Taking Advantage of a Crisis

Not too long ago, a company I know had a serious outage. The customer base was split across the old, legacy environment and the new public cloud, and there was a schedule in place to finish the migration in six months or so. The outage took down most of the legacy environment for an extended period of time.

Once the outage occurred, it became clear that the migration needed to happen much more quickly for a number of reasons. The team rallied to the cause, put in a LOT of time on nights and weekends, and completed the migration in about six weeks.

Every company has these moments. A whale customer comes along that needs a set of features you don’t yet have, an unexpected outage occurs that exposes a critical flaw, or a customer has an unexpected spike in traffic that takes everyone else out. In nearly every scenario, there is work pending that everyone knows needs to be done, but it keeps getting shuffled to the back of the line for a variety of reasons.

The crisis is a 2×4 upside of the company’s collective head.

If you have a great team, the story ends similarly to the one I started this post with. I’ve been a part of many of these myself, and the recurring theme is that which seems impossible is nearly always possible. What’s missing is focus, and nothing brings focus like a crisis.

Software is a complex business, and the best companies on the planet make mistakes that lead to crises. In the moment, they suck. The stress level is unimaginable. The company’s existence seems to hang by the thinnest of threads.

However, what you learn is that people can do remarkable work when backs are against the wall. You don’t want to live like this every day, but every now and then it’s good to be reminded of what is possible.

I read a quote recently that was attributed to Elon Musk, wherein the SpaceX team came to him with a project estimate that was approaching two years. In response, he said “What can you do in two weeks?” Musk invented a “crisis”, reframed the conversation, and created focus.

When used properly, a good crisis, either real or invented, can be a company-defining moment.