The Performance Improvement Model & Accountability

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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

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the B Shifter podcast John Vance, nick
Brunicini, terry Garrison andtoday we're talking leadership
stuff, as we like to sit downwith our silverbacks and discuss
that.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Speaking of silverbacks, Sit down with our
silverbacks.
Well, you guys are thesilverbacks.
Silverhead, I have no hair onmy back.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
We were watching an old video in class today and it
had Terry in it with a lot ofhair.
I'm going to pop this pictureup here for our YouTube videos.
Do not do that so people cansee, but this will be the video
that our viewers see right nowthat's a 1990s haircut right
there that barber seemed reallyhappy when I left.
You were like kid and play.

(00:50):
You were going pretty high onthat one.

Speaker 3 (00:53):
I got angel flight pants on with my uniform right
there.
I love the lighting.
It's like a halo effect.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
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 (01:06):
Well, no, that could have been anybody.
It may have been Mummer, ohyeah, it could have been any of
us.
So yeah.
Pay credit.
We were shift commanders then.
Right, yes, yes, and then Iwasn't involved in the creation
of any of it.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
That was 2004.
Post-2004.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Yeah, I was in a trance on the B-shift.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Man, I must have had my last 20 years.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Those have been some hard years.
You've had a few fire chiefjobs, a lot of miles there.
I think the fire chief jobs putthe miles on.
Hey, before we get started,September 30th through October
3rd, we are going to be inCincinnati, Ohio, at the
Sharonville Convention Centerfor the 2025 Blue Card Hazard
Zone Conference.
You can go to bshiftercom andsign up for that and get more

(01:59):
information.
We have five pre-conferenceworkshops, including a safety
workshop.
We are going to be doing aMayday workshop, strategic
decision-making workshop,expanded command operations and
we are going to do a CERT labthere as well.
So for folks who want to getthe message from the lead

(02:21):
instructors pure blue cardthat's an opportunity to do that
and then hang out for anothertwo days as we'll be doing the
general conference on October2nd and 3rd.
You guys will be there doingthe silverback class once again,
right?
Yeah?
So you know, come on out toCincinnati and we'd love to see

(02:42):
you there, Get signed up and goto bshiftercom to do all of that
.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
That's a great venue.
Oh yeah, it is that whole setupis really nice yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
It's a very convenient and friendly, and
inexpensive too.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
So that's one of the reasons you don't have to go
outside for four days.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, we can just learn.
And well, we got to cross thestreet to go to the brewery once
on Thursday for our happy hour,for our social times.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
You know how people when they walk towards that they
walked a little bit differentwhen they're leaving and coming
back across the street again.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
That's when their IAP went to an IPA.
Well, today we are going totalk more about leadership
issues, and one of the things Iwas curious about is
accountability and improvement.
How do we get accountabilityout of people?
How do we make improvementincrementally and drive that

(03:38):
improvement?
And you talk about theperformance improvement model.
It's kind of like thecontinuous improvement model.
So let's get into that and talkabout how we can drive change
and improvement within theorganization while also holding
people accountable.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Well, you know, I said it before is that back when
I was a firefighter, a firecaptain, a battalion chief,
deputy chief, we would alwayshear Bruno talk about process
and he used the heck out of theword process.
I mean, there was a point in mycareer where I was like why
does he keep saying process?
Because I actually didn'tunderstand how important process

(04:15):
was.
And he would always refer touse.
The process and that's whatwe're talking about here is you
have a process for improvement.
So it doesn't matter what youcall it, whether you call it the
accountability model, thecontinuous improvement model,
like we are with the AAR program, or you call it the performance

(04:36):
management model, which is whatBruno originally called it
before we bastardized it alittle bit, but it's interesting
.
But if you go back to thatwhole accountability, you know
accountability always seems tohave a negative connotation to
it.
And when I was a fairly newfire chief, I went to Oceanside
and same thing happened inHouston and in Glendale when I

(04:59):
was a fire chief is, as soon asI walked in there was a couple
different groups of people andone group would say, hey, we
need to hold these guysaccountable, and then they would
leave and another group wouldcome in and they would be
speaking about the ones thatjust left the room and said we
need to hold these guysaccountable.
And it seemed like to me theaccountability word was thrown

(05:22):
out there a lot and basicallyall they wanted me to do as a
new fire chief was to pick aside and then beat up the other
side for whatever reason.
It's like, no, I don't thinkI'm going to do that.
So I started looking ataccountability and really
Bruno's performance managementmodel.
It's like what kind of processcan I use here?
And, being a B shifter for allmy years, I tried to simplify,

(05:48):
which really is not acomplicated model, the
performance management model.
But I just kind of tried tosimplify and I came up with a
four-step accountability modelwhich was the same as the other
one, just a little bit simplerand I use different words.
We'll talk about it here in aminute.
But what the accountabilitymodel did is that when I was
trying to hold somebodyaccountable, or when people say

(06:10):
hold somebody accountable, therewas excuses that came along
with why somebody wasn't beingheld accountable, and there was
really four excuses and wetalked 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 foryears and nobody ever said it

(06:31):
was wrong.
You got to monitor performance.
And then the last piece isaccountability, both positive
and negative.
Right, because negativereinforcement excuse me positive
reinforcement is holdingsomebody accountable.
Thank you for doing that andkeep doing that.
We need that.
So that was what I kind of cameup with in Oceanside.

(06:54):
And then when I came back andstarted working for Nick and I
saw the performance managementmodel, which is more complete.
It's got a few more steps to it.
Then we just kind of layeredall that together, but it's it's
.
It doesn't matter what you call.
It's been brunicini'sperformance management model the
whole time and it works.

(07:16):
So when it's a process ofimprovement, that outlines the
entire process from thebeginning to the end.
And then it's a continuouscycle, because once you identify
what behavior is, you've got togo back to the beginning again
and continue the process again.
So we could go through thesteps of the model, if that's

(07:40):
what you want to do, unlessNick's got something to say
about the model on the front endbefore we do that.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
If that's what you want to do, unless Nick's got
something to say about the modelon the front end before we do
that.
Accountability is a kinky wordPeople, I mean, I don't know but
there's not a better one.
Really, what it is is it'sdoing your job is what it boils

(08:09):
down to.
Did you do your job or didn'tyou do your job?
Well, the accountability pieceof it is really this is the
system or the process we'regoing to use to analyze what
just happened, and really it waskind of designed for after
action review.
Critique is what they called itback then.
In fact, that's one of theboxes in the performance
management model.

