Ep 101: Overcoming Resistance To Change
Episode 101
Published Jan 13, 2025
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 49:14
Episode Summary
Episode 101 explores common obstacles faced by change agents trying to implement new emergency response protocols. The hosts discuss practical strategies for overcoming these challenges, emphasizing the importance of interagency cooperation, effective communication, and the power of "inverted thinking" in improving active shooter response procedures.
Episode Notes
In today’s episode our panelists discuss the challenges of implementing change in emergency response protocols. The episode delves into common obstacles faced by change agents within organizations and offers insights on overcoming resistance.
Key topics covered include:
*Communication barriers between agencies during crisis events
*The importance of building relationships and training together before incidents occur
*Challenges with radio interoperability and potential solutions
*The pitfalls of siloed operations and the need for true unified command
*Overcoming cultural differences between law enforcement and fire/EMS
*The power of "inverted thinking" in emergency planning
*Strategies for motivating change at various organizational levels
The hosts share personal experiences and practical advice for those seeking to improve active shooter response procedures. They emphasize the critical nature of inter-agency cooperation and effective communication in crisis management. This episode provides valuable insights for emergency responders, administrators, and anyone involved in public safety planning.
View this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/mCB4ADjZiVk
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:We all know that change is hard, and if you're one of those people in your organization that's trying to change active shooter policies and procedures, but you're getting blocked, or you're somebody that knows you need to change, but you're not even starting because you just know you're gonna get slammed, that's today's topic. And this information's gonna help you.
Stick around. Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host, one of the instructors here at the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response. I'm rejoined by two of my dear friends, Terry Nichols, one of our law enforcement instructors. Terry, good to have you back.
Terry Nichols:
Hello, Bill, and certainly glad to be here.
Bill Godfrey:
And Joe Ferrara, one of our fire EMS instructors. Joe, good to see you again.
Joe Ferrara:
Always happy to be here, Bill.
Bill Godfrey:
So we were recently together and talked about the power of inverted thinking and how that can help us. And at the tail end of it, we talked about some of the obstacles or the challenges to trying to implement procedures and policies. And so this discussion today is about some of the common things we've heard and some of the ways to get past those hurdles, to have ideas to work around. So I want to kind of bring this list up for everybody to see.
So before we started filming, we took less than five minutes, and it took that long to put together the list of things that we've commonly heard in classes. So these are some of the things that we've heard people say about why they can't, won't, don't want to implement the Active Shooter Incident Management program. So, not the way we do it. We don't like the terminology. The leadership's not here in the training. There's no leadership buy-in. They won't buy in if they don't think it's their idea. There's no budget or inadequate budget to do it. Our agencies don't work together. And that could be police with the sheriff or it could be police and fire. We can't communicate with each other, which can be on the radio, or just we can't talk with each other.
Joe Ferrara:
Don't like each other.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, exactly. We have inconsistent policies or no policies. Fire has to be in charge. The fire side has to be the incident commander. EMS won't go in. We don't do warm zone EMS operations. It's not in our contract. It's not my job, not what I signed up for. And both on the law enforcement, you know, doing medical, and on the fire and EMS side, asking them to go into places where bullets could fly. It won't happen here. And we have other priorities. We have bigger fish to fry. So, that's our list.
Terry Nichols:
I think we came up with more than that in our five minutes, but we can start there.
Joe Ferrara:
Oh, we've heard way more than that.
Bill Godfrey:
Oh yeah. Some we can't write unless we change the rating on the podcast. Yeah, exactly. So, let's start with the classic. That's not the way we do it around here.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah, it may not be the way you do it, for you, but what what about your partners? What about your community as a whole? So if you're the police department, well, that's not the way we do it here, but the sheriff's department does something different. And our fire and EMS partners do something even different than that. But that's not the way we do it here. We gotta get, this thing, this was built to be the national standard. It is the national standard and we're trying to get everybody on the same page. It's the whole goal.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, and it's not just in your local jurisdiction, but also when you go to mutual aid out of county, isn't it?
Joe Ferrara:
Absolutely. If that's not the way we do it here, then I'm gonna challenge you to say, well, when you work with your adjacent county, your adjacent city, what happens then? It's not the way we do it here. Okay, well, I guess you can't work together with the county next to you on mutual aid.
Bill Godfrey:
And that is a very, very real challenge. In fact, we've got a case study that we did on one where they had a pretty good response. They had a couple problems, but they had a pretty good response. But when their out of county mutual aid who had not participated in the training showed up and wasn't on the same page, didn't have the same training, didn't know the process, it went horribly sideways on them. And Terry, you know, you mentioned the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist process, which was endorsed by the National Tactical Officers Association, NTOA, as the national standard for managing active shooter events. It's referred to by ALERRT as the gold standard in managing active shooter events. There's safety in standards and national standards, isn't there?
Terry Nichols:
Yes, absolutely, there is. And again, nobody else is doing this, okay? This is a national standard, like you said, the gold standard according to ALERRT, and NTOA has said it is a national standard, everything you just said. But there is power, there's absolutely power, in everybody being on the same page, having that national standard. And you put that in your books. So when you do it right, you know, you can refer to this that, hey, this is why we did it this way. If you don't do it right, you have a negative outcome, and you weren't going by a national standard, that puts you at risk.
