Being Both On Fire and Frozen in Place

When I first started coaching Mark, a newly promoted CTO, he was exhausted. He joined a high-growth company with an incredible product and a bright future, but within weeks he realized something was terribly wrong.

Engineering Boiling, Product Frozen

Every morning began with firefighting. Production incidents, angry customer calls, urgent bug fixes. Engineering was boiling—pulled into late nights, running on adrenaline, never able to get ahead. The chaos created an atmosphere of blame. People stopped trusting one another. Fingers pointed across departments. “If only product would prioritize differently.” “If only engineering would stop breaking things.”

At the same time, product was frozen. The roadmap was paralyzed. Every decision required CEO sign-off. The root of the fear was clarity. Product wasn’t defining initiatives in a way that gave engineering what they needed, which fueled the firefighting. In response, engineering lost confidence in product’s plans and pushed back with urgent fixes and last-minute changes. The CEO, watching trust unravel between teams, pulled decisions up to the top to try to contain the chaos. But that very act froze product even further, creating even less clarity and even more firefighting.

The Feedback Loop of Dysfunction

It was a circular challenge. Each part of the organization reacting to the others in ways that amplified the dysfunction.

This feedback loop of dysfunction is common in complex systems. One team makes a move to protect itself, another reacts, and the whole organization spirals. Product tries to solve uncertainty by making last-minute changes. Engineering, overwhelmed, pushes back with defensive firefighting. The CEO clamps down out of fear, freezing progress even further. None of these actions are malicious—each one feels rational in the moment. But when combined, they reinforce the very problems everyone is trying to solve. The system feeds on itself, and without intervention, the cycle can run indefinitely.

Resist the Urge for Quick Fixes

When Mark and I began working together, he felt intense pressure to deliver quick fixes. His instinct was to push harder, demand more, tighten the reins. But I asked him to pause. To step back and listen. To see the bigger pattern.

Boiling and frozen systems often coexist. The harder you clamp down on chaos, the more you freeze progress. In fact, by clamping down, a boiling system can instantly become frozen without ever passing through a healthy, liquid state. And the more you try to unstick the frozen parts by pushing harder, the hotter the boiling parts get. It’s a vicious cycle.

Break the Cycle

Mark began to shift. He sat with his teams, not to give answers, but to hear their fears. He listened to engineers who felt unheard, to product managers who felt powerless, to leaders who had lost faith in each other. This wasn’t about rushing to patch the latest fire. It was about uncovering the root causes and laying the foundation for solutions that would endure. Listening was the first step toward rebuilding trust.

Redundancy and Specialization as Leverage Points

Together, we found two leverage points. To cool the boil in engineering, Mark added redundancy: clear escalation paths, better monitoring, and on-call rotations that gave people rest.

To thaw the freeze in product, he leaned on specialization, working with the CEO to delegate decision-making authority to product leaders so each could truly own their areas. Progress didn’t come overnight, but little by little, momentum returned.

The Deeper Lesson

The lesson was clear. In complexity, you cannot bully a system into health. You must name the patterns, listen deeply, and move with patience. That is how you restore flow.

If you want to dive deeper into how leaders can recognize these dynamics and restore momentum, you can read more more in Liquid: How CEOs and CTOs Unlock Flow and Momentum in Complex Systems.