Ep 70: Sometimes Tradition Has To Change
Episode 70
Published Mar 4, 2024
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 35:59
Episode Summary
The one constant in Public Safety is we don’t like the way things are done, and we don’t like change. Today’s episode looks at three reasons why we are resistant to change and what we can do to implement it.
Episode Notes
Hard is hard for a reason – it doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Getting held back by tradition, management and others are often the reasons we fail to implement change. Join Bill Godfrey, Adam Penley, Kami Maertz and Mark Rhame as they discuss these three common obstacles to changing policies and procedures and offer ideas and examples of how to overcome these challenges.
View this episode on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/rdwFcKc-D38
Transcript
- You know, we joke in our business sometimes about it being 100 years of tradition unimpeded by progress. It's a little bit tongue in cheek. The problem is it's not funny. Sometimes tradition has to change. And yet, we're all resistant. Today's topic, we're gonna talk about how to overcome that institutional inertia to get change. Stick around. Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I am joined by three of the other C3 Pathways instructors. Sitting next to me is Adam Pendley, across the table from us, Kami Maertz. And Mark Rhame. Welcome in, everybody, thanks. So today's topic is sometimes tradition has to change. And this is I know something kind of near and dear for all of us and I wanna set the stage a little bit. I was at one of the training sessions just a few weeks ago, and we started it off by saying, Let's talk about how we sometimes get in our own way. And I challenged everybody to tell me all the things that they would do if they wanted to ensure they had a terrible response, you know? Because the way our brains are wired, we're a lot better at picking out the things that can go wrong as opposed to how to do something correctly, something that this guy named Charlie Munger used to call inverted thinking. So instead, you say, what are the things that we could do to ensure that we don't achieve this? And so I said to the group, Give me the list of things that you know you could do or not do that would guarantee that you just had a terrible response to an active shooter." And of course, the board filled up very quickly, all the classic stuff. You know, we wouldn't train, we wouldn't work together, we wouldn't cooperate, we wouldn't set up command, we wouldn't do an integrated response," you know, the whole list. And then I turned the tables on them a little bit and I said, okay, and I picked up the book, and some of the materials, and the checklist, and I go, we're gonna talk about all that, everything that you just listed." And they gave me like 20 something items on the board. Everything you listed is covered in this. Now, let's be honest, you guys don't even know what it is yet. Tell me all the reasons why you won't be able to implement this or you can't implement this. And I said, And I'll spot you the first one. It's not the way we do it around here."- [Kami] Yes.
- And literally, 24 hours later, the next morning, I listened to a fire and EMS person try to explain to me how the triage and transport position would never be called that. That that's operations for them. And they just didn't like the naming and it just didn't fit the way they did things. And I stood and looked at this individual and I just kinda nodded my head and I said, well, I said, you know, the problem with calling it operations is that there's only one operations position and this is a joint operation. So right away, you've got a problem. And the person started to step forward to say something and I could see the little light bulb go on in their eyes, like, oh shit, he's right.
- Yeah.
- And then it got down to the naming and there was another fire department person from another agency that was there. And as the conversation went back and forth, the person said, you know, I don't care if you call it Steve's group, call it whatever. And the person who was objecting to the triage and transport name goes Yeah, but we would never call it triage and transport.
- I just...
- [Mark] Yeah good with everything except for that.
- [Kami] Exactly.
- Yeah. I assume each of you have your own stories along this way.
- Well, I mean, every, you know, the twatty, that's the way we've always done it. You know, that always gets in the way of training. But I mean, to bring it back to, you know, this topic in particular, you know, when you look at everyone often cites the Columbine incident, of course, as a time when law enforcement had to change its tactics. The tradition and training up to that point had been surround and smother until your tactical teams could get there. And then that changed quickly. But then it changed into having to form like the diamond, you know, where you had a certain, a prescribed number of officers that were in a certain formation that had to go in a certain way. And then you realize that's a little too rigid. But even taking it out of active shooter examples, just in the agency where I'm from, you know, my entire career up until the point I retired, the zone structure was a certain way with the types of areas that officers rode in. But the county grew and it needed to change. So they changed everything. They even changed the terminology from zone to district right, and there was probably some resistance with that change, but you adapt to it, you learn it, you train to it, and it becomes your new way of practicing what you do.
- Yeah it's a little nuts in some ways. But on the EMS side, Mark, I mean, I know you and I started as medics in the '80's. You know, we thought we were supposed to take time to start IVs on trauma patients before we transported them. When we would run a code, you know, we used bicarb and then bicarb was out, and then it was back, and then it was out again. And how many stories do you have along that line?
