Ep.11: Pressure Meets Purpose
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About this episode. We often hear people in our world say that they’ve spent their day “putting out fires.” Yeah? Well, we thought, why not talk to someone who has spent his career putting out actual fires—and who leads one of the most dynamic fire departments in the United States?
In this episode of The Better Way?, Zach and Hui sit down with Sheldon Hao, Chief of the Honolulu Fire Department, for a conversation about leadership and decision-making on the front lines of emergency response. Drawing from decades of service, Chief Hao offers a behind-the-scenes look at how firefighters make split-second decisions; train for the unexpected; and shape a culture rooted in family, service, and resilience. From managing emergencies in real time to using data for long-term strategic planning, Chief Hao’s insights are as applicable in business as they are in the firehouse.
Who? Zach Coseglia + Hui Chen, CDE Advisors; Sheldon Hao, Chief, Honolulu Fire Department
Full Transcript:
ZACH: Welcome back to The Better Way? Podcast brought to you by CDE advisors. Culture. Data. Ethics. This is a curiosity podcast for those who ask, “There has to be a better way, right? There just has to be.” I'm Zach Coseglia and I am joined as always by the one and only, Hui Chen. Hi, Hui.
HUI: Hi, Zach. Hello, everybody. Welcome back. I cannot tell you how excited I am today. So, we've been talking about the importance of looking outside of our profession for inspiration; and we all often hear people say, when we ask them, “How are you doing?” They say, “Oh, I've been fighting fires.” So, we thought today we would draw inspiration from someone who fights real fires every day. So, it is truly my honor and pleasure to introduce to you, Chief Sheldon Hao, of the Honolulu Fire Department. Chief Hao, welcome.
CHIEF HAO: Thank you. I'm glad to be here and excited to see what this podcast brings.
ZACH: Chief Hao, I'm going to ask you the question I asked all of our guests when we get started, which is, who are you? Who is Chief Hao? Tell us more about yourself.
CHIEF HAO: I've had the pleasure and honor of serving the department for the last 3 1/2 years. So, I was selected as the 35th Fire Chief of the Honolulu Fire Department on December 31st of 2021. So, up to this point, it's been a hell of a ride, if I can just say that. As for myself, I’ve been in the department for 29 1/2 years. Again, as I stated, 3 1/2 as the Fire Chief. I think to get to know me you have to know where I kind of came from. I'm an island boy. I grew up on the island of Maui. I'm the youngest of five. I currently live in Kaneohe with my wife Jolene and our three children. And I'm going back to my upbringing, and I think my upbringing was a very stable and loving environment. I think my parents did a great job in being a youngest of five—and we're in less than a year apart. So, I think it laid a very good foundation for me to be in the position I'm at . . . because as a strong family unit at home in my personal life, I really didn't think of becoming a firefighter in the beginning.
When I came into the Firehouse, it was very similar to my upbringing. So, it was very easy for me to assimilate into that environment. You know, really close-knit family. By handling five kids—are like a team in itself, right? Having to get along with others—and just be part of this group it was very easy for me—this is just like home! So it was very easy for me coming into that environment.
So, I think what shaped me is my upbringing at home and my parents’ loving and stable environment with my siblings. Coming into the fire department, I was surrounded by very great mentors, who showed us the proper ways, set good examples; and I think the unique thing about the fire department is this family environment—and what it makes us, that's the culture that it brings. And I think that's what makes us successful.
ZACH: I'd actually love to hear a little bit about, what inspired you to become a firefighter in the first place?
CHIEF HAO: I think sometimes God has a path before everyone. That was not my end goal. I never really . . . I didn't have any family members that were part of the fire department, and that's traditionally how one gets interested in the profession.
ZACH: Sure.
CHIEF HAO: I initially went to college with the goal of becoming an electrical engineer; but being a young adult and maybe not mature enough, I didn't stick to my studies the way I should. But, I think everything happens for reason. My cousin just came home one day. I was living with my grandmother, and she said, “Hey, I picked up an application for you. Why don't you apply?”
