Leadership
Retired Phoenix Fire Chief Allen Brunacini has been referred to as a visionary in fire service leadership throughout my fire service career and continues to be an example of a truly ground-breaking leader in my field. His leadership skills and abilities as well as his accomplishments during his career are well renowned in fire service publications for decades and he is one of the fire service’s greatest leaders.
In Brunacini’s Phoenix Fire Department, firefighters are taught that firefighting is not just about pulling people out of burning buildings and saving the structures. Fire Chief Alan Brunacini believes in a considerate and courteous approach that takes into account the suffering of victims. In just a few words, his guiding principles are: "Prevent harm. Survive. Be nice." This way of thinking was certainly a radical change in culture for fire services around the country and became a new way of operating in some agencies after seeing the successes that Brunacini was having in his organization. Some results that made fire departments take notice and realize that Brunacini was on the right tract with his thoughts, especially the benefits of a customer service mentality as a method for obtaining taxpayer support.
The simplicity and common sense of the ideas that Brunacini espouses for the culture of his organization regarding customer service is the thing that really made departments so apt to follow his lead. Most departments throughout the country did not see the benefit of a customer service process in their organizations. The typical process was to play politics with the city fathers who pit city department against one another to get a bigger piece of the city pie. Another approach was to try the scare tactic that if you don’t provide us with enough money to put on more firefighters the city will burn down, lives will be lost and safety