Once again let me turn to my Pastor Scott Brown in joy for the lessons he teaches at the Colts Neck Reformed Church. Lest you think that all lessons we receive are learned on the adult level I want to share a recent happening with you. Recently I received a tremendously important message from Scott’s Gospel for Children.
In his message to the little children Pastor Brown called upon two of the bigger kids to wheel a wheelbarrow down the center aisle of the church. In the first instance Scott has one child go halfway down into the congregation. He then had the other fellow wheel the wheelbarrow down the aisle toward the other in the standard fashion. It seemed fairly straightforward and easy. He then asked the lad to wheel the wheelbarrow back to the front of the church.
When the child turned around and began to wheel it in the same fashion as before, Pastor Brown stopped him. He then asked the child to turn around and attempt to wheel the wheelbarrow back up the aisle while facing backwards. To his credit the young lad made it most of the way back to the front before bumping into one of the pews on the left side of the congregation. Scott then proceeded to share the lesson with us all.
His message was simple indeed. You should always keep your eyes on the important things in your life. In order to succeed in life you need to keep your eyes looking forward so that that you can keep your eyes on the goals in your life. Scott’s reading from the Bible reinforced this message. It is such a simple message that you can see how easy it might be to miss it. The past is prologue. And while the lessons can be important, it is not the epicenter of our journey through life. The past is one place where we were and consists of a series of places where certain lessons were learned. But the past should not be the focus of our journey through life.
Are there people in your life who live for the past? No, I am not referring to museum curators or antique fire apparatus buffs. The past is indeed the focus of their world. I am speaking of those folks for whom 1970 is the year they use as the touchstone for all decisions made in their fire departments. I have to believe that such people exist within your world.
For some folks the year of choice might be 1980 or 1990. Heck it could even leap forward to the year 2000. The point is still the same. A great deal has changed and if you are to succeed as a leader within your fire department, you must be living in the world of today. Heck, you should have an eye on the future if you are to have any shot at success. This is a lesson which has been hard for me to learn.
Now I am not suggesting that you forget the lessons of the past. In many instances such behavior could have disastrous consequences. What I am saying is that the focus of your life must be on the future. I guess this is pretty gutsy talk for a guy who has been riding ambulances and fire trucks since Lyndon Johnson was our President. But this allows me to bring experience to the table for this discussion.
Are you aware of folks who still think that it is OK to wear high rubber boots and long rubber coats when they go to combat a fire? Leather helmets can still be a viable alternative if you have the right model, the money to buy the right model and the requisite neck muscles to support the weight of the new code compliant model. Heck, my old leather helmet lasted for a long time until it no longer met the standard. The point here is that there is a new generation of code-compliant turnout gear for us to use. This is but one area of concentration within our world. We must not be slaves to a past from which we have safely moved forward.
Let me suggest an important point to you. If you are continually looking back it is my contention that you will never be able to see that next fork in the road of your life. You need to move forward without being distracted. Do not forget the lessons you have learned, but do not let them be the all-encompassing central focus of what you see to do in life. In order to see that next problem, you need to be looking forward toward that place where all problems exist: the future. We need to spend time looking toward what our future-oriented goals should be.
Oddly enough, research tells us that you and I have a lot more free time now than any generation which preceded us. Wow! The funny part though is that we tend to spend a great deal of that time thinking about just what to do with that free time. Let me suggest that you need to spend some of that time contemplating just what it is that you want to do with your life. As a fire officer and leader of others this period of contemplation also equates to the need for setting goals and priorities for your department and your people.
Be sure to look forward with your people. No one likes to be left out of the loop when the future is being discussed. Heck, I can recall when one of my fire departments was devoting a great deal of time deciding whether to buy 1-3/4-inch hose to replace our 1-1/2-inch supply. It might be hard to believe in light of how we operate today, but this was a serious matter. The same sort of discussions revolved around the move to 5-inch supply hose and light-weight self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA).
I guess we chose correctly, because we here in Adelphia, N.J., have moved smoothly into the 21st Century as an efficient and effective suburban volunteer fire department. But we have not left the future to chance. We conduct periodic long-range planning sessions where the officers of the fire company come together with the Board of Fire Commissioners to chart a course for the future.
We have assessed the need for stations, apparatus, and staffing. We have laid out a fleet replacement plan and decided that staffing is currently generally acceptable. We have set some goals for the future and we are working to gather the necessary resources to move forward in a logical manner.
Now to a point of personal pride where looking toward the future paid great dividends. Recently we paid off the note which funded our second fire station. Ten years ago we decided that we did not want to tie up our resources for 20 or 30 years. Think about how well we have done by keeping our eyes on the prize and moving forward to reach our goals.
We celebrate our 87-year history, but we are not bound to the past in any negative way.
In our business it is critical to focus on the life and death issues which we face in the world of municipal fire protection. But we prefer to focus on the life issues by training to avoid the death issues. You do that by looking forward and assessing your department and the world around your department.
Like the young lads in Pastor Brown’s wheelbarrow analogy we need to wheel the wheelbarrow of fire department operations toward the future while facing forward. To do anything else is to court failure. Please join me on keeping our eyes on the future and the goals which will allow us to reach the future safely.
HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., CFO, MIFireE, a Firehouse.com Contributing Editor, is a municipal fire protection consultant based in Adelphia, NJ. Dr. Carter retired from the Newark, NJ, Fire Department and is a past chief and active life member of the Adelphia Fire Company. Follow Harry on his "A View From my Front Porch" blog. You can reach Harry by e-mail at [email protected].
