I hope to see all of my loyal followers (both of them) at FDIC in a few short weeks. I’ll be presenting “From the X-Box to the Box Alarm” on Thursday-April 22, 2010 at 10:30am in Room 127-128. There’s room for 308 of my closest, most personal friends so there’s really no excuse for not joining me! LOL

Here’s the description from the FDIC web site and participant guide:

From the X-Box to the Box Alarm: Leadership in Today’s Firehouse
Deputy Fire Coordinator Tiger Schmittendorf, Erie County (NY) Department of Emergency Services

How do you motivate today’s recruits away from the X-Box long enough to answer the box alarm? This question builds consensus that the majority of the challenges you face are in the firehouse, not on the fireground. This class addresses the challenges of today’s fire service leaders in attracting and retaining the appropriate quantity and quality of firefighters they need to support the delivery of emergency services in their communities. Learn to combat these challenges with solutions that are right in front of you. BASIC

Furthermore, you can probably catch me hanging out at the Fire-Rescue Magazine / FirefighterNation.com / Fire-EMS Blogs.com booth #3755 from time to time throughout the week. I’ll be arriving on Tuesday afternoon and won’t be leaving until I finish my live Internet BlogTalkRadio show with the FireCritic and FireDaily on FirefighterNetcast from 9:30-10:30am+ on Saturday morning from the same booth.

We’ll be discussing my FDIC presentation, my www.runtothecurb.com project and the importance of storytelling in the fire service.

If you can’t catch me in between, you can certainly find me at the MeetUp at Indy:

• When: Friday April 23rd – 8pm
• Where: Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery just blocks away from the Convention Center at 10 West Washington.
• What: Blogger/FireEMSBlogs.com/Firefighter Nation/Fire Rescue Magazine meetup.

The event is being sponsored by the great folks at: Fire-Rescue Magazine / FirefighterNation.com / Fire-EMS Blogs.com booth #3755. Hit me up at the show for some free drink tickets. However, I can’t be responsible for your resulting actions!

I’m really excited about the opportunities that the show, conference and networking gigs will offer. I can’t wait to see you there.

Check back for more info soon on other presentation dates, times and locations.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

UPDATED FROM ORIGINAL POST: SEPTEMBER 25, 2009

I just received notice that I’ve been asked to teach “Leadership in the Firehouse: Recruitment & Retention – Rescue and Recovery” at FDIC 2010 in Indianapolis, IN.

Needless to say, I’m pretty excited and honored to be presenting at one of the largest conferences of firefighters in the world – where some 30,000 of our brothers and sisters gather.

I’ll be teaching a two-hour class on April 21, 22 or 23 – time and date to be announced soon. Stay tuned for details as they develop.

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I recently had the opportunity to tape a radio show titled: “Sound Magazine” with Carl Russo of 97Rock.

The segment focused on the recruitment of volunteer firefighters and will air on several Citadel Broadcasting affiliates in the Buffalo area.

Carl is a long-standing afternoon jock on 97Rock and is also a volunteer firefighter with the East Seneca Volunteer Fire Company in West Seneca NY. Carl isn’t just a firefighter, he’s also president of the fire company and a commissioner in the fire district.

It offered me the opportunity to talk about being a kid who “ran to the curb” whenever I heard a fire siren and all of the great things that come with being a volunteer firefighter.

This was the second installment of “Sound Magazine” that focused on volunteer recruitment and more are planned for the future.

Click here to listen to “Sound Magazine” VOLUNTEER FIREFIGHTER RECRUITMENTSept 09

Let me know what you think.

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Firefighters must start living the Life Safety Initiatives for us to see an impact on LODDs.

The following article is a reprint from the June-2009 edition of Fire-Rescue magazine. It is also a companion piece to my blog titled: Clean the Litterbox.

I recently attended a seminar on preparation for line-of-duty deaths and firefighter funerals. If you’ve ever read one of my blogs here or at FirefighterNation.com, you know that I have very strong feelings about firefighter deaths.

But, for the first time, the subject really hit home with me. While it’s important to plan that stuff, if we really think about it, doesn’t the need for proper funeral planning only further acknowledge our acceptance of failure in protecting our own from the risks we face? 

Too often we focus more time, energy and attention on those types of activities instead of the things we can do to prevent them. Firefighter safety, like fire prevention itself, is not glamorous. Whether it’s civilian or firefighter lives, it’s easier to take stock of those lost than those saved by implementing effective safety measures.

The 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives (LSIs), available at www.everyonegoeshome.com, are our road map to improved safety practices.

A close review shows us that while several of the concepts must be addressed at a national level, many of the initiatives are personalized calls for effective risk management.

Own It

The first four LSIs  focus on increasing accountability for how we integrate risk management within incident management at every level within our organizations.

