The Fire Department Mission Statement

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The Silverbacks are in the studio this week talking about The Fire Department Mission Statement. 

This episode features Nick Brunacini, Terry Garrison, Pat Dale, and John Vance.

We trade long, forgettable mission statements for simple words that drive decisions: be safe, be nice, be accountable. Stories from the field show how clarity anchors culture, justifies resources, and holds leaders and crews to the same standard.

• why short missions beat wordy statements
• aligning SOPs, training and gear with be safe
• defining be nice for crews and customers
• accountability as care for people and system
• staffing, survivability and telling hard truths up the chain
• the work as a non‑political north star
• risk management plans that everyone knows and uses
• training as continuous, not one and done
• enforcing values from probationer to chief

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This episode was recorded at the Alan V. Brunacini Command Training Center in Phoenix on October 27, 2025.

For Waldorf University Blue Card credit and discounts: https://www.waldorf.edu/blue-card/

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_05 (00:44):
Welcome to the B Shifter Podcast.
We've got John Vance here alongwith Nick Bernassini, Terry
Garrison, Pat Dale, theSilverbacks back in the house.
How are you guys doing today?

SPEAKER_04 (00:57):
So good.
You described us.
Silverbacks.
We're glad to be in any house.

SPEAKER_05 (01:02):
Yes.
Oh yeah.
Old.
I'm grunning.

SPEAKER_03 (01:05):
I'm silvering up.
Well, full of wisdom.

SPEAKER_05 (01:09):
Full of wisdom.
That's what we're all about heretoday.
Yeah.
Right?
Half okay.
If you say so, experience.
We've got it, we've got to ropethem in.
So we'll give you a little bitof experience too.

SPEAKER_04 (01:21):
You gotta have experience, right?
My grandkid the other day wentout for him and his buddies went
out for the basketball, eighthgrade basketball team.
They went, they had, they weregonna cut for the first time.
It's the first time they wereactually people are gonna make
the team and people weren't.
Okay.
So uh my grandson comes over,God bless him.

(01:43):
I said, Buddy, you've beenpracticing?
No.
I said, Well, let's go back andat least shoot a couple baskets
before you try out himpracticing all year.
And uh he didn't make the team.
And him and his buddies that arehang out with him didn't make
the team.
These other kids live andbreathe basketball.

SPEAKER_03 (01:59):
They play basketball all the time.

SPEAKER_04 (02:00):
So the other day I said to him, I said, So, buddy,
you didn't make the team.
He goes, Nah, he wasn't tooupset about it.
I said, So uh with everysituation like that, there's a
lesson.
I said, What do you think yourlesson is in that?
I don't know.
I said, Well, let me help you.
The lesson is if you wantsomething, you gotta practice.

(02:21):
Yeah, you gotta go out and yougotta do it and you gotta try
hard.
I said you didn't make the teambecause you you didn't practice.
So you weren't good as the otherguys that practice.
It has nothing to do with yoursize or your strength or how
fast you run or nothing.
You didn't practice.
So that's wisdom, right?
Back to the wisdom pieces whatdid you learn from doing

(02:42):
something that didn't work outvery well?
And I think that's what we getour best lessons from in life is
when you try something, it'slike, oh, that didn't work.
And then you stick that thatlesson sticks with you.

SPEAKER_00 (02:53):
So my grandson got a little wisdom over pa over the
week.
And then Pa says, let's let meteach you how to TP the coach's
house.

SPEAKER_04 (03:02):
That's yeah, exactly.
But it was kind of an endlesson.

SPEAKER_03 (03:05):
So him and his two buddies got let's feel we're
gonna bet this parlay here forbasketball.

SPEAKER_04 (03:11):
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
This is ripped from theheadlines.

SPEAKER_05 (03:16):
Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 (03:18):
Don't play any of that on the on the podcast, but
that's just a story.
Okay.

SPEAKER_03 (03:23):
I don't think that's right.
The problem is yeah, I don'tknow.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I don't know if that'sthere's nothing off the record
when the the thing startsbouncing.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (03:32):
So anyway, next year he'll either, you know, practice
or not.

unknown (03:36):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (03:36):
Yeah.
I think there's yeah, if youwant to play basketball, you
would think you would practiceit.

SPEAKER_04 (03:42):
He just thought he was he was gonna those the guys
are gonna just show up and justdo it.

SPEAKER_03 (03:47):
You know, we uh uh we had similar experiences with
high school athletics.
Okay.
Yeah, we were we were on theteam, and we just weren't
serious enough about it for thecoaches.
So we ended up being off theteam, and there was yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (04:05):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (04:05):
You were asked to give your uniform back or yeah,
it would just it it didn't workout well.
They were gonna do punishment,and you're okay, you're gonna
have to do this, and there therewas some violence with the team,
and we just nah, we're we'reyeah, and we're not gonna be
made examples of it.
You don't told stories probablypretty interesting.

(04:25):
Yeah, it was.
They had to use alternativejerseys for the next few games
because all the jerseysdisappeared.
Yeah, yeah, it was a thing.
You never know where these aregonna go.
You know, there's a lot of shityou can learn in high school.

SPEAKER_05 (04:41):
Truly.
I I truly believe that your highschool's just from stories was a
lot like porkies for somereason.
I I probably get the the porkiesvibe off that.

SPEAKER_03 (04:51):
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Well, and really, it's myexperience that we never really
get out of high school.
No, we don't.
What is this?
And you're like, well, no,that's just what it is, is we
don't mature much past thatpoint.

SPEAKER_00 (05:11):
I think you're right.

SPEAKER_03 (05:12):
It seems like grade school, but we're taller.
Yeah, exactly.
Got more lunch money to be takenaway at some point.
Yeah.

unknown (05:19):
I just can't.

SPEAKER_03 (05:20):
Well, and then like you get lucky.
Because like wisdom.
There's people that I went tohigh school with that were like
stars, A shift stars.
We're like, okay, you've peaked.
They they truly did peak in highschool.
And then, like, you get on thefire department together and
they don't understand thatthere's been a leveling.
And then pretty soon they don'tunderstand why they're looking

(05:40):
up at you some days, and youthink, well, it's because I set
your shit on fire and now we'regoing to put it out.
This is so just like theinterpersonal dynamics of being
part of a dysfunctional familyoccupationally, uh, like they
keep reminding you, I guess, ofthe good things in life.

SPEAKER_05 (05:58):
College athletes that were stars at one time,
hard to coach once they're in afire department.
Oh, I'm bad.
I've ran I've ran into a few ofthose situations where I've had
to like troubleshoot, and it'slike, oh yeah, that this person
was a huge whatever, whateverathlete in college, and and that
fell apart, and they're nolonger at that stature, but they

(06:19):
expect that same treatment onthe fire department.

SPEAKER_04 (06:21):
You know what's interesting is beyond that,
we've had some professionalathletes that have been hired,
some baseball players and afootball player, and they
actually go the other way.
They're pretty thankful to be inthe fire service.
They made it to the big league.
We had one guy who played forthe Minnesota Vikings.
It was Callahan, Mitch, MitchCallahan.

(06:43):
He paid he made it on.
You're looking at me.
Do you remember he did that?

SPEAKER_03 (06:47):
Yeah, he was he was a star football player at ASU.
And then he did, he had a veryshort career.

SPEAKER_04 (06:52):
Yeah, but but he was he was he did great in the fire
department.
Then we had a couple baseballpitchers, and one of them was
insane before he got hired.
But I'm thinking Al Worth.
I'm using names now, but AlWorth, he's a good, he was a
trainer.

SPEAKER_03 (07:05):
There was some there were some professional football
players, and you didn't knowthey were they never told
anybody.
That's right.
And then it was like, yeah, Iplayed football for a few years,
not in long enough to get apension, but they were that
level where they were.
Remember, we had what were theythe Rough Riders or the football
team?
Yeah, yeah.
We had a like a semi-profootball team in the Phoenix

(07:27):
Fire Department.

SPEAKER_04 (07:28):
It started with the cops and then the fire to fire.

SPEAKER_03 (07:30):
Yeah, the cops and firefighters got together and
they had this team.
And there were like players onthat team that had played
professional football.
And you thought, you know, thatthe the they're not good enough
to play in the pros anymore, butstill they were highly
competitive.
Sandagan.
And I remember there I knew alot of the players, and so we

(07:52):
were going back and forth, andthey played like six games a
year, and then they played theSuper Bowl.
And I remember the Phoenix teamand the New York team were
buddies.
I remember and it was highlycompetitive.
And there's there's you can't,there's stories you just can't
tell that happened that werejust too good.
But there was a little period oftime where I was scheduled to

(08:15):
announce at the games.
I was gonna be the color guy anddo and and they were trying, and
everybody thought that's itnever, yeah, it never hooked up,
and there was always smarterpeople involved that thought,
and they said, No, we're gonnawe're gonna get intoxicated at
the game, and then you cancommentate.
Like I had all these ideas aboutlike writing fictional stories.

