When there are too many fires in your business....

What do you do when you are always having to step in and "put out a fire?"

Complain while feeling needed and important?
No.

This is a common mistake that many business owners and managers make on a regular basis.

Step back and notice the bigger picture

Are you calling things fires and emergencies that are really just a lit match that hasn't been dropped yet?

My mind's eye sees a blazing fire I must deal with immediately because I see
all the POTENTIAL for the blaze to ignite.  This creates unnecessary urgency and stress. 

Sometimes what I perceive as fires are really just lit matches
and not truly urgent situations at this stage.   

I catch myself doing this a lot.  Because I have a sense of the business as a whole, I know how the various processes fit together and will impact one another.  Sometimes we see the situation for its POTENTIAL to cause problems and not for what the situation is right now.  Nor, usually, do we see multiple ways to deal with the situation that may make small sacrifices in timeliness but reduce the stress level considerably. 

Here's an example of a situation I helped with recently dealing with shipping duplicate orders with product:

Have we actually mailed duplicate orders yet?

        Or are the duplicate packages still sitting, waiting to be picked up?   IE the product's not actually out the door yet.

               Or did we just print the shipping labels?   IE Could one email can fix this situation in the short-term?


Yes, printing extra shipping labels may result in mailing out tons of extra product.
That could be hugely expensive!
What would your customers think of you?
BUT if it hasn't actually happened yet, what is the minimum you have to do to stop it from going down the wrong path right now.

Figure out the minimum you need to do and do it... quickly.  Then sit back and reevaluate the time sensitivity of "fixing" the problem.   Is fixing the whole problem a fire you need to be involved in?

You should indeed fix the problem so it doesn't happen again.

That may mean figuring out who/what triggered the train to run off the rails in the first place.  

If the train wasn't really off the tracks, only starting to turn, here are some suggestions:
1) Set standards and expectations
2) Communicate how you want things handled and why
3) Use decision trees for standard situations that help show how you came to the conclusion/solution that you did
4) Give your people authority to take care of the situation and right the train without your intervention if possible.
5) Set limits where you will find out about a true train derailment before it's too late, but only if your staff can't handle it.  Make sure this is defined.

Maybe you're seeing a fire that YOU have to put out. But, your staff may see a match that they've watched you put out many times and would handle fine if you just let them.

Maybe the fires are actually real.  

OK. Once you've decided that, it's time to look at the process you use to execute the actions in the business and look for places where that process may lead your people astray 

IE they may have done everything right according to the process you had communicated.

Looking at your process (hopefully it's written), what keeps ALLOWING the train to derail?

Are there minor changes you could make to your process to handle these situations?
Sometimes simply defining what is happening is enough to make it very clear what an easy solution would be.

Stay open-minded as you're analyzing the processes you have in place.  

Maybe you're making it way to complicated.    If it's not you that's doing the work, make sure to ask the people who are doing it what solutions they might suggest.  There's nothing like doing a process 100 times to make you realize how it could be improved.  If you haven't done it much, ask the people who have.

Fires are created when "unusual" situations pop up that don't fit into our regular scenarios.  

Businesses and their processes change over time.  You will probably not do the same thing for years and years and handle everything the same way.  Whether it's getting a new book keeping system, or shipping orders in a different way, or handling your public relations or social media differently, things change.

Change is hard and the fires that are created by change are one of the reasons why.   Every time we change something, the play book we usually use may not work and we find ourselves having some hurdles to jump.

The first few times a situation pops up, they will probably create fires.  You may be the best person to help sort them out in the beginning.  That said, after you've encountered it a few times and the path to the solution was similar each time, it's time to build yourself a system.

Your system might be to put fire hydrants everywhere to
make putting the fires out an easy task.... Or you could put fire
retardant all over to prevent the match from lighting...
Your choice, but take action!

Build your system to handle new situations:

1) Set standards and expectations
2) Communicate how you want things handled and the why behind each.
3) Use decision trees for standard situations that help show how you came to the conclusion/solution that you did
4) Give your people authority to take care of the situation and right the train without your intervention if possible.
5) Set limits where you will find out about a true train derailment before it's too late, but only if your staff can't handle it.  Make sure these parameters are defined and communicated in writing.

Write all this down.  Write down the problem. Write down your solution.  

Write down your new process that will keep this from bothering you again but still lead to good customer satisfaction. 

Remember that a day will come when you would like to go on vacation or go to your daughter's recital without feeling like your business can't survive without you.    You don't want to be the only firefighter in town or have a company that's fire prone!

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Comments?  What fires do you put out on a regular basis that you could prevent with a better process?