Why the Incident Commander resists pressure and stays calm to guide major incidents to resolution

When the alarms start blinking and the clock keeps ticking, the worst impulse isn’t panic—it’s rushing a decision just to quiet the room. In a major incident, the captain of the ship isn’t the person who shouts the loudest or who snaps the first plan into motion. It’s the one who can resist the pressure to decide hastily and instead steer toward calm, deliberate judgment. That’s the core habit an Incident Commander must cultivate.

Let me explain why restraint matters. The moment you sense urgency, the pressure to “just fix it” can feel like a lifeboat pulling you toward safety. But in the world of complex systems, knee-jerk choices often sweep the underlying issue under the rug. Quick decisions can mask symptoms instead of addressing root causes. They can also set off a chain of secondary problems—false containment, misallocated resources, or communications gaps that leave teams wandering in different directions. In other words, speed without clarity is a risky trade.

What should you do instead? Start with stability, then clarity. The IncComm ( Incident Commander, to keep things short) should create a steady rhythm: stabilize the situation, gather essential data, and bring the right people into the loop before committing to a plan. It’s not about waiting forever; it’s about timeboxed, thoughtful progress. When the room feels chaotic, the best antidote is a clear process, not a loud voice.

Here’s a practical way to think about decision-making during a major incident.

1. Stabilize first, don’t race to a solution

In the first moments, the priority is to prevent the incident from getting worse. That means confirming visibility into what happened, who’s affected, and what systems could fail next. It also means securing a reliable line of communication so everyone isn’t shouting over each other. If you can establish a stable base—who’s in the war room, what the current incident severity is, what the top risk is—you’ve set the stage for better choices.

2. Collect the data that actually matters

Yes, data matters—yet not every data point moves the needle. Focus on the essentials: impact scope (how many users or customers are affected), service dependencies (which downstream services are at risk), time to remediation (how long a fix would take), and potential fallout of each option. It’s easy to chase a flood of telemetry and feel productive, but the right data is the data that ties directly to risk and recovery.

3. Involve the right teammates, but do it deliberately

Consulting the team is valuable, and it’s smarter to involve specialists once the scene is stabilized. A quick consult can confirm if a proposed action solves the symptom or the root cause. The goal isn’t to stall every decision; it’s to guard against blind spots. A structured 10–15 minute check-in with the right SMEs can reveal critical dependencies, verify assumptions, and surface alternative approaches you hadn’t considered.

4. Weigh options with clear trade-offs

When you do start weighing options, lay out the trade-offs openly. What does a quick containment cost in terms of reliability long-term? Could a temporary workaround create technical debt later? What are the risks of delaying a decision to gather more data? Put probabilities and impact into plain language so stakeholders can see the math, not just the posture of the team.

5. Make a plan, then pause for confirmation

Formulate a concrete course of action with a time-bound commitment. Then create a brief pause—call it a 5- or 10-minute checkpoint—to confirm alignment. If new information surfaces, you can adjust. If the plan still holds, you can execute with confidence. The pause isn’t indecision; it’s discipline.

6. Communicate with intention

Clear, concise, and honest updates keep stakeholders from filling the information void with rumors. Tell them what you know, what you don’t know yet, what you’re doing about it, and when you’ll report back. When people understand the reasoning behind a decision, they’re more willing to support it—even if it isn’t the instant fix they hoped for.

Why this approach works in practice

• Stability breeds trust. A calm commander signals that you’re methodical, not reactive. That steadiness reduces panic in the room and makes it easier for others to contribute constructively.

• You buy time for the important questions. The longer you can hold off on big, irreversible moves, the more you learn about the system’s interdependencies. Sometimes what looks like a big problem is a chain reaction of smaller ones. Slowing down can reveal the real culprit.

• Decisions become durable. When you base a plan on verified data and aligned input, you’re less likely to backtrack because the core assumption was flawed. Durable decisions ride out the rough patches better.

A few common misconceptions to watch out for

• Making fast decisions to appease stakeholders isn’t a win. It’s a shortcut that often leads to repeated fixes and frustration.

• Gathering data forever isn’t the answer either. The aim is to collect the critical signals efficiently and stop when you have enough to act responsibly.

• Consulting the team every minute can feel inclusive, but if it stalls action, it’s a problem. You want timely input, not a committee meeting that lasts forever.

Think of the Incident Command role as a captain at sea. The ship’s crew already knows the ship is carrying a lot of moving parts: engines, sails, navigation gear, weather updates, and a thousand small levers that can go wrong in an instant. The captain doesn’t abandon the wheel to chase every noisy alarm. Instead, the captain translates the alarms into a plan that the crew can execute, while staying mindful of the weather, the horizon, and the ship’s overall course. In a digital incident, the weather is instability in the service, and the horizon is the ultimate goal: restore reliable service with minimal fallout.

Tools and habits that support wise decision-making

• Runbooks and playbooks. Predefined responses for common incident types keep the team from reinventing the wheel under pressure. They don’t replace thinking—they guide it.

• Incident Commander role within your tooling. PagerDuty and other platform features help designate roles, assign tasks, and coordinate updates without drowning in noise. A clear hierarchy and a shared timeline reduce the risk of conflicting actions.

• War room rituals. Short, structured standups at the top of an incident, with a fixed agenda, can anchor the conversation and prevent drift into endless debate.

• Decision logs. A simple record of what you decided, why you decided it, and what data supported it can be a lifesaver later during postmortems. It also helps new team members after the storm passes.

• Post-incident reviews (PIRs) that are constructive. They focus on learning, not blame. The insights feed future playbooks, so your squad is better prepared next time.

A quick, friendly reality check

You’re not expected to be perfect in the heat of a major incident. You’re expected to be deliberate and thoughtful, to balance speed with wisdom, and to keep the team aligned even when the pressure rises. When you resist the urge to decide immediately, you give yourself the space to see the system clearly, talk to the people who know the most, and choose a path that stands up to scrutiny and time.

If you’re building a personal playbook for these moments, here are a few lines you might map to your day-to-day practice:

• State the incident, its impact, and who’s affected in one breath.

• Confirm the stabilization status before proposing any major action.

• Gather essential metrics and dependency maps first; defer deeper dives until later.

• Schedule a short team check-in to surface critical perspectives.

• Log every decision with its rationale, then reassess on a fixed cadence.

Where this idea shows up in the real world

You’ll see it in the language the incident commander uses: “We’re stabilizing now; we’ll decide next after we’ve confirmed X, Y, and Z.” You’ll notice it in the swap from “What should we do?” to “Here’s a plan that protects safety and data integrity.” You’ll hear the emphasis on communication, on writing a clear narrative of what’s happening and why a certain action was chosen.

If you’re reading this and thinking about your own team’s setup, consider how your runbooks, escalation policies, and war-room rituals reinforce—not undermine—this disciplined approach. A strong framework makes resisting pressure less about willpower and more about process.

In the end, restraint isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a signal that you’re prioritizing a reliable recovery over a quick fix. You’re choosing clarity over noise. You’re protecting the system so it can heal and recover with minimum collateral damage. And that’s exactly the kind of leadership that lets a team come out of a major incident not just intact, but wiser.

So next time the horn blares and everyone’s looking to you for the answer, remember the core rule: resist the impulse to decide on the loudest moment. Take a breath, gather the essential facts, bring the right people in, and move with a plan that you can stand behind. In a complex world, that steadiness is what turns a chaotic incident into a story of resilience—and that’s something worth aiming for.