Joe Ferrara:
And to further that, look, nobody operates in a vacuum. Nobody operates in a bubble. In fact, you know, we try to avoid silos, so to speak, from an incident command perspective. And of course in the post 9/11 world, let's not forget the National Incident Management System priority was that everyone be on the same page. So if that's not the way we do it here, I would challenge you to say, well, you know, what about the rest of the country?
Bill Godfrey:
And it seems like a weak or a farfetched argument to say that, but let me say this. When you think about responding to an active shooter event, you're probably thinking about your police department, your fire department, your sheriff's agency in the county. Maybe a couple of other municipal agencies are gonna respond with you. Couple of other fire departments. Maybe you're thinking about your mutual aid partners that are coming in from out of county.
But what about federal law enforcement? Because they're in your community. You may not be aware of it. I mean, we've had multiple stories about federal, armed federal law enforcement showing up at a scene. They're from an agency that people had never heard of. Well, what's their way of doing it? And will that way work with your way? And that's part of the challenge is that there's no good cutoff point to say, well, our region does it this way, but just outside of our region, they do it a different way. Well, now what happens if your region has an incident right on the edge of the bound?
I mean, it's just, that's part of the challenge. And so this whole idea of having a template, and I do want to be clear that it's not overly prescriptive. It's simply a template. It's a list of the things that need to get done. And generally speaking, the order in which they need to get done so that we have the best possible outcome.
Terry Nichols:
I agree, and I'll say it again, though, I think there's, you prepped it. There's power in having a standard, there's power in being standardized. Because again, if you have a negative, real negative outcome based on your actions or inactions, this is something they're gonna hold against you if you do not have, you're not operating under national standards. It will not help you in the long run.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Terry Nichols:
It can only help you.
Bill Godfrey:
Now Joe, you mentioned NIMS, National Incident Management System, which is, you know, obviously huge on standardization. And while there's a tremendous amount of flexibility, there's a handful of words, I call them keywords or reserved words, that have very, very specific meaning in NIMS. And so our next one, we don't like your terminology. How does that fit?
Joe Ferrara:
Well, you know, I think we've all heard this on the road with different agencies. Well, we don't call that here. We don't call an ambulance an ambulance, or we don't call, you know, a fire truck a engine company. We call it this. And look, at the end of the day, if all these agencies are coming, because Terry, you can probably answer this question, who's coming to an active shooter event?
Terry Nichols:
Everybody.
Joe Ferrara:
Everybody. So, everybody needs to be on the same page with terminology. And I think, you know, in the past, I know Bill, you and I have discussed this, and certainly Terry has before, let's look at the term rescue, just as an example. A rescue for me in South Florida is a transport unit, is an ambulance. However, if I go to New Mexico, it's not called a rescue. And even if I go to some areas in Central or North Florida, maybe it's not called a rescue. So, if we're gonna stick to terminology, I think the better list is, what's national terminology for these things?
Bill Godfrey:
One of the common ones I hear, you mentioned rescue, and it made me think of actually the rescue task force and the triage group supervisor. So one of the things that we've heard is that, you know, well, we don't like the term triage. We don't like the person running the rescue task forces to be called the triage group supervisor. We think they ought to be called the rescue group supervisor or the this or the that. It might be interesting for people to know that when we started, we actually started out with that position named rescue group supervisor overseeing the rescue task forces. And so you had RTF to rescue, rescue to RTF, going on the radio and, you know, it worked out perfectly.
Joe Ferrara:
No.
Bill Godfrey:
No, it did not. It was a huge problem. And we got a lot of feedback on that. And so one of the reasons, there's a reason it's named triage group supervisor. That's because we tried some of these other terms and they didn't work. It became a powerful source of confusion.
Terry Nichols:
This has been vetted. You know, not afraid to change when things are identified like that, not afraid to change, but stay within the boundaries of ICS, of their position titles and everything else that comes along with that.
Bill Godfrey:
Oh, yeah. One of the other ones, Joe, tell me if you've heard this one, and I hear this mostly from the fire departments, not from law enforcement, is they wanna refer to the group that we put together called the tactical, triage and transport. So the tactical group supervisor, triage group supervisor, transport group supervisor, are working together shoulder to shoulder in the same location. They're down range typically right on the edge of the warm zone or just inside, but outside the building, kind of working the contact teams and the rescue task forces and the ambulances to kind of get the down range stuff taken care of. I have fire departments that will say to me, no, well, that's not what we call that. We call that operations.
And I'm like, well, okay, how does that work? And they go, what do you mean? That's how we do it all the time. Yeah, and how often do you have law enforcement as a contingent of your operation? And it's funny because law enforcement across the country assumes that fire and EMS knows so much about NIMS and ICS because we use it all the time. And yet these kinds of mistakes are very common. Fire department gets in the habit of calling that position operations and calling it ops. Well, there's only one operation section chief and they run all of operations. And so you can't have a fire department operations and a law enforcement op. It's one position. And it's dictated by NIMS and the ICS system. But that gets lost on people.
Joe Ferrara:
It does, but worse yet, have you heard them say, no, no, that's forward operations. Oh my gosh.
Bill Godfrey:
Or forward command. Or tactical command.
