Roast Yourself

What does Charlie Sheen, David Hasslehoff,  Donald Trump, William Shatner, and Flavor Flav have in common?  They have all been featured roastees on the Comedy Central Roast.  In case your unfamiliar with how the roast works, one at a time comics like, Tom Arnold, Gilbert Gottfried,  Kathy Griffin and others, take turns making fun of the roastee (more like ripping them to shreds).  It is all done in good fun, when the camera pans over to the roastee, even they can be seen laughing uproariously.

Jason Fried, of 37signals, had the idea to feature a roast at one of his companies events.  Instead of roasting a person, they roasted one of their products, their main product, Basecamp.  Every employee had the opportunity to knock on this product, accentuate the various problems that customers have found annoying with it, and point out flaws without hurting feelings.  This exercise was simply to make the product better. Fried says, of the product roast, "...we started fixing some of the stuff that was brought up in the roast...we began working on solving some deeper problems that emerged...The roast hit all the right notes: It brought us together, generated some laughs, broke the ice on the first day of a long week together, highlighted a bunch of issues, and motivated us to dig in." (read more at Inc. Magazine, Oct. 2011)

Perhaps what we need in the fire service is a roast.  Perhaps at our next large gathering we spend some time roasting ourselves.  Bring together operations, prevention, and administration, and give an open forum to express things that need changed, both within the department, and outside the department (community).  Put the jokes (that we all have) about each side of the house out in the open.  Perhaps this exercise could be the start to closing gaps that have long existed in your department (gaps between operations/prevention or between the fire department/community).  Maybe this might be the start to realizing new programs and initiatives that need to be started or revamped for your community.  Everyday we all hear different opinion of what the community thinks about our service (and we have our own opinions).  A roast can serve as a non-threatening way to have these opinions heard and realized.

Disaster Proof

The September 2011 issue of Inc. Magazine contains the article, "Ready For the Worst? How To Disaster-Proof Your Business".  Below, are some interest items from that article.

Launch/Jason Lee

1.)     Back up servers in different geographic locations -- Latisys ($500/month)

2.)     Fire proof filing cabinets -- SentrySafe ($2,436/two drawer)

3.)     Re-route phone calls -- PBX Parachute ($400/year, five ext.)

4.)     Back up power -- PowerReady ($6,995)

5.)     Fireproof crucial equipment -- Firetrace ($1,000)

6.)     Ensure inventory -- BCMexperts ($4,000/six months)

7.)     Train employees -- Preparis ($250/month)

8.)    Mobile office -- ReadySuite ($495/month for standby)

9.)     Shelter in place -- Perfect Storm Shelters ($3,350/three person unit)

10.)     Maintaining crucial correspondence --  Mail-Guard ($2,000/month)

11.)     Maintain web services --  GATR Technologies ($1,000/day; inflatable antennae)

12.)     Maintain an exit strategy  --  Seatchute ($2,995)

Mimeo Level of Service

The July/August edition of Inc. magazine contains an article entitled No Time To Spare.  This article describes the operations of a printing company called, Mimeo.

"It was already late afternoon when the call came in...a client needed 250 financial analyst presentations...printed and delivered to a conference in Houston by 8 a.m. the next day. The problem: The content for the books wasn't ready yet. And the client wouldn't be able to send the information until 11 p.m.

When it became clear that the order wouldn't be done in time for FedEx's cutoff for overnight delivery, Mimeo's employees scrambled to book a private plane...Mimeo's employees worked into the night, printing and assembling the books. At 2 a.m., they drove the boxes of books to an airport in Memphis and loaded them onto the plane, which landed in Houston with just two hours to spare."

One may expect this from a small company trying to get the big client, or maybe a once in a business occurrence, but for Mimeo, this is normal operating procedures.  Customer service is king.  The client is happy to pay extra for this service, and Mimeo is happy to do this (even sometimes taking a loss for this type of service).

The fire service should strive for this mind set.  How can we best serve the community?  Perhaps, if we went above and beyond more often, operated outside of our normal job descriptions, the communities we serve may not fight so hard to cut our budgets and benefits.  Perhaps, they would even be happy to pay a little (or a lot?) extra for "all we do".