When It Gets Tough

let's talk about adversity

I took an unexpected week off from writing last week. I’ve been pretty consistent about writing every week (barring planned vacations), but sometimes, no matter how consistent you are, life gets in the way and things change.

Smooth Sailing and Rough Waves

I’ve written a bit about the power of routine and habit. For me, anchoring the day in a few consistent practices - whether it’s Wordle or Weightlifting, keeps me mentally on track. The consistency helps me find consistency elsewhere in my world. Sometimes though, stuff happens. Whether it’s losing my (second) 300 day Duolingo streak to go on a week long hiking trip, or taking a break from other usual routines to entertain friends, it’s all just stuff that happens. It happens, and we deal with it.

What I’ve discovered in a few decades of dealing with people as a profession is that everyone deals with adversity differently. Some folks let change and hardship roll off them like water, while other people lose their shit at the most minimal amount of challenge or struggle.

One thing I’ve learned is Weasel Law #7 - in times of stress, challenge, and hardship, people reveal who they truly are.

Walk the Talk

I once worked for a manager who said all of the things from management training classes all the time. He told us we should collaborate, take ownership and responsibility, and stressed the importance of psychological safety. The talk was all good, but the first time we had a production incident he was blasting out phone calls and messages asking, “who fucked this up, and what the fuck were they thinking?”. The site was down, and he turned into a raging jerk. Turns out over time that Weasel Law 7 applied. The longer he ran the team, the more his team realized that he was full of crap and didn’t believe half the words coming out of his mouth. His true nature was to be a raging jerk - we just needed to trigger it.

Breathe

Things go wrong sometimes. My car wouldn’t start in the middle of nowhere a few weeks ago. I was angry and frustrated, but being angry and frustrated didn’t solve the problem any more quickly. It took time, but I dealt with it. One thing I learned from a far better leader in my career is that shit happens - and when shit happens, the most important thing to do is deal with it. It’s hard to solve these odd issues if people are freaking out and over-reacting because someone changed an IP address.

Take a step back. Take a deep breath. And focus on the problem you need to solve. While that sounds easy, I think we all know that this approach is rarer than we’d like.

The Sky is Falling

I love when things go wrong. It’s an opportunity for two of my favorite things - learning, and problem solving. In fact, in a previous role, when c-suite executives asked me if we should have a target for fewer incidents in our services, I doubled down on wanting to have more incidents reported (ideally all low-impact), as it accelerated organizational learning.

Of course, neither of those things happen when anyone involved in the process is off the rails trying to do the wrong things, or acting the wrong way.

The Sky is Not Falling

I’ve managed incidents ranging from, “We’re losing a million dollars an hour” to, “the data looks wrong”, but the approach is the same. Quickly get the right people together to understand the problem, then prioritize mitigation rather than solution. You don’t need a long-term perfect solution - you need to stop the bleeding as soon as you can. Non-tech life works the same way. If a friend is in crisis, you’re going to focus on getting them out of the crisis before you try to solve whatever issues led them there.

Regardless of the severity, impact, or scariness of the situation, don’t blame, don’t point fingers, and don’t judge the situation. It doesn’t help, it stifles learning, and it makes you look like a jerk.

It’s also easy to fall into “why did this happen” discussions too early. Those are great discussions for the retro, but get in the way when trying to quickly mitigate a complex issue.

Be calm, be purposeful, and be kind.

Once the Dust Settles

I could (and probably will someday) write an entire post about incident retrospectives, but for today I’ll leave it as this. Focus on learning, discuss what happened, what went well, and what didn’t go well. Take a short list of action items, and don’t look for blame. Sounds easy, but it’s not. Take a breath, facilitate, and keep people on topic.

Most of us aren’t making life or death decisions every day. In fact, the vast majority of the adversity we face is relatively minor. Don’t freak out, don’t blame, and don’t forget to breathe. Use every day to practice being who you truly are.

-A