What is it with firemen that they think they are the only ones with good ideas? You could be surrounded by 8 firemen and not one will have a bad idea. Just ask one of them and they'll tell you. Now try to get one to say that one of the other dudes ideas is just as good or even remotely the same idea and its time to slam on the brakes. You can call it hardheaded or sycophantic but in the end it's an emotional Alpha male response. We are so competitive that we stifle progress to serve our own egos. If 4 people each have the best idea ever (according to themselves) nothing is going to change. Not willingly at least. It seems to happen on all levels too...
As a firefighter assigned to a ladder company I wanted to know as much as I could about doing my job. Officers would come in and train on a very narrow aspect of the job but never really get down to brass tacks. Basics, like how to use a chainsaw or ladder placement. All of it skills based and I always felt unfulfilled after a training session. Especially if it required a lot of time and energy. I never really knew why I felt that way until I took my first week long training class out of the department. 4 instructors focused on a larger picture with a skill set to pass on. Each skill built up to a total package that could solve most rescue problems. It's what I had been missing all along. The bigger picture. Maybe my officers had it and just forgot to pass it on to me. Maybe they thought I already had it. The more likely scenario is that at one time in their career they had an idea about how to assemble a set of skills into a complete picture, drill or process and it was crushed or stifled. After it happens once or twice the well dries up on an individual level. The crew that gets shut down does the same. I present for an example a story:
I attended an out of department truck training class several years ago when I was still a firefighter. The week focused mainly on rooftop drills for flat and pitched roofs. After returning to my crew with a new systematic approach to rooftop operations I was all jacked up to show it off. I talked to my officer and he said "show us what you learned". Onto a roof we went and my buddy Jason and I showed off our new found knowledge. Holy Cow what a fiasco. We did the whole process and the first thing the driver said was "That was the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen on a rooftop". Now, I still think I have the best idea of the 6 of us on that roof and the driver has just told me it wasn't, in no uncertain terms. I wasn't going to back down so I asked him "What?" He replied "Just get up on the roof and cut a fucking hole Mike. Whats the point of cutting this hole and that hole and fucking walking all over the place? Just cut the fucking hole Mike" Now I'm insulted, as if I was the one who made this whole system up I had just showed them. So I yell back to him that "It's the only way I've been taught because you never showed me how you want it done. I had to go elsewhere to get training because all you do is bitch and moan when we go out and drill and then never even participate when we do go out!" To which he replies "Listen I've been cutting holes in roofs since you were in diapers and right now in my life I don't need or want to do this shit". In hindsight his reply was epic but in the moment I only used it to fuel the inferno on that roof. "So what the fuck am I supposed to do in the meantime. We don't go to enough fires to just learn from that. You can't find the time to show me, so I went somewhere else and learned and this is it. If you want me to do something different then fucking show me how!" At this point we are nose to nose and he has an ax in his hand that he's waving in my face to accentuate his every syllable. "You don't fucking talk to me like that or I swear to god I'll throw you right off this fucking roof!" My officer makes a move at this point to intervene and I snap out of it and start for the aerial to descend and cool off, not before some choice words between the two of us are exchanged that only make matters worse of course.
This is how new ideas are forged in my department. It's a dramatic example of the larger problem within ourselves. The utter disbelief that someone might actually have a better way of doing something. Trust in me and a willingness to at least try it was all I wanted from my crew. The system I showed them that day was eventually adopted by the entire department and is taught at our drill school today. The way we got there was not smooth in any way. In the end that interaction can teach a lot to new officers and firefighters alike. My driver didn't trust me enough to give any credit to the ideas I brought to the table. "The way we have always done it is just fine. Why change?" Is the feeling or thought or reply to a new way of doing something. We are handcuffing ourselves every time we do that. The free flow of ideas keeps us moving forward and leads us to even more new ideas. How do we take it to the next level? Ask yourself that every day you come to work. Every time you go to a fire for real ask yourself that. I'm not saying you don't already kick ass, we already kick ass most of the time but if there is a way to get even better it will take the collective group discovering and presenting that new way or idea to get there and most importantly it takes the group accepting this new idea in order to get to the next level. That free flow of ideas begets more ideas. If you shut down one member of the team what does that say to the rest of the team. If you wave an axe in someones face and threaten to throw them off a roof what are the chances he or anyone else on the team is going to offer up any new ideas in the future? Zero percent. Encourage your people to keep their head in the game by contributing to the think tank. Ask them how we can take it to the next level.
