“Its like deja-vu, all over again.” — Yogi Berra
For any of us in a corporate setting, we know what the unwelcome surprise of a fire drill feels like: cancel meetings, cancel evening or weekend plans, get ready to stay late. Unlike literal fire drills (the fire department kind) when we practice safety and orderliness in the face of a calamity, and even get a breath of fresh air as we line up outside, these euphemistic fire drills are almost the opposite in that they are chaotic and certainly not good for our health. Replace fresh air with high cortisol levels, sleep deprivation, and tension headaches and this is closer to the realities of a workplace fire drill.
For those uninitiated to the term, the corporate fire drill to which we are referring in this article is about an out-of-the-blue, didn’t-see-that-coming request from a higher power that brings everything else on your plate to a grinding halt because someone needs an answer and they need it now. The commanding voice could be the CEO, a board member, an important customer, the bank, etc. but in all cases, the situation comes with some form of dissatisfaction and an urgent, non-negotiable deadline.
So once the request has been made, what happens next? Most likely, those involved drop everything else to rework that deck, crunch those numbers, or build that report… whatever it takes to meet the imposed deadline. Not meeting the deadline, however unreasonable, is not an option. Every minute that ticks by without an answer is a downward notch in confidence in the team in charge — or at least that’s how it feels.
So the clock is set. The mad dash begins to extract the data, do the math, conduct the modeling, and build proxy data to get you somewhat close to an answer, and then present for review. Mental wellness exercise, this is not.
If fire drills sounds hellish, that’s because they are. So why do they still happen?
Shouldn’t it be in the age of enterprise systems and AI that quick answers should be easier to extract? What exactly is preventing companies from stepping off the rollercoaster of endless fire drills?
As one confused board member once said: “I ask the same question at every board meeting and it still takes them a week to get back to me. At some point, if you know its coming, can’t you just train your data to spit out the answer?”
There are a few simple reasons why fire drills keep occurring regularly, despite our advanced capabilities:
1. Misaligned data and data structure. Let’s start with the most obvious culprit. Oftentimes, this is due to a misalignment between what the data offers vs. what the business actually needs. To fix this gap, manual solutions are often applied that were meant to be temporary or minimal, but then become ingrained in the business — off-line reports and entire business intelligence teams manually manipulating data become the norm
2. Urgency-induced myopia. Let’s go back to that board member’s comment, which is insightful. If we stay focused on putting out fires with rushed manual solutions, we’re often stuck in the “just-in-time” answers loop and are unable to see the patterns of what comes up repeatedly and what stakeholders want to understand about the business
3. The inability to say no. Without having the data straight to begin with, it’s hard to have a leg to stand on when a request comes in asking to explain what went wrong. Whether the request is unreasonable, irrelevant, or suboptimal to a better method, we end up with no choice but to acquiesce to requests, particularly when we lack the data to articulate an adequate rebuttal
4. Being stuck behind the 8-ball. Being on your backfoot is usually a stressful position. Remember this all started because of some dissatisfaction or suboptimal situation. Problems blow up (angry customers, empty shelves, etc.) and this can paint you and your team into a corner, resulting in knee-jerk requests to clarify WTH happened
Due in part to their fleeting nature, fire drills often don’t receive the scrutiny that more regular and predictable work tasks do. But it’s about time that the damaging effects of repeated fire drills were brought front-and-center.
Fire drills can not only be a drain on the time and energy of a department, but they can also cause a damaging ripple effect on company culture, employee satisfaction, and strategic capabilities. The unpredictable nature of such emergencies often impedes the overall productivity of a department and can set off a dangerous cycle of rush jobs and inability to catch up.
So let’s banish these disruptive, unwelcome fire drills. Here’s how:
1. Connect data to business goals. Taking steps to do this properly starts with an understanding of what questions will be asked to determine whether goals are being met. This is first-and-foremost a thinking exercise, rather than diving headlong into a major tech rehaul. Although sometimes there is the unavoidable necessity to finally upgrade antiquated systems, often there are plenty of incremental improvements to existing systems that yield tremendous benefit and save countless hours and dollars
2. Anticipate the FAQs. By getting out of manual just-in-time mode, this gives you and your team the mindshare to anticipate and answer questions proactively. Answering questions before they are asked, or being prepared when asked, strongly indicates competence and solution-orientation, and this turns the heat down in the room when facing stakeholders
3. Weed out irrelevant data. Not all data is important, especially if it’s been collected for a while without connection to business goals. Unimportant data is simple to identify: it doesn’t connect in any explainable way to an important decision for the business. Don’t be afraid to take a scalpel to that long list of reports, dashboards, and KPIs that departments have been collecting on autopilot
4. Make a mindset shift. Take a “do it once” stance and promote an intolerance for endlessly manual and haphazard reporting processes. “Do it once” means that while there may be a manipulation or a fix required to get to the answer, the goal moving forward is to perform that manual fix just one more time to either uncover the root cause and fix the source problem or automate the manual manipulation so the same repetitive step does not need to be done again manually
As difficult as it is to commit to these things while also running a hectic business, it is the mark of the successful that have the discipline to push through and evolve. There is never a good time to get started. But ignoring this problem does not make it go away.
And conversely, once we create an environment where fire drills are a thing of the past, the sense of peace and confidence is something that no amount of caffeine-fueled all-nighters will ever be able to achieve.
Cooper can help with each step of this process, helping to identify the right decisions, create the right data processes, and better anticipate the needs of the business. Put Cooper to work and leave fire drills behind for good.