Joe Ferrara:
How confusing would that get if we do have an operations section chief, now we have operations calling operations, or forward command or command calling command. I mean, come on, there is a reason for common terminology and common phraseology in the National Incident Management System. And it's to reduce confusion. Look, folks, we have enough trouble with communication. Let's not make it worse in different areas saying different things.
Bill Godfrey:
And that, you know, Terry, it's funny because I had forgotten about that one, but Joe's absolutely right. One of the things that we hear commonly on the law enforcement side is, well, that's tactical command. Except the NIMS, there's, again, we come back to these reserved words in NIMS. Command has a specific meaning. It's defined. Operations has a specific meaning. PIO, there's, these things have specific defined meetings. And you only have one. Except when you have command and you have tactical command.
Terry Nichols:
That's a problem.
Joe Ferrara:
That is a problem.
Bill Godfrey:
And the fact that we fail to recognize that that's a problem. I mean, there's not dozens, hundreds, if not thousands of agencies on the law enforcement side that when a SWAT operation comes in, they call it tactical command.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah. We ran, I was a SWAT commander for years, and I had the tactical, that's what I did. I had hostage negotiation right next to me. And we had an incident commander above us.
Bill Godfrey:
But were you tactical command on paper in your policy?
Terry Nichols:
No, we didn't have it that way. Well, I was commander of the tactical team, but on the operation I was in charge of the SWAT team. You know, but we had an incident commander above us. They didn't call me command. It was tactical.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, and what's, I, you know, it's funny, I feel like sometimes the discussion of terminology, it becomes, you know, gagging on a gnat. You know, somebody says, well, I don't like this term. And they get hung up over it. Or I've had these conversations with senior leadership people in our industry who have argued that it doesn't matter whether we call tactical, triage, transport operations. It doesn't matter if we call tactical command forward command and forward stage. Yes, it does.
Joe Ferrara:
It doesn't matter till it does.
Bill Godfrey:
It doesn't matter till it does. It's a known source of confusion. There's a reason that the system is not designed that way. And I get looked at and said, oh, well, you're just being a NIMS purist. You know, you're being the NIMS police. That's not what this is about. This is about doing appropriate training, meaning that we're teaching them the right things from the beginning. Because let's face it, execution may be a little off-center, but we need to be teaching the correct terminology. And it does matter because it's a known source of confusion.
Terry Nichols:
Yep, it is.
Joe Ferrara:
Terry, have you ever seen communication come up in a after action report?
Terry Nichols:
Oh, goodness.
Joe Ferrara:
As a issue?
Terry Nichols:
Communication?
Joe Ferrara:
I don't know.
Terry Nichols:
Nah, I don't think so.
Joe Ferrara:
A couple thousand times?
Terry Nichols:
Yeah, just do a quick Google search or AI search. You'll see that that is one of the top things in these after action reports. But leadership, because that comes up a lot, Bill.
Bill Godfrey:
Yep, leadership is not here in the room doing the training. We don't have leadership buy-in if it's not their idea.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah, man, we could do a deep dive into that leadership piece of it, but-
Joe Ferrara:
Probably do a whole podcast.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah. There's a whole nother podcast. But those two are kind of tied together. No leadership buying, leadership's not there. So, you know, part of that is having leadership go to training. Actually go to training. It's a novel concept. And I know a lot of chiefs and executive leadership doesn't think it's for them. They got other things to do. And I get it. I was busy as a chief as well. But if, you know, you're gonna have to help your people and be there, be there in spirit, be there in person as well. And then let your folks, if they're coming to you with a problem and they're giving you answers to the test on how we can solve this problem that you identified through inverted thinking, go with it, you know? It's not that hard.
Joe Ferrara:
Yeah, and I would submit that the next item ties into those two, because if leadership's not there and leadership doesn't have a buy-in, well, of course there's not gonna be a budget. Because it's not on the priority list for leadership to pay for this level of training, or to pay for this level of policy that needs to be implemented.
Bill Godfrey:
I completely agree with you, and Terry, I'm gonna pull on that thread of inverted thinking there for a second in terms of tools. Because it can always be a delicate conversation when you're trying to manage up in the organization and talk to a leader who's just not getting it. Whether they're the type that, it's gotta be their idea, or they, you know, I think the power of the inverted thinking of saying, all right, boss, look, you tell me, what are the things that we could do as an organization to make sure we screw up this response? I mean, just give me three or four things off the top of your head that you know that we could do that if we did them, we would have a horrible response to an active shooter event. And they'll come up with a couple of things.
And then ask the question, okay, if you were in command, you know, we have one of these, you're gonna show up, right? So if you're in command and you're in charge, or the deputy chief is in command and in charge, you know, or fill in the blank, what are the things that they could do leading up to, before the event, and during the event, to make sure that they did their part to make it a horrible response? And somewhere in there, not going to training is gonna come up.
Terry Nichols:
Absolutely would be. That'd be one of the key things, is didn't attend training with the people, don't know how to make decisions under stress. But I'm glad you you segued us back to the inverted thinking, because a lot of people may not have seen that podcast where we talked about this, but you just spelled it out very well. That's how we get to solutions like this. And these are the things we've heard about why they can't. But it helps you identify these things and gives you a blueprint on how to move forward beyond that, so.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. Interesting. So, no budget. Both of you guys were chiefs. You've had to go, like myself, in front of your commissioners and, you know, try to justify your budget. What are some of the tips that you would give people to be able to address budget issues?
