Putting Out Fires vs Managing Risks: How to Think Like a Good Commander
Putting Out Fires vs Managing Risks: How to Think Like a Good Commander
There are days when running a business feels way too much like sitting in a cockpit with alarms going off everywhere: the key client complaining, the supplier failing at the last minute, the system going down, a crucial employee announcing they’re leaving… you name it. What’s interesting is that many people in leadership positions live like this every single day—and treat it as normal.
The problem isn’t that sometimes you have to put out fires. That happens in any operation, aviation included. The problem is when your entire way of working is built around it: you show up, fix what’s urgent, breathe for a moment, and wait for the next emergency. In the end, the feeling is always the same: lots of movement, lots of tension… and very little real control.
If you look at how a good commander operates, the logic is different. In the cockpit, the goal isn’t “getting out of trouble with style”, it’s avoiding trouble in the first place. It’s not about being a hero; it’s about managing risk with anticipation, judgment, and margins. And that mindset is exactly what separates a leader who’s permanently burned out from one who actually knows what game they’re playing.
Let’s break down what “putting out fires” really looks like, what it means to manage risk like a good commander, and what concrete steps you can take to move from one mode to the other.
What “putting out fires” really means
When we talk about “putting out fires” in a company, most people instantly know what we mean:
• Problems that appear out of nowhere and weren’t anticipated.
• Work being reshuffled at the last second because something failed.
• Emergency meetings, after-hours calls, emails with “URGENT” in all caps.
• People jumping from one thing to the next, no time to think—only to react.
Firefighting can be addictive. When you solve a mess at the last minute, you feel useful, like you saved the day. There’s a small ego rush: “good thing I was here”. Many company cultures reward exactly that—the hero who stays late to fix the disaster.
But the cost is huge:
• Important projects never make it to the top of the list.
• Strategic decisions are made in a rush—or quietly postponed.
• Teams get tired, demotivated, and feel like they’re always behind.
• A business that reacts to the environment instead of steering its own direction.
Firefighting is basically living in reactive pilot mode: you go where the problem of the day pushes you, not where you decided to go.
What it means to manage risk like a commander
In aviation, a good commander isn’t measured by how many scares they “saved”—but by how many they prevented from happening in the first place. The logic is different: it’s not about proving nerves of steel when something blows up, but about building an operation where it’s rare for anything to blow up at all.
Managing risk like a commander means:
• Accepting that risk always exists, but it can be identified, reduced, and controlled.
• Working with margins: fuel, time, alternates, workload.
• Making decisions before things get ugly, even when you could still “push on”.
• Understanding that your main job isn’t “flying the airplane” but managing the environment: crew, passengers, weather, aircraft, airspace.
Translated to business, managing risk is moving from:
“Let’s see what breaks today and we’ll figure it out”
to something more like:
“We know what could break, how we’ll spot it early, what we’ll do if it happens—and what we can do today to make it less likely.”
It’s not a life without problems. But problems stop being constant surprises and become anticipated scenarios.
Why we get stuck in firefighting mode
If we all understand that managing risk is better than living in perpetual urgency, why do so many people stay in full-time firefighter mode?
A few very human reasons:
• Immediate recognition: firefighting is visible, celebrated, and thanked. Prevention isn’t. Nobody applauds because “nothing happened”.
• The “we’ll see” culture: many organizations normalize operating without margins, without clear procedures, and without time to review how things are done. Urgent always wins.
• Fear of slowing down: managing risk requires stopping, observing, thinking, questioning habits. It can feel risky because it seems like “if I stop to look, everything will collapse”.
• Hero ego: some people build their identity around “I’m the one who fixes problems”. Stopping the fires feels like giving up that role.
In aviation, this happens too. That’s why procedures, CRM, and checklists exist—and why the culture constantly reminds you that the point isn’t to “prove you’re a great pilot”, but to keep it simple, safe, and repeatable.
How a good commander thinks (and what you can copy)
The good news is that many of the things a commander does to manage risk transfer almost directly to any business. Nothing mystical—just habits.
They don’t take off without a clear plan
Before the aircraft moves, there’s a plan: route, alternates, fuel, weather, NOTAMs, performance. It doesn’t eliminate risk, but it gives you a map.
In business, risk management starts just as basic: knowing where you’re going and what conditions you need to feel comfortable. Without a plan, everything is urgent by definition.
