Your book resources
Everything that goes with Never Fight the Same Fire Twice, one kit per chapter.
Bookmark this page. You will come back to it as you work through the chapters.
Each chapter below has the action step from the book and the tool that goes with it. Start with the chapter you are reading right now.
CHAPTER 3
Focus
Agree on what the problem is before anyone starts working on it.
Your action step
Pick the most persistent recurring problem in your plant. Write a solution-neutral problem statement for it: one sentence, no blame, no assumed cause, no proposed fix inside it. Then ask three members of your team to do the same, independently. Compare the answers.
Focus Coach GPT
Prepare and pressure-test your Focus deliverables before you take them to the team.
CHAPTER 4
Analyze
Find out whether anything actually happened before you react to it.
Your action step
Take your Focus metric and collect the last 20 to 25 measurements in the order they happened. Paste them into the kit. It draws the moving range chart first, then the individuals chart with the natural limits of your process. Add the specification limits, the requirement this output has to meet, and you get the diagnosis. Before adjusting anything, ask: is any point genuinely outside the limits, or is this just what normal looks like for this process?
Analyze Diagnosis Kit
Read the two charts in the right order and match your situation to the right treatment before you take action. No point outside the limits does not mean the process is good. It means it is predictable, and that is a different question. No data at hand? Load one of the examples and read the charts with it.
CHAPTER 5
Solve
Widen the options before you narrow them.
Your action step
Take the root cause you identified in Analyze. Open the kit and start on tab 1: everyone writes solutions independently, in silence, before anyone speaks. Five options is the minimum, not the target. Then shortlist on tab 2 and classify each option on the hierarchy. The sheet warns you if every option is detection or tracking. Agree the criterion weights before anyone scores, then score.
Solution Selection Kit
Five tabs that keep generating and evaluating apart. Options are scored on effect on root cause, cost, time, risk and customer value, and you decide how much each of those five counts. Each person scores in their own column, and the sheet shows the spread before the ranking. A gap of two or more means two people are describing different mechanisms. Clarify that before you look at the ranking. Open the example tab first: it works through the empty-box case from the book.
CHAPTER 6
Track
The handover is not done until someone else can walk you through it.
Your action step
Take the solution you identified in Solve. Fill in one page covering what you watch, how often, what triggers action, what the action is, and who does it. Name a person for each job, not a team. Watch the outcome metric and the leading indicators. Then hand the sheet to the person who will live with the process, leave the room, and ask them the three questions on it. Three times yes and the handover is done. Anything else and you have training left to do.
Handover Kit
One page that keeps the two jobs of Track apart: holding the gain, which never ends, and deciding whether the new level is good enough, which is not the process owner's call. A point outside the control limits is a trigger. Normal variation inside them is not, and reacting to it puts back the variation you just removed.
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Lean
L - Look for solutions
E – Enthusiastic
A – Analytical
N - Never give up