Episode 110- Rich and Frank Supovitz
Brian Kruger 0:00
Welcome to Richard Helppie’s Common Bridge, the fiercely nonpartisan discussion that seeks policy solutions to issues of the day. Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health, and finance space. He and his wife Leslie are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, with a primary focus on medically and educationally underserved children.
Richard Helppie 0:23
Hello, welcome to the Common Bridge. I’m your host, Rich Helppie. The Common Bridge is available on most podcast networks, including Apple, Amazon, Buzzsprout, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and on YouTube TV Richard Helppie’s Common Bridge. And of course, at the website, RichardHelppie.com, please register for free. And please subscribe on your favorite podcast and of course, the YouTube channels. Today we’re going to be talking about crisis management with the man who’s been around a lot of crises no cause and effect there, but the guy to make sure that it doesn’t become a bigger problem. So we have with us today in our virtual studio, Frank Supovitz. Frank, welcome to the Common Bridge. So glad that you’re here. (Frank: Thank you, Richard, great to be here.) So crisis is something that affects everyone at some point. It can be personal, it can be professional it can be a leader in government. But at some point, a crisis is going to occur. And Frank has been in some really interesting situations with major sport events, Stanley Cup playoffs, and the great outdoor games that the NHL has put on and most notably managed many Super Bowls. He’s authored this book, “What to Do When Things Go Wrong.” I will tell you that is a great read or a great listen if you want to bring it in from Audible, which is where I brought it in from and also read through it. It’s really packed with management insight, a lot of do’s and don’ts, a great way to frame thoughts. And I’ll also say this– highly entertaining as well, particularly if you are a sports person. Frank will tell you in the book, how planning can prevent bigger problems. He’s very good at it. He’s the President and Chief Experience Officer at Fast Traffic Events and Entertainment. And he’s host of the podcast called When Things Go Wrong. Other things that he does, he’s an adjunct faculty instructor at Adelphi University. Prior to that he was a Senior Vice President for Events for the National Football League, Group Vice President Entertainment and Events for the National Hockey League, and Director of Special Events at Radio City Music Hall, which means whether you’re kicking the legs high or you’re plowing through on the ice, he’s been there. He’s known as the “Cog.” And from his command post, the person who will know first when things go wrong, or will be the second to know when the crisis occurs. I expect our Common Bridge listeners will understand why his book, “What to do When Things Go Wrong” is a best seller. It’s a reference book and the foundation of his consulting practice. Frank, again, welcome to the Common Bridge.
Frank Supovitz 3:09
Thanks. Great to be here. And thank you for such a kind and generous introduction.
Richard Helppie 3:13
Well, I was very enthusiastic about the book. And I love the admonishment to not be a super man or super woman, or I guess a super person, or super being whatever the correct nomenclature is, these days, all of the real world experience wrapped around this methodology I just found both entertaining and highly valuable. If a person’s running a business, a not-for-profit, or an event, anything that requires human beings and any manner of technology and time, they should read this book. Frank, our audience likes to know a little bit about our guests. Where did you spend your early days?
Frank Supovitz 3:52
I’m a kid from Queens. And I don’t live in Queens anymore, but she’d never gotten the Queens out of me. I grew up in Queens, and when I got married, we had our first apartment in Queens, went to Queens College, where I majored and got a degree in biology, which is not enormously related to what I do for a living nowadays. But that’s because you know, when you live in Queens, you are close to just about anything you want to get to, right. It’s just a bus ride or a subway ride away. And when I was 15 years old, I started working at Radio City Music Hall as an usher on Saturdays and Sundays and walked what we called miles of aisles and just had a great time growing up in that business because when you’re 15 years old, you’re really you’re really impressionable. I started to really love and admire the people that I worked around in the entertainment business and it ended up launching me into a career that I, you know, wouldn’t trade for anything.
Richard Helppie 4:55
I do like the references that you made about the hand signaling at Radio City Music Hall as an early lesson that you picked up. You went on to university from there and then began your professional work. And what can you tell us about that, that I haven’t covered?
