Firefighting (Problems)

The term “firefighting” is often used to describe solving problems in a mad scramble during a crisis.

It generally means that someone comes in and handles a problem in an emergency mode. The result is normally just enough to rescue the team from its predicament, but seldom actually solves the problem.

Using the term ‘firefighter’ to describe implementing emergency stopgap measures is wrong on three fronts.

The first problem is that firefighters actually spend the majority of their time doing fire prevention rather than putting out fires. In a company, the teams would be far better off if the staff worked more diligently on preventing fires rather than extinguishing them.

The second problem is that using the term “firefighter” glamorizes letting problems happen. Sure, you are also dealing with the problem, but the real issue is that it happened in the first place. In the workplace, the firefighter is often the person who also set the fire, or at least set the conditions for the fire. There should be a lot more celebrating the days when there were no problems and a lot less time admiring the people who can get things done in a crisis.

Now, I’m not saying we don’t want people who are good in a crisis. What I am saying is that we should see the need for a firefighter as a big problem and focus on that.

The third problem is that firefighting tends to be stopgaps and not solutions, but we seldom jump into problem solving mode the next day to make sure it never happens again. If we just stop at firefighting, we will see the problem again. The person who puts in a poka yoke device and keeps a hundred future problems from ever happening again is far more of a hero than the person who jumps on the problems whenever they repeatedly crop up.