The three pillars of great incident response include clarity, transparency, and calm. Clarity involves having clear roles and responsibilities within the team, focusing on the problem at hand, and using actions to avoid duplication of effort. Transparency requires defaulting to public information sharing, fostering a blameless culture where mistakes are learning opportunities, and intentionally sharing relevant context with stakeholders. Calm is achieved through trust among team members, having good tools for gathering and verifying information, ensuring adequate energy levels, and gaining experience in handling incidents.