Terry Nichols:
I'll go first. I was blessed that I had, one, good leadership above me. My city manager and councils and mayors were always great. But I went to them on this topic. I went to them with my fire partner, my fire chief partner. As a collective, we need to address this. We need to do this. And that's powerful when both your emergency people in the community are coming to the boss saying, we need a budget to support X. It's not outrageous. It's within both of our capabilities. But showing that it was a priority for us combined, it's hard to say no to that as my boss. And again, I had great leadership above me.
Joe Ferrara:
And I tend to agree with that, Terry. If you go in a unified fashion, and you justify it together, whether it's the fire chief and the police chief, or the fire chief and the sheriff, how we put this forward to the elected officials is critical.
But you know, it's, again, it's gotta start with leadership has to have buy-in here so they make it a budget priority. And I would submit to any fire chief out there that if active shooter training in your community is not a budget priority, you probably need to rethink what you're doing today. Because, I've said it before I think in podcasts, it's not a matter of if it happens in my community, it's a matter of when. So let's get prepared today. And that does start with budget authority. We can't do things without paying for it. We know that.
Bill Godfrey:
I think, you know, it's important to say out loud, and for us as chiefs and as leaders to remember, you have other tools. You've got grants, you got all kinds of grant funding. You got county grants, emergency management grants, state grants, DHS grants, FEMA grants. I mean the list of grants can be almost overwhelming. And so there is opportunities out there to get funding on the law enforcement side. You've got that seizure and forfeiture slush fund that, you know, we won't talk about that anymore, because I don't know what you do with it.
Terry Nichols:
Don't talk about that.
Bill Godfrey:
But there's grant funding. There's also grant funded training. For example, the three day advanced class that we teach is free to responders. You simply submit a request and get your name on the list. And once you get selected, the team shows up and provides the training. Now, you don't have to pay for that, that is free.
However, look, you've got to be a realist. You've got to fill a class and taking people off the road can have a cost. Can you spare them, or do you have to hire back overtime to cover them? Do you have to move people around? Do we need equipment? We need to do some policy development. We may now need to do some in-house training because okay, great, we sent 60 people, but we're a force of 600. So we've trained 10%, now we need to train the other 90. So, the reality is that there's going to be some budgetary impact, but plan ahead for it.
Terry Nichols:
It goes to your priorities as an organization, as a community. If this is important to you, you need to invest resources into it.
Bill Godfrey:
So our next one on the list is agencies don't work together. We don't work with our police department. The police department doesn't work with the sheriff's office. We hate the county. The county hates the city. We can't get along with fill in the blank. Yeah, we've heard this a bunch.
Terry Nichols:
And it's unfortunate. I've seen it throughout my career, unfortunately, within, you know, my neighboring agencies. It's gone up and down, up and down. It's cyclical. At least it was in the community I worked in. But in this day and age, I think we all know we have to work together.
Joe Ferrara:
Absolutely.
Terry Nichols:
It's a no-brainer. Both with our fire and EMS partners, other law enforcement agencies, we're all in this together. And put our egos aside and figure out a way to get along.
Joe Ferrara:
Yeah, again, I'll go back to we don't operate in a vacuum. You may, on a day to day, city doesn't like the county, county doesn't like the city. Law enforcement and fire don't get along. But you can't avoid the fact that you're going to be on scenes together and you can move forward with the negative connotation that we don't like each other so we're not gonna talk to each other on a scene. How's that gonna work out for you? And when it comes down to an active shooter event in a community, everybody's coming. Folks, it's time to put your big boy pants on and work together.
Terry Nichols:
And everybody's watching. Not just everybody's coming.
Joe Ferrara:
Yeah, there you go. I like that.
Terry Nichols:
Everybody's watching.
Joe Ferrara:
Community's watching you.
Terry Nichols:
Do you want to have an outcome that, again, we said it before, is on the national news for the rest of your life in a very negative way? Not in a good way, in a very negative way.
Joe Ferrara:
And one of the top recommendations in the AAR after that is the city should have learned, or the county should have learned, how to work with the other agencies.
Bill Godfrey:
You know, my take on this, I agree with you guys, but I have to acknowledge and own my part in this when I was active duty. There is a real tendency to look at the other agencies around you as competitors and to say, you know, our fire department, our police department, our organization, needs to be better than this other one. I need to demonstrate that we've used our budget well, that our people are trained well, that we're better than the ordinary thing. And that's a very real issue.
I realized far too late in my career how horribly damaging that is to actually being able to do our job on very large scenes where we're all having to operate together. Far too late in the career did I come to that realization. So I think that there are a lot of people on the job that don't think that it's a problem. They fail to recognize that it's a problem that they don't get along with this agency or they don't cooperate with this agency, or they don't do training together.
Now that said, my personal experience has been that the majority of the time the issue is coming from the top and not from the people in the field. That's been my personal experience. I don't have any data to support that other than my personal experience. The majority of the time, the fact that agencies don't get along together is because of how leadership treats each other and not because the line people don't actually. And if there are attitudes on the line, they've been derived from this poisoning of the well by the leadership.
