Let Fires Burn (with Three Never-Burn Exceptions)
Agree which problems you let burn this week — and the three that never can
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
Loktev's core prioritization doctrine: if you are equally engaged on twenty things, you do not actually know what matters. Instead, name one to three things per week and explicitly, jointly agree with your peers which fires you are letting burn. The framework's real teeth are the exceptions — three categories of fire that will become wildfires if left alone.
Origin
Loktev's own motto, developed while leading and then running Airbnb's homes business (over a thousand people). The three never-burn exceptions were learned painfully over time, particularly the senior-hire one.
Core principles
- 01If you are equally engaged on 20 things, you don't know what's most important.
- 02Some things must be allowed to go badly so energy concentrates on the few that matter.
- 03Letting fires burn should be a joint, explicit agreement — not a silent abdication.
- 04Empower your team to burn their own fires: the first response to 'we need more headcount' is 'what can we let burn?'
- 05Three fires must never burn: slipping major timelines, strategic disagreement, and senior hiring.
How to run it
- 1
Run a Monday leadership priority meeting
Kick off every week with your cross-functional leadership peers (engineering, design). Discuss priorities for this week only — not long-term roadmap. Land on one to three things.
Pro tip Keeping the horizon to one week is what makes the count of 1-3 credible and forces real trade-offs.
- 2
Jointly name the fires you will let burn
In the same meeting, explicitly agree the list of problems that will be left to burn. Name them out loud so that when a peer sees one smoking, they know it is intentional.
Pro tip This is what prevents the panic reflex — your eng and design counterparts see the fire and remember you agreed to leave it.
- 3
Push burn decisions down the org
When a team asks for more headcount or resources to take on a new goal, respond first with: what are your actual priorities, and what can we let burn? Only expand after reprioritisation is exhausted.
Pro tip Trust the team — the people closest to the work are usually best positioned to judge which fires can burn.
- 4
Enforce the three never-burn fires
Jump in immediately on: (1) slipping timelines on major launches — one slip sets the precedent that timelines are optional; (2) any disagreement on strategy or vision — it spreads into a wildfire and people lose meaning in their work; (3) senior hiring processes — delayed engagement there set Loktev's teams back for years.
Pro tip For strategic disagreement, the response is to bring people together immediately, not to overrule.
Watch out The senior-hire exception is the one Loktev learned most painfully — disengaging from a senior hiring process bit him 'for such a long time'.
- 5
Over-communicate what you are burning and why
Tell the broader org what you are personally spending time on and what you have deprioritised. Loktev started running all-hands and sending 'weekly thoughts' musings after realising his silence left people confused about why nobody was fixing their problem.
Pro tip Spend 10% more energy explaining why a decision was made — it lets everyone downstream make better decisions with the same context.
Watch out This was the failure Loktev names in himself: rising fast, he under-appreciated how much people needed to hear the reasoning.
In the wild
Running many teams at once, Loktev had to rank not just projects but teams. He would knowingly skip design reviews with an important team because another was the number one priority, accepting that the second team's work would suffer for a while.
→ Energy concentrated on the top priority. The deprioritised projects burned — deliberately — while he asked himself whether the org was simply doing too many things at once.
When a product launch went badly — numbers flat, users unhappy — Loktev's instinct was not to jump on it immediately. He let it burn, on the reasoning that understanding what was actually wrong takes time.
→ Attention stayed on the top priorities rather than being pulled into a reactive fix on incomplete information.
Common mistakes
Letting fires burn silently
If the burn is not a joint, explicit agreement with your peers and your org, it reads as negligence. Loktev pairs the doctrine with heavy over-communication precisely because ICs otherwise conclude that leadership is asleep.
Letting a strategic disagreement smoulder
Unlike a bad launch, disagreement about the vision spreads. Left alone it becomes a wildfire — a team of people who don't believe in what they're doing and lose meaning in their work.
Letting a major timeline slip once
The first slip establishes precedent that timelines are not real and can always move. That precedent is very hard to reverse, which is why Loktev jumped in immediately every time.
Is it for you?
Best for
Managers and org leaders drowning in a hyper-growth company with more problems than capacity, especially perfectionists.
Not ideal for
Small teams or early startups where there are few enough workstreams that everything genuinely can be attended to.
From the transcript
“you've got to let fires burn”
“And we would jointly agree on the fires that we would let burn.”
“First, timelines. Major timelines. This is like huge product launches. Once timelines slip, you basically establish precedent that timelines are not as important and timelines…”
“those are the three things that I would never let burn”
From the episode
Airbnb’s Vlad Loktev on embracing chaos, inquiry over advocacy, poking the bear, and “impact, impact, impact” (Partner at Index Ventures, Airbnb GM/VP Product)