(08:29):
So you got to start with likeyour job, okay, what's my job?
Well, you're going to describeyour job in the form of an SOP,
because we use the SOPs as kindof the catalog for all of this.
And then this SOP is we'regoing to have to distill this
down because this is the waywe're going to train you in your

(08:50):
job.
So like for a young firefighter.
It's like doing task level work.
So like establishing a watersupply.
This is how you take a hydrant.
We got an SOP for that.
Well, when you're going throughthe academy.
The accountability piece is justthe recruit training officers,
teaching young candidates how totake a fire hydrant, how to

(09:13):
hook up a water supply to a firehydrant.
Well, that becomes the deal.
And they do that a number oftimes and then they figure out
okay, this is what this is, thisis the purpose of doing this.
This takes water, this putswater to the fire truck so we
could put the water on the fire.
So it's really that simple.
But when people sayaccountability, they think, oh,

(09:34):
I'm going to need a lawyer, orI'm going to go to jail because
you're going to hold meaccountable for something, or
what you're going to do isyou're going to I didn't do it,
but you're going to hold meaccountable, I'm going to be the
fall guy for this thing.
It's like, okay, somebody isgoing to get the credit, who's
going to take the fall, who'sgoing to be accountable for this
thing?
So I wouldn't let the wordaccountability.
In fact, if you got a betterword, that'll work.

(09:56):
Please send it to us and wewill replace it in a minute,
because for well, the old manwas dealing with, he didn't even
put it in.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
For that reason, no, he didn't like the word.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
He was talking about it at the end because there
wasn't another one.
There's not a synonym for, youknow, holding them accountable.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
So if you look at that first step and now we'll
start with the model but thevery first step is the
establishing the SOPs,identifying what the work is.
And, nick and I, if you look atthe silverback leadership, the
very first function that we haveafter introduction is
identifying the work and, aswe're going through this
accountability model excuse me,the silverback leadership we're

(10:38):
starting to talk about.
We had a great conversationyesterday about the worker and
the work and the workforce andhow they have a contract.
That's your contract.
So when you get hired as afirefighter, you're contracted
to do just like anybody else whogoes out and uses their skills
to deliver a service is that'sthe contract agreement between

(11:01):
the firefighter and theorganization.
So the first front end of thatis with the SOGs, sops and then
establishing those expectations.
That is the initial contractand that contract goes from
firefighters, first-linesupervisors, managers, fire

(11:24):
chiefs I think the city plays arole, the jurisdiction Having
authority plays a role andeverybody's kind of aligned
within that contract.
So that's the first part isestablishing expectations or
understanding what the actualwork is that you're going to
perform.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Well, you take three months to train them.
So ahead of that it takes ayear or two to select them.
I mean, that was the biggestpart is okay.
We got to make sure we have theright people that are going to
be the future firefighters forour department.
And then, once you hold thetest and do whatever and you do
your selection process, then yourun them through an academy and

(12:03):
that's where you train them inthe SOPs they need to know.
So basically, you're trainingthem to the firefighter one and
two level, so they need to knowall the task level stuff.
So that becomes the deal.
But ahead of that there is anemployment agreement between the
employee and the employer.
So it's work.

(12:25):
I mean, it's an occupationalthing, and that's where you have
SOPs that describe all thosetask-level chores, if you will,
that they have to be able.
The task-level actions that wetake at the incident scene, See
and that's a critical firecategory, Critical fire ground

(12:50):
factor are the actions that wecan use and as you promote up
through the task and to thetactical and strategic levels,
you have to have an expertunderstanding of that, because
that is what you're managing,the work you're actually
delivering.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
So whenever you ever heard John, you'll love this.
Have you heard a firefightersay I didn't sign up for this?

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
And what are they referring to?

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Having to do something extra like community
paramedicine or home visits orchecking a smoke detector.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Added value yeah, added value, it's really
customer service yeah so whenyou hear that, are we having a
training academy where we spendthree months spraying water?
They're already EMTs.
So we don't talk a lot aboutthe EMT response system.
They're already trained in that.
And Nick always likes to saythat's the same emergency EMS

(13:43):
system throughout the entirecountry.
So everybody kind ofunderstands what that work looks
like.
They want to be in the firedepartment.
You spend three months sprayingwater and then they go out and
they spend a lot of time goingon EMS calls.
Well hell, I didn't know I wasgoing to go on this many EMS
calls.
Well then, you didn't payattention, you didn't have your

(14:04):
eyes focused in the rightdirection, because that's what
we do most of the time, right?
So, as fire chiefs, part ofthat service contract that we
have with the employee is we'vegot to be realistic up front and
say, hey, you're going to getto go to a fire, but you're
going to go to 40 EMS callsbefore you get a chance to go to

(14:28):
one fire.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
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 (14:38):
We said a fire captain's job was managing the
tactical fun at a fire, becauseit was that's what it was right.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Well, and that's the other part of it we're a
maladaptive group of peoplebecause we run towards something
other people are running fromand there's a recreational
aspect to that.
There always has been it's afun thing to do, yeah, so if
you're afraid of going into abuilding on fire, you shouldn't
become a firefighter.

Speaker 2 (15:07):
Nobody likes to drive slow.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, exactly, we don't drive slow to the fire so
and that's really kind of thedeal.
So that becomes a challenge.
In fact, that's the biggestsafety challenge that we really
face, I think, as a service, ismanaging what we're doing on the
fire ground, and you know I'vebeen beating the balls off of
this forever.
As you look at the services weprovide, there's four main areas

(15:33):
there's EMS, there's fireresponse, there's hazmat and
there's TRT.
Of those three of those servicetypes we do not maintain.
We maintain SOPs for them, butwe're not in charge of those
task-level training programs.
Other people are Like themedical community is responsible

(15:53):
for EMS, the hazmateers of theworld are responsible for hazmat
content, the concretewhisperers are all responsible
for the TRT piece and there'sstandards there.
So when you're doing ahigh-angle rescue, there's
certain knots and differenttactics and tools that you use

(16:15):
that you have to be well-versedin and they check you off on
those before they'll let you dothose operations and then you
have to maintain your skill setsthere.
So there's ongoing continuingeducation.
The only place that reallydoesn't exist in our
occupational world is forstructural firefighting.
So we're heavily into like SOPsand the rest of it.

(16:38):
So I mean because we have tomake those training programs.
So we've been doing thisforever.
We're like departments customize, they have to take blue card
and overlay that on theirdeployment capability, right,
that's kind of what drives whattheir incident operations are
going to look like, especiallythe tactical and strategic

(17:00):
levels of it.
So, doing that, we say you goahead and do that.
Well, it's odd, because thenthey get away from the program
like totally, there's noaccountability there.
It's like, well, no, we do bluecard, we just do it this way.
And you're like well, you don'tstage.
Well, yeah, we don't do thatbecause we got to get it to the

(17:21):
scene quicker.
Well, that's, a tenant of bluecard is is you got to as certain
things are built into it.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
That's a blood pressure, a blue card?

