BY KEVIN PARKER
As a fire department leader, how do you spend your time? As a leader in business and a 30-year fire service veteran, I know that it is very easy to get caught up in the "busyness" of the job. With e-mail, paperwork, personnel matters, and other "time monsters," we tend to get bogged down in our job's administrative elements, which may trick us into thinking that we must be doing all the right things simply because we are busy. Be warned! Being busy and being effective are two very different things, particularly when it comes to proactively moving our departments forward.
In all of our busyness, perhaps the most important area that we tend to neglect is firefighter development. Since personnel are clearly our most important (and with career departments, most expensive) assets, failure to recognize the importance of our firefighters' growth and development is, at best, career limiting and, at worst, threatening to the lives of our members and the citizens we serve.
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