You Built a System for Sunny Days. Here’s How to Build for Storms.
Perfect execution is an illusion. Here's what actually works.
Hawaii’s emergency alert system could warn 1.4 million people of incoming missiles in seconds. But when they sent that alert by mistake on January 13, 2018, it took 38 minutes to take it back. They’d built a perfect warning system. Nobody had built a simple ‘undo’ button.
Over the years I’ve watched many plan for perfect scenarios. Ironic, as the point of disaster planning is to develop resilient processes, not perfect execution. The reality is, perfect execution planning is an illusion. They answered the questions they knew to ask and planned for the designed scenario. But Murphy doesn’t follow the rules. That’s the whole point.
Your calendar explodes. Your budget disappears. Your best people leave. Three “emergencies” hit at once. And that beautiful system you built? It folds like a house of cards.
Here’s the thing: The system wasn’t broken. It was just never built for what you’re asking it to do. Took me way too long to figure this out. Most systems don’t actually break. They just reveal they were never designed for pressure in the first place.
The Pressure Modes We All Default To
When work pressure peaks, watch what happens. Everyone defaults to their panic mode.
The Martyr promises to rest “when this is over.” Spoiler: It’s never over. There’s always another crisis. Another deadline. Another reason to sacrifice themselves.
The Crisis Surfer rides from emergency to emergency. Fighting today’s fires while tomorrow’s are already starting. So busy being heroic they never prevent anything.
The Task Churner clears 20 small tasks while avoiding the 2 that actually matter. Inbox zero becomes their religion. Meanwhile, strategic priorities burn.
The Meeting Marathoner fills their calendar until it’s solid blocks of color. If they’re in meetings, they must be productive, right? Never mind that nothing gets decided. Nothing gets done.
Me? I was an Inbox Warrior. Felt productive responding to everything within minutes. Plot twist: I was just managing everyone else’s priorities while mine burned. Mistaking motion for progress. Confusing busy for valuable.
These days, my systems catch most of the pressure. But when something breaks through? Still find myself back in that inbox. Thinking “I’ll rest when this is over.”
Look, building pressure-proof systems isn’t about perfection. It’s recognizing when you’ve stopped driving and started just reacting.
Which pressure mode is your default?
Why Your Documentation Is Lying to You
Your organization has thousands of pages of procedures. Step-by-step processes. Compliance checklists. But when someone asks “Why do we do it this way?”
Crickets.
That senior person who knew why? They retired. The director who made that decision? Gone. Now you have perfect documentation of a system nobody understands.
Here’s what actually happens: You can have a 50-page policy. Detailed procedures. Comprehensive training. Doesn’t matter. If your team doesn’t understand the why, culture beats compliance every time. They’ll do what makes sense to them, not what’s written down. And the more complex your system? The more steps they’ll skip when pressure hits.
New hires create workarounds because the original logic is gone. They optimize for their reality, not the reality that existed when someone wrote that procedure. This is how good systems die. Not from neglect. From optimization without understanding.
Process without purpose is just expensive tradition.
Your team knows the what. They’ve memorized the how. Nobody remembers the why. So when the ingredients change (and they always change), they’re following a recipe they can’t adjust.
The Five Components That Actually Matter
After watching way too many systems collapse (including some of my own), here’s what separates systems that survive from systems that don’t:
Step 1: Map Where It Breaks
Where does your system break first? When calendars explode, budgets get cut, or crises hit, what fails? That’s your design starting point. Not where it should work. Where it actually breaks.
Most leaders design for ideal conditions. Then act surprised when reality shows up. Look, pressure-proof systems assume constraints from day one. They’re built for 80% capacity. Incomplete information. Chaos.
Check your last three system failures. Odds are, they broke in the same place. That’s not bad luck. That’s bad design.
Step 2: Install Communication Filters
Before every message, three questions:
Is it true?
Is it timely?
Is it helpful?
If no to any, reconsider.
Most pressure-driven communication fails the “helpful” test. True? Yes. Timely? Sure. But it just amplifies panic instead of enabling action.
Here’s my favorite filter: Your emergency isn’t my emergency until it survives 48 hours. Not because I’m ignoring you. Because I’m giving you credit.
Day 1: Everything’s on fire Day 2: Your team solved half of it Day 3: The real problems remain (and probably got worse)
The actual emergencies? They escalate on their own. The fake ones? Someone’s anxiety masquerading as urgency.
Learned this one the hard way. Used to respond to every “urgent” request immediately. Know what happened? Created learned helplessness. My team stopped solving problems because they knew I’d jump in. The 48-hour buffer isn’t about delay. It’s about trust.