(08:35):
They said, we want you to wirethese into like commentating
these games with and we and likewe were gonna attack the our
friends on the team, and it wasgonna be a lot of fun.
And the and like you said,smarter people that were like
cooler heads.
And they had like Ken Lynch orsome guy who was a professional
announcer that would announcethe games, and they'd video the

(08:56):
whole thing was just stupidsilliness.
You're like, okay, let it go.
Come on, buddy.

SPEAKER_04 (09:00):
There was a nicest guy in in the planet who is a re
former professional footballplayer for the Cardinals in the
Glendale Fire Department.
Okay, and I never knew that forabout six years I was working
there because he didn't hedidn't brag about most about it.
And one day somebody said, Well,you know, he's really and he
showed up on the field for oneof their one of their games over

(09:22):
there, but just the most humbleguy.
So it works out okay.

SPEAKER_05 (09:26):
Yeah.
Well, there's a fire chief inMinnesota, Chip Low Miller, and
I think he was, I think he's gota national championship ring
from the Colts.
He was their kicker.

SPEAKER_04 (09:34):
Wow.

SPEAKER_05 (09:35):
And and he never talks about it.
Like people have told me, butit's like, yeah, Chip Low Miller
was a kicker for the Redskinsand the Colts and and had a had
a real professional career andthen went into the fire service
after that.

SPEAKER_03 (09:48):
Crazy.
Yeah.
Well, today's topic, guys.
Wow, let's win to today's topic.
Yeah, 15 minutes into ourhour-long podcast.

SPEAKER_05 (09:56):
It's kind of how we do it.
Uh, we want to talk aboutmission statements today.
And not and then and before youhit forward on this, um, not the
boring part, but the realapplicable part of mission
statements, what missionstatements really should do as
far as informing the culture ofour department, why it matters,
maybe mission statements thataren't so effective.

(10:18):
And I thought a good startingoff point would be, and and you
guys just did it in your classin in Cincinnati where you
handed out the cards that hadthe mission statement from Bruno
on there.
Prevent harm.
Well, I'm not saying this in theright order.
Prevent harm, survive, be nice.
That's the right order.
That is the right order.
That's it, man.
Pretty simple.
That's a simple one.
So let's let's talk about simplemission statements and why it's

(10:39):
a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 (10:40):
Oh, you go right ahead.

unknown (10:41):
Okay.

SPEAKER_04 (10:42):
I touched stack sorry.

SPEAKER_05 (10:43):
So quit touching each other.

SPEAKER_04 (10:45):
Go ahead.
I feel like I jump into front ofeverything.
So I'm gonna let Pat go.

SPEAKER_00 (10:48):
It's a great topic.
And what comes to mind to meimmediately is all of the
organizations I was with did nothave a simple mission statement.
And so because it wasn't simple,no one knew what it was.
No one in the organization fromtop to bottom, they didn't know
what it was.
It's a really long paragraph,though.

(11:10):
Longer than a paragraph.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that I can think of.

SPEAKER_03 (11:14):
It's got parts of the Constitution in it almost.

SPEAKER_00 (11:16):
Yeah, and then that's it.
And it always becomes thechief's mission statement.
And that that is just soineffective.
So much so that in onedepartment we didn't have a
strategic plan.
So I wanted to lead with astrategic plan right out of the
gate after I was offered the thepermanent position to be there.
So I hired a consultant to helpto develop a strategic plan.

(11:38):
And I asked him I want to get tothe point here, so I don't want
to spend time in the planninggoing over a mission's mission,
vision, and values.
I just didn't want to do thatbecause my experience had been
we were going to spend half ofour time just wordsmithing a a
mission statement that was gonnabe too long and recopied the

(11:59):
last one and no one would knowwhat it is.
That was my experience.
It's the opposite of a simplemission statement that everybody
can make sense of.
That's what comes to mind, theopposite of it is ineffective,
too long.
Nobody has understands it or hasbuy-in with that type of mission
statement.

SPEAKER_05 (12:17):
And really, ideally, the mission statement's going to
drive what what everyone does onthe team.
It should.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (12:23):
So what'd you come up with?
What would where'd you guys endwith?

SPEAKER_00 (12:26):
So in that one, you know, I I ran the in a different
department, I ran the processagain with a consultant, and we
did go through the missionstatement development.
And I had as many hands on theknife as I could get in the
develop development, a big groupand a in the organization.
And it still was longer than youknow, I didn't want to, I

(12:50):
purposely didn't want to be tooinvolved so that it didn't
become the chief's missionstatement.
And surprisingly to me, it stillended up being not just based on
the length, but it got soworried that I think it lost you
know some of its value in theprocess, even though I had a lot
of all people represented inall, you know, um areas of the

(13:10):
department.
It was still not something thatyou could ask a member later,
what is our mission statement?
And and they could tell yousimply that, you know, in a
simple way that it had meaning.

SPEAKER_04 (13:21):
So I was fortunate because coming from Phoenix
after 30 years and having thatsimple mission statement, when I
went out, it's like I'm gonnahave a simple mission statement
because I'm kind ofsimple-minded, right?
And so in Oceanside, it wasgreat because they they didn't
have a they had one of thoselong ones, and we had a long one
in Phoenix when I got hired.

SPEAKER_02 (13:40):
Remember to provide the highest level of life and
property through the I pledgeallegiance to the mission
statements for which I'm aboutto get paid.

SPEAKER_04 (13:53):
We had a smaller group, there's about 185
firefighters, something likethat.
So we were able to really meetand talk about it.
We came up with somethingsimilar to Bruno's, but it was
be safe, be nice, and beaccountable.
And so and we even outlinedthat.
So what is being what does beingsafe look like?
And it matchs all of our SOPs.
If you can point to an SOP,whether you use the blue card

(14:16):
incident command system orwhether you use safe driving
practices or whatever that is,and say that aligns under be
safe.
And when somebody violates oneof those, you can say, hey, you
didn't you didn't meet ourmission statement of being safe.
And then the be nice part washow you treat each other
internally and how you treat thecustom customer externally.

(14:37):
And that aligned with our ourvisions and values also.
So, and then the last part is beaccountable for your and the
accountable accountability partwas always the part that we
seemed to struggle with.
That's why we came up with thataccountability model, is that um
being accountable for yourequipment.
So being accountable kind ofmeant be a good steward of your

(14:59):
equipment, of your fire station,of your apparatus.
And then being accountable meansself-accountability first, and
then if you make a mistake,hold, you know, hold yourself
accountable.
If you make a mistake, takeresponsibility for that and try
to do better.
That worked out really well sowell in Oceanside that when I

(15:20):
went to Houston, which was alarge system, obviously, is I
said, hey, this is what I use,and this is I think would be a
would would make sense if youguys want to adopt it.
So you don't want it to be afire chief pushing everything
down, but they've they heard it,they reasoned with it, it made
sense.
We got a committee together, itwas labor, it was management, it

(15:43):
was members throughout the comthroughout the entire entire
fire department, and theyadopted it and they adopted the
same thing hook, line, andsinker.
And uh when and in Glendale, thesame thing.
I mean, I was on a roll, so I itwas five and a half years or so
in Houston, and then when I wentto Glendale, they didn't have a
mission statement either.
And I said, hey, this workedreally well.

(16:05):
What do you guys say?
Well, they really latched on toit, and we kept that for the six
and a half, seven years I wasthere.
It was it was nice for me thateach place adopted that, and and
there wasn't really muchresistance.
But if there would have beenresistance, it's like if it
would have been, okay, so whatdo you want to replace that
with?
The be nice part was took in inHouston was that was that was

(16:29):
language that they weren't realfamiliar with.
Now they were nice people andthey weren't you know incredibly
mean spirited or anything, butthe the be nice statement, some
of them had to be, okay, so whatdoes be nice mean?
So we and we have it in oursilverback leadership program,
is patience, consideration,unity.

(16:51):
Those are, and there's one more,and I can't remember right.

SPEAKER_03 (16:53):
Acceptance or tolerance.
That's it.
Yeah, we it was tolerance, andthen they changed it to accept
it.
So you just have to toleratepeople, you had to accept them.
Well, my I tell them.
Well, wait on what if we don'taccept them?
We just have to tolerate them.

SPEAKER_04 (17:07):
I tell my people I've been married 30 years, my
wife tolerates me, but shedidn't quite accept me yet.
But um, so they had probably andso we adopted that, and it it
was so we did coins, uh,everybody was doing challenge
coins, and it was really easy toplace on a challenge coin.

