IGNITE: Your Mind is a Garden

 

“Your mind is a garden.

Your thoughts are the seeds.

The harvest can either be flowers or weeds.” ♦ William Wordsworth ♦ Photo: Justin Vernon

The Training and Education Continuum

Together, training, education, and experience affect individual and collective knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

Kings and Queens of the Mountain

Haughtiness hurts people. The other day I saw some children at play on a large vacant lot where someone had dumped a mound of dirt. They were playing the greatest of kid games: King of the Mountain. The rules are as simple as they are brutal: fight your way to the top, and shove off anyone who threatens to take your spot. It was a slugfest of crawling, pushing, and falling. King of the Mountain is not just a kid’s game. Versions are played in every dormitory, classroom, boardroom, and bedroom. And since mountaintop real estate is limited, people get shoved around. Mark it down: if you want to be king, someone is going to suffer. Your uppitiness won’t prompt a Bethlehem massacre, but it might prompt a broken marriage, an estranged friendship, or a divided office.- Lucado, Max. Because of Bethlehem.

IGNITE: Strategy

 

STRATEGY

Worrying isn't a strategy.

Neither is hope.

Doing your best and continuously learning is.

♦ Dan Pedersen ♦

[Photo: Gannett Glacier Fire Crew]

Building a Learning Organization - Experience

Experience is the most memorable aspect of learning in body, mind, and spirit. It should be designed to incorporate elements of both education and training.

In our experiences—both crafted learning experiences and actual operational experiences—the interplay of questions and answers and problems and solutions produces tangible results. Results must be sensed, evaluated, and used to continually improve personal and organizational character.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service."]

Challenge #12 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

 Challenge #12: Good teachers craft great learning experiences.

• Visit the Tactical Decision Game Library and facilitate a sand table exercise with your team.
• Interplay questions and answer and problems and solutions to produce tangible results.
• Ensure participants get to be teachers and students.
• Conduct an AAR with your team.

IGNITE: Open Hearts Build Supportive Relationships

A leader with an open heart builds supportive relationships. - Dan Rockwell

[Photo: Tallac IHC]

Building a Learning Organization - Education

 Education is a mind and spirit broadening aspect of learning. It should be designed as a humbling aspect of development in which both teacher and student explore the vastness of knowledge and possibility—that which is known and that which is yet to be discovered.

IGNITE: Silence

“Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.” - Cicero

[Photo: Kyle Miller/Wyoming IHC]

Building a Learning Organization - Training

Training is an aspect of learning that sharpens body and mind. It should be designed as an edifying, confidence-building aspect of both individual (personal) and collective (organizational) development.

In training, the answer is more important than the question. Often times the answer takes the form of action in response to a condition. Meeting and exceeding established tasks, conditions, and standards continually “raise-the-bar” in training.

In addition, accuracy (deviation from perfection) and precision (repeatability of effects) are both sharpened through training. Individual and collective safety is a product of demanding training that always raises the bar in both accuracy and precision.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]

Challenge #11 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

 

Challenge #11: Good leaders look for new opportunities for inquiry and dialogue.

• Discuss the difference between training, education, and experience (TEE) with your team.
• Look for ways to artfully combine TEE into a well-crafted opportunity.
• Seek opportunities to be a teacher and a student throughout the campaign.
• Share your experience with your team members and in your journal.

IGNITE: Never Stop Asking Questions

 

“Don’t ever stop asking questions. Questions are what causes you to stretch, create, grow, innovate and change.” 

♦ The Daily Coach ♦ 

Photo: Lassen IHC

Building a Learning Organization: Learning Defined Through Training, Education, and Experience

Every day presents new opportunities for inquiry and dialogue—new opportunities for learning. Training, Education, and Experience are the three interwoven elements of learning. We learn from all three, but learning is most effective when all three are artfully combined into a well-crafted opportunity that looks both backward into experiences of the past, and forward into possibilities for the future.

