Episode
Sanity at Scale: The Hero Trap
- Podcast
- Better Ways of Working
- Published
- Jun 14, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 253
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Summary
Every organization has them: the engineer who pulls an all-nighter to save the launch, the manager who bends the rules to get the deal done. We call them heroes and give them awards. But what if their heroics are actually masking the real problem? In this episode, Dave Borzillo breaks down the Hero Trap, the seductive feedback loop where individual sacrifice quietly prevents organizations from fixing what's actually broken, and why scaling sanely means learning to celebrate fire prevention instead of firefighting. This episode kicks off a series based on Dave's new book, Sanity at Scale , available now for Kindle pre-order , with the full book launching June 24th.