Running technology companies teaches you very quickly that certainty is temporary. Systems work until they do not. Something that has been stable for years can suddenly become the most important issue in the company. Plans change. Unexpected things happen.
And every now and then, something happens that reminds you how little control you actually have.
We recently experienced one of those moments. A serious infrastructure incident created a situation where multiple things were happening simultaneously. Technical teams were investigating. Systems needed to be secured. Customers needed information. External specialists became involved. Decisions had to be made quickly while the picture was still developing.
These situations are interesting from a leadership perspective because they expose something we normally try to avoid. Uncertainty.
Most businesses are built around reducing uncertainty. Forecasts. Processes. Monitoring. Contracts. Backups. Risk management. Security. We create systems because we want predictability. And we should.
But eventually something happens that reminds you that no system removes uncertainty completely. You can only prepare for it.
During that situation, there were many moments when I wanted a definitive answer. What exactly happened? Is everything secure? Will this happen again? When will everything be completely normal?
Sometimes those answers simply did not exist yet.
And leadership becomes different when certainty disappears. You cannot wait until you know everything. You have to gather the best information available. Bring the right people into the room. Make a decision. Communicate what you know. Be honest about what you do not know. And continue.
It reinforced something I have been thinking about ever since. There is a big difference between control and resilience.
Control says: “We must prevent anything unexpected from happening.” Resilience says: “Unexpected things will happen, so we need to build an organisation capable of responding.”
The second mindset is much more powerful. Strong teams matter. Good processes matter. Clear communication matters. External expertise matters. Trust matters. And perhaps most importantly, being willing to ask for help matters.
The incident eventually became something we could manage, learn from and build stronger systems around. But the bigger lesson for me was not technical. It was about leadership.
You cannot always control what happens. You can control how you respond. You can choose transparency over pretending. You can choose collaboration over trying to solve everything internally. You can choose calm decisions over reactive ones. And after the situation is over, you can choose to learn from it rather than simply move on.
I still believe in preparation. Probably more than ever. But preparation and control are not the same thing.
The goal is not to create an organisation where nothing difficult ever happens. That organisation does not exist. The goal is to build one that can experience difficult things and emerge stronger.