Leaders are Fire Fighters – 3 ways to put out fires

I’ll never forget standing outside my home at one o’clock in the morning, watching my house burn to the ground.  We were devastated.  We lost everything.  Thank God no one was hurt but we truly lost everything.  It was a very difficult time for our family.  We loved our home, but it was gone, and everything in it.

One thing I noticed was that the firemen were doing everything they could to put that fire out.  They were trying to pull water from our pond, they were doing everything they could to solve that problem.  The bottom line was, we lived out in the country and by the time they arrived it was too late.  That house was too far gone to stop.  When they did finally get the fire stopped there was nothing left but ashes.

Several observations about that fire that pertain to leadership.

As leaders we face fires in our organizations.  Problems that arise that need solutions.  These fires come in all kinds of different ways.  Upset customers.  A downturn in sales.  Mishandled money or people. Even top tier personnel issues.  There is no way around it if we are going to lead we are going to face fires.  What I have found to be true in over 30 years of leadership experience on many levels, is that true leaders bring water to the fire, they do not bring Gasoline.

Meaning, leaders do not exacerbate the situation they extinguish it.  They make molehills  out of mountains instead of mountains out of molehills.  They stay calm and look for the solution.  They don’t run in throwing gas on the fire with their words, or the rehearsing of the problem over and over as if everyone doesn’t already know the place is on fire.

 

3 Ways to Put out the Fire.

1. Get there in time.  (Don’t procrastinate)

It seems to me that in a lot of organizational situations fires are allowed to burn out of control simply because leaders are putting off handling them.  There is a fear of, “what if my solution makes it worse”, or “what if its not a forrest fire but just a small burning bush?” The problem with this thinking is that while you are trying to determine if the fire will burn you, the organization is burning down.  Far too many leaders do not take steps to put the fire out in time, and by the time they figure it out there is nothing left but ashes.

So be nimble, be good at assessing situations, and be a decision maker.  Identify where they fire is, prepare the water, get to the fire and put it out.

 

2.  Use the right tools.  (There are right ways and wrong ways to put a fire out, find the right way)

 

My dad woke me up with the words, “get up son, help me, the house is on fire.”  The cause of the fire was a fire place accident, where soot caught fire, blew a hole in the chimney and shot fire into the attic, which sat right under a roof with wooden shakes.  The perfect storm for a house fire.

My dad and I retrieved pots and pans and any container we could find, and begin to fill them with water and run up into the attic to put the fire out.  Which was doing no good because every time we would douse the flame, it would jump to another place in the attic and continue to burn.  Ultimately once the fire reached the wood shingles it was over.

There was a moment that we laughed about later, but wasn’t funny at the time.  By this time my mom and sisters were up and they were filling buckets and pans and bringing them to us, i came into the kitchen and my mom was so shocked by what was happening, she had filled up a gallon milk jug and handed it to us, and I remember saying “What do you want me to do with this?  I can’t stand over the fire and pour it out slowly.”

She was so confused by the reality that her house was burning to the ground that she was paralyzed to know what to do.  This is not uncommon in leadership scenarios.  Especially if the fire is visible, and is escalating rapidly.  It can make your thinking become cloudy and confuse you to the point that you don’t know what to do.

The key is to step back just for a moment.  Focus on the present.  Assess the situation, and what it will take to solve it, then aggressively put the fire out.  You can worry about the damage later.  You can worry about the recovery later, but if you don’t get that fire out, your damage will be far worse and your recovery take much longer.

 

3.  Know who your ally’s are.  (There are other leaders on the team who are bent towards solutions, and still others who are bent towards reactionary thinking)

I’ll never forget there was a man who lived a stones through away from us and he came running.  He saw how bad it was from the outside and we were still inside fighting it.  He grabbed my mom and my sisters and me and got us out of the house. He and my dad kept running in trying to get belongings until they got too much smoke in their lungs.  I remember seeing him outside throwing up because of it.  I gained a lot of respect for that man that night.  I also remember very clearly that there were other neighbors who stood on their back porches and watched us try to save our house and never even considered helping.

In every organization we have leaders who are geared towards running in and being thoughtful and strategic about putting fires out, then there are others who make the fire worse.  They watch from the comfort of their space and say, I knew that was going to catch on fire if they didn’t fix that, or they rush in and make the whole situation worse because they aren’t thoughtful but foolish.  Instead of getting a bucket and filling it with water, they grab a gas can from the garage and pour it on.  So know who can be counted on to bring calm, thoughtful strategy and give them opportunity to help solve problems. (Put out fires)

 

So the fact is, you will face fires.  If you are leading, the time will come,  more than once, that a people, or financial or even a scandal type fire will come your way.  Always remember the first priority is putting out the fire, and proceed accordingly.