My Board

I'm glad you didn't get hit. You probably would've really damaged the car...
Thanks for sharing. This is very applicable to CCFD as we don't make many calls to the highway.  I was very comfortable making runs to the highway where I worked previously, as was everyone that worked there. Now that I work at CCFD and we don't make many runs on the highway, i view the risk higher because of the low frequency of the crews making these calls.

Describe a time when you were “playing in the top left box” and what was the outcome? Early in my career when I worked for West Carrollton, we were working a extrication on the highway. I was asked to retrieve a tool from the truck. When I walked around to the other side to get it, I was nearly struck by a car.

What did you do to handle the situation? I quickly realized how dangerous the environment was and warned everyone else. I assured it was safe then retrieved the tool.

Is there anything you would have done differently? Knowing what we know now about vehicle placement, we should have had another appratues blocking the scene for us.

What have you learned to assist others to be prepared for things that fit into this category? I have shared this story with several other people and stressed the importance of situational awareness and scene safety.

A lot of us like to apply Gordons Risk model to runs, whether Fire or EMS.  For the sake of this thread and discussion, I would like to apply it to public relations/interactions.
A time that I fell into the "top left" was when I had to address/deal with a public complaint. A citizen called the firehouse and wanted to complain that the crew took too long to respond to their request for EMS Service.  This falls into the top left for several reasons. 1. We do our jobs correctly 9 times out of 10. 2. We rarely get complaints because we do our jobs well. 3. When we get complaints, I don't have to deal with them usually. 4. The risk is considerably high because one bad service delivery could affect many people and greatly destroy our public trust and future.
OF course, I apologized, looked into the complaint, apologized, followed up after I investigated, and ensured this was atypical and would not happen again.
I would suggest to others to be able to recognize when you are operating in the top left and seize the moment as a learning experience.  Remember-If its uncomfortable it's unfamiliar, and that is the learning zone.

One of the big problems with holding the home owners liable would be the insurance companies involvement. Insurance companies are cost driven.  They don't want to lose money even if it means not doin the right thing.  This is one f the reasons why you see insurance companies coming after fire departments for action or inactions taken during extinguishment.  Fire departments have bigger pockets than home owner and that is why they are coming after us.  So I strongly doubt insurance companies would go after home owners.  If they did it would be to get out of paying a claim. 

I believe that there will be a significant reduction in the use of interior firefighting in the future but I do not think that it will be completely eliminated.  We have definitely become smarter at how we handle fires with controlling the flow path, transitional attacks, and understanding the survivability profile of conditions.  While all of those things combined have decreased the exposures and length of time in the hazardous conditions, we still have the duty to act to protect life and property.  We do have continue to push forward in the advancement of technologies available in the protection of the fire service’s largest asset; us the Firefighters.

Utilizing Level A suits sounds like a great concept; however, this concept sounds like a logistical and fiscal nightmare.  This concept brings thoughts to mind of where do we store them on the apparatus, how many to store, who holds the monetary responsibility of replacement, etc.

The statement of holding property owners liable for having a preventable fire in their structure does sound like a far reach, but is not entirely out of the question.  However, I believe that would responsibility would lie with the insurance companies to deal with rather than the fire departments.
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My narrative is not necessarily with a specific person or directly relating to a problem employee. This is more about outside influence and previous experience not matching CCFD expectations leading to excuse being made “ That’s not what we do at….”

Problem: Inherited Poor Performer/Excuse Meister Combo.
Description: Previous experience and conflict while conforming to CCFD procedures.

As a career member in our organization I found myself routinely being assigned to equipment with new part-time members. The new members would come to our organization with a wide range of experience. The range spanned from brand new never worked a day in the fire service to guys with over a decade of all part-time service.

The inexperienced members would not resist CCFDs expectations, while the long time part-time from other places would reluctantly comply to our higher expectations. Often times followed by the statement “that’s not how we do it at my other job.” The first couple of times I heard that it was just noise to me, I paid no attention to that statement. After a few times I started to be annoyed with that statement. I would point out that our medics and fire trucks don’t say “JEMS” or “Washington Township” on the side. My reply was deliberately snarky and short.

None of the resistance to conform was malicious or poorly intended. The common operating procedures simply varied from the expectations from a lackadaisical and low accountability system. Our organization has higher standards that needed to be explained, coached and practiced. Examples being: Gear set out and tagged in at the start of shift, truck checks done early, EMS restocked while at hospital and house duties performed without being directed to do so. Other tasks would include dressing a hydrant, pulling and reloading triple load attack lines and apparatus placement. These all seem natural to most of us. Other less organized departments lack daily routine, training and accountability. We have all worked at a department with a lower bar of expectation.

These employee “issues” provided me an opportunity to develop a new employee with our procedures.
Coaching the new employees with our procedures was beneficial for me with constant review of how we operate, where we keep things and what we do with them.

Outcome: Leading someone to success is accomplished with proper coaching. Setting expectations, explaining rationale and practice to reinforce procedure comprehension will lead to better performance.
Failing to do this in advance of an issue is poor management.

When preparation meets opportunity success is achievable.

These issues or problem employees may not be a thing while they are working at "the other places"  but organizations do have different standards for many difffernet reasons.  I am glad we are at an level that we can simply tell these people to leave and that CCFD is not for them.  CCFD is not perfect by any stretch-as no fire department is but if an employee cant get on board with how we do it then they need to hit the road.

The problem:  lazy under performer
This employee is a seasoned ff with many years on the job.  They have a wealth of valuable knowledge and often times could be a great contributor to the crew.  The problem was that this employee seemed to think that since they were "seasoned" and had newer people under them, that they could slack and not meet minimum requirements.  In this case "seasoned" did not imply mastery of skills or high performance as most would think.  Often times this employee was seen in the back of training's and would never participate unless forced to.  When they were forced to participate, their attitude would be terrible and often affect others attitudes.  This could fall into another problem category but to me this was lazy (and selfish) which then lead to under performance. Due to this employee not participating and staying up to date on skills, abilities and new techniques, their performance on actual calls was seen by myself and other members of the crew as poor.  They would use old methods on calls while others were using more up to date methods.

What I learned:
Although i agree that as you near the end of your career you should be able to relax a little and let the new young guys take over, i also feel that you still need to pull your weight and set a good example for the new guys to want to portray.  Once i addressed this with this person, they seemed to understand and not realize that this was happening.  They also did not realize how this impacted others.  No excuses were made.  Performance was brought back up to acceptable and a slight attitude change was noted.

What strategies do you use to manage your time effectively? 
I try to do easier tasks/assignments as soon as i receive them.
Harder task/assignments i begin to work on and attack immediately also but realize these will take more time and need more management.


What are some of your biggest obstacles to you managing your time effectively? 
Some obstacles are personal life aspects such as family, kids, other jobs, hobbies.
Sometimes not having all the information needed is a major obstacle.  This lack of information could be the result of others working on something with you and not completing their part, or it could be information that you need to gather and act upon.


What can you do to remove some of these obstacles?
Most obstacles cannot be removed but instead managed or lower priority put on them.
Obstacles that involve other people or waiting for other people to complete there responsibilities is not managed as easy but can be decreased by open communication with the other person.