Gratitude under crisis

Given the recent coverage on the security incident at PageUp and my upcoming talk at YOW! CTO Summit Melbourne on the lessons drawn from it, I thought it would be an appropriate time to share the Thank You letter I sent to my team as the acute stage of the crisis was drawing to a close.

I believe it gives valuable insight as to how we handled it as a team, draw from it your own conclusions.

Subject: “Thank you!”
Sent: 18th of June, 2018

“As the tides are turning, and we’re having more and more of our customers reactivate their instances, I wanted to express my gratitude to all of you.

First, I’d like to preface with this- the media articles that we, our friends & families were all exposed to, whether they were balanced or wildly misleading, all failed to note one thing- this cowardly attack on PageUp was not an assault against a faceless corporation, it was an act of destruction aimed at the fruits of labour of a group of incredibly dedicated and passionate individuals, all working together with a shared purpose.

At no time was this as evident as during this time of crisis- communication barriers fell away, all ideas of ‘they’ and ‘us’ disappeared, each and every one of us pulled together as a team to repel this intrusion, minimise the harm to our work and our clients’ businesses and do the right thing by our users.

It is in times of adversity in which the true colours of any organisation come to light, and all of us can be extremely proud of what has been surfaced by this challenge. There was no blame, no pointing of fingers, we have upheld our integrity and have been transparent with our customers to a degree unprecedented in the unfortunate history of such attacks, even though it carried a significant cost to ourselves.

Challenge inevitably leads to growth, and we’ll have many lessons to learn from this chapter – and while the crisis is by no means over, after witnessing how we’ve all come together, I know with all my heart that we will surmount any further obstacle that is thrown in our path and turn it into an opportunity for growth and shared prosperity.

So, thank you. All of you. I’m very proud to be part of this team.”