Windstorms, Watercraft & The Return of Silverback Leadership
Windstorms, Watercraft & the
Return of Silverback Leadership
By Nick Brunacini
B Shifter Buckslip, Aug. 11, 2026
Last night it rained in Phoenix. Up until yesterday, it had been four months since we’d had any water fall from the sky. This was the first time I received a notification from the government that a windstorm was currently taking place in my exact location. The text closed with a reminder to closely supervise children and the elderly during adverse weather. My wife was driving, so I kept an eye on her (because she is elderly), but I did it in a way she wouldn’t notice (because the age of the predator mauling you to death is a minor detail).
But it is worth celebrating any piece of factual information, especially from the government. Although the temperature the day before it rained being 115 wasn’t a fact worth celebrating.
Lots of places throttle it back during the months of July and August. Budget cycles cycle, no one opens email because they are off on vacation or planning to go on vacation, school’s out, and a lightly retired John Vance can be found piloting a watercraft on Lake Minnetonka wearing his new Miss Piggy shirt. This changing of the seasons brings comfort, allowing for a refreshing of our essence.
Effective bosses are a critical element of the service-delivery cycle, directly influencing customer service and worker safety. Their leadership methods can make or break a department.
Adding to this freshening is the next CE module in the Silverback Leadership Program: Boss Power. It’s been a while since we’ve had a new Silverback installation. We burned through the last few months completing the third edition of Fire Command. The book is now available in full color, allowing us the time and space to jump back into the Silverback project. The advantage of our ebb-and-flow production schedule is that the pace allows Poony Pickering the time and space to produce incomparable artwork for the Silverback program, just as he did for Fire Command. In today’s world of AI-generated images, authentic artwork produced by a B-shifter (C-shifter, actually) is a breath of authenticity. AI has all the charm of a plastic ass fire.
The Boss Power module balances the boss’s personal capabilities with the organizational elements and systems used to produce effective leadership. AVB called this “aligning the boxes and blobs.” This is all rooted in leading, managing, supervising and supporting service delivery.
Click here for access to the new module, and have a sweet and chill summer, B-shifters.
Nick Brunacini joined the Phoenix Fire Department (PFD) in 1980. He served seven years as a firefighter on different engine companies before being promoted to captain and working nine years on a ladder company. Nick served as a battalion chief for five years before promoting to shift commander in 2001. He then spent the next five years developing and teaching the Blue Card curriculum at the PFD’s Command Training Center. His last assignment with the PFD was South Shift commander. Nick retired from the PFD in 2009 after spending the first 26 years of his fire-department career as a B-shifter and the last three on C Shift. Nick is the author of “B-Shifter—A Firefighter’s Memoir.” He also co-wrote “Command Safety.” Today, he is the publisher of B Shifter and a Blue Card instructor.