Case Study: Are you stuck firefighting when you want to be leading?

1 Apr

I met with a leader who was absolutely knackered. Not just tired but properly exhausted and fed up. They were demotivated. I’d go as far to say they were done. They were considering jacking it all in.

Their team wasn't performing the way they needed to, and this leader was spending every single day firefighting. It was one crisis after another. They never felt able to come up for air.

The thing that really got to them was that they couldn't ever get into the strategy space. You know, that place where you're really driving the business forward rather than just keeping the bloody thing afloat.

They were stuck in the fixing space. They were reactive and overwhelmed. Quite frankly, they were wondering what the hell they were doing wrong.

What was actually going on?

The thing about firefighting mode is that you lose perspective.

You're so busy dealing with the immediate crisis that you can't step back and see the patterns. So of course, you can't spot the root causes. You're treating symptoms, not diagnosing the disease.

This leader knew that something was fundamentally broken, but they just couldn't see what.

That's where I came in.

The Team Diagnostic

I ran what I call a Team Diagnostic. Think of it a bit like an MOT for your team - a proper check-up to see what's working, what's not, and what needs fixing before the whole thing breaks down.

The process is straightforward:

Step 1: Ask the team

This can vary depending on the organisation and the need. In this instance, I sent an anonymous questionnaire to everyone covering three key themes:

What do you love about working here?
What do you hate?
If you had a magic wand, what would you fix?

Sometimes, as in this case, anonymity is crucial. When I gather my data, people need to feel safe to tell the truth. That’s the real truth, not the sanitised version they'd give in a team meeting with the boss sitting there. I’ve also run the ‘ask the team’ session as an in-person focus group. This works really well for bigger teams and where there is more time in the prep phase. Boy do you get a lot more data when you are ‘feeling’ the room!

Step 2: Read between the lines

This is where the real work happens.

Anyone can send out a survey. That's easy. The hard bit is reading between the lines, spotting patterns and noticing what isn't being said. Doing proper thematic analysis reveals what's going on beneath the surface.

Your team won't always tell you straight. They might talk about symptoms while the real problems stay hidden. They'll be diplomatic when what you need is proper diagnosis.

I took all those responses and connected the dots they couldn't see. I diagnosed the real issues getting in the way of performance.

Step 3: Figure out what to do about it

Then I sat down with the leader for two hours. This was a proper workshop session where we didn't just talk about problems but we figured out what needed to change.

We built a talent roadmap covering everything from talent strategy and recruitment through to employee engagement and getting the team to perform better and do more for themselves.

By the end of those two hours there was clarity. There was a plan. This leader knew exactly what to do differently.

Step 4: Deliver the roadmap

After our workshop, I went away and wrote everything up into a comprehensive report. Not some fluffy document full of generic recommendations. A proper, practical roadmap of what to do differently.

I delivered that report with:

Clear diagnosis of what’s really wrong (not just symptoms)
A talent strategy addressing root causes
A recruitment approach that’ll get the right people in the right roles
An employee engagement plan that enables the team to perform better
Specific, actionable changes they can make right now

That report became their blueprint. Their roadmap out of the chaos.

The invisible things became visible

The lightbulb moments are what makes this approach so powerful.

There were genuine "oh crap" moments where this leader could suddenly see things that were going wrong. These were things they had absolutely no idea about. They saw issues that were hiding in plain sight and patterns they'd become immune to. The recognised behaviours they'd normalised because they'd been living with them for so long. They even said at times, “god that’s so obvious now”. Wasn’t before we chatted though.

That's the value of an outside view. I'm not caught up in your day-to-day chaos. I'm not too close to see clearly. I can spot the things you can't because I'm not living inside your blind spots.

Some of what we uncovered included:

Communication breakdowns that caused the same problems to resurface again and again
Unclear expectations that meant the team was guessing what "good" looked like
Talent gaps that were putting pressure on the wrong people in the wrong places
Engagement that had quietly eroded, without drama, slowly killing motivation

None of this was visible to the leader but in many ways it was obvious to the team. Once we had done the analysis it became crystal clear to the leader too.

From firefighting to strategic

Most importantly this leader is no longer stuck in firefighting mode. They’ve got a clear roadmap and they know what needs to change. They can get back to strategic leadership instead of just keeping things afloat.

That is what proper diagnosis does. It doesn’t just tell you what is wrong, it also shows you what is invisible. Then it gives you a clear path to fix it.

Why this matters

During my 25 years in leadership, in the Royal Navy, in management consultancy, and now working with SMEs and professional services firms, I’ve learned that most leaders know something's not quite right with their team. They can feel it but they can't see it clearly enough to fix it.

That's because they're too close and they're living inside the problem. They've adapted to the dysfunction and normalised the issues. They're simply too busy firefighting to step back and diagnose what's really going on.

That's my job. I come in from the outside, do the proper diagnostic work, and help you see what's invisible to you.

It’s not just listening to your team (though that's part of it). It’s reading between the lines, spotting patterns and connecting dots. The important thing is diagnosing the real issues underneath the surface symptoms, then giving you a clear, practical roadmap to fix them.