Step 3: Build Early Warning Systems (They’re Already There)
Your team tells you when systems are breaking. If you’re listening.
Repeated questions = unclear systems. Three people ask the same thing? Your documentation failed.
Silence = psychological safety collapsed. When questions stop, it’s not because everything’s clear. It’s because nobody feels safe asking.
Tone shifts = morale imploding. That joke that lands wrong? Email with unusual formality? Not personality quirks. They’re diagnostics.
Took me forever to see this. Thought complaints were just complaints. Noise to manage. Nope. They’re signal. Your early warning system is already installed. You’re just not listening.
Step 4: Simplify for Chaos
Complex systems break under pressure. Simple, repeatable processes hold.
If you can’t explain it in 30 seconds, it’s too complicated for crisis conditions. Look, when stress peaks, cognitive load maxes out. Your brilliant 12-step process? Useless if step 3 requires a PhD to understand.
Test: Hand your process to someone from a different department. Can’t follow it? Neither can your stressed team. The systems that survive are embarrassingly simple. The ones that fail are impressively complex.
I used to build these elaborate frameworks. Comprehensive documents with flowcharts, the works. The reality was I built them for me, not my team — or better yet, for those outside my team called in to support us during the event. Not only did it not meet our needs during the event, I wasted time being busy on something that added very little value in the end.
What does work is simplifying processes as much as possible. Think three steps and keep the language simple. Target fifth-grade reading level. Not that your team can’t handle more. Rather, it needs to be simple enough for those outside your immediate team.
Step 5: Design for Recovery, Not Just Execution
Don’t just plan for execution. Plan for repair.
Every system needs a “when this breaks, here’s how we rebuild” protocol. Almost every organization I’ve worked with has execution plans. Contingency plans. Backup plans. But a recovery protocol? A clear process for rebuilding after collapse? Nothing.
So when systems fail (and they all fail), leaders improvise under the worst possible conditions. Making it up while everything’s burning.
Your recovery protocol needs to answer:
Who makes the call?
What do we preserve at all costs?
What can we sacrifice temporarily?
How do we rebuild without repeating the failure?
Don’t have these answers before the collapse? You won’t find them during it.
The Innovation Paradox
Look, the whole point of pressure-proof systems isn’t perfection. It’s constant improvement. 1% better each time gets you closer, but the world keeps changing. Your systems have to evolve with it.
If you’re designing for perfect, you’re deluding yourself. Worse, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Perfect is just copying what worked for someone else yesterday. Those people? They’ve already learned from their mistakes. Moved on to bigger problems, better designs.
Tesla didn’t perfect the ignition key. They asked “Why do we need keys at all?”
Designing for perfect means you’ll never design anything better. You’ll just recreate what’s already acceptable. That’s not resilience. That’s stagnation.
Documentation That Actually Teaches
Imagine documentation that explains itself. Every critical process includes a decision log:
What we rejected
What we considered
Why we chose this path
New team members understand trade-offs, not just tasks. Budget shifts? They adapt intelligently because they grasp the principles.
Add “break glass” context. When should someone deviate? What conditions invalidate this process?
Here’s one that works: Sunset reviews. Every procedure expires in 18 months unless someone can still explain why it exists. Harsh? Maybe. But I’ve never met a useless process that could justify its existence when challenged.
Can anyone explain why your most critical process exists?
Start Somewhere. This Week.
Pick one system. Just one.
Map where it breaks. That meeting that always runs over? That approval that always bottlenecks? There’s your pressure point.
Install one filter. Try the 48-hour rule. Or the three-question test.
Listen for signals. What questions keep coming up? Where has conversation stopped?
Simplify one complex process. Take your most complicated procedure. Rebuild it for someone having their worst day.
Design one recovery protocol. Pick your most critical system. Answer: “When this breaks, how do we rebuild?”
You don’t need to rebuild everything. Just start somewhere.
Look, your systems will be tested. That’s not the question. The question is whether you built them for perfect conditions or real ones. Perfect conditions don’t exist. Never have. Never will. But systems that survive imperfect ones? Those you can build.
Start this week. Map one pressure point. You’ll see the gaps immediately.
The storm is coming. Always is.
But here’s the thing about storms. They pass. Rainbows follow storms, though you’re never guaranteed one. What you are guaranteed? More storms. Build for the storms, not the rainbows. When the rainbow shows up, it’s a bonus. When the next storm hits, you’re ready.
Your team is counting on you to build something that holds.
What breaks first in your organization when pressure hits? That’s where I’d start.