Speaker 3 (17:33):
yeah, exactly yeah establish yeah, but well, no, we
don't like that, so we're notgoing to do it.
And you're like well, do youtake blood pressures?
Yeah, but we don't.
We don't want to, but we haveto.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Well, okay, yeah, and why do you have to?
Because it's the right thing todo.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
Because it's part of the job.
You can't do medical EMSwithout.
That's just an element of it.
So it's like strategicmanagement.
That's the biggest thing aboutthe safety for blue card.
So you know, are you we'remanaging offensive tactics or
defensive tactics, and that alsoincludes the placement of where

(18:08):
firefighters are.
We use the strategy so thefirefighters can more
effectively kill a fire.
In fact, a pure blue cardoperation is you get fire
control in the first four orfive 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'retalking about.
Blue card, you know the most,the quickest, because there's a

(18:32):
system, a process you use to dosize up when you get to the
incident scene, where you'regoing 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 theneverybody else coming in gets

(18:53):
assigned to it based on thatincident action plan.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
I just remember the most exciting part of our job
and people would fight over thatnozzle so they could put water
on that fire.
That's what we wanted to do.
We wanted to put water on thefire and knock the fire down.
Yeah, and there was fist fightsin the front yard.
The strongest guy got thenozzle right, um, or the

(19:18):
quickest, and now you havepeople kind of arguing that they
don't.
That that's not no, we don't.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
We.
We're going to fight over towho searches first or who who,
who, who ventilate and you'relike no, no, no, no, no.
That goes against all bestpractices.
In fact, if you're doing that,you're not, you're not doing,
you're going to flunk theperformance management model
piece of it You're going toidentify.
No, we didn't get what weneeded here.
The service delivery was goofy.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
For these reasons, so if you look back to the model,
which is you're going to holdsomebody accountable on the back
end, you can't hold somebodyaccountable on the back end
unless you go through that firststep of identifying what
expectations are, and the bestexpectations are those that are
written down in SOGs or SOPsright, I just want to make sure.

(20:09):
And then you take that and thenyou train people to that.
And what Nick is absolutelysaying is, if you had to put
those four areas of work up thatfirefighters do, three of them
absolutely have somebody sayingthis is how we should do it
consistently throughout thecountry, but when it comes to
hazard zone operations on thefire ground, we seem to spin

(20:31):
around and fly up each other'sarse no, whatever reason, terry.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
They didn't say should.
They said will.
There's not should in that thatthe ems directors didn't say
you should do this when they'retraining paramedics, they say
you will do this, you're workingunder training paramedics.
They say you will do this,you're working under our orders.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
So there's the should gives the option that you have
an option.
What if it's shall?

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, shall it's shall.
Yeah, yeah, you would be a goodattorney.
No, shall is different.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
As a fire chief you know the difference between
shalls and wills and shins andmaybes Well, read an NFPA
standard.
A lot of it's.
What's crazy is like they'reimplementing the system, the
performance management model, inthe mid to late 70s in Phoenix
Arizona, and so they got a bigfire and the system's newer got

(21:26):
a big fire and and and they'rethe systems newer.
And so what happened and ifyou're watching the silverback
things you see it is is avbpromoted, he became a captain
and he started implementing thiskind of process for his crew
and station he worked with andthen when he promoted again to
battalion chief, he did it forthe battalion.
And then he says it, like Isaid, if you go through the

(21:48):
programs you'll see this.
And he says when I became theoperations chief, none of them
had a choice, they were alldoing it because I ran the whole
thing then.
So that's how they implementedit.
So what they would do is theywould do an incident review of a
bigger incident let's say asecond or third alarm, the paint
store fire.
And early in the system, let'ssay they only had SOPs for like

(22:10):
level one, staging and doing aninitial rating report and then
taking command and managing thestrategy.
Well, they want to talk aboutthe tactical deployment of
companies when they come in,because that's what all of it's
about is, what's the best wayfor me to execute tactics?
And they said, no, all we'regoing to talk about is what we
got procedures for.
I said if there's not aprocedure, we're not going to

(22:33):
talk about it because nobody'sbeen trained in it.
So we'll spend the whole first90% of this thing going over the
existing SOPs we have and howwell that worked.
And then on the back end, we'regoing to talk about where we
need to improve in the futureand that may capture some of the
stuff we don't have SOPs for,and we'll start crafting those.
And so everybody understoodokay, this is we're like in the

(23:00):
first 15 minutes of this twohour movie.
So we got to write more.
And it's not that it sped upthe SOP production anymore, but
people understood the value ofit then of saying, no, if we're,
we got to write it down so wecan train other people to it.
About the same era he's talkingabout, somebody in FDNY wrote a
ladder manual for about the sametime mid 70s, mid to late 70s

(23:25):
and he said that individual,they had to hide because the
ladder companies were coming forhim, because you told the world
our secrets and that's.
You don't get to do that.
This is our culture and weinvented this and a lot of us
had to give skin for it, and nowyou just shared it with
everybody.
So that's rather cultish andself-defeating that attitude.

(23:47):
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 morepower 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 (24:03):
So you know it's interesting, because
establishing those expectationsand people who come visit us
when they would come tosymposiums and it's like, are
you guys really doing all thatstuff that we're hearing about
with the we didn't call it addedvalue then Are you guys really
doing all that be nice stuff andthey would come and they go
cheap.
You really are and we've toldstories about some of those

(24:26):
things here.
But what it was is is Brunocreated that added value as an
expectation.
And then when you, when you layout that as an expectation and
then there was even sometraining, we're into the second
step of the model.
But when you establish thoseexpectations, you don't have to
have an SOP for all the ways toadd value.

(24:49):
All you have to do is say, onthe expectations is added value
is not only encouraged, but Iexpect it as a fire chief, I
expect added value is not onlyencouraged, but I expect it as a
fire chief, I expect addedvalue.
And then that's what he saw,that's what he got, and then
that was reinforced throughpositive, positive reinforcement
, sorry, and that sets theculture up and when, so when

(25:11):
people would come here, they'relike, well, how did you guys get
to this?
The culture is set up based onthe expectations and then you
train towards those expectationsand that's what we had.
We had a fire chief the newearly on, and it's almost.
We talked about the kindnessconspiracy.
It wasn't always obvious.
Uh, he would.

