Prevent ‘wildfires’ at your business

Do you remember a few summers ago, when the constant blaze of wildfires created a real crisis situation? News reports showed that as firefighters contained blazes, new ones sprang up to drain resources and sap manpower.

By Joan Young
Brigham Young University

Unfortunately, many businesses find themselves in the same firefighting mode. New problems crop up while they’re still trying to deal with old problems, draining resources and sapping attention. Managers and owners leap from crisis to crisis, so totally engaged in containment issues that they never find time to work on prevention.

Several years ago I was involved in a "firefighting" situation on a very cold winter evening. My husband and I had stopped by the restaurant we owned on our way to a much-anticipated evening at Pioneer Memorial Theatre. We just wanted to make sure everything was going smoothly. We were greeted with expressions that reflected a curious mix of panic and relief that we were there. A pipe in the back of the building had broken because of the cold weather, and water was flooding the walk-in refrigerator where the perishable food was kept.

Three things contributed to the potential for disaster: It was an extremely cold night, and we were not the only ones in Salt Lake City with broken pipes; we were in danger of losing a large amount of food; and there was a large party in the dining room celebrating an important occasion for them.

While my husband searched Salt Lake for an available plumber, I wrapped the pipe with everything imaginable to absorb the flow of water. I couldn’t help but think about the potential loss, and wonder how this could have been prevented. Insulating that pipe during the summer would have prevented our predicament. But we weren’t thinking about frozen pipes in July when it would have been much simpler — and much less expensive — to deal with.

Professor Roger Bohn from the University of California at San Diego has proposed a set of principles that can help businesses prevent most fires. Some of these principles are:

Design problems out of your system. As new projects and products are developed, a proactive plan to anticipate potential problems gives teams a chance to design ways to avoid problems along the way. What a savings it is to never have to deal with these potential problems.

Solve classes of problems instead of individual problems. If we had spent a little time at our restaurant inspecting the building and equipment in the fall, I would have spent the evening at the theater instead of standing with my finger in the proverbial dike. The individual problem would never have occurred.

Don’t reward firefighting. I may have felt like a hero that January evening, but the real hero is someone who corrects problems before they happen. Plan for prevention.

Build a problem-solving organization. If your company is constantly putting out fires, take this as a signal that the problem-solving efforts are improperly focused. Important questions need to be asked: how is the company structured, who reports to whom, how are goals set and what are the priorities of the company.

Whether the problem is fighting wildfires, correcting plumbing problems or directing your company toward new projects rather than operating in crisis mode, long-term planning and implementation is certainly the best approach.

Joan Young is associated with the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].

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