Putting Out Fires

At some point (practically every week if you’re in a startup) you will be called upon to firefight. This thankfully doesn’t involve actually getting into a burning forest or building but handling a mini-crisis.

I wanted to share some of my experiences with fires and some tips to firefight, with the handy acronym F**K:

Focus: It’s very tempting to start a blame game/investigation into why a mini-crisis has occurred in the first place but the present is not the time for that.

When you’re in the middle of a fire, the very first priority should be to put it out. If you need to rope in additional hands (or even all hands), the need of the hour is to handle it.

This takes me back to my very first experience at a startup (more about my journey here) when our very first private collection of clothing was delivered with the wrong sizing labels on them. We discovered this at 7pm on Friday…

There were no doubts in our mind. We called a few more colleagues and asked them to come back to the office, sat down and spent the next 48 hours fixing it. Slept in the office. Breakfasted on leftover pizza from the night before. Anything that was needed to fix the problem at hand.

Understand: Deep dive into the root cause of the problem. Did the error occur in the logistics department? Was it supplier driven or internal?

Errors often occur due to communication gaps, which leads me to one of my firmest beliefs communication can make or break a company.

Spending time getting to the root cause of an issue is often worth it as it prevents recurring errors from occurring.

Correct: Once you have established the root cause of the error, you can build processes to ensure it won’t happen again.

Building simple-to-follow processes (or automating it) reduce the chances for human error to occur. This is especially critical for cases like alerts, such as a Fintech startup reaching close to it’s risk threshold on a customer, or a micromobility startup setting up recharging for their bikes.

If you automate alert processes for issues, you reduce the chance of error or minimize it’s impact.

Kick-out: Sometimes you end up with bad actors. Whether this is due to malignance or incompetence, it’s essential to weed these bad actors out at early stages to protect the integrity of the platform/service.

Mobility companies have taken this philosophy to heart. I had a close friend who was BANNED by Uber for making drivers wait too often. Her rating kept dropping till she received a mail from Uber one day notifying her that her account was now blocked.

Similarly, Banks and NBFCs tend to shun customers (or even outright ban them) for failing to pay back loans or going beyond the repayment date.

By applying these tips, you can hopefully reduce the amount of f**cks uttered every month by a significant number.