Most high-growth businesses stare down periods when growth unexpectedly slows down or stops altogether. At some point, that stomach-churning moment has visited the leadership of most of the companies I’ve advised. We also faced it at OpenTable, eBay, and Reel.com when I was managing them. And it has reputedly happened to a number of today’s mightiest internet businesses as well, including the likes of Amazon and Facebook.

CEOs at high-tech businesses work hard to keep as much growth going for as long as possible. Investors — both public and private — tend to value growth over everything else during most investment cycles, and the recent cycle has been no exception. Growth is where all the action is, and to where all the money flows. The reason for this is that the majority of returns are driven by a handful of companies that “break out.” And a business can’t get big enough to break out if it isn’t growing.

Of course, there are a number of key performance indicators for managing a business well and toward profitability — which we’ve written about here and here — but there are still times in most growth companies where that growth trajectory was interrupted. Sometimes it happens gradually, but in a surprising number of cases it happens suddenly: The business is growing one day, then it’s not growing the next.

I’ve taken to calling these growth hiccups “Oh, shit!” moments for CEOs. So what do you do when the growth rocket judders?