7. Follow through on every promise to provide more or better information, whether as public posts or DMs.
8. Refresh your messages often to make sure you always provide the latest and most accurate information.
LAWYER UP!
There, I said it. When something goes wrong, there are often legal ramifications that may impact what you say and how you say it. When the police respond to questions from the media or the public, they do not want to share information that could taint an investigation or adversely change the outcome. Neither do you. If there is an injury or worse, your organization may be subject to a lawsuit and what you say, in addition to what actions you took or didn’t take, could affect future litigation. Liabilities don’t require a physical injury. Damages can be pursued by customers or business partners who feel inconvenienced, defrauded, or defamed resulting from a mistake, omission, or statement. Depending on the nature of the incident and the industry in which you work, there may also be inquiries and investigations after the fact from a variety of local, state, or federal agencies.
Have your legal team on speed dial, or better yet, have a legal representative on your project team, so what you say or post online benefits from their guidance. On one hand, you want to be candid and cooperative and do not want to appear as though you are withholding or hiding information. At the same time, you must act in the best interests of all parties—both the public and the company. The intersection of the two requires you to:
• Acknowledge the problem.
• Act authoritatively.
• Speak truthfully.
• Accept responsibility for the response.
Your legal team will be skillful guides to help you navigate the potential risks and manage responses and liabilities stemming from things that go wrong.
Remember that it is impossible to completely walk back something you say or write, and you can never entirely erase the damage of a deleted post. So, do not make snide or sarcastic comments, resist the urge to indulge your ego with self-serving defensive statements, and avoid exaggeration. This is true in e-mails and texts, even ones you send internally. So don’t write anything you don’t want to read verbatim in The New York Times. Keep in mind that your microphone is always on!
DON’T FORGET YOUR PEEPS!
Ivy Cohen schooled me when I asked her about the most common mistakes leaders make when something goes wrong. One of her answers surprised me, and upon reflection, I was more than a bit embarrassed when she said: “allowing employees to be an afterthought.” She is 100 percent right. Whenever something goes wrong, our teammates are just as affected as we are, whether or not they are directly involved in the response or recovery. From our position in the trenches, we try to keep things that go wrong from becoming personal, but for our teammates, with little information or control over the outcome, it can be intensely personal. They wonder how a mistake, especially a costly one, might affect the security of their jobs. If it is a problem with a public profile, their families, friends, and their network of business relationships will check up on them, concerned about their safety or security. Don’t let them get all their information through social or traditional media, or worse, the rumor mill. The same team that is invested in our achievements and success is profoundly affected by missteps and failures, even if they are not of our own making. Bringing them “into the know” will demonstrate your trust and concern for their well-being. Rumors, whether promulgated from the outside or spreading from within, can sap morale and be among the most damaging “sources.”
That’s why Cohen recommends leveraging your human resources departments when something goes wrong. As we are developing our messages to the media and the public, we should also be communicating in meaningful ways with our teammates. They will always be our best ambassadors to our partners. Much as senior executives are often the most natural and desirable spokespeople for delivering news to the media, so too are they the most appropriate people to communicate authoritatively with the organization-at-large. Without divulging confidential information that you would not share with the media or public, let teammates know what happened and what the organization is doing to fix or manage the problem.
Express confidence in the team’s ability to recover from the challenge. Provide teammates with instructions on what they should do if contacted by the media. Tell them to refer all inquiries to a media relations executive or project team member, as appropriate to your organization. Let them know you will be updating them, and then be sure to follow up. If there will be a press conference or statement, let them know how they can see or hear it. If it’s not broadcast live, your PR team can set up a dial-in or web conference so they can stay current with developments. Involve the HR department to be helpful as counselors to concerned employees, and to collect any remaining questions for later responses.
SEE IT COMING? GET THE TEAM ON STANDBY
I work on a lot of outdoor events, and I take particular notice when I hear that thunderstorms are expected in the area. Some events don’t operate at all in falling precipitation, like baseball games, car races, and many festivals. But, because of the deep economic ramifications of canceling or postponing, a lot more events do happen in the rain. So we sometimes get a bit soaked at football games and outdoor concerts.
Wet weather can make for a miserable experience for the participants and guests, but sometimes, it has resulted in some surprisingly memorable moments, like when Prince played Purple Rain in the rain at Super Bowl XLI on February 4, 2007. Or in 2004, at the post-game party for the NHL All-Star Game, when The Barenaked Ladies played outdoors in St. Paul, Minnesota, as falling snow piled up on the stage and was shoveled away by stage hands during the performance. “We’re from Canada,” announced lead singer Ed Robertson, brushing it all off. “This is nothing!”
Add in some random atmospheric electrical activity, however, and those fields, stadiums, and plazas filled with metal grandstands, lighting trusses, electronic gear, and people become very attractive to bolts of lightning. Although 90 percent of the people who get struck by lightning survive, you don’t want to be a part of the 90 percent or the 10 percent. So, when a thunderstorm is on its way, seek shelter immediately because when lightning hits a tree, which can’t take refuge indoors, the intense burst of heat can instantly vaporize the water contained inside and cause a mighty oak to literally explode from the sudden pressure.
