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Training is important, but is perfect practice really necessary?
From my Kitchen Table blog at: http://thekitchentable.firerescue1.com/
Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach once famously said "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."
Old Vince had a good thought but face it, perfect practice on a regular basis is unattainable for most people. More importantly, is perfect practice really important to the fire service?
An unknown author's reply to this was "Practice makes perfect, but nobody's perfect, so screw practice."
Frankly, this is a really bad idea - don't give up before you start, or you have no chance of success except by sheer luck. What we do is much too important to trust only to luck.
I think my brother John has the best solution. He once told me that "Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough."
A little background on this...John is a cardiac anesthesiologist. He has been keeping patients alive during open heart surgery for over three decades. His explanation is that if you try to be perfect in the details of everything you do, you tend to get distracted by details. That often leads to missing an important part of the overall picture. When you're working on a critical process, if you achieve a workable solution to 100% of the problem, you're going to be successful almost all of the time. If you achieve perfection on 90% of the problem, the 10% you don't get to may kill a patient, a firefighter, or someone else.
Let's practice until we're good enough at everything we do.
Vince Lombardi, the legendary Green Bay Packers coach once famously said "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."
Old Vince had a good thought but face it, perfect practice on a regular basis is unattainable for most people. More importantly, is perfect practice really important to the fire service?
An unknown author's reply to this was "Practice makes perfect, but nobody's perfect, so screw practice."
Frankly, this is a really bad idea - don't give up before you start, or you have no chance of success except by sheer luck. What we do is much too important to trust only to luck.
I think my brother John has the best solution. He once told me that "Perfect is the enemy of Good Enough."
A little background on this...John is a cardiac anesthesiologist. He has been keeping patients alive during open heart surgery for over three decades. His explanation is that if you try to be perfect in the details of everything you do, you tend to get distracted by details. That often leads to missing an important part of the overall picture. When you're working on a critical process, if you achieve a workable solution to 100% of the problem, you're going to be successful almost all of the time. If you achieve perfection on 90% of the problem, the 10% you don't get to may kill a patient, a firefighter, or someone else.
Let's practice until we're good enough at everything we do.
Add a Comment
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Comment by Jason Koontz on February 18, 2009 at 11:30am
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Seems to depend on the task you're referring to as to just how perfect you need to be. Attention to detail is imperative, but if you spend all your time with the details, you lose your focus on the big picture.
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Comment by Ben Waller on February 18, 2009 at 9:13am
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John,
I think both are important, but gearing up properly is more important than if you get the gear on in 59 seconds or 61 seconds. I've seen students wear oversized, improperly-fitted gloves, coats, etc. to make it easier to gear up in a hurry. That kind of misses the point if they have to hit the burn building or a real fire with gear that lets superheated air inside the coat or gloves that are too big and can easily be pulled off. I don't want to hear "But I got the gear on in under 60 seconds" in the burn unit.
As for how to affect the academy's standards and enforcement, there is only one way to affect that change. Llobby the state chief's association, the instructor's association, the firefighters association, and especially the fire academy advisory committee with a coherent plan that states how you believe the current practice needs to change and more importantly, why. If you don't have the numbers backing you, you'll likely not get much traction.
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Comment by John Schander on February 18, 2009 at 7:29am
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Ben, as an instructor, and going by what you have said in this thread, what do you think of the SC academy's new rigid adherence to the time limits in 1152 for getting your turn outs and your air pack on. Is it better to make sure your peaple are dressed properly or quickly and how do we get the academy to be more reasonalble about the standards?
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Comment by Jeff Betz on February 16, 2009 at 9:21pm
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My simple response to your question? ... NO. OK, now add in all the very well written comments for and against the topic, but in the end, I say no, it is not absolutely necessary.
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Michael,
I've seen engines that did exactly what you said...they practiced until they had hoseline deployment down to a fire art - they were perfect. Then they went to fires where one little detail was different than the detailed, perfect practice they had down, and their previously-perfect hose deployment was a complete disaster. Hose deployment is not an exact science. You need to be able to get the hose off the rig, around obstacles, through doors, and up or down stairs/ladders. You need to be able to get the nozzle to the seat of the fire with enough hose left to maneuver and advance anywhere that's still burning, and in a timely manner.
