If you think this post is about you...it is!

Sorry to offend you, but you've lost your dinosaur.

Span of Control: What do you know?

I hope to have some input by comments on this posting.

Most everyone of you have heard the term "Span of Control".

My question to you is:
1) What does it mean?
2)What number is your "Span"
3) Extra Credit: Where did this number come from?

I'll chime in if I get any reposts as comments. I'll give you a clue, the extra credit is a "Magical Number".

Stay safe, and don't do anything stupid!
Chief Bean

Fear the Uninformed but Influential

The other day I was riding home listening to the locally produced political radio talk show. The normal host was out that day and the show featured two local conservative politicians (one as has-been, the other and never-was). Both guest hosts had experience in the fire department. The has-been’s father was a paid and volunteer firefighter IN THE 1970’S, and the never-was served grits at the local Sunday breakfast. Therefore, they were both well versed in the ways of the fire service. They were speaking out against the spending of the local (not Howard) county regarding how officers made too much overtime. They discussed both administrative and field personnel should not get overtime because they were managers.

There is a clear line between management and supervision that they didn’t understand. Managers have the ability and authority to hire, fire, and discipline personnel. Having been through my share of each of these situations, I can assure you that I do not have that ability or authority.

Additionally, there are legal definitions that make clear distinctions between salaried and hourly wage personnel. Clearly they didn’t have any clue about these two key issues.

But then again most politicians look for the easy answer that supports their platform. They certainly don’t let the law or facts get in the way of them getting their point across.

Decision Making: 101

When I started my fire service career, I began a collection. Lots of firefighters have collections. Some collect fire figurines, for others its patches, I even know a few guys that collect full-sized retired engines and trucks. Some of the things I collect came easy; others I had to dig for. By now you’re getting ready to log off, so I’ll spill what it is that I collect. I collect memories.

If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, you’ll probably remember the Pensieve in Dumbledore’s office. If you’re not a fan, it was a bird-bath type of contraption that the most wise and powerful wizard used to store memories. He could look into his memories and bring them back in full detail. If someone else looked into his memories, they could observe Dumbledore’s memories as if they had been there too. Dumbledore used this bit of wizardry to carefully review long-past memories seeking out minute details, while trying to solve mysteries. Even the most wise and powerful wizard admitted that he couldn’t recall every detail regarding all his memories. Dumbledore shared some of his memories with Harry in order to “teach” him things about his enemy, Voldemort.

How unfortunate it is that we don’t have Pensieve’s in the fire service. Imagine being able to see, through the eyes of each the officers you’ve been assigned to; all the fires they have fought and learn the lessons they have learned. (I’m sure Vincent Dunn would have a mess of memories available on DVD’s).

In the 1980’s, the military wanted to learn the decision making process of highly effective combat officers. What they found was a process called Recognition Primed Decision Making (RPDM). They found that effective fire officers too used RPDM when confronted with on-scene situations. To view a very informative report on this process go to:

http://www.standto.com/rpdm.html

In short, both military combat officers and effective fire officers have a “slide-show” in their brain. When confronted with a situation, in a nano-second, the officer views their slide-show to try to best match the current situation with one that they have seen in the past. Sometimes there isn’t an exact match, but usually if you’re an experienced officer you’ve seen something similar…enough.

So now that you have a better idea about what RPDM is, what can you do with this information? As I said earlier in this posting, some of my collection came easy like learning not to touch the steel doors of the burn building without your gloves on no matter how long the fire has been out (wow, that hurt!). Other memories I had to dig for. Back when I was riding the ambulance (yes, I did!), if we had a call where the paramedic did some critical interventions, I would bug them on the way home to explain to me, what was physically happening with the patient, what intervention they did, and it changed the physiological status (or was supposed to) of the patient. I was lucky I worked with a lot of good paramedics back-in-the-day. To this day, current paramedics sometimes call me a “closet-medic”. I usually have a pretty good idea what is going on with the patient and how to alter the course though interventions.

Here is where you come in. If you’re a seasoned officer, you must share your on-scene observations and how it affected your decision making process with those with whom you work. If you’re a young-buck, ask questions without out being a pest. If an officer knows you are seeking guidance to fill your “slide-show”, they will most likely share their experiences (often in the form of war-stories) with you. There is a lot to learn.

In closing, I would like to acknowledge one of those great fire officers, and who turned my on to the concept of RPDM many, many years ago. Chief George Morgan (there is a Pensieve I’d like to glare into…or maybe not! ;-)) was always a wealth of knowledge. It was years later that I further explored the concept that I formally knew what he was talking about.

Communications 101

Question: Do you know what the term Collyer’s Mansion means? Three…Two…One: Time

I have heard a number of very knowledgeable officers use this term, and had to do a little time with Uncle Google to find out what Collyer’s Mansion means. Collyer’s Manson syndrome is another term for the disorder commonly called being a hoarder. Most of us have been exposed to a hoarder sometime in our fire service career; if not it’s only a matter of time.

The point of this posting is to reinforce the use of common language to identify common problems. On the radio this morning I heard an unit officer ask our dispatch center to make a note in our dispatch notes for this address that indicated that the house was a Collyers Mansion situation. That would be acceptable if that officer is the only person that responds, but what about the newly promoted officer, or the firefighter acting above class? Will they know what that means?

We all pretty much know what a hoarder is, if not watch the high-numbered channels on basic cable.

Pyramid

I have to apologize for my lack of contributions lately; I was pretty busy with college and preparing for the promotional process.

Recently, a good friend and I were talking about worker safety. He attended a seminar in which the presentation included a section that discussed a “Risk Triangle” shown below. If you start at the bottom of the triangle it lists unsafe practices and associates a number of those unsafe practices. The next step up the triangle shows us near misses. Up one more is minor injuries. Then it shows life threatening injuries and finally a single fatality. You may be asking what this has to do with the fire service. What the triangle shows is the progression and escalation of dangerous actions.

Look we’ve all done things on the fireground that are unsafe practices, more than a few of us have had near misses; a few have received minor injuries. Thankfully life threatening injuries are few and in the modern era, our department has never had a on the job death. I pray it stays this way.

What is often forgotten is the other basic building block listed unsafe conditions. These can be operational based unsafe conditions, but it can also be unsafe conditions in the stations, during training, or just driving to and from miscellaneous details. This could provide a significant number of “events” that contribute to our overall exposure to injury liability.

So what do you do? The pyramid is built on a wide base and each of the other levels is derived from the corresponding number below (e.g. 5,000-10,000 near misses are 10% of the 50,000-100,000 unsafe conditions/practices). What you can do is reduce the number at the base, and thereby reduce the probability of the climbing to the next level. If it takes a single employee 50 years to accumulate 50,000 unsafe practices/conditions, the employee will most likely retire before he encounters a fatal event. A different employee may reach the 50,000 unsafe practices/conditions in 5 years. If so, the second employee will most likely enjoy any retirement. The way to reduce your pyramid is to whittle away at the base. As you decrease your number of unsafe practices/conditions, your career survivability skyrockets.

Each year hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Egypt and Latin America to climb to the top of the pyramids. Let’s hope that we never see the top of ours.

Authors Note #1: The graphic represents a different industry. I believe the fire service numbers to be much lower

Authors Note #2: This logic is not an exact science, as employees could have fatal accidents long before accumulating 50,000 unsafe practices. The numeric representation is a representation meant for job/industry wide occurrence..