Essay about Mary Schapiro and Leadership

Inherently the fire service operates in high-risk environments to facilitate the role of preserving life safety and property conservation. How these incidents are managed and safeguarded by our administration

Nowadays, it is almost impossible to find a building that does not have exit signs or fire extinguishers in America. Whether in a university or at the work place, exit signs and fire safety instructions can easily be found by anybody. Fire drills are regularly practiced to ensure the least amount of casualty will occur if something goes wrong. However, a hundred years ago safety issues were barely taken into considerations and safety regulations were most of the time inexistent, as illustrates the terrible fire that happened a hundred years ago at the Triangle

The illegal construction of the Bernie Madoff securities pyramid scheme grew to preposterous proportions from legal, auditing, and regulatory weaknesses of the Securities Exchange Commission, the designated regulatory body of the U.S. financial markets. The required expertise, authority, and relevant penalties needed to deter management from committing ethical breaches lacked substance in the case study of BMIS (Crews 11). Even after the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals that occurred in the early 2000s, the SEC unexplainably revoked provisions created to help avoid fraud. The provision the SEC revoked specifically mandated firms structured like Madoff’s to be audited by accounting firms registered and audited by the Board. By revoking the provision, BMIS was allowed to continue its Ponzi scheme for another half a decade with the aid of utilizing an unregistered, small accounting firm called Freihling & Horowitz (“Madoff’s Jenga”

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire not only affected the city of New York, but also the rest of the country. It forever changed the way our country would look at safety regulations in factories and buildings. The fire proved to America what can and will happen if we over-look safety regulations and over-crowd buildings. Unfortunately, 146 lives are taken before we fully understand this concept.

“There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to people’s speculation with other money (pg 92).” The SEC was designed to keep security on Wall Street.

Organizations must respond to their internal and external environment. Therefore, organizational success heavily relies on leaderships ability to manage change. Unfortunately, many leaders struggle to effectively lead change initiatives. In fact, Ashkenas (2013, para. 1) reported 60 – 70% of organizational change initiatives fail to meet their objectives.

“The images, metaphors, or frames that we hold, both of managing and of change, influence our ideas of what we think managing change is all about” (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin, 2009). As people we all see through our own eyes, we call see a different perspective and have a different reaction to what is coming next. As human beings we react differently to situations. Situations of change are transitions that some are able to adapt to quickly while others have a hard time. Being the leader of that change can be difficult and helping make a change does not come easily or effectively. Keep and Newcomer (2008)

For years if not decades, firefighters have responded to a reported structure fire that turned out to be a fully involved single room. This fire scenario requires a core set of fire tactics and skills to control and extinguished the fire, but is it this simple? Perhaps twenty years it may have been, but new dangers are lurking in every scenario and may have detrimental outcomes for unsuspecting and unaware firefighters and victims. The National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) agency along with the Underwriters Laboratory (UL) have been conducting research to understand fire behavior and fire dynamics. This research is providing firefighters with new information about how and why

Leaders change systems, structures and policies that have not yet been confronted. They hire, promote and develop employees who can implement the vision for change. In addition, they revitalise the process with a new round of projects or change agents.(Cengage Learning AUS, 2015)

On arrival they witnessed smoke and flames on the mid level of the building. Two battalion chiefs arrived on scene and one proceeded to set up incident command at the lobby, while the other led fire fighters up the building for fire attack (Routley 8). One of the security guards then informed the chiefs that the fire was on the 22nd floor, and at 2033 battalion chief 5 ordered a second alarm (Routley 8). Due to insufficient fire protection around the utility lines all power was lost to the building (Routley 8). At the loss of primary power the emergency generator didn’t kick in due to improper maintenance it was unable to start (Routley 8). This profoundly impacted the fire operations for the remainder of the incident because the entire building was left without electricity (Routley 8). As stated in the tactical report, “This total power failure had a major impact on the firefighting operations. The lack of lighting made it necessary for firefighters to carry out suppression operations in complete darkness using only battery powered lights. Since there was no power to operate elevators, firefighters were forced to hand carry all suppression equipment including SCBA replacement cylinders up the stairs to the staging area that was established on the 20th floor. In addition, personnel had to climb at least 20 floors

Is your school or office prepared for a fire if one ever did happen? Albert Marrin’s text, Flesh and Blood so Cheap shows a factory that was not prepared for the fire that was awaiting it. Marrin uses implicit and explicit evidence to hint towards his overall theme that safety concerns should be a priority for business owners. The Triangle Fire was a disaster, killing 146 people. There were ways in which it could’ve been prevented but those were overlooked. The fire couldn’t've been predicted, so safety was not a priority.

The Mentor Fire Department has not been able to meet the goals of annual pre-fire planning. By not meeting these goals we could be placing firefighters at risk because they may not have the information necessary to safely, efficiently and effectively handle the fire emergency presented. The issues seem to affect each emergency incident differently. If the incident commander had knowledge of the building and how to use the preplan information that might be available, the situation was handled safely, efficiently and effectively. If the incident commander lacked knowledge of the building, and did not know how to acquire any preplan information, the incident was handled, but might not have been handled as safely, efficiently and effectively as possible.

Leadership is critical when executing a strategic change initiative. By differentiating leadership and management, leadership styles and the key factors of change we can better understand what should be done to successfully lead change. Success is not obtained through leadership alone but by developing a group of individuals from all levels of the organization who work together as a team. . (Leban and Stone, 2007)

In times of uncertainty and failure I believe that a transformational leader would inspire performance and creative behaviors in their employees to meet the emerging needs of their organization. I believe that the transformational leader would have the ability to motivate his or her employees and inspire them to trust and be loyal employees. Additionally, I think that a transformational leader would continue to maintain daily operations and continue to stimulate their employees to perform with confidence to achieve the goal and meet the standards of the organization.

In order to move forward and keep ahead, I believe an organization need change leaders who have capabilities to have their workforce go from change avoidance to change acceptance. “One of the most significant strengths of an effective leader is the ability to create a positive work climate where people are energized to do their best work, free of unnecessary distractions” (Cronkite, n.d.). During this part of the change process I feel the change leader would have better success if he would be tactful and harness the skills of others by working in a collaborative rather than hierarchical way. Leadership in an organization involves instilling motivation and enthusiasm in the employees. An effective leader knows how to manage and tackle difficult situations and people. Many reasons can cause a force of change in organizations but I feel it’s up to change leaders to manage these planned and unexpected changes. (Word count: 548)