What to Do When Things Go Wrong

by Frank Supovitz

  The next morning, there were five of us sitting around the table set for 30 people. At precisely 7:00 a.m., I closed the door and started the meeting with a handful of reasonably important announcements in a normal voice. Another half-dozen teammates—who were milling about in the room or were gathered at the coffee station right outside the door—quickly took their seats as we launched into follow-up items from the day before. The rest of the gang arrived over the next 10 to 15 minutes, many chattering to each other until they entered the room, surprised that they were interrupting a meeting in progress.

  I grabbed a second cup of coffee a few minutes before 7:00 a.m. on Day 3, and noticed the urn was only half full. The vast majority of our team was already caffeinated, seated, and ready for the meeting. A handful of sheepish stragglers entered quietly after the door was closed and took their places.

  Day 4 and beyond, latecomers were the exception rather than the rule. Not only did we never start that meeting late or without the room filled with very nearly the entire complement of participants until game day, but the same could be said for the years that followed.

  I sat in my usual spot ten minutes before the meeting, a steaming cup of black coffee within convenient reach, reading my notes from the previous day’s briefing, and outlining additional topics to be covered. Magically, when everyone’s iPhones approached 7:00 a.m., the din of conversation in the room diminished to silence all by itself. I could tell it was time to start without ever glancing at my watch. Assuming the meeting took the same amount of time, regardless of whether it started at 7:00 a.m. or 7:10 a.m., imagine how much productive time we added to the system across 30 colleagues? Thirty people, ten minutes at a time, every single day. That’s a total of more than 100 people-hours over the course of three weeks.

  It wasn’t intended as a power trip (although I admit it did seem pretty effective), but rather a drive toward changing our department’s culture by respecting not only our own time, but that of others, and wringing out all of the efficiency we could in the hour we were together. A 48-minute hour is simply less productive than a full 60-minute hour, and I’m not alone in thinking that way.

  New York Giants former head coach Tom Coughlin’s meeting policy was even tougher than mine. In 2004, the New York Times reported that two Giants players who had arrived a few minutes early to a team meeting were fined $1,000 each. On another occasion, defensive great Michael Strahan found the team’s meeting room door closed two minutes before the scheduled start time and was also rewarded with a fine notice. Coach Coughlin, apparently, believed that “meetings start five minutes early.” As for me, I’m good with “right on time.”

  LITTLE HAPPENS WITHOUT A DEADLINE

  The start time of our meeting was essentially a deadline, the time for participants to be ready to start discussing how we as a team were delivering against every other deadline. We demonstrated the importance of meeting deadlines by making the start time definitive, reliable, and inviolate; missing that deadline was a stigma. In labor negotiations and congressional budget deliberations, there seems to be more posturing than progress until a deadline for action has nearly arrived. Often, little happens even when there is a deadline. The penalties for missing deadlines can include a disruptive work stoppage or a government shutdown, but the penalty during the American Civil War was far more severe. Diaries and news reports from that time describe a physical line or a ditch drawn around a prison camp—a “dead line”—as a physical boundary that a prisoner best not attempt to cross under the penalty of being shot. Most deadlines are not literally life-and-death, but I still try really, really hard not to cross them.

  During my NFL career, the most sacrosanct deadline of all was on the first Sunday in February at 6:28:30 p.m. Eastern Time. That was usually the time for the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl, conceived so the broadcaster could generate the greatest viewing audience and the highest ratings in two half-hour segments, the one before and the one after 6:30 p.m. I wasn’t one to argue against that strategy, as the game’s stratospheric viewership ratings justified the $5 million NBC charged for a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl LII broadcast in 2018. Our collective job was to make sure everything we did, at every second of that day, led up to an on-time delivery.

  Although most Super Bowl deadlines were less micro-precise, they were still important because, come hell or high water, it was nearly 100 percent certain that the game was going to be played on the first Sunday of February, not Monday or Tuesday, and not on the second Sunday of February. Every deadline for every task that was crucial to being ready for a kickoff at 6:28:30 p.m. was essential to identify and communicate to the team. For leaders, they were even more important to model and enforce. Set deadlines for yourself and respect them, and the others you count on will follow suit.

  IMAGINING INNOVATION

  Keeping things fresh, adjusting to the needs and demands of the marketplace, and progress are all good things. When I work on an event held annually, I always try to add things that are new or different to the product, or better ways of doing things than the year before. There is always room for improvement and growth, even for something already “on its own level.”

  Super Bowl XLIV, held on February 7, 2010, was originally scheduled to be staged in a new spectacular stadium to be built for the New York Jets on the west side of Manhattan. But the game was moved to South Florida when plans for building the new venue were abandoned after New York City failed in its bid to host the Olympics. The new site was a natural choice because it wasn’t so new at all. It would be the region’s tenth time in 44 years to host a Super Bowl; almost one-quarter of all Super Bowls ever played were played in South Florida. Also, it was just three years since the last time (ninth time) the region hosted a Super Bowl in 2007.