Frank Supovitz 5:10
Well, I was offered a management position about coincident with the time that I was offered the ability to go for my master’s degree in zoology at Clemson University, I didn’t have the money to go, I didn’t have the, I guess, the explorer spirit at that particular moment to jump down from New York into South Carolina as quickly as that. But I did get this opportunity to join management at Radio City at about the same time. So I just deferred my acceptance for a year– I figured I’d build up a little bit of money and then go off to grad school, and ended up advancing through the company and just having a blast, and said, You know, this is really something that I’m loving so much that I really want to learn more about. And, you know, that’s the great thing about starting from the bottom and working your way up, the opportunities are there to be able to branch out into the things that get you excited the most. And what got me excited the most was the ability to learn how entertainment was put together, which ultimately led to my being appointed Director of Events. And the events that we did, were the ones that were held outside Radio City. So Radio City decided to export its production service, not the events that were inside Radio City, but Super Bowl halftimes and Goodwill Games welcoming ceremonies, and US Olympic festival ceremonies, these gigantic, big productions, which Radio City was known for on 50th Street and Sixth Avenue, but taking that and bringing it to more people. And that’s where I got my first you know, got my first Super Bowl experience as the associate producer of Super Bowl XXII’s halftime show back in 1988.
Richard Helppie 7:05
Where was that game?
Frank Supovitz 7:07
It was it was the very first Super Bowl in San Diego, Jack Murphy Stadium, at the time. You may remember it had 88 grand pianos in it, which was kind of a ridiculous idea. Back in the day, you know, Super Bowl halftimes were all about pageantry and filling the field and spectacle and had nothing to do with Star Entertainment. Although we brought the Rockettes and believe it or not brought Chubby Checker along with us. And and that’s what that show was it was all about, the piano, 88 keys on a piano, 1988 there you go. (Rich: What’s your job today, Frank? What do you do, who you do it for?) Well, I’m the, as you mentioned, I’m the President and Chief Experience Officer for Fast Traffic, which is an event management and organizing company, as well as a consultant on things related to large scale entertainment, large scale venue management, as well. We’ve produced for the last six years, the Indy 500 pre-race show. This year, we’re producing the Major League Baseball Draft in Denver, which is going to be the first time in many years that Major League Baseball will have fans at the draft, it’s usually a stadium show. So they brought us into to consult on that and produce it. And one of the other really remarkable things we were able to get involved with over the last six or seven years that we’ve been in business, is the development and redevelopment of Pier 17 in New York City and the Rooftop at Pier 17, which is a great outdoor amphitheater that’s sitting on the roof of a building sticking out into the East River three blocks below the Brooklyn Bridge.
Richard Helppie 8:47
We’re going to dive into crisis management and time won’t allow us to get into all of the really interesting stories, again, I encourage folks to read the book. Let’s just dive right in there. Super Bowl XLVII (47) some things happened that weren’t supposed to. What happened, and where were you working, and how did that shape some of the lessons that you’ve got in your book?
Frank Supovitz 9:09
Well, when you work on the Super Bowl and something goes wrong, a lot of people find out about it about the same time you do. And in this particular case, it was 74,000 people who who were in a half dark Stadium, the lights went out as people may recall. 110 million people were watching on television live in the United States at the same time. And nobody knew what was going on. Certainly nobody on television knew, nobody in the building knew for at least the next four or five minutes. The lights simply failed. They failed because one of the feeder cables into the building overloaded. Post the Super Bowl halftime show with Beyonce. She didn’t cause it. A lot of people have talked about that. We didn’t unplug it. Ray Lewis notwithstanding, it was not a conspiracy to change the outcome of the game, but it happened a minute, 38 seconds into the second half. And the reason that it happened is because we had put the halftime show on its own generators– on its own power source. So when the lights came back on after being off for the 28 minutes of halftime, the computer that watches power consumption, and acts like a giant circuit breaker, if it sees a power surge, saw a power surge, because everything came back online at the same time. And it cut half the building out of the grid. And so we were in darkness, at least for half the building, which included all of our communication systems. And many of the–almost all of the gametime functions, so even if we wanted to play in the dark, we couldn’t. But we had a really tremendous team of people with us. I was at NFL control, which is a special booth that overlooks the playing field and the seating bowl at the Superdome. And it was built especially for the Super Bowl because it’s a Level One national security event. There’s a lot more people looking at it from a law enforcement perspective, as well as operationally. And when the lights went out, I happened to be standing right next to a crew from 60 Minutes, who was producing…
Richard Helppie 11:30
…So it’s your job to make sure things go smoothly, the lights go out and there’s a 60 Minutes crew?