I usually start to take note of the potential for thunderstorms three or four days ahead of an event, and my level of concern increases as the forecast becomes more short-term. Most outdoor venues subscribe to one or more commercial weather services, and some have their own weather station equipped with a local lightning detection system. We watch where, and how far away, the closest lightning strikes are, and whether they are heading in our direction. If lightning gets to within 12 or 15 miles and the storm’s trajectory has it heading our way, we get our teammates into position, ready to stop the event, and to begin evacuating the outdoor areas of the venue.
When the lightning is within 8 miles and closing, we start clearing out the venue and encouraging people to seek shelter. The crew begins unplugging electronic gear. If there are strong winds that accompany the storm, we may take additional measures to secure equipment and materials that might literally blow away. Chances are, the lightning that passes through won’t hit anything, but we are never going to take that chance. We have these protocols in place, just like the Pennsylvania State Police have theirs in place for managing crime scenes, because we know that thunderstorms are going to strike one of our live outdoor events at some point. And not to disappoint you, it’s happened to me on multiple occasions.
We have discussed in detail the development of operational contingencies to be prepared for anything and how we should respond in the event the most likely things go wrong, like evacuating outdoor venues ahead of a thunderstorm. Preparing contingencies to plan how we would contact our various audiences when an incident occurs can be just as important.
When the power went out in New Orleans at Super Bowl XLVII in 2013, it was vitally important to communicate as quickly as possible with the fans in the stands. This is why stadiums have battery-powered public address capabilities. If an outdoor event is going to be canceled or postponed, we direct people by public address announcement to leave and seek shelter, and we include instructions for guests to visit the venue’s website and social media feeds for details on rescheduled dates, cancellation policies, and refunding procedures. With an electrical storm approaching, we don’t want to delay their exit by engaging in question-and-answer exchanges, debates, or arguments.
If you become aware of a developing potential challenge that can disrupt operations for your company or project—from an emerging labor dispute, rumblings of a political protest, forecasted severe weather threat, a supply shortage, or literally anything that your intelligence (or even intuition) suggests is likely—add the need to prepare a communications strategy to your operational contingency readiness, as follows:
• Prescript key speaking points while you have time to be thoughtful.
• Identify who will deliver the message.
• Determine how to distribute the information before you are in the middle of a full-blown response.
Also, don’t be too quick to press the send button to send anything you drafted ahead of time without reviewing it one more time to ensure that the information is relevant to what is occurring, or what has already occurred. Why should you start thinking about messages and dissemination ahead of time? If whatever happens is newsworthy, you can bet that the media will be on the story the moment it occurs. And, if it is predictable, they are probably ready even now.
STEP FIVE
EVALUATE
23
BREATHE. DEBRIEF. REPEAT.
February 4, 2013, the day after Super Bowl XLVII, now remembered as the “Blackout Bowl,” was rife with speculation and conspiracy theories. Based on what happened in the second half of the game, it was at least somewhat understandable. When the lights cooled, so had the players. The Baltimore Ravens had built a commanding 28–6 lead early in the third quarter, but the momentum had definitively shifted when play resumed after the power was restored. First, Colin Kaepernick led the 49ers on an 80-yard drive to set up San Francisco’s first touchdown of the night. Ravens quarterback (QB) Joe Flacco was later sacked by Ahmad Brooks, forcing the Ravens to punt from deep within their own end; it was returned by Ted Ginn, Jr. all the way to the 20-yard line. This set up a second unanswered score and narrowed the margin to 8 points, 28–20. The 49ers added a field goal before the quarter expired, bringing them to within 5 points of the Ravens, the team that had been ahead by 22 at the half. The teams remained separated by the same number of points when the game ended, 34–29. The Ravens’ win avoided an upset, which might have more concretely entrenched the claim that the power failure was a purposeful effort to revive the 49ers and revitalize fan interest and sagging TV ratings for what had been to that point an undeniably lopsided contest.
“I’m not gonna accuse nobody of nothing because I don’t know facts,” said Baltimore Ravens Hall of Famer Ray Lewis, who was on the field when the lights failed. “But you’re a zillion-dollar company, and your lights go out? No. No way,” he speculated. “You cannot tell me somebody wasn’t sitting there and when they say, ‘The Ravens (are) about to blow them out. Man, we better do something,’ ” he surmised. “That’s a huge shift in any game, in all seriousness. And as you see how huge it was because it let them right back in the game.” Whether Ray Lewis really believed that or not, I cannot say. But, five years later he was sure to pop a reference to it into his 2018 Hall of Fame enshrinement speech in Canton, Ohio; it was a boisterous and entertaining monologue that was only one minute shorter than the blackout itself.