THE FIRST FOUR LIFE SAFETY INITIATIVES:

1. Define and advocate the need for a cultural change within the fire service relating to safety, incorporating leadership, management, supervision, accountability and personal responsibility.
2. Enhance the personal and organizational accountability for health and safety throughout the fire service.
3. Focus greater attention on the integration of risk management with incident management at all levels, including strategic, tactical and planning responsibilities.
4. All firefighters must be empowered to stop unsafe practices.

Note: For the complete list of the 16 Life Safety Initiatives,
go to www.everyonegoeshome.com/initiatives.html.

They address the need for a health and safety culture change within the fire service.

Our culture is built from our values, beliefs, mindset, attitudes, actions and behaviors. But I question whether the LSIs personalize the solutions enough for us to embrace them-or whether the deciding factor for real behavioral change will come from the wake-up call of a personal near miss or the sting of losing someone dear to us. What will be the catalyst for change for you, for me, for us?

The solution lies in how we apply these safety initiatives. Like anything else we do in the fire service, changing our culture, especially when it comes to safety, is challenging at best. It requires courage from the top down and the bottom up, simultaneously.

Personal responsibility is the key at every level of the fire service safety chain. It all starts with each of us. Management can market the safety concepts to us, but those messages are lost if we don’t make them our own.

Conduct a Safety Assessment

Changing our culture requires a personal commitment to safety at every level of the fire service. Management can market the safety concepts to us, but those messages are lost if we don’t live them in all of our actions, every day.

Like any other form of “advertising,” we need to surround ourselves with safety messages to constantly reinforce their meaning. Posters, postcards to your members, business cards, e-mails, videos and hands-on training are all ways to get the safety message across to your firefighters, subliminally or through “in your face” marketing techniques.

But are they enough?

To make the LSIs more than hollow rhetoric, we must pause and examine all of our practices and identify opportunities to improve the level of safety at which they are performed.

A great time to get started is during this year’s Fire/EMS Safety, Health and Survival Week, scheduled for June 14-20 (the event formerly known as the Firefighter Stand Down). But don’t stop there.

Self-assessment should be a continual process.

Completing a thorough safety analysis doesn’t require reams of forms, slide rules or a degree in rocket science. Whether we realize it or not, we hold safety briefings almost every time we get together, often around the kitchen table or sitting on the tailboard as we dissect the last run or the actions of another fire company. We just need to be honest about our own unsafe acts and support each other to correct them.

Initiative No. 4 tells us that firefighters must be empowered to stop unsafe acts. That empowerment doesn’t come just from leadership; it comes from each other. Once in a while we need to drop the tough exterior and allow each other to speak freely about what scares the stuffing out of us on the fireground.

It’s not enough to just remove the threat of retaliation for speaking out; real success will come when we actually reward those who create positive changes in our safety culture. A popular Homeland Security theme is: “If you see something, say something.” That should be our safety motto, too.

Some might argue that we’re attempting to soften, to sterilize the fire service with all this safety stuff. Nonsense. The ability for any firefighter to throw a figurative or real red flag at an incident scene is still a reactive but effective means of saving lives. That will never change.

Implementing the Initiatives

Once we’ve completed our safety assessment, we need to study the 16 LSIs as a complete organization, not just as part of a class a few firefighters attend and then attempt to disseminate across the team with varied results. There are so many tools and resources available, including a variety of Web sites and other sources, that there should be no excuse for not incorporating a different safety theme into every training session and every teachable moment.

Our attitude toward safety is the only thing that stands between “It hasn’t happened to us” and “It hasn’t happened to us yet.”

Armed with a plan (the 16 initiatives), a list of opportunities (safety assessment) and the knowledge to act (training), we can now go about the business of changing our safety culture. The best place to start is with the low-hanging fruit. Small victories add up quickly and build lasting momentum. Nothing breeds success like success itself.

Some examples:

• You don’t have a mandatory seat belt use policy? Google it and get one. E-mail me and I’ll send you one. Tweak it to be your own. Train on it. Implement it and after a month of 100 percent compliance, reward your firefighters and let them pick the next safety challenge to tackle.
• Still running hot to cold calls? Still bullying your way through intersections with a 20-ton piece of apparatus and an oversized air horn hoping that the sheer sound pressure will push oncoming traffic out of your path? Get a grip. Get a response and intersection policy in place. Not sure where to start? Here’s a real simple one that even I can remember: Stop, look, listen. Then proceed … slowly. Every time.
• And then there’s firefighter health and fitness. We’re at a higher risk for both heart disease and cancer. How long have we known that? Start with more thorough exams at your annual physicals. Why do we spend years specifying a single piece of fire apparatus and only minutes to choose our medical screeners? Educate your firefighters on how to avoid the risks. Educate their families on what to look for and you’ll never find stronger advocates for any of your safety programs. Is STS (Spare Tire Syndrome) slowing your firefighters down? Initiate a “Biggest Loser” contest like many firehouses have done, and reward your members for coercing their fellow firefighters into the competition. Pay by the pound and offer gift certificates for free fitness center memberships. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

A Final Word

In this day and age, there’s no shortage of access to information, no lack of available training, no insurmountable barriers to our safety success-only attitudes and excuses.