Frank Supovitz 11:36
Yes, Armen Keteyian, the sports correspondent from 60 Minutes, and of course news correspondent, tremendous talent was standing next to me watching us do our job; they were creating a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to put a Super Bowl together. And so they had a camera crew standing right next to me. In fact, Armen Keteyian was talking to me about the halftime show, at the moment that the lights went out so they were able to document our response and which occurred, of course, instantaneously, and was reported on CBS Morning News the next day, and then ultimately, in an episode of 60 Minutes Sports on Showtime.
Richard Helppie 12:22
One of the things that you describe well in your book, and I know my producer, Brian Kruger is an avid sandlot football player. And he, I think he believes that you just take a football and you head out to the local park and with your friends and you try to find a field all that type of thing. But the number of things that have to be managed–the number of flights getting people in and out of the stadium, where’s the parking going to be? How are you going to get staff in there from all over the country? And you did mention the security concerns, and the adroit handling of who knows what when 125 people try to get into the stadium, without tickets, in Phoenix one time? Can you give our listeners just a little feel for the scope of what goes into an event, like the Super Bowl, it’s just more than a game?
Frank Supovitz 13:09
Yeah, I think the thing and you mentioned that the number of details are enormous. There’s actually more than a game… as an event. There’s tailgate parties, there’s the Commissioners Reception, there’s a gigantic Fan Festival, which had been called the NFL experience back in those days. Media events, a media night, nowadays on Monday night used to be on Tuesday mornings, on Media Day, and, just an enormous amount of venues that have to be managed, an enormous number of events that are all happening at the same time. And as you mentioned, a lot of logistics behind the scenes in terms of people movement, and vehicle movement, etc. The thing that complicates it enormously is the fact that it is the safest place in America when it comes to security, because it’s a national security event. The federal government is very involved in making sure that the venue is safe, that the event is safe. There’s a lot of barricades and jersey barriers and a perimeter around the stadium that is really designed to keep people from getting in. So you have to get 74,000 people through a place they’ve never been even if they’ve been to the stadium. It could actually be a quarter mile away from the stadium. So everything about how a stadium operates is very different on game day and any number of those details in any business–any project is made up of hundreds of details. Think in terms of millions of details and all the enormous things that can go wrong. There’s 14,000 people on Super Bowl Sunday who hold a credential that either are working with you, for you, or with people who are integral to the broadcast, to the operation of the game, or to the operation of all of these major events. So those 14,000 people are both your early warning system– because they have to know how to respond when something goes wrong– and they have to know who to talk to, when something goes wrong. They also have to be empowered to know to bring things up, if they see things going wrong. It’s everybody’s job to do that.
Richard Helppie 15:32
You talk a lot about the safety issues and safety and security, of course, but when it goes flawlessly that the toilets flush, that there’s enough cola at the stands, that you don’t run out of souvenirs, that you can accommodate people with different mobility needs, that dignitaries are given a safe place to go, ingress and egress, that the players have their schedules set up to bring this event off. Really, it’s a marvelous inside. And I like the way that you codified your approach into five steps. And there are sub steps in this book, why don’t we just kind of run through your five-step plan and in Step One, you say– “Imagine.” Now some people might read the book and go now that doesn’t sound like imagination, it sounds like paranoia. But, you know, look as a guy that’s managed a lot of stuff, I understand. And you actually did reference Murphy’s Law and the origins of Murphy’s Law– you make “Imagine” your first step, why is that? And what is it and and what are some key takeaways people should know about that step?
