THANKSGIVING is one of those special times of the year. The weather is great, football is in full swing, and there are lots of family gatherings that center around the table. The table holds spectacular culinary delights in which we overindulge, putting ourselves into food comas! If you don’t make it to the table, it’s a given that you’re going to be talked about.
- The Firehouse Kitchen Table: The Importance of the Morning Meeting
- Standard Operating Procedures: The First Step to a Safer Fireground
So much of the fire station culture revolves around the kitchen table and the meal. Away from our stations and homes are the great tables where discussions are held, decisions are made, policy is developed, and a host of other things happen that affect our day-to-day life and work. Having a seat at the table where this takes place is an essential part of progress and success. Not being at the table means that your perspective, experiences, and knowledge are not intertwined in the discussion and are potentially left out of consideration on any decisions that impact your ability to perform your work.
This is true whether it’s a local standard operating procedure that is being developed, an apparatus specification, the design phase of a training building, your gear and equipment specifications, and the list goes on. These decisions directly impact you and your department. On a grander scale are national organizations that meet at the table to discuss standards and codes and conduct research.
This is definitely not the sexy part of the job. There is only metaphorical smoke. The fire may surface as a heated debate. And, frankly, your average firefighter type wants no part of it. This is a long, boring process of sausage making—it is always well intended and almost always has unintended consequences. These meetings are most often facilitated and attended by chief officers and the senior leadership of the organization. Hopefully, tactical operational policies are discussed and developed at a much lower level, closer to the work. We get ourselves into trouble when we start trying to create tactical policies with a group of people who haven’t been tactical in years!
We tend to focus on solving the problems as we remember them and not how they actually are at this moment. It is important to always include several members from each rank who will be directly impacted by the policies being created or revised. This presents us with a dilemma. We have people dictating procedure far removed from the actual work and people performing the work without having any motivation or desire to sit in meetings and discuss it because they perceive it as a long and arduous waste of time.
Both the fire department leadership and rank-and-file have the responsibility to turn the tide. Department leaders need to recruit and provide the path to participation. They must inspire and motivate members to want to be part of the process. The rank-and-file members need to speak up and speak out that they want a seat at the table. Members with good emotional intelligence are needed on all sides so that differences can be debated and compromises and agreements can be reached without drama and emotional distractions.
Firefighters are well known for being cynical. This trait is developed over time as our members experience very slow government bureaucracy and a host of unmet expectations. The reality is most of us just want to be firefighters. We want to do training and learn. We want to take care of and maintain our equipment and we want to help the members of our community. This often comes with great sacrifice of ourselves and our own needs. We are conditioned to expect disappointment in some organizations to the point that we give up and just make do with what we have. We spend our own time and money repairing equipment and taking up the slack. We have to develop workarounds to outdated policies and, in some cases, flat out violate them just to function. This puts us on constant edge and under an unnecessary level of stress. It’s no fun getting to the scene and having to make moral decisions to do what is right for a citizen instead of following a checklist created out of fear of liability. Nothing is worse than receiving disciplinary action for attempting to save a life. But yes, it happens!
All of this can be avoided if the leadership and members come together at the table to establish a meaningful mission statement free from corporate jargon and buzzwords and then develop and revise policies that focus on the accomplishment of the mission.
At the state and national levels, we need a balance of administrators and operators at the table to ensure that standards reflect the needs of the communities and the fire service at the level where the service is delivered. There are opportunities for firefighters to fill these seats through the International Association of Fire Fighters. At a minimum, every one of us can engage in public comments when legislation, standards, and codes are being reviewed or developed. Your input and experience are vital to making the process work. If you are not at the table, then you will have to settle for the leftovers. Pull up a chair and make a difference!
