The Grandma Test: A Benchmark for Your Communications

This is our Grandma Holland. She 86, still works part-time over lunch at the school near her home and is the most matter-of-fact communicator I know. Grandpa Holland, her late husband, fretted ten years ago about buying a suit for our wedding. He worried he would pass away before the wedding and not get to wear his "investment." Grandma told him, "Gilbert, we're getting you a new suit. If that happens, then we're covered for the funeral."

Upon reviewing anything I have written, I ask myself if it passes the "Grandma Test." I visualize Grandma Holland when I do. I ask whether each sentence is direct enough. I remove extra words where I can. I look for industry lingo and try to explain it in more common terms.

With so much to accomplish each day, it can be difficult to keep this review process a high priority. However, it is my critical bridge towards greater understanding by my audience.

Communications opportunities abound. You may need to prepare for your department meeting, send a news release about Fire Prevention Week activities, schedule your next training session through your community college, submit a grant report, or develop a presentation for when your city council starts to plan next year's budget.

Do the communications on your plate right now pass the Grandma Test?

For more information on communications services available to your department, contact Dawn Svenson Holland at FlashPoint Fundraising today.

Your Department's Strategic Plan - a Bird's Eye View of an Even Better Tomorrow

Each year, you continue an even better training plan for your members. You adapt to changes in state and federal regulations. You exceed recommendations on the number of hours committed to scenarios like live fire training, school bus extracation, disaster drills and more. You work closely with partner organizations in your city, township, county, district or state to ensure access to important classes like Firefighter I, Firefighter II and Driver/Operator.

If you're involved in EMS services, your commitment to training excellence continues with helping your members move forward with training levels like First Responder, EMT-B, EMT-I and Paramedic. Although these training demand significant time and some financial investment, they pay positive dividends in safer operations, member satisfaction and excellent service.

Your department can plan for an even better tomorrow in terms of excellence through adding one component to your training commitment: strategic planning. One annual meeting with your officers and/or members that focuses on your goals for the next three years is an investment that will pay dividends that ensure your department moves forward and builds on your unique strengths.

Investing in an independent facilitator for your strategic planning helps ensure that all voices are heard and no particular personalities or issue dominate this critical discussion on how to make your department's future even better. Everything invested in strategic planning helps bring about a bird's eye view of where to take your department in 2010 and beyond.

To schedule your department's strategic planning session as you look towards 2010, contact FlashPoint President Dawn Svenson Holland today.

Thank a Fire Department Spouse or Partner

The brave men and women who are again gathering from across the country to fight the California wildfires deserve every one of the accolades they are receiving and more. There's a directly related component to those brave firefighters I don't think we stop to praise often enough.

The spouses and partners of firefighters enable their loved one's dedication through many unsung sacrifices:

• Reheating meals or rescheduling meal times all together
  
• Interrupting, postponing or rescheduling plans when the pager calls
  
• Going without precious full family time of which no one has enough
• Accepting and often embracing the risks that firefighters face every day, especially in dangerous situations like the wildfires

The immediate families of firefighters have enabled public service ever since the industry's earliest days. God bless them!

Little did my shy mother DiAnn Ehler know that her marriage to firefighter Gary Svenson would take her through the streets of downtown Decorah on her wedding night on the old Decorah Fire water wagon, as pictured above. She also simply smiled and got to work upon returning from her honeymoon to find every piece of furniture in her new home crammed into one room by the new members of her firefighting family. Thank you, Mom. You enabled the career Dad so deeply enjoyed.

The next time you encounter the spouse or partner of a firefighter, pause for a moment and thank them for their dedication. Their understanding enables all of us to be a little safer!