It takes more imagination than money to understand and embrace the premise of the 16 Life Safety Initiatives. It takes more willingness than it does sheer will.

It just takes the courage to be safe.

Stay safe. Train often.

Download a reprint of “Make It Personal” from Fire-Rescue Magazine. ©2009 www.tigerschmittendorf.com

This article is a companion piece to my blog titled: Clean the Litterbox.

Tiger Schmittendorf is chairman of FASNY’s Recruitment and Retention Committee and serves the County of Erie Department of Emergency Services (Buffalo NY) as Deputy Fire Coordinator. He created a recruitment effort that doubled his own fire department’s membership and helped net 525+ new volunteers countywide. A frequent presenter on the subjects of leadership, incident management, safety, recruitment and retention, he is a Nationally Certified Fire Instructor and has been a firefighter since 1980. Visit his blog at www.tigerschmittendorf.com.

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Dig in.

“Early on in my fire service career, we responded to a report of a tractor-trailer rolled over on a nearby state highway. We arrived on scene and found a truck lying on its passenger side. The wheels were facing the roadway and the top of the cab was on the shoulder of the road. The truck driver was being treated as walking wounded. It seemed like a relatively benign accident.

As we approached the curb side we realized that this was no ordinary call. It turned out that the truck driver had a young female traveling with him. When the tractor trailer tumbled on its passenger side, the girl apparently fell half way out the window. Only her right arm was now visible outside the overturned cab, turned up at a ninety-degree angle towards us, her hand motionless.

She was buried alive and we were given reports that just prior to our arrival, her muffled screams could be heard from underneath the several feet of mud and snow that accumulated on the side of the road when the truck finally skidded to a stop.

Being the smallest and lightest of our crew, I was suspended by my ankles into the cab by two other firefighters. As I began digging feverishly with my bare hands in the muck that the eighteen-wheeler had plowed through, her cries for help became fainter and fainter, until they stopped all together.

You can imagine the outcome – and the emotions that came with it: frustration, anger, sadness – every extreme imaginable. I was in maybe 19 or 20 at the time and completely unprepared to deal with the personal side of tragedy. The whole episode lasted just a few minutes, but it was an experience I will never forget.”

Why do I share this story with you? Not to be a bragger, for there are no bragging rights to be had in recovering those who we could not save in time.

My goal is simply to stress to you the importance of telling stories, of sharing our experiences.

Very early on in their book titled: “Made to Stick,” brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath point to the fire service’s success in sharing stories as a means of sharing experiences, passing down critical information to their successors. The book is based on the premise of why some ideas survive while others die.

“Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience; after years of hearing stories, they have a richer, more complete mental catalog of critical situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations,” they say in describing the sixth principle of their “stickiness” theory.

The Heath brothers are not firefighters. Chip is a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford. Dan is a former researcher at Harvard. The book is about many businesses, including the business of delivering emergency services. But you don’t need to be a Stanford or Harvard graduate to figure out that they’re right.

It’s my opinion that the need for telling stories in the fire service has never been greater. We may be winning the battle of fire prevention but as our fire load goes down, so does our experience level – a double-edged sword.

The way I see it, there are essentially three ways of compensating for this downturn of experience.

First, we can prematurely promote personnel who are unprepared to progress. We know how well that works… Not! The outcome is not only predictable and unfair to those we put in this position; it can be deadly as well.

Secondly, increase both the quantity and quality of your training. Train more often and get the most realistic training that safety standards allow. This is paramount and cannot be overstated.

Lastly, learn from others.

But what’s required to accomplish that? We, the more experienced of our profession, need to be better and more frequent story tellers.

In recent conversations with a lot of firefighters, I ask them if this accurately describes their fire department: We have a stable cadre of firefighters with five years of experience and less, and a dwindling cache of firefighters with fifteen years of experience or more. Furthermore, we’re real lean in the five to fifteen years of experience range. Essentially, we lack depth, qualified bench strength in our organization.

I haven’t met anyone yet who hasn’t nodded their head in at least partial agreement.

Let’s first take a look at what transpires while we’re building off of our first five years in the fire service. Ideally, those next ten years are supposed to be the officer development phase. We’ve captured their attention, they’re getting the hang of things, starting to really contribute and they’re ready for more challenges; hopefully growing towards a position of increased responsibility and leadership.

Here’s part of the challenge. Their first five years might look nothing like our first five years in the fire service, thanks to the aforementioned decreasing fire load. It may take them ten or more years to gain the same level of real life firefighting experience that some of us saw when we entered this career twenty years ago or more.

If we match this same ten year niche against the 25-35 year old demographic I referred to in “From the X-Box to the Box Alarm,” we come up against another obstacle. In this time warp I affectionately call “the lost years,” most volunteer firefighters are simultaneously going through a time of significant personal and professional growth. Think about what traditionally happens during this period in a person’s life: marriage, careers, families, job advancement, home ownership, etc.

