There's a particular moment in every fire I've ever fought.
Something's broken, people are waiting, and halfway through working out what to do, my brain hands me the perfect solution. Not a patch. The proper fix. The one that sorts the root cause, tidies up three related problems and makes everyone's life better forever.
And I have to put it down.
Why it's so tempting
If you've come from a development background, like I have, this one's hard to resist. You can see how the thing should work. You know the quick fix is a bit ugly. Part of you would genuinely rather do it properly than do it twice.
But a fire is the worst possible time to do anything properly. Everyone's stressed, the clock's running, and the people you'd need to scope the perfect version are busy dealing with the actual problem. Trying to squeeze the ideal solution into that window is how a one-hour fix becomes a three-day incident with a side order of new bugs.
In the moment, the job is narrow. What solves the problem now, in the time we've got, with the people we've got?
The slightly uncomfortable bit
A lot of the time, the urge to build the perfect fix mid-crisis isn't really about the client or the team. It's about us. It feels good to be the person with the clever answer. It's satisfying to solve the whole thing rather than just stop the bleeding.
That's ego. And a PM indulging their ego during a fire is spending the team's time on their own satisfaction.
Parking isn't abandoning
Here's the other half, and it's the bit that separates good from great.
Putting the perfect fix down doesn't mean forgetting about it. The quick fix only stays quick if somebody comes back for the proper one. Otherwise it quietly becomes permanent, and in two years someone's swearing at a workaround nobody remembers adding.
So once the fire's out, the job changes. Write down what the better solution was while it's fresh. Work out what it would take. Then find the time to do it properly, when it's scheduled, scoped and nobody's panicking. Calm work gets better results, and the perfect fix finally gets the attention it deserved in the first place.
About that time
This is where it gets awkward. A PM can park the proper fix, write it up and scope it beautifully, and it'll still sit in a backlog forever if the business never makes room for it.
If every sprint is new features and every fix is a patch, you're not moving fast. You're borrowing from your future self at a terrible rate of interest. Leaving space for the follow-up is how you stop the same fire happening again next month.
The two-part habit
In the fire, solve the problem in front of you. After the fire, go back for the one you wanted to solve.
Good PMs fix the problem. Great PMs fix it twice: once quickly, and once properly.