The House Divided.
This is an issue that plagues every station. It has infected
every agency at any given time.
It doesn’t always appear in a time that you would expect. I always
thought that it would arrive around low morale times or periods of intense
conflict, like budget problems or highly contested promotions, changes in
leadership models or expansion of services but I can’t correlate it to those
things.
It seems to be part of the cultural divide. It appears that holding
accountable has somewhere along the way gotten mixed in with lack of oversight
and many other things. It looks to me like there are lots of people that know
how lots of people should be doing there job but go on not being able to
skillfully execute theirs.
Its is important for you to remember something, its up to
you to “Do your job”, Mark VonAppen has put this to the boards time and time
again. DO YOUR JOB! Not what you think the Chiefs job is, not what you think the
Captains job is, not another officer or firefighters job. Do what you are
assigned. You must do YOUR job, you must do it proficiently and must do it
without haste and to the best of your ability. If you do that every single time
you are setting the expectation. This generates the expectation that you are no
longer going to accept anything less than this level of accuracy.
If you want to set standards you are going to have to be
willing to set the standards and maintain them as well. As a leader or a
follower remain consistent. Its at the heart of building things to be better.
I challenge you to join the ranks of the people who live
what they teach, who walk there talk.
Live what you read, promote directed and intelligent change,
and be willing to move mountains if that’s what it is going to take to make
things better. Not just for you. Do it for the others on the line, for the
crews to come and for the communities that we serve.
Be Ready. Be Willing. Be Present.
No comments:
Post a Comment