Alex Zielinski

No Empty Complaints

Alex Zielinski is a fire chief in Texas. His approach is simple: “No empty complaints. When something isn’t working, we look for the change that needs to happen, then put in the effort and gather the data to get it done.” Often that means taking on work nobody is doing yet: a gap in training, a problem everyone has learned to work around, a group of firefighters who have been overlooked. The goal is always a better, more capable fire service.

The teams he has helped build are organized around capability, not compliance. Emergencies, and the people living through them, need more than the minimum a standard requires. He wants firefighters to feel confident in what they are asked to do and comfortable asking questions while they learn, so that on a moment’s notice they can size up a situation and make a positive difference right away.

None of that is solo work. The results he is proudest of belong to the crews and colleagues who did the work alongside him. And there is always someone, somewhere, doing it better. He would rather learn from them than compete with them.

The same instinct drives his writing and research, much of which advocates for firefighters who fall outside existing protections, including industrial and privately employed firefighters left out of many cancer presumption laws. He started TrainTeachLead.com to share practical tools and training with other departments, and he wrote this book for chiefs and officers in municipal, combination, volunteer, and industrial departments alike.

Outside the firehouse, Alex is a Cincinnati Reds loyalist and lifelong baseball fan, and a former music teacher and drummer.