10 Things I See in Companies Running on Heroics

1. The same three people get pulled into every escalation.

They're the only ones who actually know how things work, how the pieces connect, where the workarounds live. Nobody planned it that way. It just happened over time as everyone else stopped asking questions and started going straight to them.

2. Incidents happen, get resolved, then everyone moves on.

Your team puts out the fire and there's this collective sigh of relief. Six months later the same fire starts again, and nobody's connecting the dots back to what caused it the first time.

3. Let someone take vacation and watch what happens.

Projects start to stall and timelines slip because people are looking around asking where that person is. They're the only one who knows how to do that particular thing, and that's your system waving a flag at you.

4. New hires take months to contribute anything meaningful.

The process they need to learn lives in someone's head, and that person is buried in meetings trying to keep everything else running. So your new hire just waits, asking questions that take hours to get answered.

5. Real work happens in side channels nobody can see.

Quick messages, side conversations, things that happen in the hallway after the meeting wraps up. Your system has no idea what's actually moving or what decisions got made, and if someone leaves tomorrow, all that context walks out with them.

6. You've got people working late every single week.

I've seen the workload, so I know what you're thinking, but it's not that. They're working late because they're the only ones who know how to keep things from falling apart. They're not trying to be martyrs, they're just trying to keep the wheels on.

7. You can't see what's at risk until it's already burning.

Your visibility into problems depends entirely on someone raising their hand and saying "we've got a problem here." The system isn't surfacing anything on its own.

8. "Just ask so-and-so" is your standard operating procedure.

That person knows things nobody else does. They know where the files live, why that one client gets special treatment, how to actually get something through your process. Your system needs them to function, and they didn't choose to become the single point of failure.

9. Strategic work keeps sliding to next quarter.

You've got plans and everyone agrees they're important, but when you're choosing between working on strategy and keeping the lights on today, firefighting wins every single time. It's not even really a choice at that point.

10. People can't disconnect, even when they're supposed to be off.

They're checking their phone on vacation, logged in on Saturday morning. Something breaks and the system needs them to fix it. You know how that story goes.

Here's the thing about heroics

When you're in it, it feels like dedication. Your best people stepping up when things matter most, and honestly, that's exactly what it is. I'm not dismissing that for a second. These are people who care enough to stay late, to answer the call, to make sure things don't fall apart. That matters.

However, if you step back and look at what's really happening, heroics is your operating system breaking down in slow motion. When your system doesn't know what to do, people have to fill those gaps. The people who are really good at holding things together become the load-bearing walls of your entire operation. You start depending on them for everything, and that dependency becomes part of how work gets done.

That can work for a while, but someone finally hits their limit and burns out. They might get a better offer somewhere else and leave. Or, maybe they just want to take a real vacation without checking their phone every few hours to make sure nothing's on fire. That's not too much to ask.

The fix isn't another platform or tool. I know that's what a lot of people will try to sell you, but you don't need more software. What you need is clarity about how work actually moves through your company. Real ownership, where people understand what's theirs to handle and what isn't. Some kind of rhythm, some cadence that helps you see what's coming down the road instead of only reacting to whatever just landed on your desk five minutes ago.

A calm operating system doesn't need heroes on call all the time because it already knows what to do.