Furthermore, it’s my belief that this ten-year gap in experience directly correlates to a ten-year period where we were asleep at the switch in the fire service.

There was about a ten-year spell where we focused more on being professional and less on our people. Some of us even dropped the word “volunteer” from “volunteer fire department.” We forfeited the virtues of being volunteers in favor of being viewed as equals to our paid counterparts. Worse yet, we let our trusted position as the social epicenter of the community run out the end of the hose line.

We viewed story telling as boring bragging. We disregarded our senior firefighters. Our answer to retention was to increase our recruitment efforts. People became disposable. We didn’t value values. Our turnover rate skyrocketed until, like the stock market, the bubble burst.

What did that buy us? We invested heavily in everything that is useless without the people to staff it. We learned the hard way that you get what you pay for.

Every time a senior member of your department steps out of the line, retires or dies – we lose years and years of valuable experience through attrition. Years we may never regain. Years of experience you can’t put a price on.

The first thing I do in the leadership conversations I hold with firefighters around the country is to bring them to early consensus that 95% of the challenges we face are back at the firehouse, not on the fire scene.

Despite this revelation, we invest our time, energy, and yes, our money; in the exact opposite proportion. I have yet to find a fire department that invests as much as 1% of their net budget back into the one asset required to make every other resource work: their people.

What did that buy us? Apparatus we can’t staff, calls we can’t cover, and other functions of the fire department that are dysfunctional.

Here’s my call to action: If you are a chief, an officer, or a wannabe officer; I have two words for you – Dig in.

Dig in to your organizations and figure out what makes them tick. Break down your membership by age, years of experience, training level and skill sets. You might be shocked at what you find. Do a needs assessment. Then do a skills assessment of your people and match it against your needs assessment. Identify and address your gaps.

If you’re serious about the survival and success of your fire department, dig in and plan to be in the ranks for up to another ten years while the others catch up to your experience level. But don’t just hang around, don’t be “R.I.P. – Retired In Place.” Really contribute. Really lead.

Invest heavily in education, yours and theirs. Not just tactics and strategies but organizational management too. Read magazines like Fast Company and books like “Made to Stick,” Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and “Leadership” by Rudy Giuliani, to name a few.

Take notes. Talk to people who have had success in successful organizations. Learn from their experiences.

Truly train and nurture your replacements. Mentor, model and mold the future of your fire department. Motivate and cultivate.

As Hall of Fame Football Quarterback Joe Montana told me just the other day, “Let your work ethic be contagious, for your work ethic is what tells your teammates how much they can trust you.”

Become a great story teller, a trusted source. Share your knowledge and experience. Give back. Demonstrate a real desire to develop your officers. Become more engaged with your people than ever before. Be a real leader. Care.

Chip and Dan Heath finished their fire service analogy with, “Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.”

Call me crazy, but it’s almost as if they’ve figured out our business. I just hope we can too.

I’ve told anyone that would listen that I think the next ten years are pivotal to the survival and success of the volunteer fire service as we know it today. Without smart investments in our people we’ll never see a return on any of our other investments. You have to be in it to win it.

The stakes are high. Will you lay your cards on the table to win – or will you fold?

Lastly, we need to face the reality that we can’t overcome all of the external forces around us, of which there are plenty. Nonetheless, there is hope. That hope is you. You don’t have to be an officer to be a leader. You can be the internal force for transforming your fire department into not just a surviving, but a thriving organization.

All you have to do is dig in.

Download Dig In.

[If you like "Dig In" - you might also like Mike Ward's "Just Enough Leadership” and my follow-up blog: Fortune Tellers.

Tiger Schmittendorf is chairman of FASNY’s Recruitment and Retention Committee and serves the County of Erie Department of Emergency Services (Buffalo NY) as Deputy Fire Coordinator. He created a recruitment effort that doubled his own fire department’s membership and helped net 525+ new volunteers countywide. A frequent presenter on the subjects of leadership, incident management, safety, recruitment and retention, he is a Nationally Certified Fire Instructor and has been a firefighter since 1980. Visit his blog at www.tigerschmittendorf.com.

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Fortune Tellers:

Almost every firefighter I meet speaks of how they always knew, from the time they were a very young boy or girl – that they wanted to be a firefighter.

I was one of those kids. I call them the “run to the curb” kind of kids.

The Evans Center Fire Hall (as we called it) was just down Bennett Road and around the corner on Route 5, maybe a few hundred yards away from my house, as the crow flies. Closer than that was the rear entrance to the sixteen acres of fire company property, directly across the street from our driveway.

Growing up so close to the firehall, it was an obvious choice as a place to hang out with my friends. We played baseball on the ball fields the fire company leased to the Little League for a dollar a year. We helped out at and patronized the carnivals and other fund-raising events. When the fire company added on a large banquet hall in 1971, we helped the contractors move supplies and materials. My initials are carved in the concrete sidewalk they poured. I was eight.

