Third parties, however, are not guaranteed to be objective and may have been launched with their own specific agendas. Before participating in an independent inquiry, be sure to consult your legal team for direction and guidance. With their own timelines and priorities, the results of an external process can take longer to complete than we can afford as we progress through our own review process. Add their conclusions, or at least their perceptions, to your collection of data. Prepare your communications team for when their report will be released. If the findings are not accurate or objective, work with them to respond with corrections.
The most important thing we can do as we collect information is to LISTEN to everyone who provides it. As we make or respond to calls, e-mails, social media posts, and media inquiries, conduct internal postmortems, and participate in independent inquiries, we need to take the time to truly understand the comments, perspectives, and other feedback we hear. If what went wrong resulted in a poor experience for our customers or partners, we should put ourselves in their shoes. Appreciate the experiences they encountered and how they feel. Provide explanations of what went wrong and tell them what we are going to do to avoid similar situations in the future, but resist the urge to be defensive, deflect blame, or make excuses.
I’ve had occasions to reach out or make myself available to hear directly about lousy experiences from customers and partners. I let them tell their story and try very hard to be patient and not interrupt. It is not usually pleasant to listen to, but it is often appreciated by those who are given the opportunity to share their experiences.
If we acknowledge that we provided less than what we had set out to, it demonstrates that we care and this helps to promote the rebuilding of their trust with the brand, one partner and one customer at a time. We want to communicate that we empathize with any party who encountered inconvenience as a result of what went wrong, regardless of its root cause.
During the review phase, we must convey a consistent message that we are welcoming of any and all information—from inside or outside the organization—that can help us avoid a similar challenge in the future. We must express our appreciation for them as active participants in helping us identify problems. By providing feedback we can learn from, they are valuable contributors to our future success.
LEARN
Biologists classify common animal behaviors into two categories. The first, an innate behavior, is a genetically programmed reaction. It can be reflexive, like flinching when we see an object heading toward our eyes, or it can be instinctive, like a bird fulfilling the sudden urge to sing at the break of dawn. A learned behavior, on the other hand, is a change in how an animal responds as a result of an experience. An experience might be a personal event (I burned my hand on a pot because I wasn’t wearing an oven mitt), one that is observed (I saw my mother burn her hand on a pot because she didn’t use an oven mitt), or one that is taught (my mother told me not to touch a pot without an oven mitt). As a result, we learn how not to get burned when touching a hot pot.
Whether we experience something directly, observe it, or hear about it from someone else, we haven’t really “learned” anything unless the information we have gathered changes how we approach a similar situation in the future. Our objective during the learning phase is to analyze the information and perspectives we have gathered and to identify not just the root cause, but all the contributing factors to what went wrong, and to apply that input to developing options for changing how we do things.
We have now identified the root cause and contributing factors, recognized the results and consequences, and assessed the sufficiency and appropriateness of our response. We have learned that changes are required to reduce the probability of a recurrence or to lessen the severity of the outcome. Was what happened something we should have imagined and for which we should now have a contingency? Were there things we could have done differently in planning and preparation? Should we make a change to our procedures, process, or organizational structure? Do we need to install or replace equipment that could have prevented the problem or improved our response? Recognizing our constraints, do we need to reallocate a portion of our budget to institute improvements or add people or skill sets to the process?
Was the problem a physical or system failure, a communications failure, or a response failure? Almost every story in this book relates to learning gained from a thorough review process:
• Our team learned about relays, what they are designed to do, and how they may react to wildly uneven patterns of power consumption in an entertainment venue.
• We changed our planning to include a rigorous test of the next host stadium’s power infrastructure and added generators that would make up for some of the energy shortfall if there is another failure.
• We learned that we could improve the pace of good decision-making by changing how we empowered our teammates to work more directly with one another across the web of command, reducing the number of issues that needed to be elevated through layers of the organization.
• We learned that contingency plans related to redirecting the movement of large numbers of people could only be implemented if we added wayfinding signage, reassigned teammates to help guide guests, and had a way to quickly activate the change.
• Our friends in Hawaii learned that their Emergency Management System was far too susceptible to human error. Using the existing procedure made it quick and easy to send an urgent alert to the population, but it was equally easy to send a false alarm. It was also apparently more complicated to withdraw the warning than it was to send the alarm in the first place.
Repeating one of this book’s common themes: “We learn more from things that go wrong than those that go right.” Consider reaching outside your own project team to other organizations to see what they have learned from experience with similar problems. Unless they are a direct competitor, most will be pleased to share their own war stories and triumphs over adversity. As American humorist Sam Levenson (1911–1980) once said, “You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”
REVISE
We have now gathered and analyzed the information we have amassed, reached conclusions as to the root cause and contributing factors to what went wrong, and determined what needs to be changed, improved, or remedied. How we will do that is the objective of this phase.