Terry Nichols:
We don't like them, I don't know why, but I was told five years ago when I joined this agency that we don't like them.
Bill Godfrey:
Exactly.
The other thing that, again, my personal experience has demonstrated to me is the fastest way to break through that is not trying to convince these leaders to start being nice to each other, but rather to get the organizations in training together. It's very difficult to keep an attitude against other responders from other organizations when you are routinely training together.
I don't mean once a year you gotta go suck it up and do an hour-long drill. But when you are routinely showing up and sharing your training with each other, you're in the same classes, you're in the same EMS classes, you're in the same fire classes, you're in the same law enforcement classes, you're going to the range and doing things together. All of a sudden you get relationships that bridge that and the leadership either takes note and fixes it or eventually they retire and somebody who doesn't have that attitude moves up.
But until, I do think that that is a real issue. The challenge is you're not there alone and you won't be in this. And so, Joe, I know in the communities that I've worked, we've always had the equivalent of a fire chiefs group for the region. And I assume on the law enforcement side, you know, you've got a police chiefs group.
Terry Nichols:
Yes, absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
Something like that everybody goes to. How hard is it at one of those, you know, luncheons, or those weren't in my experience.
Terry Nichols:
That was it. Or breakfast.
Bill Godfrey:
How hard is it to say, hey guys, I want five minutes to talk about, I just wanna, go with me here, give me five minutes and let's put up a list, like we did in the last podcast on the previous podcast on inverted thinking. Let's make a list of all the ways, all the things that we could do to make sure that we really screwed up an active shooter event response. And I think all of a sudden the light bulb goes on very quickly.
Terry Nichols:
That's a powerful tool. I mean the inverted thinking is powerful and that'd be a great place to do it. Especially if you're that chief in that area and you realize as a more global community, meaning you're working area, you're not prepared, there's some gaps. Get it out there. You spend five minutes doing that exercise and I think you're right, the light bulbs would start to go off for these chiefs.
Joe Ferrara:
Yeah, and not only the Fire Chiefs Association and you have the Police Chiefs Association, why aren't they having a luncheon together to further that? You know, because it isn't just about, does the city and the county talk, or the city and the state agency that's there talk, but it's the law enforcement and the fire. So police and fire chiefs should be getting together at a luncheon and saying, hey, what are the impediments to us working together? Why isn't this happening? Bill, you said it earlier, it starts at the top.
Terry Nichols:
Wow, Joe, slow down. Don't go too fast there.
Joe Ferrara:
A little crazy.
Bill Godfrey:
Cats and dogs living together.
Joe Ferrara:
Mass hysteria.
Bill Godfrey:
So, and, you know, that's the carrot. You know, let me apply the stick on the other side. As a fire chief, as a police chief, you've got a boss, whether it's a city manager, county manager, you've got a boss, mayor. The electorate if you're an elected sheriff. And if you don't get a handle on this, I mean, do you really think that your city manager doesn't know that you guys don't get along with so-and-so? Do you think the city managers don't talk? You think the city and county managers don't have a relationship even though those organizations may not like each other? You think that they, they know. And if you're waiting for them to force you into a meeting to solve this problem, that's not good career longevity.
Joe Ferrara:
Bad idea.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah, it's not gonna bid well for your career. And then when you have an incident happen and it turned into a train wreck because you do not have these relationships, yeah, it's not gonna work out.
Joe Ferrara:
Who are they gonna point the finger at?
Terry Nichols:
Yeah, yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, yeah.
Joe Ferrara:
You'd better point it at yourself.
Bill Godfrey:
That's the button on your side, Terry. We just had a technical fault.
Terry Nichols:
I didn't do it. I promise.
Bill Godfrey:
So for folks that can't see off-camera, Karla right now has just fallen out of her chair laughing at us because Terry hit the switch to move the table up and down.
Terry Nichols:
Blame me. Blame the cop.
Bill Godfrey:
That's all right.
Terry Nichols:
I'm against two fire folks here. So blame the cop.
Bill Godfrey:
So, moving on, we can't communicate.
Joe Ferrara:
Wow.
Bill Godfrey:
We can't communicate.
Terry Nichols:
This table communicated with us well, thank you very much.
Bill Godfrey:
So that actually falls into, let's talk about both radio comms, also just communicating before an event, during an event, things like that.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah I think radio's a big issue that we all have. You see it in every after action report. There's communication issues. But you know, why this won't work here? We can't talk to each other. We don't have the same radio channels. We don't have, you know, pick your poison, but it's an issue.
Solve it. Solve it ahead of time. If you know it's an identified issue, we can't do this because we can't communicate with each other. Fix it.
Joe Ferrara:
Well, it goes beyond that. Forget about the radios. How many times have you seen two leaders together on a scene or in a command post and they're not talking to one another or they're talking to one another, but the other one's not hearing what they're saying? There's a lot of noise, and I don't mean audible noise, but there's a lot of noise that goes on between communication exchange with two human beings. Some of it is in how they're dressed. Okay, let's take the city and the county. You know, this fire chief doesn't like, you know, their uniforms. So that's noise between the two of them.