- I would say that my entire career was from the EMS perspective, it was, this is the way we do it until we're gonna change it. And changes did occur. So like the example you used on IVs, I would also say that with airways, you know, in the very beginning you had to these advanced airways and we would sit on a scene and kill a patient. I'm not saying that literally
- Statute of limitations watch out.
- Because you would sit there and struggle so long to get an advanced airway when in fact the new technology showed us that you don't necessarily need to do an advanced airway. So long as they got good O2 exchange, that's what you're trying to achieve. So as time progressed, it opened our eyes and said, wait a second, we don't need to do that old stuff. Which we thought was imperative. You had to do this before you got off the scene. I remember getting in a fight with a, not literally, but we were close. With a private ambulance provider that insisted on starting an IV on a shooting victim, where we were wanting to do a load and go, to the point that we were getting ready to dismiss them and put them back of our transport unit and said, no, we gotta get to the hospital right now. They're not gonna survive with an IV. They need to get under a surgeon's knife. So we have to change with the times. There's no choice.
- I completely agree. If there's one consistent thing for public safety people, whether it be police, fire, EMS, dispatch, emergency management, there's two things that we don't like, we don't like the way things are and we don't like change. And that's our reality. Yeah.
- And I think especially when you know better you do better. And we teach that time and again to our children and everybody, you know, that once you learn things, you progress in things. And I think we're, you know, we can be harder on the younger generation, but they are more adept to change. And so sometimes when we've been doing it a while, we do that common, you know, this is the way we've always done it, so we're just gonna keep doing it instead of being open to change and realizing that we've got here somehow and we can get further along if we allow ourselves to do so.
- That's interesting. So you think the younger generation is more embracing of change than the older generation?
- Yes, because I think through their generation they've seen technology and everything change so rapidly that they're used to the change, that they're more able to handle that and or at least have an open mind to change. Where sometimes where we've been doing it a while and we remember the way that we used to do it, and the way that everything, you know, has come down the line and that's just it. We were always very resistant to change. And I think we've kind of been on that path for a while.
- So let's bring it back on topic here for active shooter incident management, obviously that's what we're focused on. We know what a lot of the common institutional complaints are about trying to implement a new process or adjust the process that you have to implement some of the things that you've learned and some of the new ways. So let's talk about some ways to overcome that. Adam, I'm gonna ask you to lead, lead off. 'Cause you mentioned it with me. That's not the way we do it around here. What are some of the ways that you've seen to overcome that?
- Sure, so I think the first thing and kind of extending on what we've all said is that when you attend training or a policy review or some sort of workshop, you have to be open to new ideas, right? So that's the first thing is to not go in with the arms crossed. And, you know, this is not the way we do it. So I'm not gonna listen and realize that. And somebody used this example one time a long time ago, which I really, I've taken to heart is that, sometimes any training is like being in a grocery store. There's gonna be some products that you're like hey, you know what, that's gonna really work well. And some other things you may have to leave on the shelf for some other reasons, but at least being open to the idea of shopping new ideas, right? So that's the first thing, but then the second thing I think is what you're driving at is, is that then you have to figure out a way to be willing to implement new ideas, right? So being able to go through the process of having some sort of policy discussion within your agency. And more importantly, what we talk about a lot is integrated policy discussions with other disciplines and agencies within your jurisdiction to make sure that we're flexible enough to all be on the same page, have those policy discussions, and be willing to implement some of those new ideas. That's where sometimes tradition can get in the way. And sometimes that idea that, hey, well that's just not the way we're gonna do it. And I think sometimes it's a little bit of fear, sometimes it's a little bit of just it's work sometimes to make the change. Because once you make a change, you're supposed to of course, train to it and exercise to it to make sure that you can follow through. So again, I think it's kind of two big ideas. One is that being willing to listen to new ideas. And then second to that, being able to have the courage to implement new ideas that may work better.
- So taking off of what Adam said, do you guys, how much, if at all, do you think the psychology of, if I agree to this change, let's say I'm willing to do the work, everything else, if I agree to this change that's a commentary that we weren't doing it right to begin with, or somehow what we did yesterday, if we make this change for tomorrow, then that's acknowledging that what we were doing yesterday was wrong. Do you think that plays into this spoken or unspoken?
