Hi, I’m Paul Darley, and thanks for tuning into our October issue of Inside Darley. We are really proud to bring you our fall/winter issue of the Darley Times. I’ll tell you it’s jam packed with new products that we’ve come out with and talks a lot about how we as a company have pivoted into providing PPE to our federal and local first responder customers, and some of the awards that we’ve received recently. We’ve been named one of the fastest growing companies in Chicago but also in the United States, we are proud of that team effort and thank you to our customers for helping us to accomplish that.
The thing we are most proud of and most focused on is corporate responsibility or giving back and being good corporate citizens. This issue is packed with a lot of different areas that we are doing from solar power on our headquarters to electric test motors for our pumps to different initiatives that our employees are doing to give back to the communities that we serve. This week for instance we along with golden state fire apparatus donated a truck load of Darley Safe Water boxes to citizens who have been impacted by the tragic wildfires in California and other parts of the country. We worked closely with CAL OES and some other folks to accomplish that. If you as a business leader or fire department chief or military leader, you are probably looking for some leadership tips. These next three articles are really good in terms of giving you some ideas on how to navigate through this crisis.
The first one is from Dr. Travis Bradberry, he’s one of the foremost authorities in emotional intelligence. It’s a LinkedIn article called “How Great Leaders Confront A Crisis” in the article he talks about creating calm for your people and creating confidence for your people. Don’t be cocky, stay humble, and make sure you’re listening to your employees and your constituents needs. Make sure you are balancing optimism with realism and that’s really the highlight of our second attachment which is “The Stockdale Paradox.” The article is on why confronting reality is vital.
The third article attached was put out by McKinsey, in fact it was named the best article put out during the Covid-19 crisis it’s called “Leadership For A New Era.” This article also talks about the humility, but it also talks about thinking big right now and making sure you find peer support and others that you can reach out to. For those in the fire service markets particularly those who are either fire department customers or perhaps you are an OEM, I think you will like this next article. It’s called “7 Apparatus Trends For The Future of Firefighting” it was put out by the The Big Red Guide as a thought leadership article which is big in digital marketing these days to get a social media presence but some good concepts here.
The fire service and Darley lost two friends in the past month Jimmy Edwards of C.W. Williams. Darley and C.W. Williams have been associated for over 70 years. We also lost Alan R. Kloha who is also a great Darley disciple, he founded Circle K Fire Apparatus in Michigan, he represented us for nearly 40 years. We are really going to miss Alan.
We are excited to add another Darley disciple to team Darley and that’s Bill Alm. We have worked closely with Bill for over 30 years, he started Hall-Mark Fire Apparatus. He used to be a dealer for Emergency one in Florida. It later got taken over by Rev Group. Bill is going to be joining us effective today down in the south east part of the United States.
Thanks for tuning into this issue of Inside Darley, if there is anything we can be doing to support you, we hope you reach out to us.