  But, being just 36 months later, we didn’t want to stage a repeat of the exact same experience. Instead of basing the majority of the non-game activities in Miami, 15 miles south of the stadium, we decided to move our base of operations and the focal point of non-game-day festivities to the neighboring beach city of Fort Lauderdale, 20 miles in the other direction. That decision resulted in having to set aside an enormous amount of additional time and human resources to re-imagine a new operations plan before real planning could begin. This was not unusual for the Super Bowl. It moves every year to a different place. But, it was definitely unusual to have the event in South Florida without being centered in Miami.

  Of course, introducing innovation into a system doesn’t have to involve moving an entire city’s worth of events into a new neighborhood. It can be manifest in introducing a new size and type of product packaging, rolling out a new app, or setting up a new distribution system. Constantly injecting innovation into your product, service, system, or presentation is essential to the health of your project and the vitality of your brand. Every time you try something new to improve the system or unlock value, you will naturally be introducing new uncertainties and exposing your brand to new risks. Innovation, simply, takes a great deal more time—and well it should. You and your team will need every precious moment not only to develop and create new project features, but sufficient time to comprehensively imagine the implications of introducing something new and to develop the Plan B’s if things don’t go right.

  Innovation is most often an evolving process. A new idea changes and is reshaped repeatedly to fit emerging challenges, and as it does, it consumes time and attention that wasn’t required before. Imagine newness and opportunity whenever and wherever you can, but also consider the time you’ll need to effect that change. If you think about how many times you can recall hearing the phrase “we’ll put doing that off until next year,” you know I’m right. Eventually, next year becomes this one.

  Whether introducing innovation or just more fully exposing the risks that were already there, you can be sure that once you start imagining the things that could go wrong, you’ll discover an unsettling sensitivity to imagined disasters that will continue throughout the plan
ning process, and probably into execution. I apologize in advance for the loss of sleep. It’s not to convince you of impending failure. It’s to give you confidence that by investing the time into imagining the worst, you will more often come out ahead. With a growing repertoire of things that could possibly go wrong, where then do you begin to imagine how to make them go right?

  5

  LIVING IN THE LAND OF THE LIKELY

  Torii Hunter’s leaping grab of a drive well over the wall in right-center field robbed Barry Bonds, of the San Francisco Giants, of a certain home run in the first inning. Yet, it did not win Hunter, of the Minnesota Twins, the Most Valuable Player (MVP) honors in the 2002 MLB All-Star Game, held on July 9, 2002, in Miller Park, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Later, with two outs in the bottom of the third, Bonds posted a pair of runs, lining a pitch from Roy Halladay, of the Toronto Blue Jays, over the right field fence to give the National League an early 4 to 0 lead. Halladay was already the American League’s third pitcher in as many innings. The four-run difference shrank as the score seesawed through the top of the eighth inning. With one man out, Omar Vizquel, of the Cleveland Indians, tripled into the right-field corner scoring Robert Fick of the Detroit Tigers from second base and tying the game.

  Between the two leagues, only five pitchers remained of the 19 pitchers named to the All-Star Game rosters, and team managers Joe Torre and Bob Brenly faced the prospect of the game going into extra innings. As it was customary for All-Star team managers to use all of their players during the game, Torre sent two of his remaining relievers to the mound in the eighth and ninth innings, throwing only 11 and 14 pitches, respectively. Brenly pulled reliever John Smoltz, of the Atlanta Braves, for a pinch hitter after throwing only eight pitches in the ninth inning, leaving each team with just a single hurler to take the game into extra innings.

  After the American League stranded a man on third base to finish the top of the 11th inning with the score still deadlocked at 7 to 7, the umpires walked to the front row of field-level seats to explain the dilemma to Commissioner Bud Selig. Neither team manager wanted to risk injury to their final two pitchers by having them throw for more than two innings in an exhibition game. Deliberations on how to finish the game were made in full view of the fans in the stadium and 14 million viewers on national television. As Captain Murphy would have predicted, the game ended three outs later in a reluctant tie, as had been decided during the awkward field-level meeting, amid fans booing and chanting “Let them play! Let them play!” There was no winner of the 2002 All-Star Game and no MVP was named for the game. But thanks to Hunter’s spectacular catch in the first inning, the American League extended its undefeated All-Star streak.

  Extra innings, of course, are not unknown in baseball. According to The Washington Post, there were 185 lengthened matches out of 2,428 games during a recent season, comprising 7.6 percent of the schedule. Of those, 63 (2.5 percent) lasted 12 innings or more. Of course, All-Star Games are not remotely like regular season games. But, knowing that a tie at the end of nine innings is not unheard of, and that even longer games are entirely possible, it is hard to understand why a rule was not in place well before Curt Schilling, of the Arizona Diamondbacks, unloosed the first pitch of the night.

  A tied score after nine innings was 100 percent predictable, and a 12-inning game was totally within the realm of possibility. The first tied score in 73 years of All-Star Games was in 1961, when rain forced a premature end with the score deadlocked after nine innings. That All-Star teams had never run out of pitchers in the past was clearly no prognostication of the future, notwithstanding that a 15-inning game was played to a National League victory in Anaheim Stadium on July 11, 1967.

