Your Urgency Is Not My Emergency
The Slack notification lands with the digital equivalent of a rock through a window. It’s 4:49 PM. The message, from a manager whose entire job for the last nine months has been to prepare for this single event, is a firework of panicked optimism.
‘URGENT – need a whole new set of graphics for the launch tomorrow! Fresh concept! :)’
The smiley face is the most insulting part. It’s a tiny, yellow mask hiding a spectacular failure of planning, a complete abdication of responsibility now being gift-wrapped as an exciting, last-minute creative challenge. This launch date, the one that is now an emergency, has been a fixed point in the calendar for 239 days. It wasn’t a surprise. It was an inevitability, as predictable as the sun rising, yet it’s being treated like a sudden meteor strike.
A Culture of Stress Transfer
Let’s call this what it is: a stress transfer. It’s the organizational equivalent of passing a hot potato, except at the end of the line, someone’s hands are expected to get burned, and they’re supposed to say thank you for the opportunity to show their commitment.
The Illusion of High Performance
This culture of manufactured urgency is a toxin that masquerades as high performance. It rewards firefighters, the people who thrive in chaos, the ones who swoop in to solve a problem they-or their management-created. It does not reward the fire marshals, the meticulous planners who ensure the building has sprinklers and clear exit signs, the ones who prevent the blaze from ever starting.
A company that runs on adrenaline is a company that is, medically speaking, in a constant state of shock. And shock is not sustainable.
The Temptation of Firefighting
I started to write an angry email once. It was a masterpiece of passive aggression, a perfectly worded missile aimed at a project manager who had just done this very thing. I’d spent 49 hours over a weekend redoing a report because of a ‘sudden change in direction’ that he’d known about for weeks.
This isn’t to say real emergencies don’t exist. Servers crash. A key client has a genuine crisis. A global event shifts the entire market in 9 minutes. These are real fires. But the ’emergency’ of a predictable deadline is a bonfire of someone else’s poor choices. It’s the result of indecision, of a fear of committing to a direction, of a thousand tiny deferrals that accumulate into one giant, last-minute debt that you are now being asked to pay.
Genuine crises, unforeseen events.
Predictable problems, poor planning.
Zephyr’s Class: A Blueprint for Planning
My friend Zephyr W. teaches digital citizenship to high schoolers, a subject that sounds vague but is brutally practical. They spend nine weeks on a single project: planning and launching a small, positive online community. Zephyr’s first lesson isn’t about tech or engagement; it’s about time. They force the students to map out the entire 9-week project on day one. Every dependency, every milestone, every potential bottleneck. The kids hate it. They want to jump in and design the fun parts. But Zephyr is relentless.
Day One
Map out 9-week project
9 Weeks
Launch online community
They know that true digital citizenship is also about respecting the time and energy of the people you collaborate with.
Zephyr has this fascinating rule: all project documentation must be accessible to every learning style from the start. A student can’t just drop a 9-page document on their team and expect them to absorb it instantly. They need to provide summaries, diagrams, and for students who process information better audibly, they have to provide audio versions. Many of the kids now use an ia que le texto to convert their project briefs so their teammates can listen during their commute or while doing chores. It’s a small act of planning that prevents the ‘I didn’t have time to read it’ emergency down the line. It’s about preventing fires, not just putting them out.
I wish more corporate managers had to take Zephyr’s class.
The Confession: When I Was The Problem
And here’s the contradiction I have to admit, the part that sticks in my throat. I’ve been that person. I have sent the 4:49 PM email. I once kept a design team in limbo for three weeks because I couldn’t decide on a core piece of messaging. I hemmed and hawed, asked for 9 different variations, and then, with a deadline breathing down my neck, I made a sudden decision and told them we needed to have it all live in 49 hours. I framed it as an ‘all hands on deck, let’s do this!’ moment of team heroism. It was nothing of the sort.
It was my failure. My anxiety. My inability to make a call. They pulled it off, but the cost was their trust, their weekend, and a final product that was rushed instead of considered. I apologized, but an apology doesn’t give them their Saturday back.
That experience taught me that urgency is a management tool, and it’s often used poorly.
Reward the Architects, Not Just the Firefighters
We have to stop celebrating the firefighters and start rewarding the architects, the planners, the people who build systems so robust that the fires never even have a chance to start.
Reacts to crises, solves immediate problems.
Plans, prevents, builds robust systems.
We need to reframe ‘heroics’ not as staying up all night to fix a predictable problem, but as the quiet, unglamorous work of planning so well that the night is just for sleeping. We need to create a culture where it’s safe to say, ‘No, that’s not an emergency. It’s a failure of planning, and we are not going to treat it like a crisis. We are going to make a plan to fix it properly.’