Gordon Graham here. This is my monthly opportunity to say hi (and thank you for your fine work) and to give you some thoughts on what I see going on in public safety today and perhaps give you a look into the future of our profession.

February was a tough month nationally on public safety personnel with too many deaths and injuries. Los Angeles was hit hard with the tragic loss of Officer Simmons of LAPD. He indeed was a fine man and his loss will be felt for a long time. Sadly many other firefighters and cops perished this month around America and each has an individual story of how they lived and how they died. While this issue is extremely important, it is not my focus today.

While this February was a leap year, it still flew by pretty quickly. My dad told me years ago that the older you get, the more quickly time seems to pass by. His theory, and it makes sense, was that when you are ten years old a year is one-tenth of your life but when you are fifty years old a year is one-fiftieth of your life.

And with that in mind, I guess I am in the last third of my life (from an actuarial standpoint) and my guess is the next thirty or so years will fly by unless something unexpected happens. While I don’t work the street anymore (like many of you still do with all the risks attendant to that job) I still face risks including transportation issues, health issues or international issues like North Korea or Iran getting a delivery system for a nuclear weapon or we get hit by an errant asteroid or some other cataclysmic event occurs. I try to manage the risks I face and I hope to live a full life.

Regardless of how long life is the smart people in the world are looking into the future to see what the future holds. Those who make the most accurate predictions regarding “where we will be” will prevail, and those who ignore this type of “strategic thinking” will continue to be the laggards.

Thirty years ago Ford looked into the future and saw SUV’s. Thirty years ago GM looked into the future and saw SUV’s. Thirty years ago Toyota looked into the future and saw China spooling up its national economy, and hundreds of millions of people will be hitting the workforce. Toyota also saw the same going on in India.

So we will have in excess of a billion more people hitting the workforce, getting cars, and using more fuel oil. And since there is a limited supply of oil in the world, the price of oil will go up and the price of gas will go up and at some point Americans will lose their love affair with the SUV.

And thirty years ago we were paying fifty cents a gallon for gas and yesterday I gassed up a Hertz car outside of Fresno for $3.79/gallon (and there was a fellow there complaining about the price of gas and I noted he was drinking a two dollar bottle of water – oh yeah you are a bright one. Who would have ever thought to put tap water in a bottle, give it a fancy name and charge more for it than gas costs) and I surmised that Toyota did a better job of looking into the future. And not to be a harbinger of bad news, but oil is now past the $100/bbl mark, quickly approaching the price of “Aquafina”.

Speaking of oil, Southwest Airlines made a wise move years ago by locking in jet fuel purchases at a relatively low rate and that resulted in some substantial profits. Someone there took a look into the future and made a very smart purchase. I have witnessed similar strategic thinking by land developers and people who buy and sell “futures” and recently with people who were loading up on gold when it was $300 an ounce. I now see that gold is closing in on a thousand dollars an ounce and how come I did not think of that and so it goes on and on.

So what does the future hold for the fire service? I do not have a crystal ball on this, but I peruse the occasional “futurist” websites and see concerns about global warming (still an issue of debate), ozone issues, water shortages, massive migrations of people, pandemics, terrorism (I am in Boulder City this morning and one of the top stories here is the Ricin discovery in Vegas and if that happens in Vegas it won’t stay in Vegas), increasingly violent street gangs with ties to terrorist groups, technology improvements, an aging society and infrastructure, and a myriad of other “risks” that will probably impact the future of our nation and the future of the fire service. However, I cannot predict with any degree of accuracy exactly how serious the impact of these issues will be.

What I can predict though is that you and I will continue to get older, and that you (I am already there) will retire and that someone will have to fill your job. And that someone will leave a void in their current position in your department and we will be filling the lower level positions with “new hires”.

So who will your department be hiring? Here is a statement that is guaranteed to generate some hate mail. Fifty years ago you did not have to be that smart to be a firefighter. I know that fifty years ago you did not have to be that smart to be a cop. To be fair, we had some really smart people working for public safety agencies then, but some were not too bright and there was a time when a person of average intelligence or even a bit lower than average could pull it off and get the job done.

I worked with some of the people who were hired in the 50’s and while most were great people, many of them were not all that “quick on the uptake”. It really did not matter at that time, because public safety was substantially different then. The job required strength and cunning and bravery and the ability to follow orders without question.

