This article is part of the How Do YOU CM2? blog series in collaboration with the Institute for Process Excellence (IpX). Although I receive compensation for writing this series, I stand behind its content. I will continue to create and publish high-quality articles that I can fully endorse. Enjoy this new series, and please share your thoughts!
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.
CM2 flips that script.
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.
Check out the other How Do YOU CM2? posts.
Copyrights by the Institute for Process Excellence.