- I think that makes a really good excuse is what it does for not doing anything. I mean if we're not looking, what we talked about in the active shooter incident management class, the advanced class especially, is that we have to look at case studies. We have to look at after action reports. We have to look at what other agencies did good and bad. And if we're not learning by all that stuff and modifying our response based upon their good and bad both good and bad. Because if they're doing some stuff bad, we need to not make sure we don't follow that path. But the same thing on that good side, we never thought of that. We weren't doing that. Is that something we need to start looking at, and put into practice ourselves? So again, I think sometimes it is, and I'm gonna blame management, sometimes it's management taking the easiest road and they checked it on the box. Or on the paper, they checked that box and said, you know, we've done that. We've got that. We don't need to work on it anymore. No, sometimes you need to look and see is what we have necessary and is it working for us?
- Yeah and I think you're right, and I think you hit on it, is that it's the easiest way, right? We've done it, we've already know this way, it's easier to keep doing it that way. And I think that you're right also that I think it kind of does make some people question, well, this is what I've always trained everybody to do. This is where I have knowledge in. And so now I have to learn something new. And was I doing things wrong before and admitting that? And I know as law enforcement, we're not always very good at admitting when we're wrong and that we can do things better. So that is our problem.
- And one of the things I like to do, again, whenever we talk about examples is I try to sometimes, you know, we get so focused in, this is such a serious topic in so many areas, policies related to active shooter is one of the things that just gets so dug in. But if you think about, think outside of even active shooter events. Mud huts were not wrong when they were invented to shelter you from the weather. But we shouldn't still be living in mud huts today, right? Technology, we learned from things, things advance, and we have to be willing to change what we do to get better.
- I think it is an interesting discussion. And it's funny because people in our business, in the emergency response business. We know things are gonna be hard from time to time. We're not expecting them to be easy yet when it comes to policies, procedures, training, change. Well like both of you just said. Well we've already got a policy on that. There's nothing wrong with the, yeah, but there's a better. Yeah, that's good enough. It's like we don't want to do the work. And I kind of feel sometimes I wanna say to people, look, what did you think it was gonna be easy? Well, you know, and they're all gonna say, well no we knew it'd be hard. Well congratulations. This is what hard looks like. We're there to help people on their worst day. And that means we have to do our best every day. And that's what hard looks like for us every day. And sometimes it means the big program or the big thing that we just implemented, you've gotta look at it and go, that's frustrating. And I don't really want to commit the time and resources to redo that, but we need to. It's the right thing to do. And I feel like I, Mark, you went there with management, leadership, administration. I think there's too many people that just, they want the easy way out.
- Yeah, I was blessed in my career and Bill, I'm gonna throw you in the pile here with the same people I was blessed with that had that vision that we can do something else. With you and incident management and using this technology with a couple individuals who said, the way we're doing extrication entrapment is not the best way, here's a. And they were willing to put themselves out there and say, here's another way we should look at this. And then the fortunate thing for me is that there were people in leadership and management at that point in time that said, yeah, you know, maybe this is a better way to train. Maybe this is a better way to do business. And we need to look at. The failures I see as those management teams. And we see that when we do training classes all over the country where we have boots on the ground in the class when we're going, where's your training people? Where's your leadership? Well they didn't come to the class. Oh no, they need to be here in the class, even if they don't take the class, show up for a day, an hour or two, whatever is necessary for you to see that this is another way. And one of the things I love about ASIM, active shooter incident management class is that we make it clear in the very beginning, this is a way, it may not be the way for you because you may not have the resources the people, the equipment, the financial means. But it is a way, and maybe you can implement some of that because what you're doing probably right now is not working. You gotta admit to yourself is what I got right now working? And if it's not, find another way
- And let's go down that road. Because that's like probably the number two obstacle to implementation we hear is that leadership isn't the room. That leadership isn't in the room. They'll never buy into this. So you're there, you've gotten the training and you go, yeah, okay, it's not that what we were doing was bad or that it wasn't adequate, but there's some things here that are better. There's some things here that are a little more complete. We want to implement this process. How do you sell it to leadership? The leadership that doesn't wanna be bothered to do more work, that doesn't want to stick their neck out? How do you sell it to leadership?
- Oh, I mean, I think you, if there are, you prioritize, right? So if you have to make incremental changes, so you pick a part that works pretty well. For example, we have an instructor that works with us. In her agency she made a small change to say that anytime you respond to a critical incident, you're going to establish a tactical group supervisor. It doesn't have to always be an active shooter event. So using that terminology and that position more often is a way to make an incremental change that makes a huge difference. And then hopefully others in leadership start to see how, hey that's really effective and it starts to make its way into future policy and training. So again, I think the other thing that's scary to extend on what Mark and Kami were saying is you don't have to overhaul the entire policy. You may be able to start in one or two areas that are really important and then work your way out from there.
