The Firefighter and the Engineer

I have a friend who's trying to integrate his company's logistical processes.

His current systems and providers are failing him.

Missed orders.

Delays.

Little visibility on what orders are working well and which ones will have problems.

Last night, I was talking to him about this challenge.

His basic dilemma is that, on one hand, he has to make sure that…

• Orders are delivered as planned

• Logistical providers are noticed if orders change

• Customers are noticed if orders will suffer delays

• Complaints are handled timely

… And on the other hand, their job would be so much easier if he could:

• Integrate systems with their logistical partners

• Create dashboards to catch system-wide problems early

• Automate messages to customers and logistical providers regarding late orders

People have spoken of this dilemma for ages.

One way to look at it, for instance, is the Eisenhower Matrix:

In my friend's scenario, he's constantly faced with the choice of prioritizing the URGENT (but not that important, in an organization-wide sense) and the IMPORTANT (but not that urgent).

The Eisenhower Matrix would tell him to Delegate the first, and Decide the latter.

This might be helpful for personal tasks, but it's not that helpful for setting the rhythm of his team…

… Ideally, he'd do both sets of tasks, but resources are limited (as always) and he needs to allocate how much effort will be spent on each.

He also needed to come up with a way to quickly communicate to his team when they should be focusing on the things in the first list vs. the second list.

The Firefighter and the Engineer analogy

For the communication part, I helped him create an analogy:

Are you in Firefighter mode or Engineer mode?

Both are important.

If your house is burning down, you don't need an Engineer. You need a Firefighter.

ASAP.

If a doctor finds a patient dying due to a car crash in the hospital, the fact that their cholesterol levels are a bit too high is the least of their concerns. They've gotta save their life first.

If a company is running low on cash in the middle of a credit crunch, now's not the time to focus on increasing their customer's LTV. They need cash now to do payroll in a couple of weeks.

But if your house keeps getting fires, you probably should call an Engineer and check out your electrical wires, or whatever's causing that. Then, you'll stop having fires all the time and that stress is permanently out of your life.

If you're working on a growing business, like my friend is, these priorities need to be rebalanced all the time.

And the first step to rebalancing it is to have a common vocabulary with your team. You can use the Firefighter and the Engineer analogy, or whatever other words you want. Just make sure you have a concise way to redirect everyone as the short-term priorities change.

The long-term balance

Alright, but what about the mid to long-term?

As a manager, executive, or individual contributor, where should you focus your energies?

The naive, young professional will say: "Engineer mode, of course… If you have all systems perfectly in place, you're more efficient and will have few fires to fight!"

Oh, sweet summer's child…

Here are some (off the top of my head) reasons why you should prioritize Firefighter mode:

• The "building" is "burning down" (this is the obvious one)

• You don't have the proper resources to do an "engineering" solution yet

• You don't have enough knowledge to understand what solution you need, and a few more fires will help you understand their root cause

• You have a bonus / funding round / IPO / [KEY EVENT] and it's better for the long term of the business / your career to be in Firefighter mode for a few months so the numbers don't look bad

• The fires are small and controllable and not in a critical area of the business, so there's no decent ROI in engineering a permanent solution

Something that people with an optimization mindset (that's usually good) don't get is that there is such a thing as over-engineering.

There's a graveyard of companies that systematized and optimized things too early, only to realize they've spent all that time building the wrong systems.

So, I don't have a blanket answer on whether Firefighter or Engineer mode is better. It all depends on CONTEXT.

What I do know, though, is that: (1) keeping this question top of mind is important so you make sure you're working on the right set of things at any given time, and (2) having a common vocabulary with your team helps a lot in switching modes with more agility.

Keep working smarter.