And I said, oh, okay! And I was in college, so my mind was fine, and I took the test, and lo and behold, I scored well, I got accepted. I think if I went down that route of what I thought I would have enjoyed as an electrical engineer, I don't think I would have been happy. It's because . . . I think the dynamic nature of our job; and I'm not one to sit still. I don't think I would have found happiness in that type of work that I do now. So, I believe that I was led to this profession and lo and behold, it was something that met all of my needs as far as ever changing and every day is not the same. You know I can use my physicality. I'm a blue-collar guy at heart; but yet, I can delve into the white-collar side. So, it's the best of its worlds.
ZACH: It's really interesting 'cause we talk to a lot of people, and that actually I think is a bit of a theme: when we talk about how we got where we are. We all like to think that we had this bigger plan for ourselves and that it was a series of intentional decisions, one after the other that got us where we are today. And yet, apparently it's as simple as your cousin bringing an application to you, and it ultimately just kind of working out!
CHIEF HAO: Yes. You know, along the way throughout our career—or life—you just get put into situations, and when you look back on them, you realize it is those little experiences throughout your life, whether personally or professionally, that prepared you for the trials that you have to face in the present and in the future.
HUI: So we're dying to ask, as people who have never fought real fire, or have ever— hopefully—been in one: what is it like to be a firefighter? So, when you arrive on a scene of a fire or an emergency . . . because we all know, at least from TV, that firefighters do a lot more than fighting fires. They deal with all sorts of emergencies. In fact, I personally have been rescued by your team, Chief Hao, from an elevator that was stuck on the 20-some floors of my building. So thank you very much for that. So, when you arrive at the scene of a fire or an emergency, can you take us through your thought process as someone in command? Like what do you do when you arrive? What happens in your mind and how does that translate into action for your team?
CHIEF HAO: Well, that thought process happens actually before arriving physically at the scene. So when the alarm comes in, whatever the nature of the alarm may be, you're ready now, in your mindset . . . you have to be in your mind based off your past experiences. You have this slide show that goes through your mind about previous experiences. Well, there's a medical call or actual fire itself or it could be a rescue. You're going to draw back on those past experiences—and your training—to kind of start you down that mindset. What is the problem (number one); and what problem you're trying to fix; and then, weighing those critical factors that may present itself with this specific type of alarm. And as you're going in your mind, you're trying to think, okay, this is what . . . if it's a single-family residence, and the time of day it's going to determine if people are in the structure or not?
So, for us, we have our . . . well, we always . . . it's life, incident stabilization, and property conservation. That's the order in which we go through all of our alarms. So, getting to the scene . . . once you get to the scene, then you're finally looking at the conditions that present itself, knowing that the building (it's kind of like going to a patient, they're going to present certain signs and symptoms); and it's up to us to go ahead and look at what's happening, what's the structured type, and the conditions that is present, how much resources you have on hand. Just gonna look at it. Evaluate the critical factors and figure out, okay, this is where I think it's gonna go. You develop your strategies and your tactics, you deploy.
You evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies and tactics; and if you have to make any necessary adjustments, you do so. I have had conversations with Hui previously on how, if you look at it from a fire perspective, just as I stated to you, it translates directly into the business world. It's just that at a fire, our incident duration is very short. So, when you implement your strategies and tactics, you can immediately see the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of whatever you're trying to accomplish; and you make the necessary adjustments quickly and make the changes and reevaluate again. In the business world, it's a little bit different where incident duration is pretty much ongoing. And sometimes when you turn a dial here or turn a dial there, you have to step back—and sometimes the results may not present itself for like a year or two down the road, because you can see the adjustments in the data. Whatever you're trying to evaluate or measure your measurables. And I think it's easy for me to explain it to other firefighters, because when I'm trying to teach them the white-collar side of our business it's easy for them to relate to.
ZACH: How do you teach the skill of decision-making . . . because, as you said in business, of course, there are times when decisions have to be made quickly, but oftentimes that period of strategy development that you just described can happen over the course of days, weeks, months, even longer. You're making it in a speeding truck on your way to a potential life or death situation. So how do you teach other firefighters to be able to make smart decisions quickly?
CHIEF HAO: You have to be knowledgeable about your job, number one; but you cannot replace experience—whether experience through actual physical alarms or through training. And I don't know what that exact proper recipe is to develop a competent person at a specific level; but through the years in firefighting, we've shifted more to the prevention side. So maybe, in the past firefighters had more repetitions and actually going to physical fires and gaining their experience that way. But as we progress, more recent times, it's less fires. So we have to provide training opportunities that are realistic enough to simulate what they would have normally seen.