(17:28):
It was really easy to marketthat.
And I would even, when I wouldget up and talk in front of any
group that, whether it was acity council or citizens group
or the firefighters, I would usethose those three values, and I
would talk about them everytime, kind of like you, what you
say, John, so well about usingthat and marketing it and

(17:50):
something that everybodyunderstands.
When I fired people, because Ihad to fire people, it would,
it, it was based on one of thoseareas not being performed, you
maybe even one or two of them atthe same time.
Like you weren't nice or to thisdegree, or you weren't safe.
Brunissini used to say I will Iwould uh fire a guy to save his

(18:12):
life.
And I had to do that if you'reso inept at being a firefighter
that you can't be a firefighter.
You're gonna cause injury toyourself and some other people.
But and then theself-accountability is if you're
not learning when somebody takesyou in and tries to improve your
performance, then you canactually get out of line with

(18:35):
that.

SPEAKER_00 (18:35):
Terry, I like what you what you said and what you
did was the explanation, thedeep explanation with everybody
on simple one-liners, but therewas but what I saw from outside
of Phoenix, of course, there wasa lot of places that tried to
just take what Phoenix was doingand use well.
So I saw that happen and there'sjust no explanation with it, and

(18:58):
those statements don't have anymeaning then.
No.
And in fact, people want towell, necessarily they kind of
fill in the gaps of of their notunderstanding with what that
means to them.
And now you're you're you're notuniting your organization,
they're just making things up tofill in the gaps.
So the your point of what yousaid, the the explanation of

(19:19):
what that means.
What is prevent harm?
What does that mean?
There needs to be a it's asimple two words, but but
there's a lot that that means.

SPEAKER_04 (19:29):
Well, and it's even more than just the explanation,
because you're right, on thefront end, you need to be able
to explain it.
But then if you're a fire chiefwho says be nice is important,
and then you act like anasshole, yeah, and it doesn't
filter down, or you allow yourmiddle managers or executive
officers or even yoursupervisors to act like
knuckleheads and not hold themaccountable, you've lost it.

(19:52):
Or you let you allow a companyto be mean to a customer.
So you gotta reinforce that atall times.
And yeah, it you can't ithonestly, it starts from the
top.
Like that old saying that youknow the fish stinks from the
head down, it's gotta start atthe top and then work its way
down.
It's and every day you're gonnahave as a fire chief, I

(20:15):
guarantee it, every day you'regonna have an opportunity to
live that mission statement oryou're gonna or not.

SPEAKER_00 (20:21):
Oh, that's so true.
And from the top down.
I coming in from the outside,and people knew I was a be nice
guy.
Yeah.
So when there was a need to todo something with, I think I've
talked about this in theprevious one of the the top
ranking chiefs was clearly oneof the biggest problems in the
organization.
So, what's this be nice guygonna do?

(20:42):
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (20:43):
That and you have to the accountability part of I
think more than any of it, I'vethe biggest pushback I ever got
was from be nice.
I didn't get I didn't getpushback from safety and be
effective.
Because ours was be safe, beeffective, be nice.
And being effective meansknowing your job and training
and all of that.

SPEAKER_04 (21:01):
What was yours again?
I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_05 (21:02):
Be be safe, be nice, be effective.

SPEAKER_04 (21:04):
Effective.
I like that.
Yeah, it's good.

SPEAKER_05 (21:06):
And and but be nice is I mean, and not a lot of the
membership, but I would get guyslike, why do I have to be nice?
Like you'd have to sit down andtalk to somebody about why they
should be nice.

SPEAKER_04 (21:16):
No, I I had one Nick heard this story, but I had one
assistant chief.
Uh he wasn't an assistant chief,he was a response chief in one
organization.
He said he wasn't gonna be nice.
He's and my assistant chief, hisboss came to me and said, Hey,
this chief's been here for 35years, and he said he's not
gonna be nice.
I said, Really?
Yeah, well, have him come to myoffice on it when's he work

(21:39):
again?
He said he works tomorrow, as amatter of fact.
I said, Well, have him come tomy office.
And we had a conversation aboutbe what being nice was, and he
said, I don't like the word benice.
And I said, Okay, so you're notgonna be nice?
He goes, No, I don't like theword and I'm not gonna be nice.
I said, Okay, well, then nextshift, you're gonna, you're no

(21:59):
longer gonna be a responsechief.
You're gonna have a chairoutside my office right here.
And that's where you're gonna rethat's where you're gonna sit.
I said, because I can't, ifyou're not gonna, because we all
as an organization, the union,it wasn't the fire chief, it was
the union management, all levelsof the organization agreed that
this is our mission statement.

(22:20):
So this is about a month into itwhen we got to where it was
processed out, and you don'tagree with all of us, and you're
gonna move forward in a way thatyou're not gonna support an
adopted mission statement.
You're gonna come and you'regonna sit outside my office, and
we'll figure out how we can makeyou be nice.
He goes home.
I've told the story before, andI end up really liking the guy,

(22:43):
by the way.
He goes home and tells his wife,you know, how you go when your
fire chief or your boss gets onyou, and you walk out and you go
home and you try to get supportfrom your loved ones, your wife,
your buddies, your lawyers offduty, your your internet groups.
So he came back in Monday and hewas gonna sit in that chair.
I mean, I was I was pretty Ithey confuse niceness with

(23:07):
weakness.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (23:08):
Well, the other thing is he's out there and he's
just beating your balls offabout it.
It's like, uh, who's that whodoes this guy think he's just
cheap noise is all he's doing.

SPEAKER_04 (23:19):
And it's not a and and it's not good for the
organization.
No, nobody wants to.

SPEAKER_03 (23:24):
Well, and then you got he c he shows up and they're
like, okay, well, we're gonnawind this one up.
And then he, I mean, that's yougot to deal with his fallout for
the next little while.

SPEAKER_04 (23:34):
By the end of that shift, I had people calling my
guy, calling my assistant chief,said, Did he actually tell him
this?
Did the fire chief actually it'sabout, you know, he was a mean
guy.
So he go, he comes back onMonday or the next shift, I
don't remember when it was, andhe goes, Hey chief, can I talk
to you?
And I go, Yeah, come on in.

(23:55):
I mean, I'm not gonna be mean toyou.
I got positional power.
I don't have to be mean.
I'm the fire chief and you'renot.
So why be mean to you?
And he says, I just got to tellyou, he goes, I was wrong.
I go, what do you mean?
He goes, I went home and I toldmy wife, you know, trying to get
her support that what you said.
And she goes, you know what?
She goes, and getting me chillswhen I talk about this because

(24:16):
it's remarkable.
Is my wife says, you know what?
You are, you're mean.
You're grumpy old man.
You know, you know what yourgrandkids call you?
She, what?
Grandpa Grumpy.
Oh, and they don't even want tocome to our house.
He goes, Chief, I never knew Iwas like this.

SPEAKER_03 (24:32):
So anyway, he I saw now he's ready to commit
suicide.
Oh no, so he's gone from you'rean asshole to oh, what have I
done with my life?

SPEAKER_04 (24:41):
So what happened was because he didn't want to be
mean.
This was something thathappened.
No, he loves his grandchildren.
He wants to see him.
People evolve into thismean-spirited person by hating
one person at a time.
Now you're on my list, you know,like that movie The Out of
Towners with Jack Lemon a longtime ago.
You're on my list.
And they would have a list ofpeople he hate.
Well, I said, okay, well, let'slet's spend some time talking

(25:04):
about that.
And he said, you know what I'dlike to do, Chief?
He goes, I would like to, andthis was when we had our
accountability manual.
He goes, I'd like to write anaddition to the manual where
people that they call them theold heads and the newer hired
people, how you can bridge thatgap with Be Nice.
I said, You do?
He goes, Yeah.
So I thought he's gonna throwsomething together in a week and

(25:27):
go back out to fill.
He worked on that for months,and it was it was pretty
awesome.
And then I would hear thingsabout him as a chief, you know,
chief so-and-so.
He actually walked into thestation the other day and asked
the Buddha, how's things going?
How's your family?
I mean, I didn't do this.
I have not his wife did it.
Yeah, all you do is is, youknow, you will people will

(25:48):
sometimes expect the lowestlevel of responsibility you'll
give them, or the lowest levelof what it what is that?
Minimum standards.
What will I put up with?
What will I do?
Yeah.
And I didn't realize that I wasdoing this for him, but he did
more for me by telling me thatyou know we ought to be nice to

(26:08):
each other because he recognizedthat right away.
I mean, why wouldn't you want tobe and and somebody said Bruno?
When I asked Bruno about, I wastalking to him about this at
lunch one day, and he goes,Well, ask him, go, Do you do you
want to be mean?

SPEAKER_05 (26:21):
I think there's people that probably do want to
be mean to certain people, butwell, I think there's guys too,
people who believe being nice isa sign of weakness.
Yeah, they think there's aweakness to it.
And and that's not really theintent at all.
In fact, there's a lot ofstrength behind it, right?

SPEAKER_04 (26:37):
Yeah, you it's it's hard to be nice, and I I would
tell Nick, it's a when you'renice to to one person, you say
I'm gonna be nice, you gotta benice to everybody.
And there's some people that Idid not want to be nice to, but
you you gotta be nice to them,and if they hold do something
wrong, you hold themaccountable.
But there's some people I'd liketo not necessarily be nice to.

