Firefighters vs Trailblazers

Due to a somewhat sporadic career that an MBA admissions counselor once called “this crucible of a career” called a resume, I’ve been exposed to a number of different working environments

• Unsuccessful Companies with Terrible Management
• Successful Companies with Bad Management
• Unsuccessful companies with Good Management
• Semi-Successful Companies with Good Management

Like many organizations, these organizations all had issues.  But in any organization you have two types of people: firefighters and trailblazers. I believe this mindset stems from the top down.

Firefighters

Firefighters are usually in reactive mode. They have the ability to take risks but often they’re so busy calculating that opportunity passes them by. They’re busy dealing with making sure things run on a day to day basis and they’re consumed with putting out fires.

They’re often great leaders but they have a really hard time letting go of things and as a result they don’t grow as much as they could. They tend to have a “stop the bleeding” mindset. While an organization needs to turn a profit and run,  there’s a big problem with stopping the bleeding. It doesn’t really move an organization forward. It just puts them back into their original state they were in before the bleeding started.

These are often the practical people in an organization. Without them it’s likely  an organization would burn to the ground. So we need them. The problem occurs when we’re dependent on firefighters to lead us forward.

Trailblazers

Trailblazers think very differently. They’re the kinds of people who would let something burn to the ground and start from scratch because they see the potential for something better. They take risks and tend to trust their instincts even when those instincts go against the grain. They have an inherent ability to take a leap of faith because they believe they can move an organization to new heights.

They’re eternal optimists who are sometimes labeled just stubborn enough. The status quo drives them crazy.  They have issues with authority and are often better off being entrepreneurs or working with somebody who can see them as the type of person to move an organization forward. It’s not to say they don’t have their flaws. They often operate with blinders on and can only see a bright future. They’re big picture thinkers and have trouble with the details.

Every organization needs both. For every trailbazer hire a firefighter. It’s a balancing act of people who move us forward and people who keep us from getting our asses handed to us.