Hey!

Chris here. Welcome to Blueprint—the newsletter to help you build a winning engineering team.

Let me set the scene: It's 4:30 p.m. You're about to log off and head out for dinner with the family or to one of your kids' sporting events.

Then you get the call.

Something critical is breaking. And the clock is ticking.

The moment you hang up the phone, everything else in your life has to be put on pause.

After 20+ years leading engineering teams through intense transformations, crisis moments have become almost routine for me. I just worked through a situation like this last week.

Here's what most founders get wrong: they think their job is to solve the technical problem staring them in the face.

It's not.

In a crisis, your #1 priority should be shifting your entire organization into wartime mode as quickly as possible. And as a wartime leader, you need to build a war room. Here's how to do it. 👇️ 

📒 DEEP DIVE

The 6-Step Framework to Build Your War Room and Overcome a Crisis

After 20+ years leading teams through disasters, here's the exact system I use to turn chaos into focused execution.

When that crisis hits, you're going to have a moment of panic. I still do, even now.

But here's the thing—you only get about three seconds for this freak out. After that, you need to be completely calm.

Because it's impossible to think clearly and make good decisions in a state of heightened emotion. Your brain cannot process complex information when you're panicking.

As a founder, you're the captain of your team. They're watching you to understand how they should react. Model the response you want them to have.

Once you're in the right frame of mind, it's time to start building your war room.

Building Your War Room

1. Tell Everyone the Rules Just Changed

The first step is to make it official: You're in crisis mode.

Tell your spouse, kids, and anyone else who needs to know that your calendar is cleared for at least the next 24 hours.

Then make it clear to your team that the regular rules of operation are temporarily paused.

• Sleep schedules? Out the window.

• Budget constraints? Lifted.

• SOPs? Suspended.

The only thing that matters is getting through the crisis as quickly as possible.

2. Select the Space

Whether you're in-person or remote, you need a dedicated space to work through this problem.

Pick a conference room, get a whiteboard, and gather everyone essential to solving this problem.

(If you're remote, create a wartime channel in Slack.)

3. Designate a Speaker 

This is critical and almost everyone misses it: assign someone to handle all external communication.

They sit in the War Room, observe, take notes, and translate the chaos into updates for external stakeholders.

They're there to observe and communicate, not to solve.

4. Write Down Everything You Know

Start documenting everything you know immediately. Not speculation or theories, only what you can be certain about.

I set up a Python project with markdown scripts because that's how I think after 25 years of programming. You might use a whiteboard or a Google Doc. The medium doesn't matter.

The goal is to create a single source from which everyone can see the same information at the same time.

This becomes your North Star. When people start going down rabbit holes or speculating about 17 different scenarios, you point back to the facts documented here.

5. Iterate Constantly

You're probably not the technical expert in every detail—and that's okay. You're the leader keeping everyone on track.

Watch for people getting stuck on things that don't matter right now. In software, there's always someone who wants to follow best practices while the house is burning. "We can't deploy without proper testing!"

Meanwhile, the entire system is down.

In a crisis, someone wasting four hours on something irrelevant could be the difference between survival and catastrophe.

Your job is to empower your team to break the rules. Everyone should know they can do what needs to be done. Any mess can be cleaned up later.

6. End It Decisively

When you make it through the crisis, declare it over. Don't let people stay in emergency mode.

The transition out can be harder than the transition in. After running on adrenaline for 24-48 hours, your brain doesn't want to downshift. But you have to force it.

Take a break, eat real food, and get some sleep.

The Blameless Postmortem

Within 72 hours, while it's still fresh, gather everyone who was in the War Room to debrief.

During this process, document:

What initiated the crisis

How you might've detected it earlier

What went well in your response

What didn't

This isn't about finding who screwed up. Even if everyone would point to one person who "caused" it, the system that allowed it is really to blame.

Update your procedures based on what you learned. The goal isn't to prevent any future crises—unfortunately, that's impossible. Just aim to make the next one less severe than the last.

🎙 EPISODE OF THE WEEK

Want to dive even deeper? On this episode of Build Your Business, Matt and I share even more about how to handle business crises—from late-night tech meltdowns and legal threats to complete operational shutdowns.

We share real-world examples of how founders can stay calm, lead with confidence, and rally their team when panic sets in. Whether you're facing a crash, lawsuit, or high-stakes customer emergency, this episode lays out the playbook we use when leading our teams under pressure.

Check it out: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

BEFORE YOU GO…

I was born to solve these problems. When everything goes sideways and normal people panic, I'm in my element.

Not everyone is wired this way. But as a founder, you either need to develop this capability or have someone at your right hand who has it.

These are the big moments in your company's history. How you handle them determines whether you're building something that survives or something that crumbles at the first real test.

The crisis isn't coming someday. For most of you, it's probably coming this week.

Probably around 4:30 p.m.

On a day when you had other plans.

And when it does, you know exactly what to do.

Talk soon,

Chris.