How to Learn From Fire Drills and Emergencies

It was a Tuesday in December 2005; we were all waiting to hear about the MTA strike, the strike that would effectively bring all public transportation in NY to a halt. We got the news around 3p that Tuesday, “The Strike Is On!”. Now, at FreshDirect, we were in the services business. Yes, we manufactured food, but at the end of the day we delivered food to customers in New York City. So, the main question that we had to solve for was “how do we get our employees, safely, to our facility in order to fulfill our customers orders”. You see, we were a relatively new company on the scene, a startup, and customer experiences at this point were critical. Then again, they are always critical. At this point in the day we already had customers that had browsed our website and placed orders for the next day. What do we do? Do we cancel those orders or do we figure out a way to get folks into FreshDirect’s facility? Which would effectively recreate the public transportation system. Most of our employees lived in upper Manhattan or Queens. So the 7-train line was a critical artery for getting employees to and from work each day. But, there was NO 7-train line.

What did we do? Well, what every good company would do - we recreated a portion of NYC’s mass transit system. We used rental vans and buses to run the same route as the 7-train. The good news is that even though we capped the orders for those two days, we did deliver to our customers, successfully.

When you work in the startup world, you will have your share of fire drills and emergencies. In fact, most times you are doing something that has never been done before, so there is no “roadmap”. When you have plan, which is based on some known facts but mostly unknown facts, emergencies and fire drills could bring your business to halt. We had our share at FreshDirect, but looking back we performed pretty well under these circumstances. Here is how:

1. The Right People – the biggest learning we got from our small MTA project was that we had the right people who could think outside the box. In fact, there was no box. If you have folks that are stuck in process, it’s hard to come out of an emergency successful. Remember, no one has done this before.

2. Never say “no” – in the case of emergencies, any idea is a good one. We threw around different concepts and ideas on what to do in response to the strike. No idea is a bad idea.

3. Don’t accept the status quo – you are already doing something that has never been done before, so when emergencies arise, the status quo is thrown out the door. Heck, we re-created a piece of New York City’s mass transit system.

4. Don’t micro-manage, but don’t disappear – we set out a plan to solve the problem, but no one was micro-managed. If we were, there is no way we could have done what we did. The key is to set the expectations “we want to get people to FreshDirect, safely” and then set your people free. It’s amazing how ingenuity kicks in when you let folks fly free. Just make sure you have regular check-ins to ensure they have what they need.

5. Love and Passion – having love and passion for the company is hyper- critical in these situations. You are being asked to do things that are above and beyond your job description. If you don’t have people that “love” your company, it will be a tough time to motivate people.