Special Reports
Special Report: Life After Public Safety: A Personal Succession Process for Your “Next Chapter”
Description: What comes to mind when you hear the term succession planning? Most people think immediately of its most common workplace application – i.e., replacing top leaders when they leave their organizations. But did you know that an effective succession process can be adapted for personal use? In fact, it can be very helpful in facilitating a variety of transitions, such as from your current position to other employment, to self-employment, to partial retirement, and to full retirement. This 12-page special report identifies the five phases of a personal succession process and documents the steps required to complete each one.
IAFC Webinar – July 2013
Webinar: Impressing the Community and Rallying Key Support
Handout: The 7 Ms of Marketing: How to Communicate Your Agency’s Value
Description: “Marketing” is simply a term for communicating the value your agency provides the community. This 12-page handout (a) identifies and briefly explains a seven-step process for creating, implementing, and maintaining an effective marketing plan, (b) provides tips to increase your marketing effectiveness, and (c) lists over twenty methods you may use to communicate that value.
IAFC Webinar – February 2015
Webinar: How To Write a Compelling Annual Report
Handout #1: Checklist for Writing a Compelling Annual Report
Description: The webinar covered a myriad of techniques you can use to make your annual report a “must-read” document in your community. This one-page document lists fourteen specific techniques you can use to create an annual report that demonstrates your agency’s value, educates stakeholders, and wins the community’s support.
IAFC Webinar – February 2015
Webinar: How To Write a Compelling Annual Report
Handout #2:
A Compelling Annual Report Answers Readers’ Burning Questions
Description: One of the techniques recommended in the webinar is to answer your readers’ implicit questions in your annual report. This two-page article provides a list of “burning questions” that represent information that stakeholders typically want to know about their fire and rescue agency. By answering these questions, you are both educating them and giving them good reasons to support the value you provide.
Fire-Rescue International 2014 Conference
Handout #2:
Sample Implementation Plan for Implementing a Formal Mentoring Program
Description: Successfully moving a succession process from paper to practice requires more than just an action plan: it requires an implementation plan. The difference between the two types of documents is like the difference between a “to do” list and a recipe – i.e., the former tells you WHAT to do, while the latter spells out exactly HOW to do it. This 9-page handout provides a template that demonstrates what the implementation plan for a formal mentoring program might look like at both the macro and micro levels.
Fire-Rescue International 2014 Conference
Handout #3:
Keys to Implementing an Effective Succession Process
Description: An effective succession management process ensures that your agency can develop and sustain a ready pool of qualified applicants who can step into key positions throughout the organization and hit the ground running. These workshop slides (in .pdf format) identify key elements of developing and implementing such a process.
Fire-Rescue International 2014 Conference
Handout #4:
Succession Process Self-assessment
Description: This 21-item evaluation helps you evaluate the status of your agency’s succession management process and identify which elements need attention. Don’t have a process in place yet? The assessment will give you an idea of what components you should think about including. It also offers some relevant free resources for those who would like additional information.
Fire-Rescue International 2014 Conference
Handout #5:
Pat Lynch’s Process for Identifying Your Agency’s True Value
Description: A critical success factor for an effective succession management process is the ability for all members and staff to be able to articulate the true value your agency provides. This 2-page article describes a process with which to identify that value. Results can be used in a variety of ways, including educating internal and external stakeholders about the impact of the organization’s positions, functions, skills, and systems on the community’s safety, health, and economic viability.
Workshop: How to Create a Community of Advocates for Public Safety
Handout #1:
How to Create a Community of Advocates for Public Safety
Description: The key to keeping your community safe, healthy, and economically viable is to educate and cultivate your relationships with decision-makers and the public you serve. These workshop slides (in .pdf format) identify specific tips and tools for achieving that objective effectively.
Workshop: How to Create a Community of Advocates for Public Safety
Handout #2:
Impressing Your Community Self-assessment
Description: This 20-item evaluation helps you determine quickly your agency’s strengths and areas of opportunity in creating a community of advocates for public safety. It also suggests some relevant free resources for those who wish to learn more.
Workshop: Survey Mastery: How Satisfied are Your Stakeholders? Are You Sure?
Handout #1:
Survey Mastery: How Satisfied are Your Stakeholders? Are You Sure?
Description: Surveys are an effective way to assess and improve nearly every aspect of your organization, from how well you’re meeting your stakeholders’ needs and expectations, to what’s on your members’ minds. Unfortunately most surveys are useless: people make unnecessary mistakes in their design, administration, and/or analysis. These workshop slides (in .pdf format) identify and give examples of some simple, no- or low-cost techniques that will enable you to collect actionable data. If you’re going to conduct surveys, why not do them right? These workshop slides (in .pdf format) show you how to do that.
Workshop: Survey Mastery: How Satisfied are Your Stakeholders? Are You Sure?
Handout #2:
Survey Effectiveness Self-Assessment
Description: This 20-item evaluation helps you assess your proficiency in obtaining the actionable data you need to address a variety of issues by maximizing the effectiveness of your surveys. It also suggests some relevant free resources for those who would like more information.
Workshop: Survey Mastery: How Satisfied are Your Stakeholders? Are You Sure?
