Net progress deliverers: Don’t fight all fires, optimise for net progress.
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 6 mins
Summary: I’ve come to believe there will always be ‘fires’ in a business. If you wanted to, one could spend all day everyday fighting fires. To me, only fighting fires just means you go backwards slower. Ultimately I believe one should optimise for net progress. This likely means letting some fires burn… and having fires burning at any given point.
Three strategies for dealing with fires:
Passive approach = Let the fire burn itself out or just keep burning at a low and non escalating level.
Proactive approach = Directly hose down the fire.
Indirect approach = Let’s say the UX is suboptimal and causing activation problems, instead of addressing the UX you might add a new feature and this is the best way to increase progress for the business. IE the unit of effort to add upside (new feature) adds more net progress than the unit of effort to remove downside (fix UX).
Product example: I don’t generally think about having the least bad product, I want a product with no dealbreakers and hopefully 2+ dealmakers… but not everything needs to be (or even can be) a dealmaker.
Team example: I’m normally much less focused on the weakest player on the team than ‘is the team winning matches’.
“Progress solves all known problems” - IMO optimise for net progress AKA be a Net Progress Deliverer, Not an involuntary Fire Fighter!
Firefighter = Fights all fires one is aware of.
Builder = Only builds new things, does not fight fires.
Net progress deliverer = Fights the right fires when it makes sense AND builds new things, overall delivering the net greatest amount of progress.
Jingle: If I wanted to only fight fires I would have been a firefighter, I want to try to make the world better, to build the plane as I’m flying it… and put some fires out on the plane while building it! I want to be a net progress deliverer!
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Details
Size of fires
Small Fire - Annoying but no one is really going to get hurt. Small fires can normally be left to burn indefinitely. This doesn’t mean a small fire should be left to burn indefinitely, but it usually can be. EG UX of a product could be improved. EG someone said one thing in a negative sum way in a meeting.
Medium Fire - Long term a medium fire will hurt, but in the short term you can typically let a medium sized fire burn AKA not need to address it immediately. However long term it should be addressed. EG UX is causing a meaningful drop off in activation. EG someone consistently says things in a negative sum way in meetings and others are becoming unhappy.
Large - Needs to be addressed immediately or it will burn down other significant things. EG the updated UX of a product is causing a big increase in customer churn. EG the way someone talks in meetings means others no longer want to have meetings with them.
Some fires burn themselves out, some fires burn other things down: Proactive vs Passive fire management
Most fires start out as smalls (IE they don’t start as a large). Then if left unaddressed, some fires go from small, to medium, then to large.
Other fires start as a small and burn themselves out.
Some go from a small to a medium, then back to a small and burn themselves out.
In my experience anything that gets to a large needs to be put out proactively and should be done so as quickly as possible.
However, passive fire management is something one should employ. IE don’t fight all fires you are aware of. I had no understanding of this 10 years ago. I thought all fires; small, medium or large, should be addressed proactively and immediately.
With the benefit of hindsight, I think trying to put out all fires immediately meant significantly less net progress… and significantly less net enjoyment at work. Letting some fires burn can increase work enjoyment and progress? I think it so. This was very counterintuitive for me.
“Progress solves all known problems.” You are not a firefighter, you are a net progress deliverer.
Sometimes the best approach to solving a fire is the indirect approach of progress.
Oversimplification:
Fighting fire = Removing a unit of regress
Progress deliverer = Adding unit of progress
The ROI (return on investment) of each unit of time can vary wildly.
The iPhone didn’t have a physical keyboard and some people thought this meant it was ‘dead on arrival’. Ie a unit of regress.
But the unit of progress of a touchscreen allowed many other things that way more than offset the regress.
Sometimes a team isn’t functioning well because of one person.
Reactive fire fighting approach = Just leave it, the person will slowly level up as people tend to do and the problem will go away.
Proactive fire fighting approach = Give the person feedback to shift their behaviour.
Indirect approach = Change structure of the team to work around the weakness or change the role responsibilities of the person.
Sometimes a product isn’t performing well because of the quality of a feature.
Reactive fire fighting approach = This isn’t great but we have bigger fish to fry. There is always a most important thing, and most of the time you should be doing the most important thing.
Proactive fire fighting approach = Fix the quality of the feature.
Indirect approach = Create a new feature that shifts the overall workflow meaning the existing feature is seen in a different light and received quality goes up significantly.
What is insignificant to you might be significant to others. What is significant to you might be insignificant to others.
One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. One person’s opportunity is another person’s anxiety.
Sometimes this is just experience.
The first time you encounter something it can feel like a large. By the 5th time it’s a small, you know what to do and that everything will be ok!
But even with the same level of experience, someone might view something as a small and another person as a large. Talk it out!
Also, an off hand comment from someone might be taken in a really negative way. Almost never do people go to work trying to ruin someone else’s day. Try to assume positive intent and not get bent out of shape.
If you only take away one thing
Fires suck, and it’s tempting to want to put out all fires you are aware of.
But normally net progress towards your mission is what matters, and letting some fires burn is usually optimal for net progress.
Where there’s smoke there’s fire. A company without any smoke might well be about to get smoked by its competition ;)!