It’s that time of year again: we wake-up on January 1st excited to start a new year full of self-created promises. The gyms are full, healthy food is flying off the shelves, and people are committing to doing a better job at maintaining a manageable work/life balance. The miraculous ringing-in of the New Year signals a new beginning – an opportunity to charge forward on making progress on the things we just couldn’t get to the day before.

Despite the best of intentions, only about 8%-10% of people actually achieve their New Year’s goals. The once long-sought after goals are either abandoned on the cutting room floor or saved for the following year (because we all know things will be <insert reason> next year).

Fire service professionals are skilled at emergency response tactical goal setting. We are trained and experienced at developing incident action plans (IAPs) on the fly, making split-second decisions that literally mean the difference between life and death, and bringing order to chaos. As a profession, we continually work to evolve our tactics based on proven strategies and data, sharing our successes and lessons learned with colleagues across the country.

As a profession, however, there are a rising number of issues and concerns – the elephants in the corner sort of speak – that we can’t keep punting for a future New Year’s resolution. A few include:

• The health and wellness of our firefighters (specifically addressing cardiac, cancer, and PTSD);
• Maintaining service levels for our customers (expecting to do more with less);
• Recruitment and retention;
• Funding (despite 21st in population, Minnesota ranks 45th in per-capita despite spending on the fire service);

The big issues many of us face in our organizations are most likely the same or similar across the state and country. Departments are facing an increasing demand for service, especially in EMS, but are often times struggling to maintain staffing levels (volunteer/on-call and career departments alike). Our mission to public service has remained steadfast but we find ourselves continually challenged to find solutions to significant challenges.

Research suggests that our New Year’s resolutions commonly fail because people set too many goals or the goals themselves are unattainable. As a profession, we need to continue to work together so that we have a strong, collective voice in advocating for the needs of the fire service.

As we look to the future and work at achieving our goals, I welcome your feedback and ideas on how we can continue to improve the service to our communities and taking better care of our people. As a member-driven organization, we have incredible resources and talent across the state.

Best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year; and best of luck on tackling your New Year’s resolutions!

Note: this article appeared in the January/February issue of the Minnesota State Fire Chiefs Association magazine. To get your copy, join the MSFCA today!