(26:59):
But once you say you're gonna benice, you need to be nice across
the board.
You can't pick and choose andhave your own team and divide
and all that.

SPEAKER_05 (27:07):
So and while we're on be nice, let's talk about
having that kind of culture andand having that part of your
mission statement.
What is the effect that it hason your department as a whole?

SPEAKER_04 (27:20):
Nick, you know, I I believe that it's it's when you
when you select a missionstatement that people can
identify with, and and the goodnews is if they don't identify
with, if they don't agree withit, if it's simple, then those
people will hopefully show upand you can have a conversation

(27:42):
with them, right?
Because not everybody's gonnaagree with everything you do.
But I think what it does is itit sets the bar.
We're gonna be nice to people.
And I I've I've heard of guyssaying, Hey Chief, we weren't
very nice the other day.
I said, What happened?
Well, you may get a call onthis, and they knew exactly what

(28:02):
they did.
To me, that was the mostamazing.
It's like really, and sureenough, I get a call, and the
complaint was never about thetreatment, it was about the
behavior.

SPEAKER_00 (28:13):
Yeah, those guys were the attitude.
The attitude.

SPEAKER_04 (28:16):
They did a good job, but they made them feel.

SPEAKER_00 (28:20):
You know, and it's and I think it's back to the
conversation again about it.
There's one, and we're we'rethinking of this as inside the
department, how we're treatingeach other, be nice.
Right.
Well, that's gonna translate outto our um customers also.
It's the same thing.
You you support the workers, benice, respectful, accepting to

(28:41):
the workers, and that's gonnatranslate back to what's I had
council members ask me inHouston.

SPEAKER_04 (28:47):
We had you know 16 council members.
That's a big sixteen councilmembers and a and a mayor, but
the mayor controls the agendafor the council.
So the mayor has all the power.
It's not like a city managertype system where the city
council kind of has equal power.
Yeah.
But I had council members,because I would put it at the
top of every form that we have.

(29:08):
We would say, be safe, be nice,be accountable, and they would
ask me what that means, and Ithought, oh, this is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 (29:14):
Thank you for asking that.

SPEAKER_04 (29:16):
But there was some, there was times when they would
say, What does this mean?
Well, let's talk about be safe.
You know that the ladders we'rewe're trying to order?
That supports our be safe.
You know, this is this is how wecan be safe by having
appropriate equipment, or thetraining money that I'm asking
for, that aligns with be safe oranother fire company in this

(29:39):
area south of Phoenix where theguy complains.
What a great opportunity to say,no, that's we want safe
responses for firefighters so wecan deliver that service.
So to me, it was and I it wasall Bruno that I took that idea
and I thought, and I I mean it'splagiarism, right?

(30:01):
I copied and pretty much I usedifferent words just because I
like these words and he hadthose words, but and to this
day, a few of those departmentsstill use that terminology.
They had new fire chiefs comein, and fire chiefs like to
change one fire department.
They went back to a longer tightmessage.
But the underlying messageyou'll hear guys say is that

(30:24):
messy.
So it it's something thatsticks.
So having something that sticksis nice.

SPEAKER_05 (30:29):
Didn't you have problems, Pat, with a board
member that didn't like be niceor didn't like the It wasn't be
nice?

SPEAKER_00 (30:35):
I I had Very visibly said that we put our members
first.

SPEAKER_05 (30:39):
Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_00 (30:41):
And well, I don't like this members first.
Because I was, you know, Iactually put it up on the walls.
And I always, again, back to theit took explanation.
I said it's it's about servicedelivery.
It's about customer service.
And I believe, Mr.
Board president, that the bestway to achieve high-level

(31:01):
customer service is that wetreat our members well and
support 'em.
And and that's what it means.
Well, I don't like this.

SPEAKER_04 (31:09):
So did you ever ask him what what he didn't like
about it?

SPEAKER_00 (31:13):
Well, he said, Do you do you say that in front of
people?
Because I was going out to theanimal clubs again and you know,
talking to everybody about alevy.
And he said, Do you you say thatin front of citizens?
That you put it up in thestation, citizens can come in
here?
Yeah, the citizens own the firestation, they can come in here.
Well, they're gonna see that.
I said, Well, of course they'regonna see that.

(31:34):
And it takes you know a simpleexplanation to to bring them to
the point where it's aboutservice to you, citizens that
are in here.

SPEAKER_04 (31:42):
Well, I don't like it.
So who did he want first?

SPEAKER_00 (31:45):
The citizens.

SPEAKER_04 (31:47):
And what's the best thing you can do for the
citizens?

SPEAKER_00 (31:49):
Yeah, treat your support and treat your members
well.

SPEAKER_04 (31:52):
Save them when they're dying or their house is
on fire.

SPEAKER_00 (31:55):
You know what he he had to get it, he just didn't
want to be nice to me.
And then it led to, you know, hewanted to remind me who I worked
for.
And I I know I've told thisbefore, and I said, I'm crystal
clear who I work for.
And I'm here to work for thefirefighters.
And he didn't like that at alleither.

SPEAKER_05 (32:14):
Yeah.
You know, I I f inherently it'sa a a risky job.
There's risks that come withevery job, and I I don't think
we're undermining that witheither saying members first or
survive, but there's a lot ofthings that go into that health
and safety, like pre-response,the way you're gonna treat
yourself, you know, uhhealthy-wise.

(32:36):
You know, let let's kind ofjuxtapose what you're talking
about with members first withthe the survive part of the the
the mission statement and andwhat does that mean and and and
how far cascading is survive.

SPEAKER_04 (32:50):
If you think about the be nice, the be safe, and
the be accountable, that's allsomething that you do for
somebody, right?
So I'm gonna be nice to you, I'mgonna be safe while I'm doing
it, and I'm gonna be accountablewhile I'm doing it also.
So these are I saw them as kindof like action words, action

(33:10):
phrases that's treating thecustomer.
So for I could always bring itback to well, this is these are
action that we want to use forthe customer because the
customer is like Bruno wouldsay, that's the center.
That's we rotate around thosecustomers, we revolve around the
customer service delivery.
So these are actions.

(33:31):
It's I don't know.
I I didn't get a lot of pushbackonce you once you of course
there was probably pushbackfurther down the line, and the
fire chief doesn't hear all thepushback.
I get that, I understand that.
But you'd be surprised thepeople that are against
something are not afraid to kindof speak out.

(33:51):
You got because you got thegroup that gets get behind
something, you got the groupthat's really neutral, and then
the group, you got the groupsthat are just like absolutely
against it.
Well, this this chief wasabsolutely against being ice.
That came out, so I got to thatwas an aberrant position there
because everybody else thought,yeah, why wouldn't we be nice to
each other and be nice to thecustomer?

(34:13):
So you I liked having thatmission statement because then
you can identify the outliers.
And without a mission statementand without a direction in which
you're moving, how do youidentify the outliers?
Because you haven't you haven'testablished those expectations
we talk about.

SPEAKER_00 (34:31):
So John, you asked about the survive part, right?
And you know, as a sitting inthe seat of a fire chief, I
would say in in meetings likeofficers' meetings, I can think
about this coming up, and youknow, in not so many words,
sitting in that seat.
I was asking our members to putthemselves at risk by they're

(34:54):
going to go put themselvesbetween like a fire that's that
could harm our citizens, thefire and the citizens.
So they put insert themselves tokeep the citizens safe.
My role is that in thatleadership position is to make
sure that they survive that.
Now, in a couple oforganizations that I was in,

(35:15):
they were severely understaffed.
You know, an ambulance on a firetruck, two people.
So my role was to say, if I'mgoing to ask you, in not so many
words, to put yourself at riskby protecting our citizens, then
then we need to I need to leadthis effort to increase
staffing, which is supportingthe members so that they can

(35:36):
deliver the service.
And I think frankly, mypredecessors before me, it was
just too hard to try to increasestaffing because that takes
funding, and now you gotta askpeople to raise their taxes.
And most systems I'm familiarwith, it takes tax to support
the fire department.
So that survive part starts fromthe top, and you have to, if

(36:00):
you're gonna say it, you have towalk the talk from that very top
leadership position bysupporting the members.
And a lot of times that that inmy experience was about
addressing the staffing,inadequate staffing.

SPEAKER_04 (36:14):
So everybody has a boss, right?
So a fire chief has a boss.
Sometimes it's a council,sometimes a city manager,
sometimes it's a large citymayor.
And you want to make your bosshappy.
I mean, I've always wanted tomake my bosses happy.
And it's difficult to haveconversations with your boss

(36:34):
where you're supporting yourmembers in a way that you're not
going to get sideways with yourboss.
But you got to have thoseconversations, and you got to
figure out the best way to dothat.
You can't get me mad and slamyour fist down and do that kind
of stuff.
But if you look and you itstarts with the membership, it
starts with that missionstatement.