So, that's one thing our administration has been trying to do is come up with . . . making our personnel masters of their trade and from the little task level all the way up to making that strategies and tactics—those decisions. So it's a development from bottom up. As a firefighter, we have a firefighter, one is the firefighter that actually pulls the hose, pumps the pumps. That's the task level things. But what you're getting is to develop the strategies and tactics as you come to a company officer and the Battalion Chief in charge.
You know, like I said, it's just a lot of it has to do with experience and we have people around the island at different portions of the island, West side, lot of brush fires. So if we have captains or chiefs that grew up in that environment on the West side and they've seen all of these little fires in that specific area, when they become from a firefighter to a captain, they have so many different reps and they're so familiar with the area they can develop . . . this is like, “I've been through this 100 times already. I know exactly where I need to go” . . . and it just those rep. So, I would say that experience and from an administration standpoint that we provide as [many] opportunities outside of that to just give them reps. So, it's natural. It becomes more natural.
HUI: I want to go back. So first of all, there's something very interesting about, I think being a Fire Chief in the City of Honolulu, because the city and county of Honolulu is really unlike many of the metropolitan areas that people on the mainland are familiar with—it has very rural areas and it has very urban areas. So by covering this particular island, you really need to be versatile in different kinds of firefighting, which I think in many urban firefighting environments they don't have that mixture. So how you train people to fight different types of fires I think is already interesting. And what I'm hearing you say is that you train people both based on actual firefighting experience, but because there's less fire now because of good prevention work, you also train them through just your training setting.
But I want to go back to everything you said about your incident command thought process. What I heard was you start by saying you had very clear objectives in mind. Your objectives are preservation of life and preservation of property. And then you go, “And you assess the situation, then you continuously assess the effectiveness of the strategy that you deploy. And you adjust the strategy according to that assessment.” Tell us how you define effectiveness in a firefighting or a rescue situation.
CHIEF HAO: From a visual perspective, let’s take a fire . . . when you pull up to a fire, like I said, there are signs and symptoms, right? One thing when a fire is really rolling, as we call it, you're going to see dark smoke, black smoke and a velocity of the smoke. And you're going to look at just that visual in itself. And so if my strategy is an offensive fire attack and we're going to maybe go in. Soon as they start applying water on the fire that's a corrective measure, right? You take care of it and just by looking at the color of the smoke, it's going to change black to white. So even when you're far away, maybe a lay person that sees dark smoke up in the sky, you can just see the change in the color. Oh, the firefighters are getting water on the fire. They're actually attacking it. So, it could be something as simple as that visual.
You know, maybe from the external portion where I'm outside. Let’s say from the incident commander that is outside overseeing this entire deployment. You might have someone that is working internal. They're going to be looking at certain conditions. So, from the outside you may not be presenting itself as some critical thing is happening, but that's through the communication of whoever's internal, they might come up and say this is what we got going on related information back to the incident commander. It's like you are getting these little bits of information about these critical issues and factors in managing risk and the incident commander will be taking a little bit of information at that time and possibly adjusting based on the observations of others as well.
t's dynamic. We live in a dynamic world. We live in the world of grays, not black and white, and what I always tell people is situation dictates your actions or your tactics, and you just have to be flexible enough that you are evaluating whatever it is and being able to adjust quickly or foresee something that is happening. You come up and like I said, you have these slideshows and it's what I see. This is what it should progress to this point and be that dialed in to say, okay, these are the factors. This is where you're dialing in and you're going to make the corrective actions looking ahead as far as you can instead of being reactive. Yeah. It's a balance.
ZACH: It's actually a really great to hear this from you. Hui and I have talked a lot. We talked to our clients a lot. We talked to our community a lot about the difference between output, doing things, effort and outcomes. And it's just such a wonderful sort of analogy, because if all you did was measure output, we would say it was successful because the fireman showed up and then just stood in the front lawn. But that is not a positive outcome.
HUI: Or pumped out that many gallons of water.
ZACH: Exactly. Pumped out water.
HUI: Right.
ZACH: And sometimes it feels like the measurement that's happening in our world, in our business world is just a showing up. The standing on the lawn, the pumping water and saying, oh, look how much water we pump. What did we actually do? Did we save lives? Did we save property? Did we put out the fire? Did we make a meaningful impact on the community? I want to extend the discussion about outcomes and effectiveness to the preventative work that you said is increasingly part of your focus. So can you give us an example of an area of prevention that you're focused on and how you think about effectiveness on that kind of a challenge?