(25:32):
The way he would present it it.
Oh okay, that's what we'redoing.
We're going to treat everybody.
You don't have to qualify, andthis is part of the training is
when we would talk about how wewould present our service.
We would say okay, the patientdoesn't have to qualify for your
service, they don't have tosmell a certain way, they don't

(25:54):
have to be sober, they don'thave to act a certain way, they
don't have to smell a certainway, they don't have to be sober
, they don't have to act acertain way, they don't have to
look a certain way.
They call us, we go out, wehelp them, we solve their
problem.
Now, they're not allowed to hitus, not allowed to strike us,
but they shouldn't have toqualify for our service.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
And that was a setup of that.
That's the very best thingabout a fire department and
that's really what makes thefirefighter's job the greatest
occupation that's ever existedis.
We truly are the mostapolitical organization that

(26:31):
exists anywhere, let alone thegovernment, but in private
business too, because of whatyou just said, and people say,
oh, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah.
No, we both worked at a firestation where to the south of us
was about a one square milecounty complex that included a

(26:56):
mental institution and then aprison for the criminally insane
.
There was the highest securityprison in the state of Arizona
and we would go there, I don'tknow, once every two, every six
to nine months.
We'd end up going into thatprison and you're dealing with
people that cannot be in societyanymore.

(27:17):
They're just, they're too.
They're horrible human beings.
In fact, most of them shouldn'tbe 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 woulddeliver, like I remember a
patient having a heart attackand it was an old man and you're
like I don't know what you did,but they slapped the shit on

(27:39):
him and they did the thing andwe treated him like anybody else
that was having a heart attack.
And then we took him to thehospital and like eight guards
and handcuffs and the wholething and they had mirrors and
dogs, but we get him in thehospital.
We're kind of breaking away anddoing our shit and getting
ready to go back in service, andone of the guards is like, and

(28:01):
he was almost like the same waywe were, but you know he made a
comment to the nurse about theperson and you're like, oh my
God, you know, kind ofdescribing his past history Bad
guy, oh, horrible, wretched, becareful.
Yeah, it's like oh my God.
But you know, afterwards you'relike, well, we did the right

(28:23):
thing.
We showed up and we did our job.
They call 911 because somebodywas having chest pain.
We went there and we did whatwe were supposed to do.
I mean it didn't matter if theywere the president, the Pope or
a pauper, I mean it didn'tmatter if they were the
president, the pope or a pauper.
So that's why the world loveswhen you see a fire engine.
It makes you happy inside.
It's like there is somebody thatwill firefighters never leave

(28:47):
town.
I used to say we're the lastones to leave, we don't ever
leave.
If the town is going to burn tothe ground or flood, we're
going with it.
I remember Katrina.
Our USAR team picked up a NewOrleans firefighter and he was
detached from the New OrleansFire Department.
They all were.
He says they told us to go tohigh ground.

(29:07):
And he says I lost my crew likethe night of the storm and I've
just been wandering around.
And so he hooked up with thePhoenix USAR team and then they
picked up a Coast Guard guy whoactually had a gun.
And that's where they startedwith, you know, trying to drop
off these evacuees they had intoplaces.
And the local law enforcementwas like no, get them out of

(29:30):
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 weirddeal, 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

(29:50):
, we need you.
So they all go in and they stayand they try to make the
community safe so life can goback to normal again.
That's what our job is.
So I mean, that's where theaccountability is.
Just doing your job is beingaccountable.
There's got to be a softer wordfor that.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, but I think the process once again sets up
people for success, because youtell them their expectations,
you train them on how to performthat job.

Speaker 3 (30:19):
Terry, it's the only way to get success is to go
through a process like this.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
It's so important to have the process and it's so
important for you, if you're afire chief or a boss out there
and you're trying to improveperformance on whatever level,
have a process, and then thebest thing to do is explain the
process you're going to use tothe people that are going to be
in the improvement piece.

(30:45):
So, if I'm telling afirefighter, here's what's going
to happen, I'm going to tellyou once again what I expect
from you.
Do you understand that?
Okay, you need training on it.
Okay, I'll give you a littlewhat I expect from you.
Do you understand that?
Okay, you need training on it.
Okay, I'll give you a littlebit of training on it.
Okay, now go out and do thework.
Oh, you did the work.
Okay, we'll come back here,because here's the areas where

(31:07):
you need to make a little bit ofimprovement in.
Here's the areas that wentreally well.
That's the accountability model.
And it goes back in the systemagain.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
You do that together, though, like an after action
review, they're all everybody'sjust saying this is what we had
and this is what we did.
So it's kind of like here's theconditions, here's the actions,
and see like you use that modelto 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 humanbeings it's all got to be part

(31:39):
of the training piece of it,because that's how you I mean
you indoctrinate people, youtrain them, and then I think
what your culture becomes iswhat the leadership, how the
leadership manages theaccountability piece of it.
That becomes the culture, thatdrives the culture of the
organization.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
If I could.
On top of that, though thereand I think about a couple of
employee surveys we did foremployee engagement, and the
word transparency comes up a lot.
We want transparency and Ireally equate that to I want to
know what's expected out of meand that's why we did things.

(32:20):
You know, if you don't have anSOP, you have a document like
your fire department's way.
You've done that several times.
It was done at Phoenix Fire, wedid it at my old fire
department.
So it lays out more of theesoteric things like the added
value.
So people know that's expectedout of them.
So, going into it, so you don'tneed an sop necessarily.

(32:43):
But it's really good to havewritten down how the culture of
the fire department functionsbecause 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, youknow we're, we're supposed to
be nice in our jobs.
You know those types of things.
So they know it's like hey youknow 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 youknow a lot of times the

(33:04):
accountability isn't that hardto hold people accountable for
their performance on the fireground or an emergency scene.
It's harder, with all the otherwork that we do, to hold them
accountable.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
What we talk about we were having a conversation
about it today is whenfirefighters get in trouble,
it's usually not because they'reperforming the job in a poor
way.
It's because they're treatingtheir fellow firefighter or
their customer poorly in a waythat it's going to.
If somebody read that on thenewspaper what that firefighter

(33:37):
did either to the customer or totheir fellow firefighter, it
wouldn't be a pretty day for thefire department.
And that's where we get in thebiggest trouble.
The organizations that haveproblems with culture and with

(34:10):
really creating that cycle allthe way through, from the
beginning to the end, is thepeople that do the training get.
They treat the traineesdifferent.
It doesn't match what the X.
We're going to tell you.
We're going to be nice to eachother, we're going to support
each other, we're going to dothis, we're going to do that,
and then they go to the academyand they get treated like shit
and that that's.
That's not a good match, right?
That's like telling somebody doas I say, not as I do.
So so the academy and we'vetalked about this on our last

(34:31):
show the academy really needs tobe connected to operations
because of the way that peoplewill be treated at the academy
is the way those firefightersare going to treat people on the
street.
It's got to be all aligned up.
That's another reason to have aprocess.
So even everybody understands aprocess.
You don't get to play outsidethe process.