(36:55):
You get everybody behind you,you get labor on your team.
You can have those hardconversations with them without
being disrespectful.
It's like, I I don't agree withwhat you're telling me.
We need more resources overhere.
And they're gonna get madregardless.
You know, you guys hadconversations with people, these
difficult kinds they're peopleare gonna get mad.

(37:16):
They're gonna decide whetherthey're gonna get mad or not.
So if you're gonna get mad, getmad.
It's not helpful for you, butI'm gonna continue to have, and
I and we did, continue to havethose conversations about
resources, unsafe fire stations,not enough staffing,
inappropriate.

(37:37):
Oh, God, there was one firestation in the last city I
worked.
That you could you could tastethe lubricant in the air when
you walked on the fire station.
And from the day I got there, Istarted arguing about that.
And all the city manager and thestaff and everybody went and
looked at that station and hadthe same response.
Yeah, we need to replace thatstation.

(37:58):
And it only got replaced after Ileft.
And so for six years I wassaying you need to replace this
station.
And they finally replaced it.
And so they're probably gonnahave some people that are gonna
get sick, long-term illnessesfrom breathing that, and then
they're gonna be responsible forthat.
But you've got to have those conand they got, I know he got

(38:19):
tired of me hearing it becauseevery time we met, he would talk
about we need to reduce staffinto three person.
I would say, no, we need to keepit a four, and we need a new
fire station over there.
That's kind of the way it wentback and forth, right?
That's the song, and that's theway the conversation went every
time.

SPEAKER_05 (38:37):
But but it gives you cover because if it's part of
your mission statement thatyou're actually going to
communicate in this way, it it'slike I'm just living up to the
the promise that we made eachother on how we're going to
operate this fire department.
And I'm being honest with youthat this is not a say fire
station or uh, you know, the theuh fire chief up in Michigan,

(38:58):
where they had the Latter-daySaints church shooting and fire
about a month or so ago.
That that's that departmentstaffs with two on one piece of
apparatus.
That's all you're getting.
And and the chief came out andsaid, Yeah, we're not staffed
for this.
You know what they did to thatchief?
Fired him.
Yeah, he's suspended right now.
I mean, he's on admin leave.
Yeah.

(39:19):
Because he told the truth.
Because he told the truth.

SPEAKER_03 (39:21):
Well, hopefully he told that before.
Yeah, sorry, Nick.
Yeah, I mean, the the you see iteverywhere.
See, the beauty of a missionstatement is it defines and
describes the work you do, thereason your organization exists
in the first place.
Why are we all here?
We why did you join the firedepartment?
Well, it's to go on callsbecause that's all we do.

(39:43):
We go on calls, we provideemergency services to the
citizens.
So it's pretty simple.
When you say prevent harm,that's what our job is,
essentially, through the servicedelivery that we do.
It's it's to reduce the harm onthe community.
Either the individuals that makeup the community and the

(40:04):
community as a whole, right?
So that's it.
Well, that's the beauty of afire department, is it's the
most apolitical organizationthat exists in the world today.
Is when you pick the phone upand call 911, we're rolling on
your emergency services problem,whatever that is.

(40:24):
We don't ask what you what'syour favorite, how do you
identify?
What are your pronouns?
What nationality?
What anything.
We don't ask any of that becausewe don't give a shit.
It's like, what's your problem?
And okay, you're having a heartattack, we're gonna roll, we're
gonna get there four to sixminutes is our goal, yada, yada,
yada.
So we context everything basedon that response.

(40:49):
Yeah.
So everything that you guysrepresented as fire chiefs was
so we could we could deliverservice to the community.
So inside the organization, ifsomebody doesn't want to do
that, they're not on the firedepartment anymore.
They they they shouldn't workthere.
That you you're not suited forthis job.
But whatever reason, well, no, Ithat the I have these political

(41:10):
leanings, and I just don't thinkthat we should be doing this for
the community.
Well, that's good.
Then you should go to work forthe police department or
somebody that doesn't do what wedo.
Because with us deliveringservice, if you don't agree with
this, then you're not gonna doyour job, right?
That's what it is.
You listen to any athlete, yourstar athlete, the greatest
athletes that ever lived.

(41:30):
They're interviewing them afterthey won the game.
What was the key?
Well, we all showed up and didour job.
If we all show up and do our joband what we said we're gonna do,
and the the the in our role forthis team, then we will win
every time.
That's what winning looks likefor us.
So the teams that do that thebest win.
I mean, that's that's the way itis.
So that's very powerful, both toyour bosses.

(41:53):
It's like you said, no, this iswhat we do.
It is in in this city we'resitting in, is there's places in
this city if you call 911, it'sgoing to take more than nine
minutes to get you a fire truck.
That's not emergency services.
So I don't know how the firechief goes and defends that to
the their bosses.
Because really, they're they'rethe people you report to,

(42:15):
they're not your bosses.
I think that's the problem.
It's no, that person's my boss.
No, they're not.
They're your direct connectabove you organizationally.
But the mayor doesn't know asmuch as the fire chief about
running a fire department.
They shouldn't.
That's like those should be thefire chief's deal.
It's no, I uh I'm a head coachin the NFL.

(42:37):
I understand how this works.
That's what the the that's thefire chief.
Well, if you go to city manager,they say no, we only want one or
two people staffed on thesethings.
Well, that ain't a firedepartment.
We're not we don't run a firedepartment.
We run an aid agency, maybe, butwe're not emergency responders
anymore.
Yeah.
So well, like you'll get thatfrom your own people.

(42:58):
Well, I don't think we should begoing on the the this kind of
call.
It doesn't meet my level ofwhatever.
And you think, well, youshouldn't be here anymore.
You need to go to work for adifferent place that meets your
level.
That's not us.

SPEAKER_04 (43:10):
So, Nick, the flip side of all this, too, is so we
talked about that missionstatement.
You live or die as a fire chiefbased on how you act out that
mission statement.
So the fire chiefs that I seegetting in a jam is that because
that mission statement's fromthe bottom all the way to the
top, past you all the way up tothe city.

(43:32):
Yeah.
And when our firefighters dosomething incredibly mean or
incredibly stupid or incrediblyunsafe against our mission, then
the city you will lose all yourrespect if you don't hold that
member.
I've been in a city manager'soffice.
Uh, that guy did one of yourfirefighters did this, this, and

(43:53):
this.
You're right.
I'm gonna hold him accountable.
If you don't hold those peopleaccountable, yeah, I mean, and
I'm not talking, you got toprocess for that, right?
We always talk about once itgets into the disciplinary, the
performance management piece,it's in a process that usually
involves HR, the union, all thisother stuff.
But you got to process that andthe fire chiefs to get sideways

(44:15):
with their bosses, because myboss always knew I was gonna
argue about staffing and thefire station.
But if I would have ever notwalked a walk or talk to talk or
whatever on one of the membersthat got sideways and I didn't
hold my membership council, holdmy membership accountable, he
would have gone, aha, gotcha.

(44:37):
You said you're gonna they'resupposed to be nice.
This firefighter slug somebodyon a gurney and you didn't do
anything about it.
So you gotta play that all theway through.

SPEAKER_00 (44:47):
And you know that is being nice.
When you hold the person thatwas mean accountable, that's
being nice.
Being nice to the system.
To the system.
And really to that person.
I I actually had one time in indisciplinary that the it he
needed he screwed up and knewit, but he actually said that to

(45:10):
me.
Thanks for holding meaccountable.
He said that.

SPEAKER_05 (45:13):
That's well, one of these surveys that just came
out, because they're they'reright now is arguably probably
the toughest time to be a leaderin the fire service.
I mean, and and we hear it allacross the board.
Just and and and it's workers.
It really doesn't haveeverything to do with the fire
service, it really has to dowith the workers.

SPEAKER_03 (45:34):
The worst problems are always on the inside.
Yeah.
Is we used to say nobody canscrew the fire department up but
us.
It's gonna happen internally.
In fact, when our fire chiefretired, they were making a
bunch of wholesale changes.
And I remember sitting in ameeting and they said, okay, now
he's gone, we're gonna changethe mission statement.
And they sat there for like anhour and a half shrieking at

(45:57):
each other over the missionstatement.
And at the end of the day, andyou know who it was?
It was the goddamn union of allpeople.
It said, just leave it alone asit is, it's fine.
You can't change it because thisone's just too simple and too
accurate.
And you're like, well, yeah,yeah, yeah.
You guys will find somethingelse you want to stick up your
ass here next week.
So yeah, yeah, don't don't don'tdon't be sad.

(46:19):
You'll find some somebody elseto eat later on.

SPEAKER_04 (46:22):
What were you gonna say about I agree with all that.
What were you gonna say aboutthe workers?

SPEAKER_05 (46:27):
Because I I was well, accountability.
So one of the surveys that justcame out was that is what
firefighters want out of theirbosses to is to hold people
accountable because they theyfeel like the organizational
degradation where you just keepdoing worse and worse and worse
is because you're letting peopleoff the hook and you're not
holding people accountable,whether it's minimum training

(46:49):
standards or you know,performance standards on the
fire, whatever it is, and andthat that is is one of the
things ruining the fire service.
So I think right now, if you'relooking for a magic pill, which
there isn't any, but if you'relooking for something that might
be a problem within yourorganization, look at your
accountability.
And you've said it over andover, Terry.
Accountability doesn't have tobe a negative.