Many times, there are multiple solutions from which to choose to be better prepared and to keep the same thing from happening again. The changes we can make can be simple or complex, cheap or costly, easy to implement or culturally challenging for the organization.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game
The Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Weekend is composed of several days of celebration in the host city of Canton, Ohio. The NFL’s first preseason match, the Hall of Fame Game, is held in what is now known as Tom Benson Stadium. For many years, the game was the finale of the weekend. The stadium was also the site of the ceremony honoring the incoming class of football greats on the evening prior to the game, on an elaborate stage before a field filled with thousands of seats, broadcast positions, and technical equipment for the show.
In 2016, poor field conditions and a concern for player safety forced a last-minute cancellation of the nationally televised game. The decision to cancel was attributed to “congealed and rubberized” paint in the end zones and the center of the field, which resulted in an unsafe surface for playing football. The root cause was the haste in converting the field from a setting for a show to a venue for a game. In an effort to hasten the drying of the paint on the artificial turf, the grounds crew reportedly employed heaters that caused the paint to become gummy and the plastic turf to melt, resulting in a treacherous hard-as-concrete surface.
The revision the Hall of Fame proposed to the NFL was not based on an improvement to the conversion process or the painting of logos. It was made based on the right priorities. The chief concern for bo
th organizations was to ensure the field for the Hall of Fame Game would be guaranteed to be in the best possible condition for the players, and the only way to do that was to play the game first, not last. The schedule was altered the following year so a fully prepared, groomed, and painted field would host the game on Thursday, and then be converted in time for the Enshrinement Ceremony on Saturday. Rearranging the preseason schedule may have been institutionally challenging for the NFL, but the risks of not making the change were deemed important enough to overcome the complications.
The Super Bowl Blackout
The root cause of the inability of CBS to provide audio coverage during the opening minutes during the Super Bowl blackout was because the equipment for the play-by-play team in the press box was reliant on receiving power from the building. The production truck could continue to broadcast when the lights went out because they were operating on their own power source. The network’s procedures were changed in future years to ensure that the announcers’ booth was also powered by a reliable external source.
False Ballistic Missile Attack in Hawaii
An investigative report, which was filed by the Director of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, offered 23 recommendations to address not only the root cause of the false ballistic missile alarm and the delay of issuing a correction to the public, but also a series of factors that could conceivably contribute to future errors or miscommunications. Among the recommendations included were changes in the system’s software, such as adding a simple “cancellation” option, and a confirmation step that queried: “Are you sure you want to send a ‘Real World Ballistic Missile Alert’?” Other recommendations altered the process, including a two-person confirmation requirement to eliminate the chance of an error by a single human.
Additional Information About Making Revisions
Most of these revisions may seem so obvious as to cause us to wonder why they were not imagined, anticipated, and planned for long before something went wrong. Of course, they seem obvious in retrospect, and we ourselves have probably experienced many things that have gone wrong under our watch that seemed so clearly avoidable. Why, then, were they not?
I have rarely been involved with a project for which there was no pressure of time. We simply have a lot to imagine, plan, execute, and to which we must ultimately respond. There may be ways we have done things that have not been updated in a while, things we do more out of habit and that were best practices once upon a time. It is always cheaper, faster, and easier to “dust off” an old plan, or at least elements of one, than to start a project from scratch, but things change all the time. We need to continually update, or even uproot our approaches from yesterday’s best practices to the best intelligence, technology, and research that are available today.
Finally, be sure to communicate with your teammates that you are preparing to implement changes. They can provide a great resource to validate your thinking and their diversity of experience can better the chances that the changes you make will have fewer unintended consequences. It also can’t help but boost morale because, after all, they have been wondering what you were going to do to make things work better since things first went wrong. Apply your teammates to testing, simulating, and reviewing the results of the changes. They are as invested in success as you are!
READY FOR THE NEXT THING TO GO WRONG?
I can assure you, if it hasn’t happened to you—something going horribly wrong for you at work or in life—it just hasn’t happened to you yet. And, if it has happened, it’s going to happen again and again, despite your creative imagining, expert planning, and deft execution. Hopefully, it’s not the same thing that goes wrong for the same reason. But if it is, you and your team are better prepared for it. Notwithstanding your calm, capable response when it does, there will be unnecessary second-guessing, Monday-morning quarterbacking, and very necessary reflection and self-evaluation. You will have to review, learn, and revise all over again. And again.
Despite years of experience that have contributed to making our preparations more informed and thorough, our execution better and more expert, and our skills in responding to challenges stronger and more effective, we never truly reach the ultimate level of expertise. Danish physicist Niels Bohr, for one, viewed an expert as someone who has made all of his errors in a very tiny area.