It's possible to overtrain to the point that our firefighters react instead of thinking. We need firefighters that think instead of merely reacting.
I've seen classes that teach removing a SCBA as a "go to" survival technique. We teach it in my department, but we first teach quick ways to make the hole bigger so that you can pass through a wall breach or other obstacle without engaging in a high-risk behavior like SCBA removal.
There is a big difference between looking for details and practicing so many details of one operation that we don't practice four other operations at all, too.
Being proficient in everything we do, instead of perfect in one or two is what gives us the best chance to go home.
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Comment by Michael Bates on February 15, 2009 at 12:31pm
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Ben I could not disagree with you more. It is the lack of paying attention to details that get's people hurt and killed. I wrote a blog posted on my profile several months ago on this exact theory. Now while I agree that making sure the folds on a hose bed align perfectly is silly, that's not the perfection we need to attain. The assurance that the hoseline deploys properly(perfectly)is what matters most. The key is that, what we do as firefighter's is by nature hard in the best of conditions. Once you add in the uncontrollable elements of weather, location, and the man made obstacles we encounter on a daily basis performing tasks that you have not perfected put my life and yours in jepoardy, as well as everyone involved in the incident, responder and victim alike.
The details, are what make or brake an incident. The details are what we teach people to look for upon size up. it's not just if there is smoke it's the color, amount, location and speed at which it's moving.The details are why we teach people how to take off their SCBA to move past an obstacle and put it back on, the details are why we use a tool to check the roof before we step on to it, and why we looked to see where the overhead wires were before we try to put up the ladder.
Perfecting my skills give me a better chance of going home after an incident, my whole company perfecting their skills give me an excellent chance of going home after an incident. Perfect practice makes perfect.My wife and daughter expect me to be perfect.
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Andy,
No confrontation assumed or intended...we're just having a conversation.
Ben
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Comment by Andy Marsh on February 14, 2009 at 1:40am
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Ben, I wasn't trying to be confrontational. After reading your response, your post gets a little clearer for me.
(The stuff that keeps us and the customers alive - go for perfection.)
(For example, I want to see my firefighters gear and SCBA worn perfectly every time.)
I get this and you are spot on and I share your sentiments. Looking at what you said about repacking the hosebed to perfection over and over again, to me isn't training. Is it a part of a training program, yes. But if you doing it just for show only or even punitively, your training program may suffer. For me, I have a problem with the "squirting water" drills. If you have no tactical purpose or educational thought behind it, what good is going to come out of that ? What do they really learn? Good conversation here, Ben. I wish you well in your continuing efforts. I hope we get to talk more.
TCSS.
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Comment by Michael Fish #89 on February 13, 2009 at 9:21pm
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My philoposhy on practice is, the way we practice is the way we do things at game time. It's all the simple things at drill that people complain about, the things that are tedious and minute that they dont want to practice. Then they get to a scene, and have to stop and ask questions like "why are we doing it this way," or "I wasn't paying attention at drill, where is it and how do we us it?" My mentality is to try and practice all the small things that nobody wants to do because I like being the go to guy. When I go to drill, I practice as if it were "game time" every time. This way I dont forget to do the simple tedious things. I know its not a perfect, but perfection is kind of attainable. At the time, everything might seem perfect, but there is always room for improvement.
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Andy,
I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to do our best in training. My point is that training sometimes gets bogged down in details or trivia that isn't really important to the overall outcome. If we train so that the overall outcome is good enough for the customers, then the customers are going to be happy. I'm in no way advocating training for mediocrity here, but we have to do so many different things with limited time - and now with VERY limited budgets - that we simply are not going to be able to do everything perfectly. The stuff that keeps us and the customers alive - go for perfection.
For example, I want to see my firefighters gear and SCBA worn perfectly every time.
On the other hand, I've seen officers that insisted on packing and repacking hose until the folds were perfectly aligned. I have nothing against a good-looking hose load, but the purpose of a hose load is to be able to deploy it quickly and efficiently, not to have the folds perfectly aligned. Get the hose load looking "good enough", pull the cover down, and start on something else that affects the really important outcomes. I've been a firefighter for 34 years, and I've never seen a fire go out any faster because the hose folds looked perfect yet.
Ben
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