Frank Supovitz 16:35
Yeah some of us are incredibly good planners. And in order to plan you have to know what your endpoint is going to be, what you’re trying to achieve. The reason imagining is important before you start planning, because we sit down and we say, Alright, I know where point A is, that’s where I am, right now, I have to get to point Z. And here’s the way I’m going to do that. But the problem you run into very, very frequently is– I didn’t see that coming. I didn’t consider that. I didn’t plan for the predictable, you know, I say that, you know, the outcome is predictable if you don’t plan for the predictable, right? It’s it’s all about being… having the right plan put into place that’s informed by your imagination. And for many of us who’ve been doing these things for a long time, and any of your listeners who are doing their undertaking their business for a very long time, you know, you kind of know that, intuitively, there’s some things I have to make sure that I’ve got figured out before I even put pencil to paper and start drawing up that plan because one of two things are going to happen. One is you’re going to either create a contingency plan to be able to handle the most likely things or the most impactful things, even if they’re not all that likely, right? If it’s likely, you want to make sure you’re prepared, if it’s going to be impactful, meaning it could put your business out of business, as an example, you want to make sure that you have a plan for how you would handle certain things, even if it’s not as likely because they’re going to be existentially important to you. And they’re going to be existentially important to your business. So those kinds of things are really important to be able to either create the contingency plan, as I mentioned, or it may inform your plan to begin with. Your plan A may change. And I’ll give you an example of that. For years and years, the Superbowl halftime was always put in the in the center of the field, right? That’s where everybody sees it take place in Big Star Entertainment, great effects, a great spectacle. And when we got to New Jersey, to MetLife Stadium in 2014, or well before we got there, in 2014, we said you know, we could do the halftime show the way we always do. But what would happen if it snowed, or the field was icy. And we’ve got all these people dragging tons of staging– more than 1000 people are running through the tunnel. Trying to put this show together in the eight minutes you have to put together a rock concert. It’s not a lot of time. Well, if it’s icy or snowy either those things don’t move very well or somebody is going to slip, fall and end up under the wheels of a piece of stage. That’s not acceptable, on any level. It’s not a question of show. It’s a question of safety at this particular point. So what should our plan be about how to introduce the Super Bowl halftime onto the field in between two halves of the game that was played outdoors in a winter environment, where you’re prone to these types of issues. And what we ended up doing was actually building the stage and putting it behind one of the team benches. And leaving it there. The stage was always there all the way through the game, it was just, it was just decorated in a way where it looked like part of the wall. And there were a minimum of things that we had to put into place that had to go through the tunnel, minimum number of people, minimum amount of setup. So we were ready in three minutes. We didn’t have to have to worry about that. But more importantly, by changing Plan A– it wasn’t a contingency plan, you couldn’t change the plan if the snow was in the forecast three days before, you had to change Plan A all together to make sure you weren’t going to have a problem if it did snow.
Richard Helppie 20:52
That was one of the key takeaways that I think managers or people that do a lot of projects should bear in mind, is that your operating manual from the time before, may or may not be complete, if you’re you know, moving from an indoor venue to an outdoor venue. And there are so many great catchphrases that you put in the book, I’m not going to rattle them off. But I’m going to just encourage people to obtain the book and read it and understand that there’s just a lot of wisdom packed in there in a better, very entertaining way. Now you talk about your Step Two, which is to “Prepare.” And I love the reiterative process that you led your teams through and empowerd those teams and made sure that people felt accountable. What would be some of the two or three key things that the listeners of the Common Bridge should understand about Step Two “Prepare.”
Frank Supovitz 21:47
I think one of the most important things to remember is that your team does more than just the job that they were assigned to, you know, they’re your early warning system, I mentioned that before. But they also have to be empowered to make certain decisions on their own. It’s very, very simple for someone to just kick a decision upstairs. And what was happening during my earliest years, with the Super Bowl was every decision seemed to filter all the way up to NFL control. And so that, because NFL control can only handle the most important things, the most timely things, at any given time, it was really important to let the people in the field know what their levels of empowerment and levels of authority were. They were responsible for a heck of a lot. But you have to let them know what they’re able to ascertain on their own. Again, using a Super Bowl story, you know, if we had a crush at the North Gate, for example, and nobody at the South Gate, they shouldn’t have to call all the way up to NFL control, to find out if there’s nobody at the South Gate and if it’s okay to tell people to go to the South Gate because there’s nobody there. And therefore make it easier for people to get in. Those are things that the North Gate can call the South Gate and find out and then they say, “Great, send them over. ” Why do you need that to go all the way to the top, it’s wasted time. And it really freed us up to be able to have a system in place where we were dealing with the most important things at the most important times.
Richard Helppie 23:36
And that leads us to Step Three, which is to “Execute” that I really thought had a lot of great takeaways in that as well as like, Alright, it’s okay to have a plan, but it actually has to be an actual plan, or it’s no good.
