Sunday 3rd December 2023

Topics:

• Recently I suggested to another senior manager that we should get out of firefighting mode, and his genuine response was that would require us to fire our executive team.
• It sounds like a joke but he was serious: he genuinely felt that firefighting was fine, as our executives were lighting fires for us to put out.
• It got me thinking about why some managers or organizations accept firefighting as the norm?
• Firstly, firefighting is not a good thing for one simply reason: it requires a fire, and fires are bad.
• In fact for firefighting to become the "process" in an organization, it requires a steady stream of new fires.
• A previous mentor once said to me: "John, we are so good at firefighting here, we will happily light our own fires".
• He was being sarcastic, and hated firefighting as much as I did.
• Another colleague who I worked with, a very talented engineer, changed his avatar on our chat system to the children's character Fireman Sam, to reflect the fact that he was only called upon due to some software emergency. Few managers got the joke.
• Firefighting is not a sustainable management practice, as it comes with a lot of stress for the teams impacted, a lot of blame, and ultimately will become toxic.
• Adrenaline will only carry the team so far.
• Firefighting is not a process, but is instead a reaction to a bad situation that has already escaped from whatever processes you may have in place.
• Remember, if you are firefighting, something has already gone badly wrong.
• What I am working on this week:
  • Greppr.org - Now at 2.9m web pages indexed.
• Media I am enjoying this week:
  • Scavengers Reign
  • Aegeon: Science Fiction Illustrated

Download

techleaderpro-2023-week-48.mp3

File details: 17.0 MB MP3, 11 mins 46 secs duration.

Title music is "Come 2gether" by Ooyy, licensed via www.epidemicsound.com

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