So what happens when it’s the Friday before the x-mas holiday and disaster strikes? Let’s take a lesson from Jeff who played it cool. The first step was to find who could identify and solve the problem, “lock them away so they can focus.” Identify the moral support; the problem solver can’t do it alone. Identify the business end of the company, and of course, “Stock the fridge with micro brew and soy milk (very San Francisco),” for those late nights & long hours. Then they waited. With a little grace, focus, talent, and time they made magic happen. Jeff learned that this formula is good to lessen the chaos of future disasters. These disasters will happen to the best of us, but knowing how to deal with them, and equally importantly, knowing how to pick up the pieces afterward, will bring a little more clarity to the chaos.

One benefit of dealing with a disaster is that you know how to handle it in the future. Veen spoke a lot about the fundamental attribution error. This is when we always need someone to blame. If there’s a problem, we need a villain. But this doesn’t really deal with the real issue. A better technique is Veen’s Five Whys. When a problem occurs, ask why? Then ask why again. And again, until you’ve asked five times. This will force you to look deeper into the root of the problem so you can find its source, truly fix it, and prevent it from happening again.

Veen’s lecture, designing for disaster, showed us that mistakes happen and chaos will ensue whether

we like it or not. He gave us a real life scenario on how he has handled disasters in the past, he gave us his recipe to prevent disasters from happening, and how to handle them once the dust has settled. He challenged us to “trust each other and do great work” and after soaking up a little of his disaster control knowledge today I think we all feel armed and ready to take on that challenge.