I've been involved in several start-ups during my career and the one thing I have learned is that things don't go as expected. A feature doesn't work well, the software doesn't scale, unexpected bugs, or customers who are not happy with some aspect of the product.
What have I learned? Keep cool. Don't start blaming people or look for someone to shoot. It happens to the best of organizations - mistakes happen and things don't go as expected.
My approach for handling unexpected urgent events is something like this:
1) handle the situation in front of you - don't worry about how you got there - just fix it and get past the issue
2) do a blameless post-mortum. Organizations make mistakes, but if you are so bent on blaming someone, loosing your cool and throwing a tantrum - the organization becomes risk averse, non-cooperative and plays CYA like a professional sport.
3) don't feel like you need add a layer to the process to prevent whatever from happening again. A process artifact is usual in place because someone made a mistake years before. It drives me crazy. Fix the problem, learn and move on. You don't have to modify the process every time.
Loosing your cool, throwing tantrums or becoming moody is the sign of immaturity in an organization or individuals. Amateurs. Anyone who has been doing technology long enough knows that things happen, and knows enough to learn and move on.
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