👩🚒 Why “Putting Out Fires” Is Unsustainable
Unless your building has the word “emergency” plastered to the side of it, you look like the Little Rascals and their bucket brigade when you’re “putting out fires.” Harboring a crisis mentality every time a last-minute task pops up isn’t an efficient way to work — yet it’s how most organizations operate.
Ask Your Work Wife is here to help break this cycle of panic because firefighting wasn’t in your job description. New episodes drop Wednesdays on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
In today's email:
Read: Stop, Drop, and Roll Away from Putting Out Fires 🧯
Listen: Work Is Not An Emergency 🚨
Join the convo: hiring managers are not looking for remote workers
Get what you want: the Work Wives' first-ever course
READ
Stop, Drop, and Roll Away from Putting Out Fires
When the boy who cried wolf is crying fire in a cubicle, be the cool-headed realist who downgrades the catastrophe to just a hiccup. That person has extra zeros on their paychecks.
🎧 On the go? Listen to Episode 70 | Work Didn’t Start the Fire on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
My favorite out of office email I ever wrote looked like a bullet list of contact info. At the very bottom it said, “If it’s an emergency, contact my manager. If you don’t know what constitutes an emergency, don’t bother my manager. Love, Vanessa.”
—Vanessa
Corporate America is not saving lives. If your office says “Emergency” on the side of it, that’s because you work in an emergency room and your job is actually life or death. Huge Work Wife thank you for the work you do! Everyone else, stay in your lane. Your job is important, yes, but it’s not an emergency.
Here’s the problem: even if your job isn’t of the emergency variety, it can totally feel like one when everyone around you is in fight or flight. Despite their reaction, you have the ability to take deep breaths and blow out the fires like the birthday candles they actually are.
How to Extinguish a Corporate Fire
Breathe in, and out.
Did you smell any smoke? If no, proceed to step three. If yes, call 9-1-1.
Remind yourself it’s not a real emergency and doesn’t deserve your full panic.
Ask questions. What are we actually doing? What is the deliverable? How do you imagine this deliverable looking?
Complete the task.
Go home and enjoy your day.
The reason why pumping the breaks is so important is because no one works well under unnecessary duress.
Processes get skipped, people get skipped, checks and balances are neither checked nor balanced.
—Holland
And then 5 o’clock rolls around and everyone has to redo work because nothing was done correctly. Who can blame them? Who can crunch numbers when they think they’re on fire?!
The best step forward is to establish a tactile solution using the checklist above.
If you are the voice of reason in these moments of panic, you’re going to be incredible at your job, become the de facto leader, exemplify clear communication, and basically be Neo in the Matrix as he realizes he’s the ONE and the bullets can be stopped.
The emergency ends when you realize it’s not an emergency.
—Vanessa
LISTEN
Work Is Not An Emergency
JOIN THE CONVO
GET MORE OUT OF CORPORATE AMERICA
Get what you want
In the Work Wives' first-ever course, Vanessa & Holland introduce an entirely new way to think about Corporate America and give you step-by-step instructions on how to focus your energy to get what you actually want.
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