Whether you are teaching yourself or teaching others, try to combine all three elements to make your organization better through learning.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service."]

IGNITE: New Opportunities Daily

 

Every day presents new opportunities for inquiry and dialogue—new opportunities for learning. ♦ Learning in the Wildland Fire Service, p. 16 ♦

Photo: Ruby Mountain IHC
#fireleadership

How Did We Learn ‘Duty, Respect and Integrity’?

We all know “Duty, Respect, and Integrity”. These values are taught to us from day one. But it hasn’t always been that way.

So where did our wildland firefighter values and principles come from? Some may assume that they have always been a part of the wildland fire service. This assumption is incorrect. Prior to the early 2000s we did not have a common set of values and principles to follow.

Challenge #10 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

 

Challenge #10: Effective teams adopt and internalize a common set of values.

• Review the wildland fire leadership values and principles with your team.
• Reread “How Did We Learn ‘Duty, Respect, and Integrity?’” (Learning in the Wildland Fire Service, pp. 14-15)
• Why are “common definitions and agree-upon principles for leadership” important?

IGNITE: Common Definitions an Agreed-Upon Principles

 

“Without common definitions and agreed-upon principles for leadership, how can people learn what to focus on in their own development or the development of their subordinates.”
♦ Learning the Wildland Fire Service, p. 14 ♦


[Photo: Team Wildland Firefighter]

#fireleadership

Every Firefighter Learns Every Day

 

As a community of individuals and organizations who take on high-risk missions, we represent a complex-adaptive system of lifelong learners who value inquiry, opportunity, and dialogue in order to more efficiently and effectively adapt to rapidly changing environments.

Meeting Your People Where They Are

The following quote reminds me of something Alexis Waldron, PhD, Human Performance Specialist, said as advisor to the NWCG Leadership Committee, "Meet them where they are." Alexis was advising the group on how to reach our audience at the "tip of the spear"—most of those audience being younger than those themselves.

IGNITE: Scholars and Teachers

 

“The best teachers are scholars; the best scholars are teachers. Every firefighter learns every day.” ♦ Learning in the Wildland Fire Service, p. 14 ♦

Photo: Avi Barber/BLM

Bad Apples

“When faced with a human error problem you may be tempted to ask: ‘Why didn’t they watch out better? How could they not have noticed?’ You think you can solve your human error problem by telling people to be more careful, by reprimanding the miscreants, by issuing a new rule or procedure. They are all expressions of the ‘Bad Apple Theory’ where you believe your system is basically safe if it were not for those few unreliable people in it. This old view of human error is increasingly outdated and will lead you nowhere.” - Sidney Dekker

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]

Challenge #9 - 2022 WFLDP Campaign

 

Challenge #9: Good leaders apply critical thinking and not judgment to sense making.

• Listen to LLC podcast “Bad Apples.”
• Reassess discussion/thoughts from Challenge #8.
• Did you or your team members apply the Bad Apple Theory to this incident?
• Are you less likely to judge those you know than those you don’t?

IGNITE: Take Time to Talk and Learn

 

Every day a crew or team can incrementally improve its performance if they are willing to make time to talk and learn from past actions. - Learning in the Wildland Fire Service, p 13

[Photo: Kyle Miller/Wyoming IHC]

#fireleadership #firememe

Dialogue – Talk with Others About Learning

 

After the 2008 Dutch Creek Fire tragedy, many people were inspired to talk about how we handle our medical emergencies on the fireground. This spectrum of voices included family members, national fire managers, and field firefighters.

With persistence and time, this coalition—talking and learning to work together—significantly changed the protocols for how the wildland fire service deals with emergency medical situations today.

The same approach can be used at the crew or work unit level to discuss past operations and decisions. The wildland fire service has normalized this through the adoption of the After Action Review process. Every day a crew or team can incrementally improve its performance if they are willing to make time to talk and learn from their pasts actions.

[Click here to download Learning in the Wildland Fire Service.]