You would think that we would do a better job of communicating and listening in communication. My gosh, we've got one mouth and two ears. We should be really well equipped for that. But I think it's a major failure. And then add some technology to a radio to it. And now we expect that the radio's gonna fix it? I don't think so.
Bill Godfrey:
You know, Joe, one of the things you made me think of with that is a common issue that we see in training that we have to correct the behavior, is that you end up with the law enforcement person running the show and the fire and EMS person running the show, running their things independent.
Joe Ferrara:
Silos.
Bill Godfrey:
They're standing in the command post together somewhat near or adjacent to each other, but they're not actually talking to each other. They're not coordinating together. And I see this happen a lot, whether it's medical branch and law enforcement branch not communicating, or we're in a unified command and the fire and EMS unified commander is directing all of the EMS activities from the command post and the law enforcement unified commander is directing all law enforcement activities. That is not-
Joe Ferrara:
That's not unified command.
Bill Godfrey:
That is not the way unified command is supposed to work. And it is a very, very dangerous precedent. It's a very dangerous habit to get into. And in the case of an active shooter event where we are absolutely reliant on each other to execute the job, it's a prescription for disaster.
Joe Ferrara:
And you would think we solved it by putting people shoulder to shoulder and next to one another, that that's the end-all, be-all to solving it. And it's not.
Bill Godfrey:
No, we've got video of guys that shoulders are actually touching, but they're touching with their backs turned and they're not communicating.
Joe Ferrara:
Not talking to each other.
Terry Nichols:
You hope that proximity would help solve some of the communication issues, but it won't. Doesn't do it all the time.
Joe Ferrara:
It's one tool. But there has to be more. They have to build a relationship. They have to work together. How do you build a relationship? You train together before the event happens and you have lunch together like we just talked about, police and fire organizations getting together at that level. That's how we fix the communication problems.
Bill Godfrey:
So before we leave the can't communicate, I do want to dive down into something on radio. So, we can't communicate is a common issue. Cross radios. And so there's a decision made. We're gonna create a disaster channel. We're gonna create a mutual aid channel. We're gonna have this bank that's set aside and everybody's gonna be able to go to it. We're gonna patch channels together. We're gonna do these things, do these things.
Okay, here's my challenge to you. Whatever idea you come up with for how to solve that radio communication, then go into inverted thinking and go, all right, if we do this, how could we mess this up? And in the case of a disaster channel or a mutual aid channel, well, let's see. We can make sure that the radios are not all programmed. We can name them different things in different radios, different agency's radios. We can put them on different banks and different channels and different radios. We can give one agency the encryption key and not give it to another agency.
Terry Nichols:
We can not train our first responders on how to use the radios. Because it's so complicated.
Joe Ferrara:
We cannot practice with them.
Bill Godfrey:
Exactly. So, before you leave your solution for how you're gonna solve your radio problem, drill down on that solution and say, okay, what are all the things that we could do to make sure that this solution completely and totally fails and contributes to us not being able to communicate, and then solve for that so that you have a plan.
Okay, moving on. Inconsistent policies. Police has one policy, fire has another policy. The sheriff's office has a third policy. The outside EMS agency or the mutual aid county has a different policy. Go.
Terry Nichols:
I think it segues into the next two where, you know, fire must be incident commander, or EMS won't go in. Those are policy-driven issues. But again, you have a standardized process. We talked about the checklist, the ASIM checklist. That's a good start of getting everybody on the same page, having the same policies. We actually offer a sample policy on our website that people can download, that helps get everybody on the same page.
Joe Ferrara:
And look, it's important to recognize that as many agencies as are in the United States, there's gonna be different policies. However, and Terry, you just said it, there is a sample policy, there's sample direction on how to get together. I don't have an expectation that the police department and the fire department are always gonna have the same policies, or the city and the county are always gonna have the same policies. But folks, as you're listening to us talk about these problems, if you're not getting together on the same policy, you're missing the boat.
I mean, why would I train my folks on policy A to move in this direction, and worse yet, not tell Terry over at the police department what my guys and gals are even doing? And then why would Terry train his folks on his policy and not tell us what we're doing? And if you do have different policies, at the very least, please inform each other so that we know what they are.
Bill Godfrey:
And I'm gonna take that one step further, Joe. I actually think that these agencies should all have the exact same piece of paper that the police chief, the fire chief, the emergency manager, the county sheriff, whoever, everybody is a signatory. I don't care if you've got to have two pages of the policy just for the signatures of everybody that buys in. One piece of paper that everybody signs off on.
Now, okay, oh, well we have a specific SOP template, or we have a specific general guideline to, all right, fine. Use that template to say, the attached is implemented as policy under this, you know, and then attach it but the same piece of paper. Because the disconnection is very, very real.
I will never forget, now, in fairness, this was a long time ago. It was over a decade ago. We were doing some training and the sheriff's organization said, okay, you know, bad guy's down. We're ready for fire and EMS to move in. And they turned to their counterpart and said, okay, we're ready for your medics to come up. And fire guy says, you already cleared it? And he goes, well, no, but you know, we've got the bad guy down. We've got a security cordon set up, we're ready for you guys to come up. And they go, well, no, we don't go in. We don't go in until it's completely cleared. Well, yes, you do. That's what your policy says. No, that's not what our policy says. Our policy says exactly the opposite. These two get into an argument to the point where we have to stop the exercise. They both are gonna prove themselves right. And here's the funny part, they were both right.