- But to back up what you just said in regard to rescue task force, what's something that your agency has practiced I guess for years. Is that if you don't have a rescue task force concept right now, maybe you start standing them up for known events. You know, your concerts, your football games your known special events maybe it's a parade or whatever. When you start doing those things on a regular basis for known events, when you need them for the unknown events, the critical ones that you gotta stand them up right now, people are used to it. So again, back to your point, if you start in small bites, maybe that's the way to be successful in your department, your organization, your community where there's been resistance.
- I'll brag on my sheriff for a minute is that when you're talking about, you know, coming in and implementing that change small by small, she obviously has a very big buy-in to the ASIM policies and procedures. But even when she started, we thought that there was gonna be some resistance to it. But that's what she did, is she started implementing it just small and showing us the why, showing us how it works and showing us, you know, little by little, just implementing it into our everyday, you know, patrol procedures, you know, we do it for different things now and kind of implement that mentality. And it's really gone a long way where our deputies are used to hearing it. They're used to, you know, you know, going to scenes and seeing a tactical, seeing a staging, all of those things. But it started very small. It started with an idea and kind of getting people behind her and seeing why it worked and how it worked. And you know, if you would've told me, you know, six years ago or whatever, that this was gonna be the way we, I would've said never, we're never gonna change to that. But it has, and it's now second nature to everybody so I think you really have to find, even if you don't have the top management for that, find a visionary within your command. Somebody who does like those new ideas and stuff like that. Every agency has somebody who likes those visionary kind of ideas to push forward.
- Absolutely, and leadership can happen at any level of an organization. And so the bad side of that is I know in where I was from, you know, lieutenant was the highest rank you could test to. And so then when people would make lieutenant and they got off their probationary period, they burned all their books, right? Because they never wanted to study for a promotional exam again. But the reality is that even at that level of the organization, that middle management level, if you keep your learning hat on and you're willing to influence people, you can use that leadership to make changes, even if it's just in your patrol area. And then other people see it and they're like, hey that really works. And then you start to make something happen at that level. It starts to be seen more by leadership.
- You show people it's more effective, they will do it.
- [Adam] Absolutely.
- I think the piece that I'll add here, maybe take us on a little bit of a different tangent from a leadership perspective, whether it's the fire chief, police chief, EMS chief, emergency manager, whatever. You don't get to that level without understanding that you need to have an appreciation of risk. You need to look at all of those threats and there are a plethora of those things around. And be able to rank them and say, this risk here could end up costing lives, whether it's civilian lives or responder lives. This risk could cost us millions in a lawsuit. These risks, you know, whatever that they are. And so I think if you as a, somebody that may not be in the decision making seat, so you went to training and you went, holy crap. It's not that our bad policy was bad, but there's some gaps. There's some gaps in some places where we've got vulnerabilities. I think the conversation with leadership needs to be focused on, listen it's not that what we've been doing or what we've trained to do is wrong. The problem is that there's gaps, there's vulnerabilities in what we have not covered everything. And there are some significant gaps. And the probability key word, the probability, should we have an active shooter event that these gaps are gonna come home to roost. And cause a bad outcome is very high. We now know that. So this is a known risk. And then if you still have leadership that doesn't kind of wanna move off the dime. And this is a little tricky when it's your job, but the conversation is to say, okay, well we've now had this conversation. You've been advised that there's this risk. So are you the one that's gonna stand up at the press conference and answer the questions about why those kids died? Or why this happened, or why we took an hour to get everybody transported. Are you going to gonna do that? Which I think is a really interesting perspective. And if you got any comments on that, I think the other thing that I want to talk about is, okay, you and your agency buy into it, but now what about your neighbors? So, you know, what are your thoughts on that? How would you, so Kami, you're a good example, but a bad example because you wouldn't be afraid to go talk to your sheriff.
- No, I wouldn't . Mark, you and I are we had a boss in common at one point. A little notorious. How would you have felt about going in and trying to have that conversation and saying, are you the one that's gonna stand up at the press conference?
- Well, I'm not totally sure I word it that way. But I have to tell you, I've had numerous conversations where I walked out of there and I couldn't sit down for a while. Simply because they, I say not just he but.
- [Bill] You and me both.
