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All Blog Posts Tagged 'change' (16)

Courage and Valor....understated.

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Added by Dave LeBlanc on March 24, 2011 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Tools in the Toolbox

"The fire service is fascinated with acronyms. Some have been around for a while. PSI, GPM, and RIT are examples. Some others are new VSP and CRM for example. We are also fascinated with new ideas and techniques. We are focused on these new ideas to fix old problems. Maybe the problem is that we keep looking for solutions when we should just fix the problem.…

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Added by Dave LeBlanc on November 19, 2010 at 6:30am — No Comments

Is It a Full Moon?

The belief in Fate, a divine hand, or just plain bad luck is encouraged and promoted by our understanding that call volume has some association with innocuous universal truths. Friday the Thirteenth is a widely held bad luck…

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Added by Peter Lupkowski on October 19, 2010 at 9:01am — 2 Comments

New on Firehouse Zen - Art in Unexpected Places

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Added by Mick Mayers on April 21, 2010 at 9:43am — No Comments

Organizational Values - Daily vs. Emergency Ops

From Firehouse Zen:…

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Added by Mick Mayers on April 17, 2010 at 9:18am — No Comments

what's bad, is good

I know that you should save the best for last. I think though that I will begin with one of the best. This is a story that I occasionally share with certain people, at particularly difficult times in their life. This story can be read different ways by different people. What this talks about though is social perception and personal perception. This is my favorite granddaddy story. Not just…

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Added by Capt.Alex Arnold on April 3, 2010 at 12:46pm — No Comments

Leadership Lessons from a Cold War Warrior

Back in the day – I had the opportunity to do a fellowship that took me to the Ames Research Center of NASA. There, tucked in a small corner office, off of a typically bureaucratic hall was the cluttered office of an aging gentle man, who toiled in near obscurity, surrounded by small mementos of his life – autographed pictures of he and President Johnson, personalized memorabilia from Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and memorial tokens of Gus Grissom – who was a personal friend, lost in the… Continue

Added by Chris Carlson, PhD on November 20, 2009 at 1:11pm — 2 Comments

The Monkey Parable and Resistance to Change

Once upon a time, some researchers conducted an experiment. They obtained five monkeys and placed them into a single cage. In the center of the cage was a stairway that terminated in thin air. After a hungry night in the cage, the monkeys saw a researcher lowering a bunch of bananas through the bars above the stairs. The monkeys immediately charged up the stairs toward the food. Other researchers immediately blasted the monkeys with ice cold… Continue

Added by Ben Waller on June 7, 2009 at 10:12pm — 4 Comments

Play Nice With Others

I posted a blog on Firehouse Zen yesterday relating to evolving and changing with emerging issues and reflected on how even if we try to ignore it, the world around us is moving forward. Failing to move on from the past is only going to keep us from surviving.

This morning I was listening to Alan Dershowitz discussing President Obama's new supreme court… Continue

Added by Mick Mayers on May 26, 2009 at 10:57am — 2 Comments

Constant Battle

From Firehouse Zen: I am never surprised by the willingness of firefighters to fight for what is right. I have officers that work with me as well as friends throughout emergency services who seem like they are perpetually locked in battle with someone over something, and having been one of those people myself for a number of years, I know how exhausting and frustrating that mode of… Continue

Added by Mick Mayers on March 14, 2009 at 7:38am — 6 Comments

Life Changes In A Split Second

From Firehouse Zen:

The other day I think we all were thinking about the death of the child struck by a Kansas City engine as reported by Firehouse.com. As you have probably heard thousands of times before, it doesn’t take too many incidents like this one to remind you that we have a huge responsibility while driving our apparatus, and even when all… Continue

Added by Mick Mayers on March 7, 2009 at 6:30pm — 7 Comments

Everyone Has Their Parking Lot Somewhere

Like I was discussing in my blog at Firehouse Zen, experience is useless without learning from it. As an officer with a few incidents under my belt, I too have my parking lot somewhere as a stark reminder of my failures and inadequacies (this isn't it, by the way). When I need a little humbling, I take a little spin by the ol' place to remind myself of what I was like as a young officer.

Unless you… Continue

Added by Mick Mayers on January 18, 2009 at 10:00pm — 5 Comments

Open Your Eyes in 2009

From my blog at Firehouse Zen:

What have we learned in 2008? Are we better off here on the threshold of 2009 having experienced so much in the last year? Or are we destined to repeat our mistakes? Are we advocating better cardiac fitness for our troops? Are we beating the seatbelt issue into their heads on a daily basis? Are we telling them that it’s silly to fight fire without using proper PPE and… Continue

Added by Mick Mayers on December 30, 2008 at 4:23pm — 10 Comments

Rebel or Revolutionary - You Make the Choice

With all of the change going on in the atmosphere, I was contemplating the difference between being a rebel and a revolutionary. It seems to me that there are plenty of firefighters who are a little mixed up and don't understand the difference. The problem is that while revolutionaries effect change in a situation, rebels simply refuse to obey.

Why should that matter? When we… Continue

Added by Mick Mayers on November 5, 2008 at 11:11pm — 2 Comments

R.E.S.P.E.C.T

If you weren't aware of it, that spells "respect", just like Aretha Franklin said so many years ago. So what is it? Why is it so elusive in emergency services? When you read the blogs and posts here on the Nation, so much of what is bandied about is the need for respect or the apparent lack of respect. Some of it is directed at respecting your elders (the crusty officer in your crew), respect for the youngsters (those probies you endure), respect for the opposite gender, and the public's… Continue

Added by Mick Mayers on February 29, 2008 at 9:36pm — 7 Comments

There Is No "I" In Team

It seems to me that there are those of us bonding as a team here to improve the fire service, which is pretty cool when you think about the fact that we're spread all over the country and some of us have never met. It made me think about teamwork and what composes a team, and about the inner workings of teams that make them special.

Teams like the Patriots and the Giants (for some of you, these are football teams) and their trip from the beginning of the season that culminated in a… Continue

Added by Mick Mayers on February 14, 2008 at 10:53pm — 13 Comments