Useful questions:
• What are the real 3–4 priorities this quarter?
• What situations could derail them?
• What minimums are we not willing to cross (cash, deadlines, quality, safety)?
They use briefings and clear expectations
A commander doesn’t just say “we’re going to Madrid”. They brief: weather, approaches, threats, what they’ll do if X or Y happens. Expectations are shared.
In a business, that means:
• Explaining context and risks to the team—not just tasks.
• Agreeing in advance what happens if A, B, or C occurs.
• Clarifying who decides what, and by which criteria.
The clearer the frame, the fewer destructive improvisations show up when something goes sideways.
They work with checklists and routines
In the cockpit, checklists aren’t a nice-to-have. They make sure critical items don’t depend on memory, stress, or ego. Some things are always done the same way, in the same order.
In business, managing risk means identifying critical processes and systematizing them:
• Client onboarding, invoicing, collections.
• Managing large projects.
• Incident communication.
• Onboarding new hires.
Every time you have a fire, ask yourself:
“What checklist, procedure, or ritual would have helped us catch this earlier?”
Then build it—even in a minimal version.
They keep margins and say “no” early
A prudent commander doesn’t take off with just enough fuel, and doesn’t commit to a questionable approach because “it might work”. They work with margins and don’t hesitate to divert or go around.
In business, that translates to:
• Not promising impossible deadlines “and we’ll see”.
• Not taking any project or client just to invoice something.
• Not pushing staffing or resources so tight that any surprise makes everything explode.
Managing risk is often having the courage to say no while you still could say yes.
They make decisions early—not when the problem is obvious
In flight, late decisions get expensive. “Wait and see” is often the shortest path to a real emergency. A commander acts when parameters start drifting—not when they’re already out of limits.
Same in management:
• You see a project slipping.
• You see a client paying later and later.
• You see a team member disengaging for weeks.
The firefighting move is to wait until it becomes a crisis. The commander mindset is to intervene while signals are still weak: talk, renegotiate, correct course—even before there’s a fire.
They debrief and learn
After a flight, good commanders spend a few minutes reviewing: what went well, what could be better, what was learned. Not to blame—just to improve the system.
In business, this should be normal too:
• Small debriefs after closing projects.
• Reviewing incidents without scapegoating, looking for systemic causes.
• Turning each scare into an improvement: a process change, a new limit, a checklist.
Without this, risk management stays incomplete: you keep firefighting, just with nicer helmets.
Concrete steps to move from firefighting to risk management
If your day-to-day is currently a festival of urgencies, you won’t change everything overnight. But you can start introducing small “commander mode” pieces in a very practical way.
A few ideas:
Block time to think—even a little
A commander doesn’t plan the route while taxiing. You need a small weekly space to look at risks, review priorities, and adjust.
Map your “critical points”
List 5–7 things that would trigger a fire if they fail: a key client, a single supplier, a person with no backup, a system without a backup, a regulatory dependency, etc. That alone gives you a risk radar.
Define action thresholds
Decide in advance at what point you act on delays, late payments, workload, turnover. That way you’re not deciding in the heat—you’re acting while there’s still margin.
Introduce one or two minimal checklists
You don’t need an operations manual on day one. Pick a process that always goes wrong (client onboarding, project closeout) and build a short checklist that is always followed.
Normalize debriefing
After every major project or every meaningful “fire”, review in calm: what happened, what early signs existed, what we can change so it doesn’t repeat. Document it—even in a simple shared doc.
From reactive pilot to commander-level risk thinking
Living in firefighting mode can make you feel important, but over time it burns you out, drains your team, and turns the company into an improvisation machine instead of a growth machine. Managing risk like a good commander doesn’t mean nothing ever happens. It means few things catch you completely by surprise—and when they do, you’ve already thought about what you’ll do.
In the cockpit, that mindset shift is the difference between “let’s see how we get out of this” and “this shouldn’t have made it this far”. In business, the difference is similar: moving from suffering the day-to-day to steering it with intention.
It’s not about becoming obsessed with risk or filling the office with manuals. It’s about adopting the mindset of someone who knows their main responsibility isn’t spotting fires and running—it’s designing an environment where fires become rarer, smaller, and easier to handle. That’s what a good commander does. And if you take it seriously, it’s what a good CEO can start doing too.