The 1997 Premier League Games: Conspiracy to Sway Games
Was a conspiracy to sway the game a total impossibility? There was a historical precedent. On December 3, 1997, a Premier League game between West Ham United and Crystal Palace ended prematurely when the stadium lights failed during a Monday evening game in London’s Upton Park. In the United Kingdom, bets on the game had to be returned, but a group of speculators who wagered in Malaysia through a betting syndicate were paid on the score at the time the game was abandoned. Later in the month, on December 22, the lights inexplicably failed again at Selhurst Park, another English stadium during a match between Wimbledon and Arsenal. Evidently undaunted by the shrinking odds of remaining undetected, the betting syndicate allegedly targeted a third game, this time between Charlton and Liverpool. The plot was discovered when the local security guard who had been bribed to sabotage the game alerted the authorities, resulting in the arrest of four suspects.
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SUPERDOME ELECTRICAL SYSTEM?
So, it is possible that a stadium’s electrical system can be sabotaged. Did it happen that way in New Orleans? There is a prodigious mountain of evidence to suggest otherwise.
We didn’t wait the six weeks it took for a forensic electrical engineer to complete a third-party investigative report before we got serious about how to avoid the career-ending possibility of a recurrence a year later. It was an established fact that the relay opened. Unless it was defective, that meant it detected an excessive increase in power consumption. Our own consultant introduced us to the concept of an electrical budget, a plan that is just like a financial budget, but one that evaluates how much power we need versus how much capacity we have, circuit-by-circuit, and minute-by-minute.
In New Jersey the following year, we would be hosting an even greater number of big events on game day at the complex than we did around the Superdome. So we began planning a test of the electrical system, simulating how it would respond to the uneven pattern of power consumption as parties and concerts ended, the game began, the halftime show unfolded, and the second half resumed. Although everything checked out fine, we still added four sets of backup generators to restore power in seconds if we still had to.
Meanwhile, the official investigation in New Orleans wrapped up. The new, upgraded electrical relay on the “A feed” did not appear to be defective. It did precisely what it was supposed to do and tripped when it sensed an increase in electrical current that was in excess of its normal factory default setting. Those last four words turned out to be the root cause of the power failure. As you might imagine, the Superdome is not a “factory default” kind of building and its electrical infrastructure would have tolerated a higher load. It’s just that no one reset the relay to accommodate that essential piece of information.
Who should have known to recalibrate the relay for the stresses and strains of a major entertainment venue and the non-normal demands of a Super Bowl—the manufacturer, the utility, or the building? That may still be in dispute, but it doesn’t really matter. Here’s what does: the fast action of the Superdome operations team saved the Super Bowl from being canceled outright. You see, both relays—one on each of the feeds, “A feed” and “B feed”—were installed with the same factory settings. That means if the building staff hadn’t immediately started to shut down the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning) system, the refrigerators, the nonessential lighting, and other power drains on the side of the building that did not fail, most likely the power would have gone out throughout the entire building, and possibly within seconds of the first failure.
I wouldn’t have known to ask for the systems to be shut down, but I’m grateful that teammates who were both knowledgeable and empowered did when the heat was on and the lights were off. If they had not, my friends, it would have been “game over” for Super Bowl XLVII, a minute and 38 seconds into the second half. There was only one backup feeder. If the second one had failed, we would have been done for the night. Doug Thornton was right when he told me he couldn’t guarantee it wasn’t going to happen again, but he and his team had taken the steps that made it a whole lot less likely, and for my money, they are the unsung MVPs of Super Bowl XL
VII.
There are a great many lessons to be learned after every Super Bowl—not just after the one when the lights went out; the one threatened by the protest against a new law; the one stricken with snow, ice, and unusable seats; or the one where everyone used the trains like we asked them to. In fact, there have always been lessons to be learned and improvements to be made after every project that I have worked on during my 30-year career of organizing and producing events. Even when things seem to go completely or mostly right, we commit to evaluating how we can make our projects more successful, profitable, and cost-effective; meet more of our objectives; or simply just make the customer experience better. And, when they go wrong, we thoroughly examine how we could have avoided that outcome, foreseen the challenges, been better prepared, or improved our response.
The Let-Down Effect
It is not always easy to get down to the serious business of evaluating how things went on a project, especially after a particularly stressful experience. Our bodies often undergo a curious physical rebound after being stoked by adrenaline, including a phenomenon called the “let-down effect.” Once the source of the stress has passed, the evolutionary autoimmune response that protected us while we were unconsciously choosing between “fight or flight” reverses. We become more susceptible to the maladies we are as individuals prone to, from migraines and digestive discomforts to skin flare-ups and fatigue. That’s why it is very common for us to get sick or feel discomfort after a particularly stressful time. There is, however, evidence that when we manage the stress we experience, we also manage the severity of physical let-down effects afterwards.
What to Do When Things Go Wrong Page 25
