Editor’s Opinion Chris Mc Loone
I am sure that the members of the military in our audience have seen and heard the above expression countless times, but I have only recently been introduced to it by my son, who is a Plebe at the United States Naval Academy (USNA).
Essentially, it means “always flexible.” During his Plebe Summer, he learned how important that mentality was as he often wouldn’t know what he was going to be doing from one day to the next. And, as a USNA parent, I’ve had to grasp that concept as the timing for certain events is not always as advertised.
It reminds me of the firehouse in some ways. If there’s a work detail scheduled at the firehouse for a weekend morning or the morning of a holiday, and that work detail is scheduled for 0700 hours, and you arrive there at 0700 to get started, it’s a good bet most of the work was already completed by the firefighters who got there at 0630. In my early days, I’d be aggravated by it, but it didn’t take me long to start getting there at 0630.
It would be very easy to apply “Semper Gumby” to the current apparatus and equipment purchasing atmosphere. Certainly, if there was ever a time and a need for flexibility, it is now—even with the strides that have been made to eat into backlogs and to solve any supply chain issues that have come up over time. But, I’d like to discuss flexibility in terms of this month’s theme: technology.
A few months ago, I asserted that when discussing technology, it’s the “why” that must be communicated to potential technology adopters, not so much the “what.” When I think of technology, I often think of something that is useful but beyond my scope of understanding in terms of how it works. Think about smartphones. I can’t explain how they work; they just do. I use one every day. And, it’s obvious to me why it’s important to have one.
I still believe that the “why” is critical to understand. Don’t worry about how the thermal imaging camera is telling you what it is; just know why the information it is communicating is so important and how to interpret the information. But this is also where flexibility becomes key.
The flexibility regarding technology needs to come from both sides: the leaders being asked to adopt and implement the technology and the firefighters who are asking for it.
Flexibility in this context can be so many things. In some ways, it means being open-minded. It takes a while for technology to be perfected. Using smartphones as an example, think about your first cell phone. I bought my first phone in 1995. I used it sparingly. Its range was sometimes questionable. Dropped calls were part of owning one because the “cellular” network was not as expansive as today’s wireless networks are. Today, dropped calls still happen sometimes, but the technology itself is far more reliable.
Take the digital radios used in the fire service today—not as many “bonk” today as they used to. The units themselves and the networks on which they operate are more reliable. Many of the technologies introduced today are in their infancy. See the potential. Don’t lock up on one feature that doesn’t work the way you want it to.
Being flexible can also mean understanding when a technology is in its infancy that it might not always work as advertised, that it may take a few revisions before a particular product hits its stride. And, it may not happen as quickly as you’d like it to or expect it to. This is why putting new technology through its paces is so important to developers. Volunteer your department to demo a new technology so the cr