November 11, 2025
Let’s talk about a pattern I’ve seen in too many organizations, one that quietly kills morale and reinforces the wrong behaviors.
We all know the “heroes” who swoop in to save the day, the firefighters who work late, fix the crisis, just “duct tape” the problem, and get the applause. They’re often rewarded, promoted, and praised for rescuing the company from chaos, often by working outside of documented processes and business best practices.
Meanwhile, the people who prevent those fires, the ones who quietly ensure the process works, that changes are properly assessed, baselined, verified, and implemented, and ensure your product information is correct at all times, go unnoticed.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth:
When you reward people for cleaning up messes, you’re not killing the problem. 𝐘𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭.
🔥 Every “hero moment” celebrated without addressing the root cause signals that it’s okay to bypass the process, as long as someone can fix it later.
💤 Every unrecognized engineer, analyst, or CM professional who did it right the first time learns that following the process doesn’t pay off.
⚙️ Every time we value speed over structure, we teach teams that prevention is invisible work.
🚨Keep adding patches to every problem; it will only work for a while before it really breaks, and the organization's reputation is on the line.
🫣What often goes unnoticed is the impact this firefighting has on other planned work/projects that later require firefighting.
It creates a culture where firefighting becomes obsolete, not because people work harder, but because the process works smarter. It doesn’t have to be hard, just intentional guardrails.
✅ CM2’s closed-loop change process, paired with the CM2 Baseline, ensures problems are anticipated, contained, and prevented.
✅ It eliminates ambiguity, so no one needs to “hero” their way through chaos.
✅ It shifts recognition from “who saved the day” to “who made sure the day didn’t need saving.”
That’s not just process discipline, it’s a cultural transformation. One that fosters a sense of pride in one's work and a responsibility for one's own deliverables. Projects become more on time, and now that snowballs, and your valuable resources are working on planned, intentional work, not burned out.
So the real question is:
👉 Are you rewarding firefighters or fire prevention?
👉 Does your organization celebrate the chaos fixers or the quiet soldiers of consistency?
When CM2 is applied as an integral approach, 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧’𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐟𝐢𝐱 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲’𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠.
Use code Martijn10 for 10% off training—and don’t forget to tell them Martijn sent you 😉.
Copyrights by the Institute for Process Excellence
This article was originally published on ipxhq.com & mdux.net.
