I wrote this paper to inspire discussion among Fire Officers (and Firefighters) about how we conduct the business of Fire Fighting. All professions have their own method of examining new ideas. One method the military uses is the discussion paper. In it, ideas can be offered and weighed by interested parties. It is also a mechanism for keeping professionals abreast of new concepts. My hope is that you will find something in these pages that you agree, or disagree, with strongly enough to talk about with other Fire Officers. If that happens then this paper has served its purpose. More...

Coming to work is like putting money in the bank. When you start out, your bank account is very low so you have to make big deposits in order to make your account grow. You make big deposits by doing all the extras around the station and by working hard in training and on the fireground. Sometimes you will meet a Firefighter who has been making deposits in his account for many years. He doesn't have to make the big deposits anymore because he already has a nice balance. In fact sometimes this old Firefighter is able to sit back and relax while the rookie is making deposits because he can live off the interest of his account.More...

The term "Effective Leader" implies two requirements. First, the person must be a leader. It is not enough to simply possess leadership skills or ability. To be considered a leader a person must actually lead. A leader is someone who influences a group to attain a goal. However, not all people who cause groups to attain goals are leaders. It is possible to force a group to attain a goal through threats, punishment or by eliminating other options. That is not leadership. To lead means to be in front. So to be a leader a person must have people who will follow her. People do not follow negative behavior they move away from it. By using threats or other negative means, a person can drive people but she cannot lead them. To lead them she must attract them toward her goal. More...

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In the 1980s the U.S. Army noticed that, although it had been teaching the classic decision making model to its leaders for years, almost none of them used it in real situations. When asked, most leaders could not explain how they made decisions; they just made them. So, the army hired a company called Klein Associates to study decision-making.

What Gary Klein and his company did was examine the way decisions are made by highly proficient personnel, under conditions of extreme time pressure, and where the consequences of the decisions could affect lives and property. Since experienced combat leaders are hard to come by they turned to the Fire Service. They conducted interviews with 26 officers in 7 professional urban fire departments in the Midwest. The officers had an average of 23.3 years of experience, with a range of 12 to 37 years.More...