have gone before us and who we've had the opportunity to meet and learn from. Role models: can't make it without them and they make you want to be a better man or woman in our business.