And of course, we ran to the curb whenever the fire siren went off. It was loud and it seemed to cycle forever. With the windows open on a warm summer night you could hear a siren from a fire station ten miles away. It would wake me up out of a dead sleep, trying to figure out the direction and thus the firehouse it was coming from.

Me with Past Chiefs Denny Allen, Pat Davis and John Latimore

Whenever we heard that siren wail, we would run out and look to see if the fire trucks were coming down our road or headed in another direction. As we got older and were allowed to venture further, we ran to the corner to watch them racing out of the station, lights flashing and sirens whining. The firefighters, in their rubber coats and boots and metal helmets. were strapped to the tailboard of the fire engine by a coarse rope belt that had a sharp hook on the end that would gut you like a fish if it ever caught you. I still have one of those.

Oh, how we wanted to be those guys.

When we weren’t at the fire hall, we were pretending to be at the firehall. We rigged our bikes with over-sized reflectors to act as “flashing” lights, and made walkie-talkies out of pieces of wood with a sixteen-penny nail in the top to serve as the antenna. That same nail was also used to carve the hatch-work of where the speaker would be on the radio. Our mothers’ flower gardens never got so much watering as when we stretched the big “green line” to douse the fictional flames on the side of the house.

I was blessed to grow up in a neighborhood with a lot of kids, twenty-one to be exact, across just three households.

We had eight. My best friend John’s family had nine children – they were Irish Catholic. And my other best friend Doug’s family had four kids. They were just Catholic. We were an anomaly in the neighborhood as we were neither Irish nor Catholic, but we held our own in the fill-all-the-seats-at-the-kitchen-table department. (If you’re interested, you can read more about my neighborhood in my blog titled “The Lost Act of Popping In.”)

THE CHIEF: Bruce Green Jr.

The rides with the chief became more frequent as we got older. We observed and learned a lot. We were accepted by the firemen as firehouse brats, despite the fact that no one else in our families was associated with the fire company.

One summer night, I remember waking up to the siren sounding, getting dressed and running down the street, John and Doug jumping in line on the way. What made this time different was that when we reached the corner, we weren’t met by the fire chief but by the local police, as the fire was in the historic old schoolhouse on the corner. Fortunately, the chief arrived shortly and quickly vouched for the ad hoc ride-along program we’d been practicing for a while now.

Our un-official arrangement continued for quite a while until the fire company caught on to the fact that we were helping out way too much at fire scenes. After what was I’m sure a heated debate, the fire company decided to take advantage of our youthful exuberance and formed a junior fire company to protect us, them and our activities. On September 1, 1980 I was inducted as Evans Center’s first ever Junior Firefighter at age 17. Today, I celebrate my twenty-ninth year with the fire department.

Of course, growing up across the street from the firehouse certainly gave me a distinct advantage in figuring out my passion for what I wanted to do with my life. However, at the time, it just wasn’t clear as to the route I would take to get there. Then I discovered later that some of us are fortunate enough to get a “heads up” on what that path might look like.

Me and my good friend Clarence Center Chief Dave Case

Amongst many other treasures, in that box were two cards and a hand-made book that may have forecasted where I would be today. The first card was to my parents congratulating them when I was born. The card was from the Evans Center Fire Company Ladies Auxiliary. The second was a first birthday card from my grandmother that folded out to reveal a fire engine. In her handwriting at the bottom of the card is: “Someday maybe you’ll get the real thing.”

The book report was titled “The Fire that Ruined Chicago.” I wrote and illustrated it when I was nine years old.

Call it fate. Call it fortune. Call it what you want.

Since first running to the curb, I rose to the rank of Chief of Training and have held a dozen other offices in our fire department. With eighteen years experience under my belt, I was blessed to be able to make my career in the fire service ten years ago, now serving 97 fire departments and more than 5,000 firefighters. Trust me, there have been plenty of other stories along the way, some of which I might share with you in future articles. I kept a log of every single call I went on in my rookie year. That’s a story in itself.

John went on to be chief of the department and our town fire marshal. Doug has been a paramedic for more than 20 years. I don’t think we turned out half bad. The best part is that my collection of friends has multiplied many times over the years.

The bottom line is this: What’s your story? Were you a kid who ran to the curb when you heard a siren?

More importantly, what’s your fortune? Where will you be in the fire service ten years from now? Will you even be in the fire service ten years from now?

Will you be ready, willing and able when an opportunity comes knocking?

So where’s the lesson in all of these childhood memories and challenging questions?

Our challenge in recruiting and retaining people in the fire service is this:

Chief John Latimore and Davey Kohler with me and our Explorers. Davey has been a fixture around our firehouse since 1968.

I often say that you can tell the difference between those who have the fire service in their blood, and those who don’t. It’s an addiction. Stand in a room full of real firefighters and you’ll see a hundred noses pressed against the window waiting for the apparatus to catch up to the Doppler effect of the siren.

