Even with hopes that the pandemic is over, managers, supervisors, and employees at all levels continue to report firefighting at a larger scale than ever before. By firefighting, I mean work that is reactionary, urgent—dealing with issues that are not what would be thought of as ordinary work. In fact, firefighting has become so prevalent, some organizations have difficulty separating the “ordinary, standard work” from the reactionary work. There are several contributing causes: the “Great Resignation” left us with fewer employees, resignations continue, skilled employees are hard to find, processes without PM are now running to failure, recruiting is more competitive, and newly hired employees (and newly promoted front line leaders) lack adequate technical and process knowledge.
How can your organization start making the shift away from firefighting toward more sustainable workloads and the work of ordinary business? Fortunately, the solutions for firefighting also provide the foundation to addressing the tide of resignations. [Read more…]