The sheriff's office policy said the fire department does the equivalent of what we now call warm zone EMS operations. The fire department policy explicitly said you are forbidden from doing warm zone EMS operations. Again, this was a long time ago, but this is a very, very large metro organization that this happened in. And it just goes to show how easy it is to get that drift.
Terry Nichols:
Yep, and when you don't have the relationships, it makes them easier to have that drift.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, and Joe, I'm reminded of, you know, when you and I were both EMS chiefs back in the day and we wanted to get our region on a joint EMS protocol, some of the challenges, and that was a multi-year challenge. Talk a little bit about that process and what worked and what didn't work to get everybody to literally buy in to the same document.
Joe Ferrara:
Well, and I'll preface that with, if you think that the fire service in and of itself is resistant to change, then please talk to the medical community and physicians, and put five physicians in a room and get them to agree that this is the best way, the one way to do things.
I think the biggest challenge there was, not only writing or compiling a protocol that's evidence-based, that's research-based, that makes sense, but getting physicians, the medical directors, to buy off on that, I think that's the biggest challenge. I think once, and again, that goes back to, it starts at the top, it starts at the leadership. If the leadership buys in to it, then the trickle down effect, the training, the effort that goes into it, works from there.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, and there's a couple of tactical things that we did. One was, instead of trying to legislate it, we decided to approach it as a keeping up with the Joneses. So, EMS and paramedics largely want to have the most advanced skillset. Just like, you know, cops want to have the best SWAT team, I guess, you know, whatever. And so we used that as, they're wanting to keep up, you know, well, why does so-and-so get to do this? But we're not allowed to use this drug? Or we're not allowed to use this procedure? And so that was a powerful motivator at the line level and at the mid leadership level to the keeping up with the Joneses. So, don't ever underestimate the power of keeping up with the Joneses.
The other thing that we did that I thought was extraordinarily powerful was the format. Basically, if you'd looked at the book, the main column was two thirds of the page, but on the outer edge was a little third column. And that had the list of exceptions that people took to the policy. So whatever the policy or procedure was that was considered to be the most complete, most literal, most aggressive, whatever, that was what went into the main column. But if there was an agency that didn't do it that way, there was a note right off to the side, which was a very powerful way to say, I don't want any notes about our agency off in the side. But that could apply to active shooter events. So as you're trying to get everybody on the same policy, how about starting by getting everybody's policies and figuring out where they're different?
Terry Nichols:
It'd be a good starting point.
Joe Ferrara:
And maybe they don't want to be the one in that column, because, I don't know, Terry, do you think there's a competitive nature in our businesses?
Terry Nichols:
Nah. Maybe just a little bit?
Joe Ferrara:
Tiny.
Bill Godfrey:
Keeping up with the Joneses.
Joe Ferrara:
There you go.
Bill Godfrey:
It's a powerful force. Okay. So, EMS won't go in, doesn't do warm zone operations, which I think ties into, it's not in our contract. It's not my job. It's not what I signed on for. Yeah.
Joe Ferrara:
Hey, why does fire always wanna be in charge?
Terry Nichols:
You know, they're used to doing things. They work in that way, and law enforcement does, but we just do it a little bit different. You know, there's a sergeant.
Joe Ferrara:
Yeah, I mean, I think the default there is, you know, we talk about it during class, first law enforcement on scene, officer on scene of an active shooter event, who's in charge? That law enforcement officer.
And somehow, my lovely brethren and sistren in the fire service get there and go, we're in command. My answer to them always is, all right, this is an active shooter. Let's think for a second. This is a murder in progress. Hey, battalion chief, you want to be in court on this one as the incident commander of a murder scene? I don't think so.
Terry Nichols:
So true. It's a culture change for us.
Joe Ferrara:
It is culture.
Terry Nichols:
It is an absolute culture change. I think we're getting better. You see the swing, you know, both, I think across the spectrum of what we're doing in public safety, especially law enforcement. It's changing. But we still have a long way to go.
Joe Ferrara:
How does the law enforcement feel about incident command?
Terry Nichols:
Lost.
Joe Ferrara:
Lost.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah. I think lost. But again, it's changing. We're getting better. But as a whole, you know, ICS and NIMS was one of those root canals you had to do. And it was no fun for anybody. But again, that's why I'm so proud of the work, you know, done here, is that you break it down and make it very applicable, very easy for people to understand at the line level.
Joe Ferrara:
And I think when law enforcement comes out of one of our classes, they get incident commander way more than when they walked in the door.
Terry Nichols:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
I think on the fire side, Joe, it's largely out of habit. It's habit and it's legacy. It's been handed down. And that's the way we've always done it. I show up on scene, I take command. I establish command. I need to be in command of my own troops. But if you go back to any version of NIMS and ICS, it clearly talks about who should be in command and why they should be in command.