(47:11):
It's not a negative, it is apositive for the overall
organization.

SPEAKER_04 (47:14):
You know what that's funny?
So I watched, I'm a Chicago Bearfan.
Oh, and I watched uh CalebWilliams, a quarterback.
And you see the Chicago Bears,and you see these teams go
through this, and Nick, you youkind of reminded me of it, is
that they're doing really well,and then it goes to crap.
And then they do another badplay, and then another bad play,

(47:36):
and then another bad play, andthen they're you know 16 points
behind and they're losing, andit seems to happen kind of fast.
And Caleb Williams says, youknow, in his interview the other
day, and I won't say exactly aswell as he did, but he says, you
know, we see when that happens,and as a leader, I need to,
that's when I need to get out infront of that and actually try
to change the tr trajectory ofwhere we're headed.

(47:58):
You see that happen all thetime.
So they're the they're theleader on the field that has an
opportunity to kind of move thatforward.
And uh you can see those inorganizations.
I've been in organizations orI've watched other organizations
where you start seeing them do,well, we know, right?
That's goofy, why'd you allowthat?
That's goofy, why'd you allowthat?

(48:19):
That's goofy.
It's like a fire ground.
It's like the the Swiss cheeselines up, and then you're gonna
get somebody killed or run overby a fire engine or whatever,
and you saw all those thingsthat happen.
Or you're gonna have that, ohyeah, so the ring camera picked
up the firefighter saying thisstupid stuff, and then the
camera on the corner caughtthese guys treating them like

(48:40):
this in the not quite superaggressive, but not nice as you
go through, and then all of asudden, boom, you got that big
call where some firefighter orcrew did something really bad,
and now everybody's held andeverybody else is held
accountable accountable for itbecause your neighbors are like,
Are you a firefighter?

(49:00):
Yeah, I saw what you guys didthe other day.
You know what one guy does is weall get the crap on us.
So as a leader, you can you needto watch for those, and that's
yeah, but it flows both ways,man.

SPEAKER_03 (49:12):
I mean, you get all the fluff and the rest.
And what so when somebody doessomething bad, you're gonna get
that too.

SPEAKER_04 (49:17):
You need to you need to be held accountable.
Yeah, and it you need to be ableto do it.

SPEAKER_03 (49:21):
And but that was the good part of it, is most people
have a very high opinion of thefire department because they
should because they they don'tuh judge and subjugate them.
They say, I got this problem, weshow up, we deal with the
problem.
So, and I think that's reallykind of what you're looking for
in the thing.
And and we go on a lot of thesame calls over and over, and

(49:43):
it's easy to think, oh Jesus,not this again.
But if you're when you'redelivering the service, you just
need to remember, you know, thisis gonna be over in about 10
minutes.
I'm gonna just I'm gonna be verynice and get through this with
you, and and hopefully you'llyou'll have a better
understanding and be in a betterposition when we're all done.
But you know, that yeah, well,good luck with that.

(50:05):
But I mean, that's what yousigned up to do.
So, I mean, you're going oncalls and doing the thing.
Now, what most firefightersdon't sign up to do is to be
mandated to work every singleday on their day off.
So now we have real issues inthe fire department that we can
kind of deal with.
We want staffing, but we don'twant like one shift that has to

(50:26):
work a prison sentence.
Yeah you know, Roy Gomez, anengineer we worked with, wanted
that.
He said, We should it should beseven years and then you're
done.
You just work 24 hours a day forseven years and then you're
done.
You get your pension.
You think, well, it'd be triple.
It's yeah, we it'd be threetimes as much.
And you just don't ever leaveuntil you do, and then you don't

(50:48):
work here anymore.
And you're like, Well, sentence.
Yeah, that's what they're goingto now, it feels like, in a lot
of places.
A lot of places.

SPEAKER_04 (50:57):
That was a big problem when I left.
Is that sustainable?

SPEAKER_03 (50:59):
That's one of the biggest issues in the service.
Departments talking, we we weonly get like a third of the
people showing up to take thetest.
We don't have enough big bigenough selection pool anymore.

SPEAKER_04 (51:09):
And here's what I couldn't figure out with that,
and I don't think I ever did.
So you have a sit you have asystem, a city that I worked in
who wouldn't hire enoughfirefighters to actually fill in
for the firefighters when theytake their benefits of sick
leave and vacation.
So other guys are forced to workthose days, and then if they

(51:32):
didn't work those days, theywere disciplined for not doing
that.
That was bullshit.
I'd never like that.
It's like, hold on, you're gonnadiscipline a guy who is forced
to work because you're not hotwe're not hiring enough people
to actually cover the peoplethat are using their benefits.
Right.
That's a system problem.
Now you're gonna so I was alwaysagainst any kind of discipline

(51:56):
when and and the union and Iweren't uh always on agreement
with this because they weretrying to get guys to fill in.
I said, Yeah, I think theyshould fill in, but you can't
discipline them.
Maybe you maybe you put them ona different list or something,
but you can't actually taketheir money or you can't suspend
them for not working.

(52:18):
That makes no sense.
I guarantee there's chiefs outthere right now trying to figure
that out.
And I I don't think I totallyfigured it out, but if you can
not discipline a guy for havingto because hey, I'm going to my
grandmother's bar mitzvah,whether you discipline me or
not.
I cannot work that day.
Yeah, I'm not gonna be here.
It's your problem that youdidn't hire enough fire.

(52:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's a that's a hard onefor fire.
That's the biggest problem.

SPEAKER_03 (52:43):
Well, see, the only and and see, the work is the
gateway to all of it.
It is you gotta process it allthrough the work.
And so when you're sitting downtalking to employees, the union,
your boss, whoever that happensto be, okay, here's the work we
do.
Well, it our work is a four tosix minute response time.
Well, when it starts gettingnine, ten, eleven minutes, what

(53:05):
that that we don't know what youwant to do, uh mayor, but we're
not a fire department anymore.
So you're yeah, fire diet.

SPEAKER_04 (53:13):
People mix in biology.

SPEAKER_00 (53:15):
Yeah, I mean, that's what I would tell my board and
the citizens, everybody I talkedto, the same message.
Our service is time-sensitive,yeah, highly technical, and
resource-dependent, and staffingintensive.
Yeah.
And then we that's our reality.
That's what I took the pledge todeliver service sitting in that
seat, and we can't do it withthe staffing we currently have.

(53:37):
And I like you said it well, butyou're not gonna figure out that
Mando overtime problem becausethe the root cause of the
problem is you don't have enoughpeople.
It's all about go hire, we haveto hire more people.

SPEAKER_03 (53:50):
Well, in the city, well, we can't.
We can't afford it.
You thought, well, you're payinglike 40% extra in overtime fees.
At some point, that that's tooexpensive.

SPEAKER_04 (54:00):
You're mad at the guys that do you show up for
overtime and make all the money?
I mean, there's no exactly.

SPEAKER_03 (54:05):
You can't win in the thing.

SPEAKER_00 (54:08):
That's why you can't figure it out.

SPEAKER_04 (54:09):
You're mad at the guys that don't work and you're
mad at the guys that do thatmake all the money.
I remember that conversationwith the people.

SPEAKER_03 (54:15):
What we did is we, as an organization, our
leadership used the work as ourfront-facing image.
And you it it it it added alayer of love and protection to
the fire department becausepeople had a high opinion of

(54:36):
firefighters and what we do.
They do today.
It's still the highest-ratedoccupation that exists.
The only ones that can screw itup is us.
And it's when we don't do thework we say we're gonna do.
And we we do we so and I thinkmost fire departments do a good
job.
They show up and they and theythey they want to do what's the
right thing.

(54:56):
I I think as a service, we'revery lucky there.
So but I think one of theproblems in the world today is
the polarization of politicsthat's going on.
I think the work saves us fromourselves there.
It's it's not political.
It's no, this is what we do.
This is what everybody shouldget.
Every single human being in thecommunity has the right to call
911 and expect a professionalresponse.

(55:18):
And we treat them all the same.
Exactly.
From the mayor to somebody who'swho's I've said it before in
these podcasts.
We delivered service to theinmates at the psycho prison
behind our fire station.
And you probably shouldn't usethose words, but that's what it
was.
They were criminally insanepeople that have done horrible,

(55:39):
wretched shit to society, toother human beings.
And we showed up and treatedthem just like anybody else and
thought, you know, buddy, you bepatient with us, and we'll be
patient with you, and this willall go fine.
That was kind of what it was.

