Leaving an Inspired Legacy – A Conversation with Chief Amesqua

12-13-11 --  

 

By Michèle Carbery

 

Fire Chief Debra Amesqua 's 28 year career is an example of inspired leadership. While maintaining a vision founded upon care and compassion, she has forged new paths of innovative opportunities in the fire service and the communities in and around Madison, Wisconsin, while creating an organizational culture of inclusion and diversity. As she now prepares to retire, FIRE 20/20 asked Chief Amesqua to share thoughts on successful leadership and the powerful legacy she will be leaving.

 

FIRE 20/20: Chief Amesqua, you have been very successful in building relationships. Do you feel there has been a particular approach, or way of looking at relationships, that has been helpful?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: The foundation and the basis of a good leader is building relationships, and building relationships with your adversaries is critically important. As I began to develop as a Fire Chief, I wanted to develop a caring and compassionate organization, and that meant that I had to be a role model every single day, with every single person I was dealing with, including my adversaries. Over the years, people began to trust that, yes, I was very interested in building a positive relationship, whether we disagreed on issues, or not. I think it served me well, and built that loyalty and that trust that is so, so important.

 

FIRE 20/20: What are your thoughts on the idea of leaving a legacy?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: I think that most effective leaders go into an organization understanding that there is an opportunity to put your fingerprint on the history of the organization. And, clearly, my legacy from the very beginning was to hire and promote people that really understood the vision. That vision was creating a diverse, inclusive, caring and compassionate organization. I've probably hired three quarters of the department in Madison and those people will carry that message of caring compassion for decades to come.

 

FIRE 20/20: Are there other aspects of your legacy that you hope to see implemented into the future?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: A leader has to inspire individuals to do their very best, and I truly believe that people want to do the good work and the significant work, and they don't like doing busy work. As I hired and promoted individuals, a strategy I used was to let them define their own destiny.

 

In the fire service you have a chain of command that is very regimented, and that command and control is part of our culture, so we promote people and we expect them to follow and not to lead. I turned that around in this organization and I said, “You are going to define your own job because you know what needs to be done. I want you to proceed until apprehended.” People would laugh and ask what that meant. I explained, “I want you making decisions, and I want you making good decisions, and when you don’t make a good decision or you make a mistake I'm going to throw myself under the bus for you because this is what I've asked you to do. I've asked you to take calculated risks and I'm going to protect you, but when I have to throw myself under the bus you have to tell me why.” That's the meaning of, ‘proceed until apprehended’.

 

This concept became a game changer for us, because now all of a sudden people are doing extraordinary things because they knew I was going to support them in accomplishing the tasks that they had at hand. So, that culture of taking action and really getting things done as an organization I think is going to be another one of those legacies that we'll see for decades to come. These people make decisions.

 

For example, I put an officer in charge of grants and I asked him to go out and find grants that were specific for the fire service. So he had to travel way out of his comfort zone, because he’s a firefighter and I asked him to be a politician, a grant writer - which is a specific skill all of its own - and to be a good advocate for this program. We worked on the project for about eight months and when he submitted the grant, within six weeks we were successful. Now we have an extra rig at the station and an additional double company. We all applauded that success. It was in building the culture of support for an individual that generated huge success, it was so important for us as an organization.

 

FIRE 20/20: It sounds like an approach for removing cultural obstacles.

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: Yes, and, they're self-imposed obstacles. Now, if you think beyond, and don't even look at the box, if you think beyond the walls of the box… this is an important concept. I was trying to create leaders from among everyone in the organization so they would think about things that do not exist today and manage their lives from that perspective. Leaders envision what does not exist today, and then they lead from that perspective.

 

FIRE 20/20: Do you feel that part of your legacy has been to ensure that there are enough people, and that a big enough space has been created for the approach to continue flourishing after you have retired?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: Yes, one of the other areas that is critically important with this concept is to make sure that you've got good people coming up the ladder behind you, so that was one of my focal points. When I first became a Fire Chief I wanted to hire individuals that had these kinds of attributes and you don't get that just by giving a written examination and a physical agility test, so I sat with consultants that helped us develop the hiring process and we looked at different kinds of instruments to measure a person's personality and their affinity for creative thinking, their ability to be interested in different cultures and ability to be inquisitive about the things that don't exist today. So the hiring process that I use now, and have for the past 16 years, has certainly given me a huge pool of people that have these kinds of attributes and qualities.

 

FIRE 20/20: If you could go back in time and meet yourself at the start of your career, is there any particular piece of advice that you would give to yourself?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: I think I would recommend to myself that I reach out to the community much faster than I did coming up through the organization, volunteering and reaching out to organizations on different projects that are really helpful and significant to the community as a whole. You can reach out to the community as a firefighter doing programs at schools and volunteering at the soup kitchens and that sort of thing. It really builds that reputation as you develop and make your way through the promotional ladder up to the Fire Chief's position. You can start that very early in your career.

 

FIRE 20/20: Do you have advice for anyone else who would like to approach their career in the fire service in such a way as to make a difference and leave a beneficial legacy?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: The fire service is changing dramatically right now, and women have a unique opportunity to really impact the fire service. For anyone that has ever thought about being in the fire service, particularly women, if you come into the organization with the thought that you're going to maintain the culture the way it is, I think you're doing the organization a disservice. So, you need to come into the fire service thinking, "This is an industry that is changing dramatically and I want to be a part of that change."