And I want to close the loop on this one piece because I don't wanna leave people the wrong impression. Because we sometimes get asked, well, what about unified command? For example, NFPA says unified command. Unified command is appropriate. And it is a very useful tool and it should be used in an active shooter event. And what we found is that if you try to do a unified command from the very first minute of the scene, it slows things down. Because everything that needs to happen right now, right now, at the very beginning, in the first five minutes of this thing, is a cop problem. It's a law enforcement related issue. And that's not the time for a unified command.
The time for a unified command is when you've got an incident commander who is a law enforcement supervisor. They have a medical branch and a law enforcement branch, and they have an operational group that's built out. They have downrange tactical, triage and transport. And the job is getting done. And then the chiefs show up, they get a detailed briefing from the incident commander. They assume unified command. And that person that was the incident commander, that law enforcement supervisor, becomes the operations section chief. And the unified commanders communicate their priorities, their objectives, their strategies, through the operations section chief for implementation.
So, it's not black or white, it's not one or the other. It's not our, you know, you have to do it right from the beginning. A command is a process. Command is a process. And what we found, because we, in the beginning, tried to do unified command right off the bat. The first law enforcement supervisor, first fire and EMS supervisor, go, make it work. Yes, it works. It's just not fast. It's slow. It slows things down. And that's what we found. So, I think that, you know, deals with some of those cultural issues. Won't happen here. We have other bigger priorities.
Terry Nichols:
Yeah, and that goes, priorities goes back to, you know, as leadership, what is your priorities? You know, and sit down. Again, go back to the inverted thinking, throw this problem out on the table and how can we screw it up? You know, how can we screw up a response. And figure out, what do we need to do right now? Like, right now, right now. And then what's a three month plan, six month plan, year long plan to start addressing those issues. And maybe some other things that you think are a priority right now, not so big a priority when you start looking at the work you just did and realize we've got some gaps.
And then the won't happen here is, like, put your head in the sand. There's so many communities around this nation that you could, we'll look at you and go, you're a fool. Because we thought the same thing. Or they were prepared for it and they handled it appropriately because they knew it would happen there one day.
Joe Ferrara:
Yeah, we've got to look. As leaders, we've got to take that attitude on. Saying it won't happen here is probably one of the more dangerous statements we can make in leadership. Because what differentiates our community from any other community? Why did it happen in this community and it didn't happen here? I have no control over that. Do you think the people in the northeast right now are thinking about wildfires? Yeah, they are. Were they thinking about wildfires last year? Probably not.
So, saying it won't happen here doesn't help us in preparation. And if we look back in this list, if I say it won't happen here, then why should I put a budget together? Why should I even think about working together with other agencies? Because it won't happen here. So, to apply that inverted thinking concept, if I say it's not gonna happen here, then the flip side of that is, when it happens here, what do we need to do?
Bill Godfrey:
You know, the previous podcast, when we talked about inverted thinking, I told the story about Charlie Munger, famous investor partner with Warren Buffett. And he, in World War II, he was a weather forecaster and his job was to provide pilots the tools to navigate the weather and go through. But he took a different angle on it. And he tells this story, and it's very, very jarring when he says it. He says, I, instead of trying to forecast the weather, because that's a very hard task, especially back then, he said, I just turned it around and looked at the question a different way. If I wanted to kill all my pilots, what would I do? And when he says that out loud, you're like, oh my God, that's jarring.
Joe Ferrara:
Horrible thing.
Terry Nichols:
And as a meteorologist. As a weatherman. Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
And he says, okay, I would put them into known icing conditions that their aircraft can't handle to make sure they crash. And I would send them to an area with fog weather clouds where they're socked in to the point that they can't safely land before they run out fuel. And I'm gonna kill my pilot. And so, what is my job as a weather forecaster? It's to make sure I avoid those things.
Now, I'm gonna turn this around and say it this way for leadership in the room that are saying, but you know, it's easy for you guys to say that active shooters are a real priority. Okay, here, try this inverted thinking exercise. Ask yourself the question, what are the things that I could do to make sure that my people get killed today?
Terry Nichols:
That's powerful.
Bill Godfrey:
What are the things that I can do to make sure that my citizens and my civilians can get killed today? And if that ain't enough for you, what are the things that I can do to make sure that I get fired Monday? That's the power of inverted thinking.
Joe Ferrara:
It won't happen here.
Bill Godfrey:
You make those lists and it'll change your thinking.
Terry Nichols:
It will, it will.
I just want, you know, we started off talking about, Bill, about those change agents within an organization, and these are some things they may have heard, but we've heard them. We've talked about we've heard all these things, plus many, many, many more. So, keep your head up. If you're that person, keep your head up, and know there's a path forward. And we're always here to help here at the National Center. And you can do it. You can do it.
Bill Godfrey:
Don't lose the faith. Don't lose the faith. You'd be surprised how much change gets driven from the line level up. It's a remarkable amount because there are leaders out there that will listen to it.
Terry Nichols:
I agree.
Bill Godfrey:
Terry, Joe, thank you very much for doing this. I appreciate you guys being here. It was a fun and engaging conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed it. If you haven't already liked and subscribed to the podcast, please do so. Please send us any questions you have or suggestions for future topics. If you've got some questions, you can post them in the comments. We do pay attention to that and respond to them.
Of course, the purpose of this is for training, professional comments, so, some off-topic comments we don't respond to. And that's the way it is.
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