CHIEF HAO: I'll give you an example of an issue, and I'm hoping that this ties in. Problem that arose, you know, the mayor's been very good about his town hall meetings and getting out into the community to listen to their concerns. And three years ago, we went out into the North Shore community and we had multiple people come up and say, our roads are dangerous, people are speeding. We need to have people to slow down. So again, with any type of problem or issue you have when you put in corrective measures, we like to look at it. We have education, engineering and enforcement.
So in this case with the speeding and unsafe road environment, you look at enforcement. Our police department they have staffing issues. So the corrective measure is a little bit more difficult to fix with the enforcement side. So from the engineering standpoint, our DOT director came in and said, okay, if we need people to slow down, then we're going to implement this engineering solution which is speed humps in various areas to slow people down. So now how this kind of cascades into how it impacts HFDs or preventive measures, putting in these speed humps now is going to affect all public safety entities, police, fire and emergency services, medical services on our response times.
So when you look at outcomes, now from a preventive standpoint, it's doing its job of slowing people down, which in theory will minimize the amount of accidents or injuries or life loss. But on the other end you might have a group of people saying, okay, now that we are slower in our response, it's going to negatively impact the community. Meaning on a medical call, you not arriving at scene fast enough to implement life safety measures. But by putting the speed humps you really cannot measure the outcomes of . . . it's more in theory that it could impact, but it's really hard for us to get that measurement of truly putting these speed humps, how it's either negatively or positively impacting our outcomes as far as we're . . . not capturing those bits of information. Yes, it may impact an outcome, but from a prevention side, it might be preventing things from happening. So it's always a balance.
ZACH: I think that will actually really resonate with kind of our community listening to this because we talk a lot about and probably don't pay attention enough to the unintended consequences of some of the preventative measures that we put in place. Sometimes what seems like a really good idea in a room to solve one problem can actually potentially create another one. So that resonates quite a bit.
CHIEF HAO: That's one thing. When I talked about the business world versus on the fire side, everything happens so quickly. The dynamic you have bits of information coming. You only have a little bit of time to process and you need to react immediately. I feel it's okay on the fire side, we have to be flexible because of the dynamic environment. You can make those decisions, and you need to make it quickly. On business side even if you want to make the quick decisions, we make sure we take a lot of time to evaluate all the critical factors that may be . . . say I had a metrics that I was looking at. I really need to make sure that I when I look at this data that I truly understand the data and what it means before making a particular decision, because if you don't weigh in all of the proper factors your assumptions of what this data is telling you is not correct.
So, when you going to implement your strategy and your tactic in our world, I cannot flip this switch hoping that in a year from now, it's going to make the change that I predicted or theorized will happen. We need to be very thoughtful on the factors that we were waiting and when we finally flipped that switch, we need to be as certain as possible because it's time. I don't want to take two steps forward make the switch and wait. Oh, it didn’t work. We don't have time for that. You need to make sure that you constantly move forward and so those decisions that we make on the administrative side, we're trying to truly understand the data. And if we're not capturing specific fields of data that would kind of help us dial in, then we're adjusting how we capture that information to ensure that we really took a look at all of the factors that are leading into an issue.
HUI: Zach, do you not just love this? We're loving this conversation.
ZACH: I do.
HUI: Can you give us an example of what you just described? So the kind of thought process, how you use data, the thought process that goes in, how it impacts the decisions you make?
CHIEF HAO: Now for us to be able to provide services, I have to make sure that our vacancy rates are down and what we have to do is on an annual basis kind of take a look at the projected retirements on an annual basis to ensure that we can bring in our recruitment matches . . . how many people are leaving? So, if we keep our vacancies at a certain level, it's going to minimize our cost of bringing people on overtime to staff our trucks. So we can be able to take care of our response. What we've done over the years is go back in time we look at historical data of people separating, we look at their rank, and we look at the years of service. And when we went back the data that we have was from 1999 to present. And went back in time and we looked at, you know, we have this graph that shows all of these charts this year. This year we had X amount of people retire and everything, and when we step back and we looked at why are there spikes in these particular years? We started asking the why first and what we've learned is when we saw these spikes over time that it was tied into our collective bargaining agreement—when we were in or out of contract and when a new contract came in.
