Stop firefighting - Shift from internal to external line of sight!

Organisations can easily fall into a habit of firefighting in the workplace. In this culture, firefighters can be perceived as the heroes, making innovators appear as if they are ignoring the most pressing challenges. Leaders can escape this dynamic and shift the internal organisational focus outward, toward the required output and opportunities for improvement.

Looking around your office on a typical day, how often do you see people running from meeting to meeting, barely finishing one before heading to the next, feeling like they’re getting the water on the flames just in time? How often do you see leaders relying on the burning platform approach to energize their teams? Setting it ablaze, everyone running around, pushing each other to get off the platform as quickly as possible, in whatever direction they can go?

This analogy is an important one – you have everyone running, in different directions (most likely not your organisation’s strategic direction), doing whatever is best for them individually. AND – what most leaders forget is that you can only burn a platform once.

This could be the most significant leadership challenge facing us today. With the ever-increasing workload, meetings, agendas, briefs, and all with diminishing resources: How can people create new value when they’re always just putting out the day’s fire?

So why do people become so reactionary and complacent? The answer is more straightforward than most would like to admit. Leaders and managers are incentivised to be firefighters. Far too often, those who are promoted and rewarded are those who extinguish all the flames. When senior executives consider who to lead projects, they call on their usual suspects – that same list of leaders and managers who have been putting out fires – not the ones who are scanning the organisation for new opportunities and ways to improve and create more value.

Add to the damage the fact that people who take initiative on new ideas, particularly ones not focusing on the day’s fire, seldom get noticed. Even worse, this type of proactive effort is often seen as a liability, and these people are disregarded for “not focusing on our most pressing challenges.”

So how do you create a culture of urgency at all levels – where people are relentlessly seeking out new opportunities to improve, whether they're proactively questioning traditional structures that start fires, or looking for ways to improve in new and more effective ways?

Shift from internal to external line of sight!

It’s natural that when people are rewarded for finding and addressing spontaneously-appearing problems, they feel they must keep scouting for internal fires. With such an inward focus, teams become blind to the windows of opportunities that are opening and closing constantly. These opportunities will pass you by unless people are encouraged to turn their focus externally – scanning for opportunities and emerging technologies. Leaders must clearly communicate a vision that engages their head and gets them feeling empowered about participating in the change.

By encouraging people to look externally, you’ll keep your people looking for opportunities instead of fires. Rewarding firefighting has a permanent effect on your culture, which will lead to missing opportunities to improve.

Adrian.