And like anything else that can get in your blood, it can hurt you if you let it. This reality reminds us to prioritize our first family first, and to balance our love for the fire service with our love for those who love us; and the other important things in our life.

For those who were run-to-the-curb type kids, we need to remind them what it was that attracted them to the fire service in the first place. We need to re-instill that imagination, FUN, curiosity; that excitement that takes them back to their childhood and then brings them to the apparatus floor.

If they weren’t one of those kids, you’ve got your work cut out for you, but like everything else in the fire service, we can adapt and overcome. Sometimes we need to start by reminding ourselves what brought us here and use that as a jumping-off point to instill that passion, motivating others to join our ranks or re-light their fire for the fire service.

Fortunate enough to be a part of this special bond we all contribute to, our ability to share information and experiences through effective story telling will be a critical skill set in sustaining the future of the fire service. It’s a form of mentoring, teaching and of leading.

Our contagiousness, our ability to spread our fever for the fire service, our “love for the job” as Chief Rick Lasky calls it; is critical to the survival of the fire service as we know it, now.

Invigorate that kid-like level of enthusiasm in others and you’ve got a new firefighter fulfilling their lifelong dream – or an experienced firefighter fanning new flames of eagerness for what we do.

Either way you’ve made yourself a fortune by investing your passion with a purpose in those we serve, and serve with.

Run to the curb. Tell your story. Tell your fortune.

Download Fortune Tellers

[If you like "Fortune Tellers" - you might also like "Dig In," "From X-Box to the Box Alarm" and Mike Ward's "Just Enough Leadership,"]

Tiger Schmittendorf is chairman of FASNY’s Recruitment and Retention Committee and serves the County of Erie Department of Emergency Services (Buffalo NY) as Deputy Fire Coordinator. He created a recruitment effort that doubled his own fire department’s membership and helped net 525+ new volunteers countywide. A frequent presenter on the subjects of leadership, incident management, safety, recruitment and retention, he is a Nationally Certified Fire Instructor and has been a firefighter since 1980. Visit his blog at www.tigerschmittendorf.com.

Download a printable copy of this blog article. ©2009tigerschmittendorf.com

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As I travel around the country talking with other firefighters, a commonly recurring theme of our chat is the future of the volunteer fire service.

The conversation always comes around to the topic of today’s firefighters and the next generation of firefighters. Some “more experienced” firefighters (notice I didn’t use the term older) share that they don’t understand the “kids” coming into the fire service today.

The veterans don’t think today’s recruits share the same values as those who are currently leading us. And they certainly don’t have the same appreciation for the traditions and discipline of the fire service. Community service is not in their blood as it is in ours. Or at least that’s their complaint.

The first question I ask is: Whose fault is that? Have we failed as parents, role models and mentors?

My second question is a more important challenge: Who better? Who better to re-instill the values of the fire service that have made it and America great? Who better to bring back the principles our communities need?

I then ask you: If not us, who?

“Reality Check: Understand them or not, like them or not – they are the future of the fire service. The reality is that there is no other generation from a parallel universe about to swoop down and save the volunteer fire service. They are it. Get over it. Get on with it.”

The fire service was built on the values of pride, honor, loyalty, trustworthiness, integrity and community service. Last time I checked, that’s exactly why the American public trusts nobody, no other profession more than they trust firefighters – nobody.

When I talk about the target audience for new recruits, I typically break it down like this:

1. 14-18 years olds: Explorers and Junior Firefighters – the future of the volunteer fire service. Figure out how to win and keep them and you will keep them forever.
2. 18-25 year olds: Let’s face it; the bull work of what we do is a young person’s job. This demographic has always been and will always be the backbone of the fire service.
3. 25-40 Years old: The lost years. Think about what traditionally happens during this period in a person’s life: marriage, careers, families, home ownership, etc. However, if we can snag them early enough, we just might be able to keep them clinging on as contributing members during this personal and professional growth phase.
4. 40+: This demo includes settled homeowners; their kids are growing to an age of independence; focused on giving back; perhaps even looking for an outlet – or just an excuse to get out of the house.

Depending on what or who you read, it’s estimated that the current generation, Generation Y, is at this moment between 14 and 27 years old.

Call them Gen Y; Millenials; WebGens; NextGens; Generation Whine; Baby Busters; Nexters; Echo Boomers or whatever you like.

Understand them or not, like them or not – they are the future of the fire service. The reality is that there is no other generation from a parallel universe about to swoop down and save the volunteer fire service. They are it. Get over it. Get on with it.

According to Dr. Renee Downey-Hart’s matrix of generation gaps, never before have four generations been in the workplace at the same time. From traditionalists born after the turn of the century, to Baby Boomers and Generation X, and now Gen Y – these four generations create both challenges and opportunities for organizations looking to recruit and retain them.