So that when we look time back in 2010 was one of those spikes. So, we asked ourselves, okay, now why in Hawaii at the time the economy was bad. That's when we had the furlough Fridays. So, I don't know if you remember and all the teachers are being laid off. The economic outlook wasn't good. And then we were out of contract in 2010, so people retired, so at the end of the year we had a spike of 51 individuals that retired. So, looking forward and having foresight, we understood, and we learned those factors that weigh in a person's decision to retire. And now what we need to do is take a look ahead and we created a system that every January 1st, we come up with these metrics that gives us a probability of how many people will retire and then we ensure that our recruitment plan is able . . . we have to look ahead. It takes one year to onboard a person and get them trained and all into the field, it takes one whole year. So that's one of the things that we do to be able to use this data and information and learn from the past and see if we in a similar environment that coming up in the next year or two is going to be similar to what happened in 2010. Or so on, and then we just have to ensure that when we look at or forecast how many people are going to retire and we can up our recruitment. So yeah, it's kind of a complex thing that we've done.
ZACH: 100%. And in our world, we talk all the time about needing to do root cause analysis. So something has gone wrong in your world. The thing that you're trying to manage is your staffing, your operations, in our world, it could be somebody broke a law or somebody violated a policy. Or perhaps we have a cultural issue which I want to talk about next, and you really just gave us a textbook definition of a very data-driven way that you do a root cause analysis. And I really like that.
So, let's talk about culture. So, you said at the outset of our discussion that one of the things that kind of drew you to or made firefighting feel familiar and comfortable, was the familial aspects of the Firehouse. And that was actually one of my assumptions coming into this discussion that because of the close quarters, because of the way in which a Firehouse, as I understand, it operates. There might be this familial element of the culture. What is that familial element like?
CHIEF HAO: I think it's important because if you know that you're part of something greater than yourself and you have a vision of servitude. And what I want people to realize and what we try and push is that the people that we serve are our own families and friends. In a way we all know each other. There's connections, whether by blood or your family.
So, to drive and inspire somebody to be the best that they can be to be able to serve the community now they have more of a buy-in. I need to be at my best because if I'm not at my best, or my partner next to me is not their best it's going to impact me personally because I may not be up to it. I need to be the best I can for my family, in the field and in the community. So if we all have that mindset that we're actually taking care of each other and our own families, then that should inspire or hopefully have people have more buy in to do their studies, be the best that they can be mentally, physically, emotionally and to be able to better serve the community. So that's one thing that we push in our strategic plan is this concept that we took from the late Tono Shim. It's called A ohana O, and if you can go Google it up and it's you giving the best of yourself. You giving yourself to be able to leave the people, the place better than you found it.
And that's the culture that we're trying to drive and not necessary . . . we want to get people more in their heart and we can get them in their mind too. But passion is what drives people to do things. The right thing for the right reason. So that's how we try and push it with that same concept being family—you’re hear not only to serve the community but to each other. And if we do that in the station, that can kind of help manage the toxicity. I need to be at my best and if I treat my Coworker with respect and we are on the same mindset and goals. And if you're good in the Firehouse and we upkeep with our competency and everything, the end result of us serving the community is more of a foregone conclusion because internally within our team we're good.
That's what we're trying to promote and my experience over the years. You know, I had an interview question when I was on up and coming firefighter and the interview question was, if you had to rank these three things, what order would you put them in and why? One was competence, attitude or positive attitude and ethic. I remember my response. This is back in 2004, I said. In my opinion, number one is you had to bring a positive attitude, optimistic person. You're going to bring a positive attitude and if you have a positive attitude and a great work ethic, you may not be the most competent person at this period of time, but having a positive attitude and a good work ethic, having those two, the third component will come because you're going to put in the effort, the time to gain that competence.
ZACH: Well, I think we have probably time for one more question before we get to our Better Way Questionnaire. And Hui, the question I'm most interested in hearing about is your most memorable emergency response or fire scene. Like, what's the story you tell around the dinner table with family that really sort of captures your experience as a firefighter?
