At a previous employer, we had a 'fire call' to handle these situations. These were emergency situations and required a form submition and authorization from a manager. You were given temporary credentials with access to do what you needed to do.

I only had 2 of these in the 5 years I worked there, but here's an example. We had an internal purchase request system used for puchasing a keyboard or what ever you needed for work. Of course the purchase request went through a chain of approvals starting with your manager and eded with the CTO. The CTO threw a fit for having to approve keyboards and other small items, so it was deemed an 'emergency' to fix it right away. I had to immediately patch the code so he wouldn't see trivial requests. The 'fire call' allowed me to submit the code directly into production without going through the change control procedures, which only happened once per week.

And you better be damn sure that your changes are correct, crap rolls down hill very quickly when it involves very senior people.