Dr. Downey-Hart’s presentation emphasizes the importance of building “bench strength” as many Traditionalists and Baby Boomers, and even some Gen Xers are about to step out of the workplace.

Some could argue that their pending retirements are an opportunity for them to get involved in volunteering. Realistically though, they’re probably not going to be the interior firefighters we need to adequately staff our apparatus. That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty for them to do on and behind the scene.

Thus, we need to embrace Gen Yers as our future. To understand them we need to get to know them better. To know them, we need to surround ourselves with them.

Here’s what I understand of them from my limited research with people a lot smarter than I am (which doesn’t take much.)

They are often characterized as a self-entitled bunch of slackers who don’t want to pay their dues – not exactly the model we’ve promoted in the fire service for the last couple of hundred years.

I refer to them as the I-Generation or the Jackass Generation. “I” is for Individual because they often ask “What’s in it for me.” But they’re also independent thinkers who have been taught to collaborate and work in teams (Hey, maybe we could learn something from these punks.)

I use the term Jackass Generation only because of the TV show they watch with the title of the same name. Their risk-taker mentality is proliferated by modern media. We just need to figure out how to harness their youthful energy and teach them the living benefits of calculated risk management – and the “death benefits” associated with miscalculating those risks.

They are also an untapped powerhouse of potential. They are future oriented, tech savvy, multi-tasking young adults who are ready to contribute NOW! Their apparent restlessness is tempered with their ability to remain optimistic in difficult times, a trait that could come in handy given our current financial climate.

They are the most socially engaged generation since the 1960s. Don’t think so? Did you happen to pay attention to how President Obama got elected? Still don’t think so? Count up all the friends you have and then ask a GenYer how many friends they have on Facebook or MySpace. Forget it, save yourself the trouble and embarassment.

What troubles those of us who used to be card-carrying members of the 18-25 year old demographic (my card expired) is that they don’t engage with society the way we do. We do it face-to-face, by calling on the phone or by “popping in” on each other.

They engage themselves on-line. They can tap out a message on their cell phones faster than you can change the station with your TV remote.

Looking for the fountain of youth for your fire department? Try Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. That’s where you’ll find today’s recruits. They know more about what their friends are doing than two cops on an overnight stake-out. They are always in touch, always communicating — just not the way we’re accustomed to or comfortable with. Nonetheless, if they’re not coming to us, we need to go to where they are to get their attention.

I’m reading a book titled “Managing Generation Y” by Dr. Carolyn A. Martin and Bruce Tulgan. The book was written eight years ago but its observations still ring true today. They refer to GenYers as the most education focused generation in history, leading a new wave of volunteerism.

Does anyone else smell opportunity? They embrace socio-economic, environmental and community problems. Our challenge is to help them understand why ours is a cause worth taking up.

So how do we get them away from the X-Box long enough to respond to the box alarm? Lucky for us, Dr. Downey-Hart states that they highly value meaningful development opportunities and they’re full of fresh insight on how best to reach their peers. This might be tough to swallow, but they have the answers. Ask them how to best recruit each other and their friends.

I’m experimenting with that concept right now as part of a $500k SAFER grant project to recruit and retain volunteer firefighters. Acknowledging very early on that “we’re too old” and the need to surround ourselves with GenYers, we’ve created a team of 20 people under the age of 30 to help chart the future of the fire service in our county. This focus group of firefighters will provide us with the insight we need to choose the right messaging, media and mediums to reach their peers. They’re in charge and we’re putting our trust and faith in them.

Dr. Downey-Hart tells us the good news is that they trust people over 30 and welcome the chance to partner with older, more experienced colleagues and bosses (mentors) and intergenerational teamwork carries particular promise in tough times. Combining the tech savvy and fresh insight of Generation Y with the experience and perspective of the older generations can be especially fruitful.

They are ripe for the picking. Behind their “I don’t appear to care” attitude, they are actually starved for strong leadership, mentors and role models. A recent study by Deloitte Consultants suggests that we redesign our rewards systems to encourage the rapid development of GenY talent and at the same time create new incentives for seasoned veterans to act as mentors to these young adults.

Frankly, I don’t claim to fully understand them. And honestly, there are days when I’m not sure I want to, despite “owning” two of them myself. (Kathleen is 20 and Alex is 16). But even I can figure out that we need to embrace them as the future of the fire service.

I’ve said before that the survival and success of the volunteer fire service depends on our ability to create more opportunities – for more people – to volunteer less time.

GenYers have lots of time on their hands if we offer them the right opportunities to quench their thirst for satisfying training and teamwork. What we don’t have is a lot of time for us to figure out what makes them tick.

We know what the challenge is. The only remaining question is: What are you going to do about it?

Here’s a couple of videos to help you figure them out:

A vision of K-12 Students today

A vision of students today

And this one, especially for instructors:  Pay Attention!