CHIEF HAO: Probably my most memorable one has to deal with our recent loss. We lost a firefighter, Jeffrey Friala, on January 6th of this year. So, as a Fire Chief, you know, I'm walking at home with my wife. The alarm comes in. I look at the alarm on my phone and I know this could be a bad one based on the area and then monitoring it as we go and as we're walking, there was what they call a mayday. Something's not going right. So I tell my wife I got to go. I run back home. Get in the car.
I arrive at the scene. And by the time I got there, they extricated our firefighter Jeffrey, and he was in the ambulance or whatever. As I'm walking up the things that I remember as I see my firefighters sitting on the sidewalk that were injured or not feeling well, I can see them over there and trying to console them. I still see it right now. And then I consoled him and I turned to the ambulance, and I looked at that acting captain that was in charge of the crew. And I see the look on his face, and he's standing right next to the ambulance and as I go in and I can see all of these things, those memories are ingrained in my mind.
ZACH: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing that.
HUI: Thank you.
ZACH: It's very powerful, yeah. Hui, should we do our questionnaire and get to know Chief Hao even better?
HUI: Yes.
ZACH: Great. So Chief, we have this questionnaire. We ask all of our guests when it's their first time on the podcast, a series of questions just to get to know you a little bit better. It's inspired by the Bernard Pivot, the Proust, the inside, the Actors, Studio questionnaires, and Hui is going to take the odds. So she will ask the first question.
HUI: So, the first question is a set of two questions that you can choose one to answer. So option one is if you could wake up tomorrow, having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be? Or you can answer a different question. Is there a quality about yourself that you're currently working to improve? If so, what?
CHIEF HAO: So my wife have I have similar values and everything, but I wish I could wake up tomorrow and be a lot more organized than I am. My wife teases me, she says, “Oh, you're a mad scientist” 'cause my brain I can go all of these different directions. And so my wife is, is like man, she's so organized, OCD. So we're at the ends of the spectrum, which is great. So she helps me be more like her and I help her be more like me. Sometimes being overly organized can cause you know your reactor versus somebody that is more of a planner. Sometimes going too far on either end is not a good thing. You need to have the balance. So the reactor is not really going to stress too much about things versus somebody that's a planner. It’s like, I don't have this in place. You can rattle yourself up as well. So I wish I could be living more like my wife in that sense.
HUI: Fascinating.
ZACH: It is fascinating. Makes a lot of sense. I am a planner and I wish I could be more chill so.
CHIEF HAO: So my wife teases me, and she says you've chosen . . . so Chief Jason Samale is my deputy. And he's an electrical engineer by trade. So as you can see, an electrical engineer, like my wife at home, is very organized and very detailed and really maps out the process. That's my deputy, Jason. So she always said, you chose the perfect work partner to be next to you because I know what I'm good at and what I'm not good at and you have to surround yourself with people that can fill those gaps.
ZACH: That's right.
HUI: That's right.
CHIEF HAO: So I have been at work and at home.
ZACH: Well, question number 2 is again, you can choose one of two questions either: who is your favorite mentor or who do you wish you could be mentored by?
CHIEF HAO: Becoming a parent, becoming a husband. It shapes and changes the person that I am. And as I come to the Firehouse as well, I got mentored by good people on my truck. It could have been my peer, my captain at the time, my chief. I think it's not one person in particular, that I still feel I have mentors every day. I learn something from anybody. For the recruit, I would sit on the recruit interview panels and even things that some of the recruit said I never forget. I think, oh man, I've never heard that perspective of it. You learn from every and any place. So I wouldn't say I could name one. Each in my family, my parents, probably in that time of life, that were the mentors. I wouldn't change that. And the people that I surrounded myself with my entire career and my family at home all this.
ZACH: That's great.
CHIEF HAO: Not any particular.
HUI: I love that. I love that view on learning and mentoring from everybody. That's really awesome. What is the best job, paid or unpaid that you have ever had?
CHIEF HAO: I would say that this job, I would say being a firefighter, you know, there is a lot of good experiences. I used to work in a hospital setting as well, but being able to serve that's from a religious standpoint and how we were brought up in my upbringing at home is serving others. We show up on a person's worst day. They call 911 not because they're having a good time. It's helping people at their worst day of their life. And that's very rewarding. And I don't respond on the calls, but our job is to support the people in the field. So we do our work here so they can go out and serve the community.
HUI: Thank you.
ZACH: What is your favorite thing to do?