  Smarting from fan criticism, Major League Baseball made good on its promise to ensure this would never happen again by initiating a rule that some position players, including pitchers, be held in reserve even at the risk of them never playing, and that certain players be permitted to re-enter the game even after they were replaced. A definitive conclusion to the game was particularly important in later years when baseball ruled that the top seed in the World Series would be determined by the winner of the All-Star Game, a rule that temporarily addressed the event’s relevance to fans.

  THE OUTCOME IS PREDICTABLE WHEN YOU DON’T PLAN FOR THE PREDICTABLE

  What the 2002 All-Star Game teaches us is the importance of planning for the predictable. The probability of a game going into extra innings was reasonably high, and in baseball there is no telling how many innings it will take to break a stalemate. The notion that a team could run out of pitchers during a game was an entirely imaginable possibility. Several years before, the NHL had foreseen the possibility of a tie in their All-Star exhibition and instituted a rule to play one five-minute overtime, followed by a shootout to break a stubborn tie. As hockey fans know, ties used to be a common outcome in the regular season, but this is the format now used in the regular season as well.

  It may sound silly, or at least overcautious, to have had a rain plan for an outdoor event in the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, and before Super Bowl XLII on February 3, 2008, I would have agreed with you. The historical average monthly rainfall totals for the city in the month of January is 0.77 inches, but during the ten days of scheduled fan activities leading up to the game, we enjoyed about half the year’s expected allotment of liquid sunshine. I left my hotel one afternoon in a torrential rainstorm and grabbed one of the gifts that had been graciously left in my room by the Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau when I checked in for the month. I didn’t for a moment think about how strange it was that an umbrella was one of those gifts, but I was grateful it was there. I grabbed it out of the basket and set out for the convention center, where the NFL Experience and the Media Center were being set up. When I opened the umbrella, the inside a little too cleverly said: “If your meeting was in Phoenix, you wouldn’t be needing this right now.”

  I’m sure you’ve listened to weather reports, heard a forecast of a 20 percent chance of showers, and thought that the best way to ensure that it doesn’t rain is to bring an umbrella with you. You leave your umbrella home anyway because, after all, it’s only a 20 percent chance. It may or may not rain, but here’s what I know for sure: if you do leave your umbrella home and it does rain, you will get 100 percent wet. Even in Phoenix. The question is, how will that ruin your day, your project, or your event, and is it worth having a plan for when the unlikely happens?

  Probability is just one key factor master planners consider when imagining what situations are worthy of the time and resources required to develop contingency plans. Safety considerations, of course, are paramount. Anything foreseeable going wrong that could result in physical danger should zoom to the top of any list. Another important factor is the damage that can be done reputationally and economically by an unlikely, but possible, occurrence. The potential impact on your brand or bottom line can escalate the need for a contingency plan for scenarios for which probability alone might not qualify.

  Like Major League Baseball’s All Star Game, probability seems to work against us when a project occurs annually or with regularity. Just ask Robert Krumbine, the chief creative officer for Charlotte Center City Partners (CCCP) in Charlotte, North Carolina. The mission of Krumbine’s organization is to “envision and implement strategies and actions to drive the economic, social, and cultural development of Charlotte’s Center City.” Among many other programs, CCCP participated as the producer of the “Avenue of the Arts” component of a street festival called “Taste of Charlotte.” The annual three-day event, running from Friday to Sunday, has been operating for decades and, of course, from time to time weather can dampen spirits and attendance. One recent edition experienced a bit more than that.

  The festival opened on a sunny spring morning, as 125 local artists settled in to their tents, fussing over displays of their handiwork. Krumbine, as he always does, checked in regularly throughout the day with multiple weather resources to stay on top of a
ny changes in the forecast. “Suddenly,” he recalls, “we heard about storms brewing to our west.” It wasn’t an unusual occurrence in the spring. “We didn’t necessarily think the worst. You may get a little bit of rain, a little bit of wind, and everybody just battens down the hatches for a few minutes.” Krumbine kept his eyes open, and when he and his associates saw a purplish wall of clouds bearing down on the festival, he knew it was time to act, and fast. He jumped into a cart and started warning guests to seek shelter as soon as possible. When the front hit, it was “like a train on a track right through the middle of the festival,” destroying many of the artists’ booths and wares. The winds lifted a 30- by 40-foot tent off its moorings and sent it smashing through a nearby office building’s glass windows.

  Krumbine saw more structures ready to rip away from their tethers, so he jumped off the cart, and with his team, physically held tents in place to reduce the extent of the damage to the artwork and the structures around them. In retrospect, holding metal tent poles in place during a severe thunderstorm “was not a very smart thing to do,” he acknowledges. “It was a knee-jerk reaction.” Happily, no one was injured during the fast-moving high-wind event, but the festival site was devastated. Krumbine, city agencies, and all the important stakeholders quickly gathered in the police department’s mobile command center to assess the damage and decide what to do next. They determined that by suspending operations for the rest of the day and working through the night, they could get the festival site repaired and reopened for the following morning.

  “It completely changed the way we think about contingencies now,” Krumbine recalls. “Now, we spend so much more time looking for potential problems and how we are going to deal with life safety first. Where do people go during an emergency? Now, we use that overlay for other events we do.”