Handout #3:
26 Insider Tips to Dramatically Increase the Effectiveness of Your Surveys
Description: Does your organization spend time and money conducting surveys, only to find that the results are not actionable, or that your efforts fail to resolve the issue or problem that you thought the survey would help you address? The 26 no- or low-cost tips listed in this one-page article will enable you to obtain relevant, accurate data that help you address the issues or answer the questions you had in mind.
Fire-Rescue International 2015 Conference
Workshop: Adaptive Leadership Roles for a Dynamic Environment
Handout #1:
Adaptive Leadership Roles for a Dynamic Environment
Description: Leadership effectiveness is the foundation of employee morale and engagement, team performance, agency effectiveness, and community impact. As the fire and rescue service undergoes radical changes, it’s clear that traditional leadership roles that served agencies and their communities well in the past are not sufficient to address current and future realities. An increasingly complex and dynamic environment has made the roles of communicator, counselor, coach, and consultant critical. These workshop slides (in .pdf format) enable you to begin to answer that question.
Fire-Rescue International 2015 Conference
Workshop: Adaptive Leadership Roles for a Dynamic Environment
Handout #2:
Coach Role Self-assessment
Description: This 25-item evaluation helps you determine quickly how proficient you are in the competencies required for the leadership role of coach, and suggests some relevant free resources for those who wish to learn more.
Fire-Rescue International 2015 Conference
Workshop: Adaptive Leadership Roles for a Dynamic Environment
Handout #3:
Communicator Role Self-assessment
Description: This 25-item evaluation helps you determine your proficiency in the competencies required for the leadership role of communicator, and suggests some relevant free resources for those who would like additional information.
Fire-Rescue International 2015 Conference
Workshop: How to Be Political without Being a Politician
Handout #1:
How to Be Political without Being a Politician
Description: Because there is a political aspect embedded in fire and rescue leaders’ interactions with all stakeholders, developing the capacity to work effectively in political and politically-charged environments is a critical success factor for these leaders. Yet if asked, most of them probably would say that political acumen is the skill set with which they are least comfortable. During this session, co-presented with Fire Chief Kingman Schuldt of the Greater Naples (FL) Fire District, we gave examples of how leaders can be effective in the political arena without being politicians. These workshop slides (in .pdf format) show you ways to increase your proficiency in this arena.
Workshop: How to Be Political without Being a Politician
Handout #2:
Political Acumen Self-assessment
Description: This 23-item evaluation helps you determine quickly your level of proficiency in political literacy, and suggests some relevant free resources for those who would like to learn more.
Workshop: How to Be Political without Being a Politician
Handout #3:
How to Succeed in Public Safety Politics without Bragging or Begging
Description: Despite the fact that they work in a political environment, public safety leaders often are unwilling, or feel poorly equipped, to engage actively in “politics.” Unfortunately, this reluctance may have a negative impact on the safety of their communities. The good news: becoming proficient at navigating the political process is a skill that can be learned and improved with practice. The insights listed in this 2-page article were shared by a veteran of the political process, Fire Chief Kingman Schuldt of the Greater Naples (FL) Fire District.
Workshop: How to Be Political without Being a Politician
Handout #4:
How to Succeed at Consolidation: The East Naples/Golden Gate Fire Districts’ Experience
Description: In 2014, the East Naples and Golden Gate Fire Districts combined to form the Greater Naples (FL) Fire District. In this 2-page article, Fire Chief Kingman Schuldt shares some insights into what it takes to develop a process for successfully achieving any major, complex change that has major implications for a wide variety of stakeholders.
Stop the Insanity of Public Safety Conversations: Change the Context
Description: One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. That description depicts what’s going on in public safety today: though we engage in continuous conversations about life and death issues such as LODDs, firefighters’ physical and behavioral health, and requiring sprinklers in buildings, we’ve seen few meaningful changes in behaviors or outcomes. To achieve the desired results, we must transform the conversations by re-framing public safety issues so they resonate with stakeholders. Yet few people are proficient in the critical leadership skill of framing – i.e., creating a new or alternative context. If you lack this skill, you owe it to yourself, your colleagues, and your community to remedy this deficiency. These workshop slides (in .pdf format) will help you begin to do that.
Fire-Rescue International 2016 Conference Workshop: Stop the Insanity of Public Safety Conversations: Change the Context
Handout #2:
Control the Conversation Self-assessment
Description: This 25-item evaluation helps you assess your level of proficiency in using framing skills to control the conversation, and suggests some relevant free resources for those who would like additional information.
Fire-Rescue International 2016 Conference Workshop: Are You Prepared? Emergent Skills for Fire and Rescue Leaders
Handout #1:
Are You Prepared? Emergent Skills for Fire and Rescue Leaders
Description: Today’s fire and rescue leaders must become proficient in an ever-wider range of leadership skills. While some skills truly may be new to them, they are likely to recognize others, though they are used in a different context and/or for a different purpose than what they’re used to seeing. For example, leaders must demonstrate the business acumen to run increasingly complex agencies, educate their stakeholders, have the versatility to create a community of advocates for public safety, manage employees with increasingly dissimilar expectations, and navigate the political process. These workshop slides (in .pdf format) cover seven emergent skills needed for success in an environment that becomes increasingly complex even as resources remain scarce, the demand for services more wide-ranging, stakeholders more diverse, and politics more prevalent.