- Yeah they disagreed with my position. And I would tell them that I think we're in a bad position. We need to correct that. We need to look at a different way. I like the concept where, I just did a class or last week actually. and this is not unusual, this probably happened in a lot of the people that listen to this in their own communities. Where they have a regional task force that's looking at these individual issues. And when you look at it from that perspective, if you have good partnerships, and that's a good way to establish good partnerships by the way. Where maybe the one task force is only looking at rescue task force. That's all they're looking at. One of them is looking at, you know, the communication and contact issues and staging or whatever the topic happens to be. And they're working on those one issues, but it's coming out as a regional approach. Well how will it look as your organization that says, well I'm not totally sure if we wanna do that, right? If you get a regional concept, a regional approach, it kind of puts pressure back on your management, your team to say, you know what? We gotta get on board with the rest of those. 'Cause we can't be the ones that at that press conference, in your example, it said, yeah, I know that the city here does it that way and that the county here does it that way. We just chose not to do it and we failed miserably. No you don't want to get into that environment. So again, one of the ways you can do it from a middle management level is start establishing those regional concepts or those training environments and say, hey let's come up with a regional plan on this.
- Right and to extend on that, again, I think if you're in charge of bringing training to town, anytime you open your doors for training, it needs to be open to everyone at every agency and discipline and your neighbors and so on and so forth. And, you know, again, you can influence that change. 'Cause now you start to build some inertia in the area and eventually you're gonna get enough people having the same conversation that, you know, that change starts to move forward.
- And Adam, I wouldn't say this is underhanded, but when we do these classes, that's where I like to go with the host and go, you do a press showing up don't you, local press local media. Because if they come there and you start bragging about this great training and I'm talking about the local people bragging about it, this great training. Then the next thing you know they ask the chief then goes, how's that training going a month later. And they go, ah, we haven't done anything. Kinda looks bad. So it may put a little external pressure on the management group to say, we need to pick up this ball and run with it because this is a good thing.
- Right. When it comes to whether it's a regional approach, mutual aid, countywide, multi-county, whatever the case may be. In one of these events, your neighbors are gonna show up. You're not gonna be doing it alone. You're gonna have local, county or municipal county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies that are gonna show up. In some cases, people you don't know and have never met, all that other kind of stuff. So when you're talking about these regional approaches, it's really important to make sure that everybody's on the same page, literally on the same page. And I get it, trying to get a bunch of fire departments or a bunch of EMS agencies or a bunch of police departments to agree on the same policy and procedure. Some people would rather go to the dentist and have a root canal, I get it. This is what hard looks like. But if you don't have everybody on the same page, back to the example from the training eye witness where this fire person wanted to change the terminology. 'Cause that's not what the way they'd done it. They were in the midst of a regional approach. In fact, we were there doing some regional training and most of the other departments had already bought into the program and bought into the terminology. And I'm saying you realize that you're gonna create an interoperability problem. You're gonna create an obstacle. By changing a name to something that you just acknowledged didn't matter and you don't care about. But you're digging in on this. And I hit that point to illustrate. You can't just think about your organization. You can't just think about your police department or your fire department or your EMS agency. You have to think about your neighbors. And at the very least, if they won't cooperate with you, you need to make sure that they know what your plan is. And what your expectations are of them. I think.
- Absolutely.
- [ Kami] Absolutely.
- So, you know, we spent a lot of time talking about the stuff that's hard to implement change, but what you just mentioned is one of the easy things, don't get stuck on terminology. And if you're gonna try to hang your hat on the ICS stuff, which again, I've said this before and other times that we've talked, I'm the biggest ICS nerd in the room, I promise you. But while common terminology is one of the facets of ICS so is flexibility and adaptability and expandability where you need to understand that, you know, don't get stuck on a terminology that only your agency uses when you need to be flexible and understand that using common terminology that makes sense to all of your partners is gonna be a lot better and using a term the way you do it. But that doesn't make sense to the way everyone else hears that same term. So to get stuck on terminology is a low hanging fruit item that you can fix pretty easily by just having an open mind.
- I couldn't agree with you more. And what just astounds me is of all the words in the English language that we could use to name groups and divisions and everything else like that. There are a handful of words within the ICS system that are what I call reserved words. They have a very specific meaning. Command has a very specific meaning. Operations has a very specific meaning. Staging has a very defined meaning. So when you start talking about tactical command no, you're using a reserve word or I'm gonna call this EMS operations or forward operations or forward staging. No, no, there are millions of other words. Hundreds of thousands. I don't know however many words ae in the dictionary for you to choose from that can be cool words. You don't have to use command operations and staging in the name. And for the life of me, I just get these blank stares back from people and I'm thinking, why is this the hill to die on? And Mark?
