Early Saturday morning I went to the Long Beach Fire Department’s Training Center to attend a traffic control class for CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) members. The CERT program manager, Firefighter/Paramedic Jake Heflin, a highly respected and nationally recognized expert in emergency preparedness and response as well as a sought-after FEMA-certified trainer, came in a [Continue Reading…]
Accountability: It’s Not Just for Field Operations
December 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Throughout my varied career, I understood “accountability” to mean that people are held responsible for doing what they are supposed to do, with consequences for poor or non-performance. It wasn’t until several months into a project with a client that I discovered that the fire and rescue service uses this term in a very specific [Continue Reading…]
How to Help Employees and Stakeholders Embrace Change
June 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Resisting change is part of human nature. Yet change has become the new “normal” in today’s world, including in the public sector, where change tends to occur at a glacial pace, if at all. These two facts illustrate why it’s critical for public safety leaders to help their employees and stakeholders embrace change, or at [Continue Reading…]
Consolidation: Panacea or Pandora’s Box?
April 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment
There’s a lot of talk about “consolidation” going on in the public safety arena these days, as well as some action. For example, municipalities such as Naples, FL are beginning to combine adjacent fire districts; others such as Long Beach, CA are consolidating their police and fire dispatch centers; and still others, such as Sunnyvale, [Continue Reading…]
Public Safety: Top Priority or Collateral Damage?
November 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Note: This post originally appeared on my Optimize Business Results blog on August 31, 2011. During the first few years of the economic downturn, police and fire departments across the country often were protected to the extent possible from budget cuts, layoffs, and furloughs. After all, isn’t public safety a core function of local governments? [Continue Reading…]
Why Insisting that Employees “Do More with Less” is a Mistake, and How You Can Stop Making It
November 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Note: This post originally appeared on my Optimize Business Results blog on July 4, 2011. One of the biggest and most preventable mistakes I see employers making in response to layoffs, furloughs, and budget cuts is what I call the fallacy of “doing more with less.” The admonition to “do more with less” has become [Continue Reading…]