SPEAKER_04 (55:54):
So you you used a phrase there a second ago, and
this will come full circle andhope hopefully it makes sense.
You said firefighters want to dothe right thing.
Yeah.
Wouldn't that be a great missionstatement?
Because that's what be safe, benice, and be accountable is
doing the right thing.
So if you got a missionstatement out there that

(56:16):
supports firefighters wanting todo the right thing for the
customer and for each other,boom.
Yeah.
That's a great missionstatement.
Is that these long to providethe highest level of life and
property safety through theextension of fire prevention,
fire suppression, EMS, andcommunity services.
I remember that from 1970.

SPEAKER_03 (56:37):
Whatever.
Yeah, man, that's it.
Well, then you add EMS and ambosto it, and can't well have made
it like the three pages.
Nothing is everybody's donethat.

SPEAKER_05 (56:46):
Like organizations do that.

SPEAKER_04 (56:48):
Keep it simple.
Uh the the newest guy on yourjob when he leaves the academy
ought to some probably before heleaves the academy, ought to
know what the mission statementis and what the fire chief
values, what the union presidentvalues, and what everybody
should value within thatorganization.

SPEAKER_03 (57:06):
Look at the calls that give us the most problems,
where we get in trouble themost.
They're the ones where there'snot the right thing to do.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's it's the call where youshow up and there's no right
answer.
It's like, okay, you've you'vebeen uh mentally insane since
the Second World War, andthere's no way for me to fix
that for you.
So now I don't have something, Idon't have a foundation to stand

(57:28):
on.
So you just depended on thecreativity of the crew to
somehow communicate with thatperson and get them to wherever
they needed to go.
Yep.
We're watching the customerservice, old customer service
stuff on the computer here froma million years ago.
AVB's talking about a deal inAustralia where they rolled on a
lunatic old veteran who had beenwriting propaganda on the walls

(57:51):
of his house with his own poop.
And kind of the customer servicething that they did with this
old soldier.
Oh boy.
Where they like got him help anddid what they needed and then
came back and cleaned his houselike a couple shifts later.
Oh, excuse me.
So it's those kind of callswhere we roll, and there's like,

(58:13):
well, there's nothing for me todo for you.
I don't so and I think a lot oftimes it because there's there's
not a standard course of actionto do, is you can kind of, well,
I want this and this and this,and you know, the patient has
their view of the world and wehave ours.
And sometimes those things willconflict.
And but I think that's kind oflike where the silverbacks is

(58:36):
like, no, we default to nice.
And when we default to nice, issometimes we just disengage with
somebody we can't do anythingfor them and say, you know,
we're sorry, but you know,here's a bottle of water, and
and then have a nice day.
There's there's nothing else foryou.

SPEAKER_04 (58:50):
Yep.
And what I want to do is readthis because this came out the
other day, and I found it88-year-old man falls and
fractures his hip while mowwhile mowing the EMTs who
transported him to the hospitalreturn to complete the job.

SPEAKER_01 (59:05):
Yeah, awesome.

SPEAKER_04 (59:05):
If you can make that, and you said it better
than anybody, Nick.
If you can make the added valuepart regular, regular service.

SPEAKER_03 (59:15):
Being nice shouldn't be a thing we do that's extra.
It's just the way we are.

SPEAKER_04 (59:18):
I don't have what city this is in or what township
or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 (59:22):
It's any town of USA, man.
It's awesome.
That's the those are the firewe've said it before.
It's the same ten people make upevery single fire department.
Same ten people made up thePhoenix Fire Department, and the
leaders were just a little bitdifferent, and that this is the
way we're gonna manage this.
So they took the same workforceand did what they did with it.

(59:42):
I I think everybody at thistable has done that somewhere
else.
So I I mean, that's kind of thewhat we're looking for in the
thing.
It's just to be a valuableresource for the community, uh
to deliver service to thecitizens when they need it,
protect the infrastructure.
And I mean, that's we're talkingto a benefits person the other

(01:00:06):
day for the company.
And this gal started up and shesays, you know, I don't know if
you've heard of defined benefitpensions before.
And I just bit my tongue.
And she says, you know, they'rethe greatest thing in the world,
and it was the best, and theyjust don't exist anymore.
I'm like, Yeah, they do.
And the fire and policedepartments still have them.
Now, they've beat them up overthe last 20 years because the

(01:00:28):
way that's the way the economyworks.
And you know, you get if youhave something good, you get
blamed when everything blows up,and it's so anyway, you kind of
think.
Well no, it's all still there.
All the juice is still there fora fire department.
All the the b instruments, it'sas good as you want to play 'em,
is kind of that's where wethat's where we went to camp.

(01:00:51):
Was in that kind of a systemthat rewarded good work and good
behavior, and we got compensatedfor it.
So like we probably made atleast 50% more.

SPEAKER_04 (01:01:03):
Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:05):
Than when when we retired from our career than
when we started it.
I mean, when you like calculateit and say, no, this is where
you but you earned it.
I mean, that's you negotiatedit, it was a deal, and you built
it over this time.
And it would you become a like aremember when naming rights hit?
They would name stadiums, thenthey give them money.

(01:01:25):
Before we had Veterans MemorialColiseum, it was the same place,
it was identified as part of thecommunity.
And I think with naming rights,that's gone.
Like America West Arena, that'swhat it was, and that's what
it's always been to me.
And it's been named somethingdifferent seven times since
then.
Yeah, so it's a goddamn buildingdowntown where they play
basketball now.
Yeah, and it's like the greed ofthe owners that you're like, no,

(01:01:48):
you took the name away from thecommunity because somebody gives
you$10 million a year to puttheir shit on top.
That's true.
Now, what is it now?
Mortgage.
Yeah.
The guy that bought the Sunsowns the mortgage industry that
screwed our pensions up in 2008.

SPEAKER_00 (01:02:05):
It's not footprint anymore.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:07):
No, it's yeah, get a mortgage from me and I'll pay it
to the Suns, and then we'regonna bet it all on DraftKings,
and it's gonna turn into thisthing.
I think Terry's team's the onlyone with its original stadium
name.

SPEAKER_05 (01:02:16):
Yeah.
Soldier Field?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:19):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:02:19):
Yeah, they're still Green Bay.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:22):
But I think even Green Bay sells naming rights.

SPEAKER_05 (01:02:25):
Uh they still call it Lambeau.
Oh, so it's Lambeau Field.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 (01:02:27):
But Soldier, what a name, Soldier Field.
That in itself, man, that makesyou want to just who's gonna
mess with that?
Yeah.
Exactly.
They're gonna move it, renameit.

SPEAKER_03 (01:02:36):
So that's you're gonna have Mike Dick in charge
of it.
Okay, yeah, look at ours.
We got Bidwell and it's whateverinsurance company.
No, we never asked for any ofthat.
It just showed up here.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:02:50):
So anyway.
Well, before we go, I I want towrap this conversation up and
let's let's just talk about forto to put a bow on it, why you
should have a simple missionstatement that's easily
communicated and that alsoreinforces the values of the
department.

SPEAKER_04 (01:03:07):
You just said it.
That that was the answer.

SPEAKER_05 (01:03:10):
Okay.

SPEAKER_04 (01:03:10):
I mean, seriously, John, you said it better than we
could say is you have to have asimple one that does exactly
what you said.
Reinforces the value of theorganization and supports the
work that's done.

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:22):
Everybody aligns with it.
Yeah.
Everybody is using the samewords from the labor to the
administration, your board, yourcouncil.

SPEAKER_03 (01:03:32):
That became our public thing.
And it was like an advertisingcampaign.
We're fast, we're well trained,and we're nice.
Yeah.
And then the admit and thataligned with our mission
statement.
Well, that came first, and thenour mission statement got
tweaked to match it.
We're prevent harm, survive andbe nice.
It's your elevator pitch.
Yeah.
You gotta we prevent harm as anorganization.
Much of our work occurs in anIDLH atmosphere, or there's

(01:03:54):
medical hazards that we faceevery day.
So we have to be safe becausethat's part of the ongoing like
occupational responsibility tothe employer, to the employees.
And then the last one, be nice.
All right, before we go,Timeless Tactical Truth.

SPEAKER_05 (01:04:11):
How about the boy?
Maybe that's something we canall agree on.
Timeless Tactical Truth fromAlan Bernassini.
This one from the deck of cards,available at bshifter.com if
you'd like to purchase them, oryou can play our nice solitaire
game with this on the back aswell.
This is the uh Jack of Clubs,and it says the risk management

(01:04:33):
plan must be known andunderstood by every team member.
This is good because it kind ofties in with the mission
statement.
Where, you know, people need toknow the mission statement.
They also need to know the riskmanagement plan.
How do we educate that?

SPEAKER_03 (01:04:51):
Training.
You train your members.
You train them in the academy asyoung firefighters, and then
that training has to continueand support every level within
the organization.
Continuously, too.
Yeah, it doesn't.
So that's the problem withstructural with the with the
hazard zone stuff we do,especially for firefighting,
it's tend to be one and done, isthe way most fire departments

(01:05:14):
look at it.
None of the other training wedo, we talked, I talk about this
until the cows come home.
Like EMS training.
If the fire service had itsbrothers, most fire chiefs, and
you you you let them vote anddecide, they'd say, no, we've
done enough EMS trainingthroughout my career.
It's all we do.
We waste all this money on it,and I'm gonna stop it.
And we're just we're just goodenough right now for it.

