In 1991 I went to work for John Weitzel, Inc. (JWI) in Wichita, Kansas after doing three years of hard time working in the Safelite Auto Glass corporate headquarters, then in Wichita. Safelite was preparing to move the headquarters to Columbus, Ohio, leaving me and nearly all the other corporate employees in the dust. I’m not sure how I got the job at JWI. I didn’t have much on my resume except a 12-year stint in my own photography business and the three years at Safelite which included going from the lowliest of lowly accounts receivable clerks to what was called the Bank Audit Supervisor, a fancy title representing the job description of being responsible for reconciling 600 bank accounts each month. I had a good crew of 15 to 20 people, and the bulk of the accounts were simple depository accounts, so we got the job done.

I had an interview with the new CEO of JWI and I guess he must have seen something in me. He hired me to be the purchasing manager of all supplies and raw materials (lots of aluminum bar, extrusions, and forgings.) However, I had to work in the accounting department for a while as they worked to hire a new CFO.

Delinquency and Near Bankruptcy

JWI was a job shop making machine and sheet metal parts for the aircraft industry with the Boeing Company constituting 90% of their business. JWI was a company of firefighters. Their daily existence involved putting out one fire after another exacerbated by their situation which was not good. JWI had 435 delinquent orders with Boeing and were near bankruptcy, hence the hiring of a new CEO to try to salvage the company. Although 90% of a company’s sales coming from one customer is not healthy, in this case Boeing bent over backwards to give JWI a chance to catch up and survive.

The new CEO proceeded to build a company of systems and processes to begin to replace the environment of firefighting. He decided and committed to a transition to management instead of firefighting. I contributed my share toward management, at first by turning raw materials quoting and purchasing into a system. Later, they added master scheduling to my duties, using the master schedule for a better look at what raw materials and tooling we’d need for orders that were months away from going into production.

Eliminating Chaos

We never really eliminated all firefighting, but we greatly reduced the chaos replacing firefighting activities with management activities. Over the next two years, we eliminated the backlog of delinquent orders culminating in being named Boeing Small Business Supplier of the Year in 1993. I have a crystal apple paper weight (Boeing was headquartered in Seattle, Washington at the time) made from the ashes of Mt. St. Helen a volcano that blew up in Oregon in the 1980’s.

Even as we transitioned from firefighting to management, not everyone wanted to change. The production manager at JWI really enjoyed the firefighting and had little interest in operating per a master schedule instead of the schedule he tried to keep in his head. The problem is that no one can possibly keep the schedule in their head when a company grows beyond a very small size.

Customers Want Consistency

All customers everywhere want consistency. They want quality products and services delivered on time. Most firefighting cultures in established businesses do not provide the consistency demanded by customers.

It is natural for a startup business to operate in firefighting mode early on when orders begin to come in. The founder typically does everything from sales to order fulfillment. When that becomes too much, others, family, friends, or employees are brought in to help. The firefighting continues with everyone pitching in to keep orders flowing. There’s a story about two brothers that started a manufacturing business (I think it came from the book; Michael Gerber’s “E-Myth Revisited.”) They each did a little bit of everything, fighting fires ever day as they came up to get the orders out. Soon, they hired their first employee and the firefighting continued. Eventually, some of their products were being returned due to defects. The firefighting continued to replace the defective parts while trying to keep shipments of new orders going out on time. Who or what was responsible for the defects? Hard or impossible to tell since they couldn’t really figure out who had produced the defective products. They were not providing the consistency their customers wanted, not to mention the added cost of scrapped parts and rework.

Entrepreneurs Need to Decide to Manage

Startup entrepreneurs need to be aware of the need for management instead of firefighting when the business really starts to take off and get busy. Many entrepreneurs would rather work in the beginning firefighting environment then transition into an environment of management by process and procedures. One way or another, for business to survive in the transition from startup to established business, the owner must make a decision to transition from firefighting to management at the same time.

In today’s fast-paced world, no company or organization can eliminate the need for some firefighting, but the conscious decision to move toward management can eliminate much of the firefighting while maintaining the consistency their customers demand.