Gordon Graham, Co-President of Lexipol—a provider of risk management resources for public safety organizations—is well known in the fire service as an educator and trainer. He’s also the co-owner of the website, www.firefighterclosecalls.com. In 2005, Gordon received the “Presidential Award for Excellence” from the International Association of Fire Chiefs for his lifelong work in improving firefighter safety and performance. A short while ago, we video taped Gordon for our training program, Recruiting & Retaining Diversity in The Fire Service^TM. We are sharing ‘in-print’ some of his nuggets of wisdom that we captured.

Perspective as a risk manager

“When problems occur—injuries, internal investigations, embarrassments, lawsuits—as a lawyer, I handle those consequences. As a risk manager, I don’t handle consequences. I study them to look for cause. All too often, when people are asked ‘What caused the consequence?’ they pick the event immediately preceding and give it the title of cause. Well, in the risk world, I’ll call that the proximate cause. Someone told an inappropriate joke, someone didn’t understand someone else’s culture, and therefore we had a consequence. That might well be the proximate cause. But risk managers like to go back in time and look for root cause. What was lying in wait that set this all up for the potential tragedy? And once you identify root cause, you can put together control measures up front, to better ensure that things go right, to obviate these nasty consequences.”

About the root cause

“The way we think has to change. The way things were is no longer acceptable. Status quo—we’ve always done it that way. Status quo—we’ve never tried it this way. Those days are gone. We have really got to break down the walls of bias, the walls of exclusivity that all too often I see. We need to break those down and we really need to look into the future and say: ‘Where are we going to be in thirty years? What do we need to be doing today to make sure that we are going to have a good relationship with our community in thirty years?” It’s a long process but we have to really, really work at getting this workforce that’s part of the community we’re protecting and serving. To not have that is a problem lying in wait, and will be the root cause for future litigation problems.”

Responding to ‘hiring more diversity means lowering standards’

“I find that to be a very offensive belief. Competency has nothing to do with race or sex or national origin or sex orientation. There are competent people in every classification. What we need to do is to revisit the way we recruit. We don’t lower standards. We work to get big, wide, broad, deep applicant pools where we can get the people we want. Two requirements: Top notch people and top-notch people who are part of the community that we’re protecting and serving. That’s the core component.”

On recruiting outside of the community

“I want to be very cautious here. Fire chiefs, who want departments that reflect their community, may decide to go outside of their community to find people who look like their community. I think they’re acting in good faith but they’re making a bit of a mistake. Certainly, I want a department that reflects the relevant workforce of the community that we’re serving. But I think it’s more important to recruit from the community that we’re protecting and serving—people who have the knowledge of the community, people who have lived in the community, people who have paid taxes in the community; people who understand the social dynamics in the community.”

Change

“I am a fan of tradition. I like looking into the past. We can really build on our past. But we’ve also got to recognize there are better ways of doing things. Continuous improvement has got to be part of our life.

“I was a firefighter, my son’s a firefighter, the only people I’m gonna hire are other firefighters’ kids; the only people I’m gonna hire are gonna look this way or look that way.’ You know, those days are no longer acceptable.

“Spencer Johnson wrote a book a number of years ago called, Who Moved My Cheese? The cheese in life is constantly being moved. The smart people are looking for new and improved ways, and one of the new and improved ways is to get this workforce that’s part of our community—that’s not traditional. In the old days, we didn’t do that. Well, if we’re gonna be successful in 2020, in 2030, and in 2040, it is absolutely mandatory that we change the way we’re doing business. And while I am in favor of traditions, there are some traditions that need to be stopped so we can move forward. That’s the key role that diversity can play.”