In business organization, there are invariably more problems than people have the time to deal with. At best, this leads to situations where minor problems are ignored. At worst, chronic fire fighting consumes an operation’s resources. Companies with complex R&D and manufacturing processes are particularly prone to destructive fire fighting. Managers and engineers rush from task to task, not completing one before another interrupts them. Serious problem-solving efforts degenerate into quick-and-dirty patching. Productivity suffers. Managing becomes a constant juggling act of deciding where to allocate overworked people and which incipient crisis to ignore for the moment.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2000 issue of Harvard Business Review.
