Change involves not only the developers but also management and the user community. For example, the way you do work in your twenties should be different from the way you do work in your forties, or at least it should be based on learning. CMM work is all about change, something such people apparently know nothing about. Users also need to change. Your users do not have the right to kill you, but that is what they are doing to our aging work force by creating unnecessary stress that contributes to heart attacks, cancers, and other ills.
Control is the real issue.
So, to gain control of your project, you must control your users. Those users need to be trained in becoming pro-active and basically getting their act together. If everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency. This sounds like an area in need of improvement. Nowhere in the CMM does it say that standards are required.