CHIEF HAO: My challenge is I'm juggling two families. My family at home and my family here at work. I like to tinker, so on my downtime, I just like to fix things. That's where I find my peace, whether it's doing something in the yard, working on my house, or fixing a car. Being able to just fix something and see that they're making it better, that's just my . . . I like to tinker and figure out how things work. That's what I'd like . . .
ZACH: I like that.
HUI: That’s a mad scientist.
ZACH: Exactly.
CHIEF HAO: Yeah, that's what I'd like to do. I think growing up, I always had a knack unique ability to look at something and say, oh, this is how it works and why something is working well and why something is not . . .
ZACH: You are skilled at finding better ways one might say.
HUI: Yes, indeed.
CHIEF HAO: Yep.
HUI: So next question is, what is your favorite place?
CHIEF HAO: Wherever the family is.
ZACH: That's nice.
CHIEF HAO: Yeah, not necessarily a physical place.
ZACH: That's nice. I suspect that your answer to the next question might be similar. So the next question is what makes you proud?
CHIEF HAO: Oh, what makes me proud is watching the people around me succeed or their happiness, that's more of . . . with my wife and my children. My children watching them grow up and hit each milestone, whether it's the first time they took their first steps or succeeding in whatever sport they're doing, whether sports or academically. At work I could see how people get promoted and see how they develop. That's the over accomplishment. It’s the accomplishments of others and what I can do to kind of be there and be part of them getting to where they need to go.
ZACH: We have such selfless guests—because you're not the first person who said that. That's just a trend that I've noticed. That's great.
HUI: That's wonderful. And what that's in part one of the many factors that make great leaders.
ZACH: Indeed.
HUI: Next question from the profound to the mundane, what e-mail sign off do you use most frequently?
CHIEF HAO: In Hawaii is, mahalo. Thank you. It's more of gratitude, you know. That's as simple as it gets.
ZACH: That's great. That makes you a one of one. But I like it. All right. This next question is one of our favorite questions and I'm really excited to hear you answer it. Given that you are in a field very different from many of our guests. And that is, what trend in your field is most overrated?
CHIEF HAO: Let me talk about this. I don't know if it's really a trend. But I think if you look at the generations that we have now, versus my generation or our parents’ generation coming up, the generational impact on how our business is run we have to change. We cannot come in with the mindset of our parents and their work ethic and everything. The kids nowadays they don't have the same. So the trend I would say that we need to manage always the changing environmental on the generational side and the impact. And I think we all are challenged and I think every line of business that's something that we're all trying to manage and understand. And the different needs of each generation and what they stand for. So I think that's a trend. I think it's probably the most challenging for all of us, you know, bending but not breaking.
ZACH: Yeah.
CHIEF HAO: Like I said, we have a certain culture but yet we know that we cannot stay in this culture or this trend the way that we used to. We have to be mindful of the new generation coming in and we have to learn to manage that without giving in too much.
HUI: So very last question, what word would you use to describe your day so far?
CHIEF HAO: It's good. You know by nature I'm not very outgoing. I'm more of an introvert. So, one of the most difficult parts of becoming the Fire Chief . . . I'm one of those guys that I'd rather be in the background. And like I said, I'm a blue collar guy. Just give me a shove and I can do the work. So it's actually outside of my comfort zone to be in the front of the camera. And being the face and the voice of the department. But you know, I think I've grown to being comfortable with being uncomfortable. That's part of our job. You never leave in the gray. But it's going good. Even though like I said, I’m out of my comfort zone, it is great. The sun is up. Family's happy at home. Everything's going well at work. I'm good. I’m having a great day so far.
HUI: Well, we feel so enriched by having had this conversation with you. We thank you so much for sharing your experience, your insights, and your time with us. This has been most rewarding for us.
CHIEF HAO: Well, thank you. I hope I have met your needs.
ZACH: Absolutely. Thank you so much.
CHIEF HAO: Yeah, you're very welcome.
ZACH: And thank you all for tuning in to The Better Way? Podcast. For more information about this or anything else that’s happening with CDE Advisors, visit our website at www.CDEAdvisors.com, where you can also check out the Better Way blog. And please like and subscribe to this series on Apply or Spotify. And, finally, if you have thoughts about what we talked about today, the work we do here at CDE, or just have ideas for Better Ways we should explore, please don’t hesitate to reach out—we’d love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening.