Firefighting is not good management strategy

2026-03-26 - 01:23

Is it only me, or is everyone amazed at the number of leaders trying to evade burnout every day at work? The irony is that some of the practices many leaders have adopted are compounding the problem of overloaded workloads. One such practice that has become normalised as a way of business life is firefighting one’s way through the day’s tasks. The level of firefighting that takes place in the corridors of businesses is impossible to ignore. Yet, many managers and supervisors march into their workplaces bravely, with “hope” as a daily strategy for getting through the business day. They keep their fingers crossed and hope they make it to the day’s end, emotionally intact. All the while, they know full well that by the end of the first hour at work, they would have lost control over their “to-do” list almost completely. While this scenario is unfortunate, what is even more disheartening is that this cycle of chronic “management by firefighting” has been normalised by many leaders. The inevitable outcomes being emotional dysregulation and workday disruption for everyone affected by the moving parts. These dysfunctions show up in team confusion, miscommunication, dropped balls, inefficiency and unpredictability. Not to mention the sporadic collapsing of service delivery systems. Needless to say, firefighting through one’s day is not a good management strategy. It is a practice that allows the day and its vagaries to dictate the pace of work. Basically, it is handling tasks, issues and situations as they arise, in a reactive, unplanned way. A structured approach to day planning and management is not the modus operandi. Firefighting takes a huge emotional toll on leaders. It reduces the emotional range at their disposal to take decisions with warm hearts and cool heads. If their heads are always “hot,” leadership effectiveness will eventually be called into question. For the newly promoted leaders, it is best if this firefighting practice does not find its way into their toolkits in the first place. For the existing leaders who have descended into this practice, it is best to untangle themselves with urgency. Untangling is challenging, simply because patterns are difficult to break. Leaders who have avoided this firefighting trap are intentional about how they set themselves up to exert some measure of control over the known and unknown demands of their workday and work lives. Firstly, they have a very specific language code. They hardly ever say “I don’t know where the time has gone” or “I’m just so overwhelmed by my workload.” Guard rails are established to preserve mental wellness. These leaders understand how easily one can become entrapped in negative self-talk, which, if prolonged, can lead to counterproductive behaviours. Instead, their language patterns are scripted to be energy boosting and designed to promote progress. For example, when a challenging situation arises, the internal question becomes “What’s the plan?” and not “Gosh, what now?” Triaging becomes a non-negotiable practice. Not every situation or task is urgent, even when accompanied by a red flag in the email message. It is understood that some deadlines in fact, are negotiable, so adopting breakneck speed to meet all deadlines is not considered to be an option. Leaders who have dodged the firefighting trap have made mental stability an overarching goal. They know how easy it is to go down the rabbit hole of reactive decision-making and abhor the stress associated with having too many balls up in the air simultaneously. It should come as no surprise that these leaders tend to be altruists and so the well-being of the individuals in their orbit matters to them. One of the most outstanding traits of these problem-avoidant leaders is that they have developed the inner architecture that supports a deep sense of empowerment. The emergent confidence provides a gateway for them to feel comfortable addressing interpersonal conflict and summoning assertiveness in situations that demand a loud voice. Leaders who do not subscribe to firefighting subscribe to the principle of owning responsibility for the quality of their day. This has meant curating a toolkit of mental, operational and interpersonal skills that protect these leaders from collapsing, whilst creating a cultural structure that enables individuals within the leadership orbit to remain psychologically and functionally intact as well. To firefight, or not to firefight? That is a choice facing the modern-day leader. Smart leaders choose the latter because peace is always a better choice than problems.