(34:52):
The process creates theboundaries outside the process.
The process creates theboundaries.
You go through that, you gothrough the process, so you stay
within the boundaries and learnto be effective within the
boundaries, but nobody gets tobe.
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 allowthat.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
We got has companies and everybody knows who they are
.
They make a run.
Their first point of businessis to be on the scene the least
amount of time to end that callas quickly as they can.
It's just a waste of my timebeing here.
Nobody's bleeding to death inthe building as they're on fire,

(35:35):
so we used to hear that all thetime.
You're not on fire and you'renot bleeding to death.
We're leaving and I'm like, well, man, you're kind of a
douchebag.
That's so like if you calledlike your dishwasher had a
problem and you didn't want totake your dishwasher apart and
you called a technician to comefix it, and they show up like

(35:57):
two weeks later to fix it andit's some simple thing that took
them two minutes that you couldhave done.
They don't say you're a stupidson of a bitch, why'd you even
call me?
What they do is they give you abill for a hundred dollars and
say thank you very much.
Here's a sticker.
If you need me again, I'll beright back.
Yeah, you know.
In fact, I'll be faster becauseyou're a customer now.
So that's, we don't do that.

(36:20):
Well, we do do that, but thereare people who work for our
organization who don't have thatsame feeling that everything
it's like, no, it's a waste ofmy time.
It's just it's like, well, youshouldn't be here.
Somebody needs to engage you.
Your boss needs to engage youto make that more.

(36:40):
But we've all managed them inour careers, you know you said
something about the dishwasher.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
So if the world was in line with the way it should
be, firefighters are respectedbecause the way they treat
people and come in and solveproblems.
Yeah, can you imagine if everyplumber, whoever went to unclog
your clogged up toilet, treatedyou 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 houseno one another plumber's on the

(37:19):
job.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
They've got my backside 100%.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
I love those plumbers .
Like your friends and familythey all have people in their
lives, professionals, that theyfeel 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 (37:36):
That's kind of the accountability piece is just to
be a little bit better Before Iget beat too much up on the
plumber compared to afirefighter.
I realize firefighters putthemselves in positions where
they get you know, they can getinjured and hurt and die and we
get to do some things that causeus to be kind of heroic,
because I don't use that phrasethat much.

(37:57):
I don't think we're heroes, Ithink we get we.
We get in positions where wehave to do some pretty, um,
heroic type things.

Speaker 3 (38:03):
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 attacklines.
Yeah, I mean, that was, thatwas a race.
You're okay, we're all in herenow.
We're all so brave.
No, we're sick in the head.
We just love this.
No, I mean, who wants to runinto a place that it'll kill you

(38:24):
instantly or give you cancerlater on?
It's just, it's an odd mix beit a B-shifter.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
You know, those really smart plumbers are the
ones who call themselves likethe firefighters, and put the
ones who call themselves likethe firefighters and put, yeah,
yeah, there's one in every cityPlumbing 911.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
And then they get an old ambulance at an auction to
make it their plumbing.
There's one in every city.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
Phoenix Air Department.
I'm driving here today andthey're building a house around
the corner between this buildingand my house and I go by and
they're putting in the HVAsystem and that's what it is.
It's all Phoenix Air Departmentand it's painted just like a
fire truck.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
That's you're like hey, why not Powerful brand?
Well, yeah, you know Bruno usedto say if we, if corporate
America, could bottle thegoodwill and the feeling that we
get, they would.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
They would tap into that every day day the
telecommunications industry 30years ago made a three digit
phone number for all of us.
If you need the fire departmentand anywhere in America, just
push these three buttons.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Who else gets that?
I want to get back to theperformance management model,
but I just have something elseto bounce off you guys on the.
Is it my job?
Is it not my job?
So a friend of mine who's anoperations chief very small fire
department they added battalionchiefs.
They've only had them for acouple of months, they're not
very busy and the fire marshalasked one of the battalion
chiefs hey, could you go out tothis occupancy and help me out

(39:54):
by?
They need to change the Knoxkeys out in their box.
He said this is a brand newbattalion chief, not my job
description.
I didn't sign up for that andI'm not going to do it.
You know he could have addedsome value to that fire marshal
who he might need at threeo'clock in the morning for
something, but instead gave himthe bird, said he wasn't going
to do it.
What's your thoughts on that?

Speaker 2 (40:15):
I mean, the guy didn't ask him to pull sharp
objects out of his arse orsomething.
He didn't ask him to doanything degrading or
degradating what's the word?

Speaker 3 (40:28):
Degraded.
Yeah, I'm the Norm.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
Crosby of the fire department.
But it's like, yeah, I think ifsomebody asks you in a kind way
to do something and we all doit all the time yeah, and it's
something that you have the timeto do and it doesn't cause you
any problems, help each otherout along the way.
Apparently he was asking thatfor a reason.

(40:51):
Now, where did that go, though?
So I'm interested on thebackside of that story.
So he said that You've got thisyoung battalion chief who says
that so how does that?
Where does that go from there?

Speaker 1 (41:04):
I don't know exactly what he did with it, but I know
that the way and they kind of weinfluenced each other on job
descriptions and the way Ialways looked at job
descriptions is the thickest,most complicated job description
really was the firefighter jobdescriptions.
And the way I always looked atjob descriptions is that the
thickest, most complicated jobdescription really was the
firefighter job description andthen they got thinner as you go
up in rank because there's a lotof things that you really can't

(41:27):
put into that job description.
But as the fire chief I shouldalso be able to perform the
functions.
If not, you know I'm notphysically doing it, but in in
the job description as afirefighter there is something
about customer service and andyou know just doing good, you
know helping out or whatever itwas helping each other.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
now there was a city here, a fire department here who
several years ago, um, um, thetheir city council didn't think
they were busy enough so theyhad them start to dig ditches
and do cemetery landscaping.
That's bullshit.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Yeah, that's not within.
No, no, no.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
We're not saying that here on this, that we should do
everything everybody has.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
But having a functional Knox box is going to
help your fire company at twoo'clock in the morning.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Yeah, that would make sense.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
You know we were doing a deal and it was a
political ploy within our firedepartment and we were and we
were going on a lot of callswith PD like EMS calls, and PD
had to get there.
First there was the incidenceof violence, right, and so stage
for PD is what it was, and soyou'd have to wait for PD.

(42:38):
Well, and then it became a dealthat the companies, certain
individuals on certain companies, didn't want to do it anymore,
because it was mostly youwouldn't do anything at them.
The police would find out, itwas a nothing deal or whatever.
So very rarely.
But one of these individuals washigh up in the union and sat on

(43:00):
one of the committees and so hemade the suggestion during a
committee meeting that you know,if this is such an important
call for us to go on as anengine company, as a task level
responder, is we think thatthere should be a battalion
chief on it also.
So, for whatever reason,because there weren't battalion
chiefs in the room when thisdecision was made, that's what

(43:21):
they did.
So we started going on PD EMScalls like single company deals.
Well, that lasted for about aslong as it took for the chiefs
to get together to have ameeting to say, no, we're not
doing this anymore.
Well, it happened to be theunion guy, a union vice

(43:43):
president, said well, I justwanted you to know what it was
like.
And you're like well, you'rekeep rolling and if you need us,
upgrade the thing to a firstalarm and we'll be rolling.
So otherwise, just do your joband we're going to hold you
accountable for it, which is hereally didn't want to hear and
you're going to keep.
He says so, we're going to keepgoing on these.
Well, yeah, that's the way itworks.

