Lots of businesses have issues. Some have customers who never seem satisfied with your products or services. Others have process and risk failures that bring production to a halt. Occasionally, a key member of staff who seemed happy and committed resigns on you. Whatever the reason, many senior leaders and managers are no strangers to firefighting business issues. The trouble is that it takes you away from preventing the fires from starting in the first place. Read on as we delve deeper into business issues.
Firefighting in businesses
Firefighting, in the business world, refers to immediate crises or issues that distract employees away from business as usual. In a business context, it means that a great deal of time is wasted solving problems rather than improving the business. Someone who claims to be ‘firefighting all day’ is spending their time putting out urgent ‘fires’ and not doing their actual job. The disadvantages of firefighting in businesses are multiple and it often crosses departments and teams.
Like any crisis, you hope that it passes as quickly as possible. Risk, loss and escalation are all possible consequences when a crisis arises. Each one tends to increase anxiety and busyness above the ambient level in a team or department. Successive crises leads to increased risk, greater potential for losses and a ‘snowball effect’ on workloads. Ultimately, some organisations become so used to firefighting that they joke (out of despair) that nothing ever gets done.
Firefighting is not business steady state
The steady state in an organisation is not firefighting. Firefighting is a heightened situation responding to problems, issues, complaints, failures and escalations. One leadership expert suggests that the more leaders focus on firefighting, the less they focus on fire prevention, leading to more fires to put out in the future. This happens because ‘urgent’ and ‘important’ are often confused. For example, prioritising important things like cultural change, digital transformation and staff development can prevent future fires. Prioritising urgent issues leads to increased focus on the urgent issues to the detriment of identifying and fixing the root causes. In essence, it is better to design or change to create a safer working environment than provide fire extinguishers in every room that regularly need refilling!
Firefighting is a strategy, but not a good one
Doing nothing is a strategy. Responding to urgent issues like whack-a-mole is also a strategy, albeit a short-sighted and reactive way to try to improve. One university professor suggests that without a strategy, employees will create unlimited amounts of work. Without guidance, focus and prioritisation on what is important, employees will merrily whack-a-mole until they decide to leave. This leaves organisations with high levels of churn, delayed projects, system implementations that are not fully fit-for-purpose and glacial speed of improvement. It should be noted at this point that some personality types prefer a lack of structure in their lives and their work. These individuals are ideally suited to organisations that firefight – appearing to rise above the chaos. However, as with any organisation, this should not be confused with the appropriate neurodiversity on a senior management team.
Fighting fire with fire?
Another strategy is to sow seeds of chaos with customers, competitors and suppliers. This could be due to organisational challenges that make it seem attractive to ditch some customers. Similarly, regularly changing suppliers in the quest to improve service and profitability causes repeated disruption to both your business and the supplier. Finally, disruption to competitors can come from new products, poaching staff, opening locations close to theirs and seeking exclusivity rights that block them from selling particular products or services. In all cases, these strategies may yield short-term gain for your organisation but they perpetuate the game of whack-a-mole. It may distract employees from the underlying issues in the business but it prevents improvement and prevention.
A world without firefighting business issues
Imagine a world without firefighting. Imagine a leader that prioritised the important changes and transformations in a business. The result? Firefighting is a rarity. Efforts focus on employee and customer experience, product development, ESG, new business models and wellbeing. When a crisis does appear, the organisation has the headspace and culture to make considered decisions and stop it from happening again. We often say that strategic planning is crucial to the success of a business. With clearly-defined organisational goals, the capability to deliver them and the plans to make them a reality, organisations possess a roadmap that is hard to lose focus on. When the mission, values and proposition is all aligned to the goals you want to achieve, it keeps everyone focused on the journey.
Ultimately, strategic planning is a process that encourages you to challenge the organisation’s capabilities and to look at the future organisational design, otherwise known as the Target Operating Model (TOM). Tinkering around the edges is commonplace – an organisation is complex to change and risky to leave to stagnate. However, the benefit is an organisation more suited to the challenges and opportunities ahead of it. Think of it as an opportunity to extinguish those fires for good.
Planning for a better future
Think Beyond is a multi-award-winning management consultancy based in Cheshire. We provide value-add solutions to help you find opportunities to grow and to accelerate your business performance. In short, we aim to make life easier for boards and senior leaders. Our range of planning services include strategic, business, marketing, operational and financial planning as well as planning programmes and providing assurance on your plans.
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