 

If a woman shows up at the Fire Station, that's change. That's huge, and we’re not talking about the bravery or the strength that's necessary to do the job as a firefighter. You have to remember that 80% of what we do is emergency medical services (EMS) and that we only fight fires one half of one percent of the time that we're on duty, so the name ‘fire department’ is almost a misnomer because we've done a really good job of prevention. We're becoming more EMS and prevention oriented, so the idea of what a firefighter is has been changing dramatically. We need people that are much more compassionate, more thoughtful about different cultures. We need people that are keen on elements such as codes and enforcement, dealing with people and business establishments on a personal basis so we get the adherence to the codes. We're not as reactive anymore, we're becoming much more proactive in what we do in the fire service, so when I talk about coming into an organization with a mindset of, ‘putting wet stuff on the red stuff’, you’re really doing it a disservice. We need to think about what a fire department can do that they've never done before.

 

I'll give you an example. About a year ago the Department of Commerce came to the Madison Fire Department and said, "We’ve been inspecting elevators for years and years and we have very little compliance. There are terrible violations and elevators are getting older, we've got a potential problem.” So I said, "We'll take it on for you.” I told them what we needed for the Fire Department to take the lead on elevator inspections, and after only a year we’ve got great compliance. Not very many people know that a fire department is capable of doing that kind of service, so I think the more people we have coming into the organization that think out of the box, and don't even look at the box, these are going to be the successful people in the fire service because we can do a lot of other things for the community that we haven't even thought of.

 

That’s the creative legacy, the idea that we're going to be innovative, that we're going to think about things that don't exist yet and really develop the organization with that image in-mind.

 

FIRE 20/20: The environment that you created sounded very supportive, an environment in which people could feel confident that they would have the support to do their jobs and be part of changes to the culture. Do you feel that is going on elsewhere? Or, is that so unique that others going into the field might find it a bit more challenging without that support?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: I've created such an innovative organization that what might appear to be extraordinary to others is rather ordinary for us. I speak all over the country to different organizations and I find that they see us as being fascinating, and so all I can say is that it can happen, you can have a very diverse and inclusive organization and create an innovative culture, but it all starts at the top. I think that Fire Chiefs all across the country are being challenged to think way beyond their capacity and to create organizations that are incredibly efficient and effective. You can't do that by boxing yourself into the old culture of the fire service.

 

FIRE 20/20: In the current economic climate, efficiency is even more important. What are some of the ways in which you see implementing this creative approach actually increases efficiency?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: In 2007, the City of Madison experienced five fire fatalities. My staff came to me and said, “Every single one of these fires was preventable,” and I said, "Well what do you think we ought to do?" In the case of every one of those fire fatalities there was a smoke alarm in the structure but it was not working because there was no battery in it. So we created an ordinance that required all facilities, whether they were commercial or private, to change out their smoke detectors and put in tamper-proof 10 year lithium battery smoke detectors. This was required all across the City of Madison and as of December 9th, 2011, we have had one fire fatality since 2007, and in that fire fatality alcohol was involved and a smoke detector that did not have a battery.

 

We focused our energy on making sure first of all that the community, council members and business establishments supported this ordinance, and making sure that we had the 10 year lithium battery smoke alarms at the Home Depot in the right amounts so that everybody got their smoke detectors when they wanted them. There was a huge campaign to get those smoke detectors in high risk areas, we gave away thousands and thousands of smoke alarms and we went into people's homes and installed them. So that kind of out of the box thinking and creative program gives you a very efficient and powerful fire department, and it saves lives. That's the bottom line.

 

What we have done is not only build this culture of caring and compassion within the organization itself, but we've also created a culture of safety in the entire community of Madison. So now people are very accustomed to seeing a firefighter on television talking about something they could do in their own homes to make their homes safer, and that is a huge change for the Fire Department.

 

To show you how significant that is, if you look in communities that are our size, all across the country, most cities have two to three fire fatalities per year, we've had one in four years. Now, that's truly impacting the safety of the community in the City of Madison.

 

FIRE 20/20: Do you feel that a strong legacy has been established for that trend to continue?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: We were wildly successful with that approach and the people that I have there right now. Those are the people who are going to be there another 10 to 15 years. In addition to the inclusive culture, a rookie firefighter can bring ideas to the command staff and to the committees and actually get their ideas implemented. We just don't see that in other fire departments. So, yes, I think that innovation is going to be part of the culture of the City of Madison for many decades to come.

 

FIRE 20/20: In conclusion, do you have an inspiring quote you'd like to share with others who are inspired to follow in your footsteps?

 

CHIEF AMESQUA: Yes, there's a poem that I recite, it's based on a quote by Edward Teller. I keep it close to my heart.

 

"When I come to the end of all of the light that I know, and I step out into the darkness, I have faith that I will land on solid ground, or I will learn how to fly."

 

 

Posted by: Fire 20/20   Tags: Chief Amesqua, Community, Debra Amesqua, Diversity, FIRE 20/20, gay firefighters, inclusion, Leadership, mentoring, retention, women   Categories: Article, Newsletter