(44:05):
When the police call for us, wetend to respond.
That's the way it works.
When the police call for us, wetend 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 weexpect them to do.
So that's an example.
Now, if the Knox box guy it wasjust a favor the guy was

(44:26):
looking for will you help me foran hour?
Do this and it's not like.
Ok, I want you to do this.
For the rest, I want you totake this part of my job and do
it forever.
Job description.
Well that's a whole.
No, that's not the way thatworks.
We can help one another in thething which is yeah, really,
yeah.
So that's what I so really, ifthe BC's boss I'd call them in
and say you know, you shouldn'tbe a dick to people, that you're

(44:49):
kind of an asshole, jimmy.
So, and I think you can saythat 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 yousuccessful, and sometimes that
means you have to controlyourself in certain ways, and
sometimes your boss telling youthat is helpful, I guess.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
So back to this process.
We started with an SOP slashexpected behavior, expected
performance Then we have totrain on it.
So, however that training lookswhether it's looking at the
document or out there physicallytraining then we do the work.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Right.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
And then once we evaluate the work somehow, how
do we evaluate so?

Speaker 2 (45:32):
the work has to be done, right, someone has to do
the work and then the evaluationis just monitoring.
You know somebody, like when afirefighter does something, a
fire captain should be watchinga firefighter not micromanaging
and all those words that wecould use, but just watch
somebody and see how they'redoing the work.
Like, even if something is anEMS call, is watching a

(45:55):
firefighter how they treatgrandma in the back room?
Is he being an asshole or is hereally being nice?
Is he being kind?
That's it.
We watch him on the fire ground.
When we're, when we whetherwe're fighting a fire or
whatever we're doing we'rewatching the firefighter do the
work.
So the supervisor everybody hasa boss.
The supervisor needs to watchthe work being done so they can

(46:19):
give some feedback, whether it'spositive or negative feedback.
So back to this monitoringperformance.
A fire company it's a team sport, right.
And whether the seniorfirefighter is monitoring the
performance of a youngfirefighter, whether the you
know, everybody kind of helpseverybody out.
That's the best way wheneverybody's kind of watching

(46:42):
everybody else.
Now we're talking about it in aformal sense here, but
firefighting really is a teamsport sense here.
But uh, firefighting is a.
It really is a team sport andyou've been on you've.
You know there's been firefighters and young fire captains
and that young firefighter.
I remember we had our incidentover here on the west side where
we had a horse trailer on itsside and we just happened to

(47:04):
have a.
I was a fire captain, we justhappen to have a firefighter who
was a cowboy.
The trailer's on his side, thehorse is inside it.
What the hell are we going todo?
I got to skip and he was ableto get that horse out off his
side and up.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
The traffic.
Loved that, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
But everybody has expertise.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
There's a ton of plumbers that are firemen Heroes
Back to of plumbers that arefiremen Heroes Back to the
plumbers.
What they do is they figure outcustomer service, and that's
what they do.
They say no man, you go in andyou're nice, I can make $200,000
a year fixing leaky faucets,just being nice to older women.
And he says they call me allthe time, they make me lunch,
I'll pay them.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
So, anyway, I guess that's what I want to make sure
that, like so, when we'retalking, there's formal
monitoring and supervising, butthen there's just helping people
out along the way too.
I mean helping each other out.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Yeah, okay, yeah, I don't think that the fire
prevention guy wanted the BC todo his job.
He just wanted some help orcompany or whatever.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
I don't know, just don't be a jerk.
I think they promoted the wrongperson into the job.
That's what the discussion is.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
It sounds like there were some issues before
Probationary period is a goodtime to find some of those
things out.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
I always say miscast.
We casted the wrong person intothis role.
Peter Principle yeah, well, youneed to bring somebody else in.
So then, after we had, after wemonitor, then we adjust.
How do we adjust what?
What?
What does adjustment look like?

Speaker 2 (48:38):
that's, that's the holding accountable, that's the
true holding accountable, whereyou say, hey, this is positive,
keep doing that, this isnegative, don't do that, but you
here's an example of adjustingis uh, we used to have hose, bed
covers, diamond plate.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
They make them at resource management put piano
hinges on one on the sides ofthe truck, hook these things up,
and then they were, uh, pressedin a way where they had lips
and they met, ouch.
And so what happened is youwould, they would catch.
They had lips and they met.
And so what happened is theywould catch, they had ridges on
them.
So, as hose is coming off,you're laying a supply line, it

(49:17):
catches a coupling.
So now the coupling is stuck.
Well, you've got a fire truckthat's going 25 miles an hour
and you're holding a humit valveWhoops.
Well, if you're in the line offire and that human valve hits
you, you are dead.
So we started in my academyclass they're like well, no,

(49:41):
you've got to change the way youtake the plug, because we had
that happen like three or fourtimes, and so this was a little
informal deal.
And so what ended up happeningis we had a safer way if
something, if your line caughtup, it just pulled it out of
your hands and it couldn't hityou.
And then eventually they saidno, you got to take these things
off, take these stupid homemadehose covers off.

(50:04):
The resource was putting themon because they got diamond
plate for nothing and they Iwill put them on every truck,
you know.
And then we can stand on top ofthe hose bed and you know it's
more stable and you're okay,whatever.
So but there's the part whereyou said oh, we got a problem.
You figured out this isn'tsupporting the work in any way,
it's unsafe.
And then it led to a coupleimprovements, and one of them

(50:28):
was modifying the apparatus toremove obstacles to the hose
coming off.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
And that's really the revision part, right yeah,
where you revise and then you goback.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Yeah, and that's usually the way it goes most of
the time, In fact, most people.
If you just tell them hey, thiswas a little screwed up here,
and it's typically a lot oftimes not even their fault,
they're just wandered into thewrong situation and took the
wrong actions, whatever that was, or they thought it was
something different.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
If you read Frank Lieb's book, the Cornerstones of
Leadership although I read thatagain, all those stories that
he said, I'm probablyovergeneralizing too much, but
it was about monitoring andadjusting Every one of his was a
story where he came upon asituation or he had a supervisor

(51:14):
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 morepositive, where it's like, yeah,
keep doing what you guys aredoing because this is working
out great.
In fact, let's, let's make thisinto a sog when we get back,