Seems this is a popular topic. Here’s a link to a similar article written by Brian Ward: Talkin’ bout my generation

Download the Reprint of: From X-Box to the Box Alarm

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For a comprehensive offering of R&R resources, visit my blog at www.tigerschmittendorf.com. Click or call if you’re looking for ideas or want to volunteer your own. I’d love to hear your experiences.

Let me know how I can help.

Until next time… “Stay safe. Train often.”

Editor’s Note: Recruitment slogans, programs or themes described herein may be the copyrighted intellectual property of the author or other parties. Please contact the author before reprinting or using such content.

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Tiger Schmittendorf is chairman of FASNY’s Recruitment and Retention Committee and serves the County of Erie Department of Emergency Services (Buffalo NY) as Deputy Fire Coordinator. He created a recruitment effort that doubled his own fire department’s membership and helped net 525+ new volunteers countywide. He is a Nationally Certified Fire Instructor and has been a firefighter since 1980. Visit his blog at www.tigerschmittendorf.com.

Tiger Schmittendorf will join Ret. Phoenix Chief Alan Brunacini and J. Gordon Routely in a fire service roundtable discussion at the FASNY Convention in Niagara Falls, NY on Thursday-August 20, 2009.

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My family is motivation for much of what I do in the fire service. Alex, Laurie and Kathleen (l-r)

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Joining on the heels of the recent well-attended presentation for Suffolk County, fire departments in three more New York State Counties have recently signed up for Tiger Schmittendorf’s “Leadership in the Firehouse” seminar series.

Tiger’s flagship presentation is a comprehensive review of the Recruitment and Retention Rescue vs. Recovery discussion. The highly interactive presentation engages the participants in a conversation to discover the root causes of the challenges we face, why we face them and what we can do about them; together.

Click on the links below to download the appropriate event flyer:

Washington County – Kingsbury Fire Department
Saturday – May 9, 2009  – 9am
Co-Sponsored by the Hudson Falls, Kingsbury, Fort Edward and J.A. Barkley Hose Volunteer Fire Departments
Download the Flyer

Allegany County – Cuba & Friendship Fire Departments
Wednesday – May 13, 2009 – 7pm
Cuba Elementary School
***Donations will be accepted to Benefit Firefighters Injured in December-2008 Building Collapse
Download the Flyer

Niagara County – Niagara County Fire Chiefs and Firemen’s Associations
Thursday – May 21, 2009 – 7:30pm
Niagara County Community College-NCCC
E-Building – Room 140 – Lecture Hall
Sponsored by Lake Plains Community Care Network
Download the Flyer

And be sure to attend the Fire Service Leadership Roundtable with Ret. Phoenix Fire Chief Alan Brunacini, J. Gordon Routely and Tiger Schmittendorf:
Niagara County – FASNY-Firemen’s Association of the State of NY
Thursday – August 20, 2009 – 2:15pm
The Conference Center at Niagara Falls
Download the Flyer

OTHER LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES:

NITTEC Highway Safety Awareness
Frontier Fire Company – Niagara Falls NY
Thursday – April 30, 2009 – 6:30pm

Incident Management in the Fast Lane
NYS Fire Police Association Annual Convention – Syracuse NY
Saturday – May 2, 2009 1pm

Bringing Calm to Chaos – Managing the Recovery from the Crash of Continental Flight 3407
Soutwestern Association of Volunteer Firefighters Annual Convention -
Fredonia NY
Thursday – August 6, 2009 – 3pm – Fredonia Opera House

Incident Management in the Fast Lane
Tri-County Regional Fire Police Association – Delevan NY
Sunday – October 25, 2009 – 9am

Incident Management in the Fast Lane
NYS Fire Police Association Annual Convention – Mayville NY
Saturday – May 22, 2010 1:30pm

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Continental Flight 3407 crashed into a home in Clarence Center around 10:20pm on Thursday-February 12, 2009 - killing 50 people and changing the lives of thousands more, including mine.

I responded in the first wave of emergency services personnel sent to help restore order to the chaos that the crash created.

Frankly, I’m not ready to write about this experience at length. Not because I’m deeply disturbed by what I saw (how can you not be?), but because I don’t want what I write to be about me, despite my being intimately involved.

I just didn’t want to go any longer without conveying my deep sense of pride, admiration and gratitude to the men and women and the families of the Clarence Center Volunteer Fire Company.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been prouder of a group of people than I am of Clarence Center and all their mutual aid partners right now.

As Deputy Fire Coordinator for Erie County and as part of the Unified Command team in the EOC, I am not in the least surprised by their actions, their professionalism, their respect and their caring for all those affected. I would expect nothing else.

I am simply in awe.

I’ve known all along that we have some of the greatest firefighters right here in Erie County. Chief Dave Case and his entire team have just proven it to the rest of the world.

I was there with them from the onset and we will be together until the end of this operation and beyond. I am proud and honored to stand amongst them and to call them my friends.

I thank them for their service.

Stay tuned here for more insights into the heroic efforts of these firefighters and first responders.

2/24/09 – Chief Case Goes to Washington.

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