- And one of the things that we do, which was a change for me when I first got into this teaching environment, is the terminology we want them to use on the radio initially is what we want them to hold, to give you an example is, those first four officers that get on the scene I use four it could be anything, any number could be one. Even though they may be in command initially on the radio, they're contact one and I'm just using an example. Contact one then contact two, contact three. That first one is contact one and they hold contact one until that title's taken away from them. We don't sit there and say, well you're now command on the radio. And then the next guy comes up, who will be the fifth person in our ASIM practice. We don't say that now they say on the radio, I'm now command. No, they're tactical and they hold that all the way through this process that makes so much more sense than, I'll say it, the stupid way. we did it for years and years and years.
- Well it's the way it started. We used to do that. We used to force people to do that. It was dumb.
- It made no sense at all.
- It was confusing. And so I think what we actually practice and push out there, what ASIM shows and defines is the logical way to do the practice because that title you get in the beating, you just hold it. You hold it and we're not gonna take it away from you until you're done with that job or give you another job.
- And I know there's somebody out there listening right now shaking their head going, what you just subscribed is not ICS compliant. Yes, it is. Unlike every fire department, police department out there we're required we have a certified DHS curriculum, we're required to submit for review by the NIMS Integration Center. And our process has been found not once, not twice, but three separate times to be ICS compliant and the reason that it's ICS compliant, Carla, which camera am I showing this to? Okay, yeah, it's right here because we have a defined process that says who's in command. Nowhere in NIMS and ICS does it say you have to say that you're in command on a radio for it to be legit. It defines right here in the response process who's in command at what phase of the response until we get to the first law enforcement supervisor who establishes the stable command post and becomes the first one to use the command moniker on the radios. It's just some of these things, Mark, right. 'Cause you've been doing this a long time with me as you have Adam as well, and you remember the days when we used to do that very thing. We used to try to make him be command on the radio and pass command. It confused everybody. It caused all kinds of problems after command had passed, you end up with the wrong person answering the wrong person talking. Cleaned it up, saved time, still IC compliant.
- Wait, say that other part again.
- Cleaned it up.
- [Adam And Bill] Saved time
- That was the main thing, right? Is we were wasting time trying to get our head stuck on certain terminologies. And I agree with you, there's certain ones that once they're established, that word means something and should be reserved for that function. The rest of it, like Mark says, you are the function that you're doing and that should be your moniker on the radio, right?
- Sure, sure. So Carla just gave me a 30 minute sign So let's go to lightning round. Things that people can do to try to help get this implemented or try to help get over that inertia to make the case. Yeah I know that's the way we've always done it. Sometimes we have to change, Mark?
- I'm gonna steal Adam's, so I apologize, is I like that small increment concept that, you know, instituting and especially if you get them pushback. Institute small things, you know, and maybe the first one is start with your rescue task force using those in known events. So when you need to use them in that right in my face, right now, you know, this wasn't planned environment. Hopefully it'll come off because we've been using it all this time. So I think small increments and training make a lot of sense to me.
- I think being open to change, being open to change, being open to progression and realizing that, you know, saving lives is worth it. And so it's worth it to open your mind and to progress yourself.
- Training and after action reports. You're there to learn new ways to do things. Those certificates on the wall are not just the paper that they're written on. They're supposed to represent that you've taken things that you can use and make the job better, save lives, save time, do those things and actually implement the things that you're learning.
- And I think for mine, I'm gonna go with like more of a mantra of hard is hard for a reason. It doesn't mean it's not worth doing. And sometimes you just gotta look at the work in front of you and say, this is what hard looks like and not shy away from it. Whether it's politicking the bosses to try to make a change, whether it's having to write new training curriculum, write new policies, new procedures, convince your neighbor whatever the case is, the work is worth doing and this is what hard looks like sometimes. Don't shy away from it, commit to it and get it done because I assure you the work works more on you than you do on it, and it is worth doing. Well thank you everybody. I think this was a great conversation for something that comes up on a regular basis. I want to thank our producer Carla Torrez for always pulling things together as quickly as she does. And if you have not liked or subscribed to the podcast already, please do so. We would love to see you on the regular and don't be afraid to share this. And I don't know, maybe share it with the boss that doesn't want to move off the dive. Until next time, stay safe.