(51:35):
because this, this, uh, what wasthe one that he tells about
with the, uh, the escalator?
the wood escalator yeah, and hesaid, hey, we're going to take
this back.
The ideas you guys had makeperfect sense on the
deassembling this and andreleasing releasing the poor
victim from it and his storiesare all about, it seems like
that monitoring piece and thenadjusting and getting it back

(51:58):
into the system.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
I don't think it's any more complicated than the
way you manage an incidentaction plan.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Because you're the IC .
You're sitting there and youthink, okay, I got the lines in
place I need, I got my attackpositions established, the fire
should be going out.
Well, if the fire doesn't goout, there's a reason and it's
like, okay, I got to do a set ofthings to figure out why this
isn't working.
And then, once I have thatinformation, then I've got to
come up with some kind ofsolution and usually it's just

(52:24):
okay, change this, do this,whatever it is.
So you're using that samesystem to manage just your day.
It's the scientific method Stop, observe, figure out what's the
best way to fix this, take someaction and then analyze.
Okay, how well did I do here?
So a lot of this is the leadersknow there's attorneys out there

(52:47):
who specialize in figuring out.
You did this wrong because youdidn't go through these steps.
That's negligence and that'sbecause of the importance of our
work and what we do.
That leads to very that's whereyour risk is is not performing
or not doing what you say you'regoing to do.

(53:09):
Well, there's a lot of exposurefinancial exposure there later
on.
So I mean that's why we're allcertified in our EMS, whatever
that is.
That's the only way a firedepartment can operate.
If we just sent a bunch ofwitch doctors, it's probably not
going to go well.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
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'sno secrets, and you have a
supervisor, battalion chief,district chief, whatever the
incident, commander number twocomes up and he wants to review
that incident and he sayseverything's fine, you guys are

(53:51):
okay, nobody got hurt.
You lose respect for that guybecause 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 thisinformation on a 360, or when
you guys communicated that, oras the IC number two, what could

(54:12):
I have done better to help youguys?
But when you just get up andyou didn't monitor that's a part
of monitoring, theaccountability part you have to
watch and then you've got torespond.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
It hits you right in the face, You're responding.
You've got smoke on the horizon.
The first three companies, eachone 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.

(54:44):
I'm IC number three.
Really, I'm the senior advisor.
I got there ahead of the BC, soI took command and we're doing
the after action review.
Nobody laid a line.
Three story apartment fire ontwo levels, no supply line.
Okay, Well, I don't want to beunpopular with the guys.
Clue me in.
Where are the supply lines?
Well, well, fire went out.

(55:07):
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 tacticalchannel.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
We talked about that the other day when we talked
about being kind, and Brunicinisaid it the most unkind thing
you can do is accept poorperformance.
Yeah, as a supervisor, don'texpect gratitude for overlooking
incompetence yeah.
So when we talk aboutmonitoring, there's a way you
can train.

(55:36):
I mean, that's what we're doingwith the AAR is training people
on how to do an AAR.
Well, you can do that withinany place in the organization.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
Well see, the beauty of it is because you use the
process.
The AAR is no different thanthe initial size up and
strategic decision making model.
The strategic decision makingmodel is just a bend and twist
on the performance managementmodel.
It's the same thing.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Here's a wonderful statement.
It was in our firefightersafetyival Guide in the 80s.
Was it 80s or 90s, Bruno?
As a new battalion chief, hesays you're going to have this.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
Yeah, it was in the late 80s or early 90s.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
One of the very first , and it was.
We went through an entire cycleof an incident, a fire incident
.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Eric Victor had Farrah Fawcett hair back then.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Yeah right and the statement I'm going to hopefully
get this right.
He says that supervisors arenot empowered to overlook safety
issues.
Battalion chiefs are notempowered to not act upon those
when they're overlooked.
Like you didn't, you had to acton it.

(56:47):
So when you start talkingexpectations a really great
thing about using this modelwhen you start out talking about
using expectations in the modeland where you fit, you get to
talk about and if you don't doit, don't be surprised if I call
you on it and it's like peoplearen't surprised, like, oh,
you're surprised because I couldyou.
Are you guys surprised when,when you said you laid a line

(57:11):
and I get here and there's noline, are you surprised at that?
I'm a little irritated by thatbecause we're missing something
on the front end of this thingthey're killing me, jimmy,
they're killing me.
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 (57:30):
Hey, mike, don't get mad at me.
But no, who got mad?
Mike always got mad.
And then he'd whoop your assand take all your money, take
everything.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Bastard.
But you've got to set theexpectations up front and part
of the expectations are in theaccountability model, or
whatever you want to call it.
The performance managementmodel is if I see something when
I'm monitoring it, I'm going tocall you on it Now.
You don't have to be mean aboutit Now.
If you see it more than oncelike we've had fire captains who

(57:57):
didn't go in with their crew,they stand out in front of the
yard with their coat open on theradio and they wouldn't go in
with their crew early on, is Imade that person a permanent
IREC?
Okay, you don't get to go inwith your crew, you're going to
stay outside, in fact, becausehow would a fire captain feel
every time their crew comes out?
Hey, what was it like in there?
That's got to be a terribleRight.

(58:19):
So you know that guy didn'tlike going into fires.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
I think some of this model too.
This isn't secret sauce.
This model has to be talkedabout and we talked about it
probably every meeting we hadfor 13 years.
It's posted in the fire station.
People know that the modelexists and they know this is the
process we're going to follow.
So I really think the power init is educating everybody on the

(58:45):
model and letting them knowthis is how we get better in the
organization.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
Absolutely Go ahead, Nick.

Speaker 3 (58:51):
Well, the safety, like the safety SOPs, going back
to the safety guide, theyweren't.
They said these aren't SOPs,these are rules, we enforce
these as rules.
Others, as you had as a companyofficer, you didn't have to lay
a supply line if you're thefirst one in because we had

(59:11):
staging in the second one andyou know.
So you could work through thatand say, well, you know,
tactically, maybe next time laya line.
It would have been a betterchoice here.
And generally, yeah, you'reright, it probably would have
been.
And then the next time they laya line.
But there's other, like safetydeals that it's like no, you
don't get to run out of air in abuilding anymore.