I’ve got plenty of mistakes still left in me, and you do, too. What we get better at is imagining more of the things that could go wrong, anticipating more of those that do go wrong, and, when they happen, managing a better response and recovery.
Getting back up on the metaphorical horse after a bruising fall because something went wrong is not easy. Our natural instincts encourage the development of a new learned behavior, making us a little more risk averse. Accept that what went wrong happened and take the responsibility to fix it. The behavior you will learn instead is that you can’t eliminate the possibility that something will go wrong, but you can exert a great deal of control over the probability of the risks, and even more control over the response and recovery if the odds go against you.
There is apparently a right way to fall off a real horse, one that will make it more likely you’ll be in better condition to climb back into the saddle after you’ve dusted yourself off. There is also a right way to fall off a metaphorical horse, one that will improve your resilience and make it a little easier to get back up when you next fall on your ass. First, forgive yourself for falling. You may have failed to stay squarely in the saddle, but gravity is always going to do the rest. You cannot control gravity, or most everything else around you, but you can learn how to fall. Each time you have fallen, appreciate what you’ve learned and integrate that learning to make you a better rider.
Walt Disney said: “All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me . . . You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.” I’ve gotten kicked in the teeth plenty. But, take it from me, it’s harder to get kicked in the teeth if you get up and right back in the saddle.
REFERENCES
Chapter 2. Defining Disaster
Apple, Inc., “iPhone Battery & Power Repair,” https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power.
Associated Press, “Officer Gives His Version of United Flight Scandal, Says Passenger Injured Himself,” New York Daily News, April 24, 2017, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/aviation-officer-version-united-flight-removal-article-1.3096121.
Chapter 3. Anything That Can Go Wrong
Burt, Bill, “Star-Spangled Career: Bruins’ Rene Rancourt Reflects on a Life Defined by the National Anthem,” The Salem News, April 6, 2018, https://www.salemnews.com/news/state_news/star-spangled-career-bruins-rene-rancourt-reflects-on-a-life/article_0b8ec8bb-9b87-50db-abe7-5b5e4eb46192.html.
Chandler, R. F., “Project MX-981: John Paul Stapp and Deceleration Research,” U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, 45: v–xxii, November 2001, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17458737.
“Edward A. Murphy, Jr.,” in Wikipedia. Retrieved October 26, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_A._Murphy_Jr.
“G-Force,” in Wikipedia. Retrieved October 26, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force.
“Murphy’s Law Site: All the Laws of Murphy in One Place,” excerpted from The Desert Wings, March 3, 1978, http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-true.html.
Chapter 4. It’s a Matter of Time
Merriam-Webster.com, “Your Deadline Won’t Kill You, or Will It?” Retrieved October 26, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/your-deadline-wont-kill-you.
Zarrett, E. Jay, “How Much Do Super Bowl Commercials Cost in 2018?” The Sporting News, February 4, 2018, http://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/super-bowl-2018-how-much-do-super-bowl-commercials-cost-nbc-coca-cola-hyundai/1qap05f9qd6hd1kn2i9lahwlk3.
Zinser, Lynn, “In Coughlin Time, You Can Be Early and Still b
e Late,” New York Times, September 14, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/sports/football/in-coughlin-time-you-can-be-early-and-still-be-late.html.
Chapter 5. Living in the Land of the Likely
BaseballAlmanac.com, “2002 All-Star Game.” Retrieved October 26, 2018, from http://www.baseball-almanac.com/asgbox/yr2002as.shtml.
Glauber, Bob, “Super Bowl Officials Hope for Best Weather, Prepare for Worst,” Newsday, January 22, 2014, https://www.newsday.com/sports/football/super-bowl/super-bowl-officials-hope-for-best-weather-prepare-for-worst-1.6852664.
“Major League Baseball All-Star Game,” in Wikipedia. Retrieved October 26, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_All-Star_Game.
Price, Bill, “Super Bowl XLVIII, Slated for MetLife Stadium—Home of the NY Giants and NY Jets—in 2014, Will See Freezing Cold Weather, says Farmer’s Almanac,” New York Daily News, January 24, 2013, http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/giants/freezer-bowl-metlife-stadium-super-bowl-blustery-14-article-1.1246452.
Schoenfield, David, “#TBT: The 2002 All-Star Game Fiasco,” ESPN.com, July 9, 2015, http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/60077/tbt-the-all-star-game-fiasco.
Sheinin, Dave, “Baseball Has Pace-of-Play Problems; Extra Innings Aren’t One of Them,” Washington Post, February 9, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/baseball-has-pace-of-play-problems-extra-innings-arent-one-of-them/2017/02/09/fb61ae16-eeed-11e6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html?utm_term=.f9795ab46d63.
What to Do When Things Go Wrong Page 27