Now you may disagree with the above, but the job of a public safety professional today requires women and men who are bright and who know how to think. I have never been a firefighter, but the more I learn about your job (particularly today with the complexities of EMS and HazMat, the urban/wildland interface, code enforcement and inspection activities, the Disaster Management responsibilities that many of you have and even the increased complications of suppression activities) the more I recognize that your job (and my former job) requires very smart people.

And where are these “sharp and bright new hires” going to come from. Our great country is not doing all that well on educating the next generation of Americans. We are so far behind other industrialized countries in so many areas of educational achievement – and there does not seem to be a master plan in our country to address these ongoing failures.

The Wall Street Journal today had a lead piece this morning on how Finland is turning out some of the smartest kids in the world. I have no feelings pro or con about Finland (although if I were bottling tap water in Long Beach I would name it Fin-Aqua) and I don’t want to live there and I don’t want to send kids there for school, but our great nation needs to be thinking about seriously improving the quality of education. I don’t speak to you here as a Democrat, or a Republican or a Libertarian – just as another American concerned about our future.

Couple in a generation of youths with many of them mired in drug abuse, gang violence (another top story this week is the shooting at the bus stop in South LA), broken homes, and all sorts of other serious issues and it will become more and more difficult to fill our ranks with the bright, hardworking, ethical, moral personnel that we will need in 2030 and beyond.

In my little world, all of the above is an identifiable risk and thus is a manageable risk – if we take the time to think things through and develop control measures. Certainly, “succession planning” is becoming more and more common in fire departments and I am happy to see that more and more “fire conferences” have speakers and presenters that are addressing that issue.

But what are we doing to “get” the best and the brightest young people who will be our new hires to fill the open positions that will occur when people move up in your organization? A friend of mine in Washington State, Larry Sagen, is doing a lot of good work with “Fire 20/20” with the goal of improving the quality of our incoming personnel.

Fortunately, he does not stand alone with his great work. There are a lot of other approaches involved in “getting and keeping” good people but it starts with recruitment. We need to revisit the way we recruit – and I think we need to start now rethinking how we “get” people into the testing process. The old thinking that “good people will just show up” I think is wrongheaded and no longer the best way to recruit. There is certainly some benefit to having a robust “Explorer” program, an active presence online, and job fairs occasionally are beneficial in attracting new hires and some agencies are offering bonuses for new hires. These are good ideas, but let me give you this thought.

I would love to see everyone (including all retirees) in the fire service take personal accountability to find the next generation of women and men to fill your ranks. “Multiple hands make light work” is something my Mom used to preach. If everyone in your department made it their goal to find one good woman or one good man – just once a year you would have a wide, deep and broad applicant pool.

And if everyone in your department made it their goal to find one such person just once a month, you would have an applicant pool twelve times that big and one that is so deep, so wide and so broad that you could pick and choose among the best of the best and get a workforce that reflects the relevant workforce present in your community. That is “Human Resources” talk for getting a workforce that mirrors our community – and that is extremely important.

So where do you get started? That kid who bagged your groceries today may well be the future of your fire department. That young woman sitting down the pew from you in Church this weekend may well be a future firefighter. That young man who checked me into the hotel last night might be the future of my department. I scooped an ice cream cone for a CHP officer in 1970 up in San Francisco and our subsequent conversation led to me having a pretty good life.

In a nutshell, everyone in your department (and your profession) needs to be constantly on the prowl for the next generation of fire service professionals. Working together at this can make a huge difference. And remember the people we hire today will be the company officers and Chiefs in the future. Please take this seriously.

And if you do not think this is your job – I guess I cannot do anything about that. But if you are not out there daily trying to recruit for your profession, then please never complain about the quality of the new hires. The quality of applicant will suffer if we don’t think strategically regarding this issue. You have direct, personal and an ongoing responsibility to look for the best and the brightest and get them interested in your noble profession.

Well, that is it for now. I will see you at the start of next month again. Until then, please work safely, watch out for your brothers and sisters, set the proper example for our young kids to emulate – and constantly be thinking about recruiting the next generation. Finally, again thanks for all your great work in keeping America safe.

Gordon Graham

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 11:48 am and is filed under FD Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.