(59:32):
So there's certain things thatit's just no, stop it.
In fact, that becomes emergencytraffic over the radio.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
You need a radio you need air, you need a plan, you
need an assignment, all thosethings.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
You've got to stage, you've got to be part of the
system, because that's how weprotect one another, outside of
delivering the service even.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
And what Bruno did is he carried that type of
mentality where this isunacceptable in the safety.
This is unacceptable withcustomer service.
You don't get to treat peoplelike that.
You don't get to treat peoplelike that.
You don't get to do that.
I don't care if the game's onand it's Sunday and it's the
Super Bowl.
You don't get to be mean topeople.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
You know, but taking responsibility for yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
Self-accountability.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
Living in a system where you could do that man.
That was the sweetest.
I mean we talk about it, it'sthe old guys going off again.
They'll piss themselves here injust a minute.
But working there was man.
It was groovy.
At the minimum you couldself-actualize and do things

(01:00:42):
that you probably shouldn't do,but because they didn't insult
the SOPs or anything else, theyjust you became a character more
than anything else.
You were OK, you had freedom tobe yourself, as long as you
would do the work and fit inwith that crew and not be mean.

(01:01:03):
It was that's the reason.
There were what did you say?
5,000 people showing up to takea test for 100 positions maybe.
I mean, it was rock and roll.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
It was fun to watch.
I don't know fun, butentertaining to watch when you
had a crew and somebody from adifferent crew would work an
overtime shift and, for whateverreason, be mean to somebody.
It wasn't quite a code red, butthere was a lot of hey man, we

(01:01:37):
don't treat people like that.
In fact, you don't get to eatlunch with us today.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
It was worse the other way.
I mean, you could take the lovetoo far, I guess, but it was oh
, we did other way.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
I mean you could take the love too far.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
I guess, but it was.
You know, you hear this.
Like today, everybody goes totheir 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 allin the main room together,
committing the same crimestogether.
It was, you were in.
It was a different.
There's always a witness.
Yeah, it was, I don't know.

(01:02:12):
There was a stronger magneticbond and then, because the
culture was positive, if youwere abhorrent to that, that's
what you became, and so we talkabout Captain Grumpy with the
ceramic plate, and so it soundsto me like there's a lot of
departments where there's moreof him and they run it and

(01:02:33):
you're like no, I don't want towork there, that's not uh-uh.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
And I also think, though and what you guys are
trying to help with theSilverback leadership program is
there's a lot of fire chiefsand fire service leaders that
don't know how to articulateexpectations and put that out
there and really know how tomanage it, because then we've
talked about the schizophrenicfire chief.

(01:02:57):
I think that solves a lot ofproblems.
Now you're still going to havethe jerks and the bad people and
stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
They don't go away.
You just have to have thesystem for dealing with them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
But if you build a culture and a department, a
department that you know the5,000 people want to come back
in line and get to, yeah thatthat there's a reason for that.
It isn't the pay, it isn't, isit?
You know?
Everyone?
Everyone pays around the samepeople have red trucks, you know
it's a.
It's the culture that peoplewant to be a part of and that's
what people wanted to be a partof in phoenix vance.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
There were classes where half you'd have a class of
30 people and half of them werefirefighters from other cities
that had 10 to five years on andthey said, no, I don't want to
work there, I want to come overhere where I know what's
expected of me and I can fit into a group that's doing
professional development.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
I'll tell you where this really pays off, because it
may not be the fire chief.
The fire chief may be thegreatest person on the planet
trying to establish this kind ofpositive culture, and the
process helps.
When you got and I'm going touse the fire ground the
strategic, the tactical and thetask is lined up, because what

(01:04:07):
will happen is, without theprocess, you could have the
nicest fire chief, but thattactical guy, whoever that is,
has a lot of opportunities.
One brick thrower can outperforma thousand bricklayers well,
like an errant training officer,yeah errant training officer,
whoever it is in the system, andthere's the captain supervising

(01:04:27):
the crew.
So when you have a process, youtalk about the process, you
post it, you use it.
It lines people up better.
You're still going to haveproblems.
We talked later in insilverback leadership about
boundary management and how youkind of get people back within
where they need to get stayingin their lane.
Staying in their lane orsending them home, you know, not

(01:04:48):
ever des Deselecting them.
We talk about the selectionprocess and Nick said how about
deselection?
Yeah, we've done that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
Well, you talk about selection, bringing them in,
picking the people that aregoing to make the best
firefighters, because you'rehiring them forever.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
I mean it's you're hiring somebody for 30 years Now
it may life has changedoccupationally and they don't
stay as long, but you got apension on the back end and
there still ain't a lot ofpension jobs out there and the
mouth breathers haven't beenable to take that away yet.
And I think it's odd to watchthe cycles of this.
See, like in SouthernCalifornia, Los Angeles, right

(01:05:26):
now, if you're a firefighter,you can't buy lunch, you can't
do anything.
They're just they smother youwith love.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
Until that one firefighter brings his whole
family yeah, but that's a wholedifferent deal.

Speaker 3 (01:05:39):
He can do that right Like after 9-11, man, it was off
the hook.
You couldn't spend the moneythey were given to fire
departments.
Seven years, six years later,they are going crazy over the
pension here.
Seven years because Wall Streetcooked the mortgage market to

(01:06:01):
nothing, so it tanked theeconomy.
Firefighters are retiring.
Our drop had just matured fromfive years ago After 9-11, oh no
, you need a drop.
You've been asking for this forso long, you selfless servants.
We're giving this to you, we'regoing to give it to you.
Well now, god bless, pat cantell me and you've got all these

(01:06:22):
benefits.
He stacked up over the 20-oddyears that he was our union
president.
So we went from here to up here.
It got to the point that hesaid at a labor management
retreat we have to puteducational requirements to our
ranks.
He says it's the only way I canjustify the pay grades.

(01:06:43):
He says if we don't do it,we're doomed.
So then the market melts andit's all.
Every man for himself.
Everyone's hair's on fire.
What's the first thing theywent after?
Firefighters pension?
Oh yeah, and they'll do itagain.
Oh, in a minute, they'll do itevery time.
It's the last, we never leave,it's, we're here until the end,

(01:07:07):
so it's.
And then what happens is yououtlast them, and so it just
keeps.
And I think, as long as we dowhat we say we're going to do
and we deliver the service andwe're nice about it, we're
nobody, we're at it it's goingto take care of itself.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Well, that's a good point to put the pin in this
conversation for today, butwe'll certainly continue it as
you guys continue on your work.
But before we go, TimelessTactical.
Truth from Alan Verdesini.
Today it's the five of clubs,and this is a longer one.

(01:07:47):
To a major extent, the commandsystem performs or doesn't
perform based on the support andbehavior of the ranking officer
bosses who operate within thatsystem before, during and after
the incident we, we just coveredthat I know that's crazy,
that's it, that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
we covered everything on that.
Yeah, that's what.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
Well, you said it before, it's like the
out-of-towners would come in andthese are like executive chiefs
from other fire departments andthey're riding along with BCs
and the rest and they're there aday or two and by the end of it
they're like you guys really dothis.
Yeah, you guys really do thisisn't?

(01:08:33):
Yeah, we do this and that's itand so much more exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
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 andthank you everyone for
listening.
We'll talk to you next time onb-shifter.