Take Back Your Strategic Time: Fight Fires Like a Fire Chief

I have a daring idea. What if we didn't fight all the fires that cross our desk?

Hear me out a minute, I know I'm embarking into an unmarked trail.

In the tech world, fire fighting is a constant. But does it need to be? And how much time should fires take?

When things break, we're huge fans of speaking in terms of P0, P1, etc. And in many cases, the priority system falters because multiple needs get labeled as P0. You can't have multiple “drop everything” priorities because then you're not actually choosing what to prioritize. Same thing happens when multiple projects/issues are tagged within P1 and P2.  

Before you know it, your day is filled with reportedly P0 issues. The question is - are they really all P0s? What if we added another filter to how and where to spend your time?  

Stick with me…

I've been playing with a concept and it's been resonating with folks. Inspired (sadly) by California wildfires, it's taking a look at actual firefighting. 

Does every fire get put out with human intervention? No. 

Is every fire life and structure threatening? No. 

Does every fire require air support? No.  

Does every fire require thousands of boots on the ground? No.  

Is the fire chief on site for every burn? No.

What if we evaluated issues (and resources) like a fire chief?

Time is the non-renewable resource leaders crave. The time to think. The time to plan. The time to get ahead. The time to shift from reactive to proactive. And they're not alone.  

Dorie Clark illustrates our challenges nicely in her HBR article:

"Almost every leader wants to make more time for strategic thinking. In one survey of 10,000 senior leaders, 97% of them said that being strategic was the leadership behavior most important to their organization's success.

And yet in another study, a full 96% of the leaders surveyed said they lacked the time for strategic thinking. Of course, we're all oppressed with meetings and overwhelmed with emails (an average of 126 per day, according to a Radicati Group analysis)."

We're struggling to prioritize our strategic time because we're busy fighting fires.

What if we put on our fire chief hat? What would we see differently about where we're spending our time?

My clients and I have been playing with the following designations as a way to view time and priority struggles differently:

• Controlled Burn - fires that will ultimately burn themselves out. It's temporarily messy, but there's a deliberate choice to let it go, recognizing there are larger benefits in the future (ie keeping true to strategic priorities). No active intervention.

• Burn With Clear Fire Lines - fire burns within parameters, and until the fire breaches a boundary, holding tight with intervention.

• Mega Fire - all hands on deck, all resources leveraged, and the fire chief is on scene.

If you reflect on the last handful of fires you fought, what kind of fires were keeping you from your strategic work? Were they all Mega Fires?  

With a more critical eye, might a few have been allowed to burn out if it meant keeping you and your people focused on the strategic priority?

It's a daring act to say no.

It's a daring act to not jump on every issue. 

It's a daring act to protect your time. 

It's a daring act to prioritize your strategic thinking timing.

Permission to be daring, Chief!