(01:05:35):
And then we would be likeamputating people's limbs six
months from now.
I mean, that's just part that'swhere it would go.
So we don't use that approachwith anything other than hazard
zone, IDLH hazard zone work.
So you gotta keep it current tokeep to keep the service where
you're as effective as possibleand you're doing it in a safe

(01:05:57):
and uh controlled manner, let'ssay.

SPEAKER_00 (01:05:59):
Well, it's like the simulations, blue card
simulations.
I I we're implementing them andwe were had a group come in and
they came in and said, We'vealready done that one.
No, that's not the idea here.
You we've done this one, and andthen you know what, they do it,
and they're not performing aswell as they thought.
Yeah, they had you had to bringtheir ability up to their

(01:06:21):
confidence level with that.
So that's the continuous well,and they think they go through
it one time and that's it.

SPEAKER_03 (01:06:27):
Okay, I did this simulation three months ago, and
and I and I did it, I'm aware ofit.
Well, no, you don't understandthe full scope of training that
we're doing here and everythingthat we're testing and trying to
implement.
Yeah, like people say, Well, doyou have any Mayday simulations?
That every one of them's aMayday if you want it to be.
So you have to exercise all theskill sets that's what they're

(01:06:49):
for.

SPEAKER_00 (01:06:49):
Yeah, not one and done.
And that's where you emphasizeyour risk management model, your
risk management plan rightthere.

SPEAKER_04 (01:06:57):
I can't really Yeah, and I believe that just like a
the risk management plan and themission statement, you gotta
spend a lot of time on the frontend describing what it is and
why it's important.
Because what we do is we jump tothe words.
We jump to offensive, defensive,risk a little, risk a lot,

(01:07:18):
whatever.
I'm talking strategy.
I should go back to riskmanagement.
Yeah, it's all good.
But we don't talk what is a riskmanagement plan and what's it do
for us on the fire ground?
You spend a little bit of timetalking about why is it
important to have one singlerisk management plan operating
on the fire ground, supported bythe strategy that you just

(01:07:39):
selected.
Same thing with the missionstatement.
Why is a mission statementimportant?
If if people don't understandwhy they're doing something
sometimes, and sometimes we justassume we took we taught them
now, they get it, they can pickuh risk a little, risk a lot.

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:56):
Here's something that falls right into that risk
management.
And this is something that ifyou start talking about it,
you're gonna you're gonna startarguing with one another.
Is when you look at thelethality of the products of
combustion, and so let's saythat you just have a simulation
and the whole house is full ofuh black smoke from a fire.

(01:08:20):
Yeah, well, what is thesurvivability of that
compartment now?
And and and over time.
So if you're a victim in thereand you've been exposed to those
conditions for more than 10 or15 minutes, not survivable,
you're dead, right?
And when you die from theproducts of combustion, as a

(01:08:41):
general rule, you will be deadfor the rest of your until your
body dissolves to nothing.
You don't save somebody who thefire makes them clinically dead.
They all the the there's thatthat's almost most doctors would
tell you impossible to come backfrom, especially people that run
burn centers.
They said they they have verypoor outcomes as a patient

(01:09:02):
group.
So you start having thatconversation with well, where's
our risk now?
See, and that's where you startgetting pushback.
Well, no, we got to get thereand get it all clear right now
because that's just so lethal.
And you're like, Well, sostrategically, I look that
that's a body recovery, that'snot a search and rescue
operation.

(01:09:23):
So now that's how we're havingthose discussions.
We're like, well, should weshouldn't even search that
according to you?
And you're like, well, yeah, wesearch, we search everything.
You go in, you put the fire out,you control it, and then you
ventilate, you search it.
That's it's in fact you'researching from the point of
entry to wherever you're puttingwater on the thing.
You're searching the attackcorridor.
So But I think those are thekind of because you talk about

(01:09:46):
prevent harm, survive and benice.
Well, what exactly who can wesave?
Who's savable?
And what does that look like?
And then you carry that overinto like commercial buildings,
like warehouses, and now we'redoing wide area search, and
you're like that's a myth thatnever was proven that you could
it it's an impossibility.

(01:10:06):
It's a made-up ridiculous thing.
You can't you don't do searchand rescue in a warehouse at
three in the morning that youhad to force entry into like
it's a nursing home.
Those are two different tacticalanimals.
So it's those kind ofconversations you're seeing.
People say, Well, it's simple.
No, it isn't.
It's a complicated thing of howare we gonna actually do our

(01:10:30):
business, especially structurefires, because there's no
standardization of it.
Now, the NFPA and the like thepodcast you've been doing with
Stuart and Josh with 1700.
Well, now they're starting toget into that.
It is okay, based on this phaseof this fire, what can we truly
expect to do here?
So, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:10:49):
I I would use the risk management plan to to
operate every facet of the firedepartment.
It just wasn't on calls.

SPEAKER_02 (01:10:56):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:10:57):
Are we going to train in a way that hurts our
members?
No, absolutely not.
That's a that there's no benefitto that, right?
So there should be during thefirst half of our career, half
of the fatalities were training.
Yeah, well, they still everyweek we're we're reading, you
know, a new one.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:11:10):
Well, that's realistic.

SPEAKER_05 (01:11:12):
Should backing fire apparatus into the firehouse be
a high risk event?
Well, it has been because we'veran over members, right?
So what do we do to look atbecause there's not a lot of
fruit in that, right?
So I I think you use it to tooperate every facet, not not
just calls, but but how ouroperating philosophy is gonna be
just much like the missionstatement.

SPEAKER_03 (01:11:33):
Well, and being safe for us really, oh God, we have
to be safe.
Like that's gonna take 15minutes extra and cost ten
thousand dollars.
No, it what you're doing isyou're slowing down just enough,
and when you do it safely,you're done quicker.
And it's done one one and done.

SPEAKER_04 (01:11:52):
It's done correctly.

SPEAKER_05 (01:11:53):
Slow and smooth, and smooth is fast.

SPEAKER_04 (01:11:54):
Yeah, that's but you need to explain that the way you
described it.
Fire chiefs need to explain thatto their bosses.
Yeah, uh-huh.
Yes.
There shouldn't be a citymanager out there or a fire
board that doesn't understandthat we operate a risk
management plan on the fireground and we're gonna carry
that all the way through all wedo.
And we don't do that enough.

(01:12:15):
We talk about budgets and thingslike that with our bosses, but
we should talk about more aboutthis.
Is the work.
Nick always goes back to it.
This is the work.
This is the work, and this isthe risk, and this is how we
manage the risk.

SPEAKER_03 (01:12:30):
Well, you EMS.
You have uh universalprecautions now.
Yeah, we didn't have that whenwe started our careers.
That's part of the riskmanagement thing.
And you're like, no, we we don'twant to get these diseases.
Yeah, yeah.
You have an EMS room.
Well, now it's all disposablegear.
We were talking about this theother day.
Washing the EMS gear in thestation bathroom, and you got

(01:12:51):
body parts in it.
You're like, well, do we takethis to the hospital?
Do I put it in the disposal?
I what do I do, Captain?
Dumping the suction unit in thecity.

SPEAKER_04 (01:12:59):
Oh, the whole thing.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:00):
Reusable bag valve masks.
Remember those where you used tohave the same mask?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:05):
Oh man, it's oh exactly.
We went there.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:08):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:09):
Well, uh, like you get up in the morning after a
busy shift and you still gotblood on you.
You think, which call did thiscome from?
And you're like, uh, okay.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:19):
Now you strip down at the hospital and go back and
scrubs.
I mean, you wouldn't even wearyour uniform back.
Oh, that's a lot of smoke.

SPEAKER_00 (01:13:24):
Thankfully, we do.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:25):
Well, after a fire.
Oh, you'd smell like smoke forweeks.

SPEAKER_00 (01:13:30):
I'm getting a shower.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:32):
I can't wash this off.
Nothing better.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:34):
Well, like Pat Dale tells a story like some young
kid comes in and it smells likea fire.
He says, Oh, cancer.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:39):
Yeah.
I loved it.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:40):
And that's when I knew there was a flip.
Yeah, he knew I shouldn't besmelling that.

SPEAKER_05 (01:13:45):
My wife actually liked that smell of house fire.

SPEAKER_03 (01:13:48):
So I would make sure I went home after a smell it.
No, Johnny, put on the hoodagain.
See, we're getting back to thefire.

SPEAKER_05 (01:14:00):
I'm gonna need to go home.
Terry Pat, thank you very muchfor uh being here on the B
Shifter Podcast.
Thank you for listening.
And uh make sure to subscribeand tell your friends until next
time.
Thanks for listening to BShifter.