Frank Supovitz 23:48
Yeah, it really does. And it you know, it’s so easy to make a contingency plan or even have a Plan A that looks great on paper. And if you haven’t tested it, pressure-tested it to make sure it’s actually actionable that you can do something about it that you can change the plan if you have to change the plan, and you have a way of communicating with the people who you need to be able to change those plans and put them into effect. That’s critical. We’ve been through, you know, tons of situations where we started to create Plan B’s and then… well let me give you a perfect example. We tried a tabletop exercise. We established that while I was working on the Super Bowl. I can’t tell you if they still do it today. But 10 days before the Super Bowl, everybody who’s at NFL control, everybody who’s got a decision-making role, is in a room for four hours and we shut our cell phones off–most of us– and we have a facilitator who becomes familiar with our operating plan but is not part of the response and he sets up, crises for us, challenges for us, obstacles that get in our way. Here’s what happened. How do you solve it? And for years, we came up with some really good protocols, which were teased out by the fact that we hadn’t thought of those things. (Rich: Right). It’s great to be able to get somebody from the outside to look in and say, are we, are you really prepared for this eventuality or that one. And when you’re really close to a project of any size, it’s hard to it’s hard to step away from that. Well, he found those things, some of them were really easy to figure out a solution for. But some of them also, were a little bit too easy to say, “I have a solution for that,” even though we didn’t, we said, “Oh, well, we’ll just do this”. And then we found out when we actually had to do, THIS, there was no way to do that. And so that was a, that was a huge problem for us. These table top operational exercises are enormously helpful. But you also have to come in with a very realistic point of view and say, Okay, I know what I’m going to do. Now, how would I do that? That would that would be the important question to ask them.
Richard Helppie 26:15
And I like the fact that you brought in outsiders. It’s… there are parallels in software development, where somebody else looks at the code that you wrote, or you have a person, not the designer/developer do the training, but someone that had to learn that technology, because they’ll see flaws that the developers can’t see. And I think that’s a great thing. And, you know, you mentioned communicate, and I do remember one of the catchphrases “Communicate or Die,” which is unforgettable. And I think that… I can’t remember, if that was in your Step Four, about Responding. But that should be on everyone’s lips, “Communicate or Die,” and “Surprises Suck.” I think that was another one…
Frank Supovitz 26:58
Every year we instituted a mantra, if you will, that was kind of the theme for every major meeting. And we started every major meeting with it. And when we got down to the daily meetings, or sometimes two-a-day meetings, we’d start every meeting, starting with whatever the message of that particular year was. And the the genesis of that was that when I came into the NFL, the gentleman that I was, whose position I was replacing, had been there for 26 years. So much of what happened at the Super Bowl just naturally flowed from his head. And he was masterful at it; he was just tremendous. And they called him Mr. Super Bowl and he was. I came in and I’m coming from hockey. I’ve got a really good understanding, I think of how major events are put together, but the Super Bowl is in a class by itself. And I started a meeting with “don’t assume that everything Jim did, I know to do.” So assume nothing, double check everything. And that became something I said at every meeting. And then the following year (and it was very effective, by the way, because people remembered that,) you know, it was, it was sing songy enough that people people could retain that. The following year, what became very apparent was that people, people kept information to themselves. Important information wasn’t being disseminated. Information is power and everybody’s interested in having the most of it. But both information, and power. So “Communicate or Die” was my expectation that if you had a piece of information we needed to know, or someone else needed to know, and you held it back– that’s egregious. The best way that we can respond is as a team. And the only way you can do that is by sharing information. And that’s where “Communicate or Die” came from.
Richard Helppie 29:06
Well, I have a light view in that as I developed–what at the time was a breakthrough company in the consulting business, I had a set of 15 Principles. One of them was Open Communication– that we’re going to talk, we’re going to exchange information. And surprisingly, that was one of the hardest things for people coming from other work cultures to get over. Because to your point, hey, information was power versus your information shared is success. And we had another principle called “Don’t Assume Nag.” And probably you know, double check would have been better nomenclature. But when we were teaching the basics, we’d say do something– you know, your mother told you not to do– just nag. Go find out for sure that something’s been done. And Frank, I’m going to guess and evaluate that, you know, you were so crisp about the causes of what caused the power outage in Super Bowl XLVII, at the top of this interview, that’s something you couldn’t have known at that time, they had no idea whether this was a, you know, natural disaster, a terrorist threat, somebody tripped over a wire, you just didn’t know. But today, you have a very detailed understanding. And that, of course, is incorporated in the planning for the next events.
Frank Supovitz 30:21
Absolutely. You know, Step Four, which we which we glossed over is “Respond,” and how you respond, and we can come back to that.
Richard Helppie 30:30
Let’s go into Respond and Execute, please or Evaluate– Respond and Evaluate.
Frank Supovitz 30:33
Sure well, responding is a really carefully chosen word. Because there’s also the tendency to react. And reaction is somewhat involuntary, it’s very quick, it’s not necessarily reasoned through. Sometimes you need to be… sometimes you need to stop and think about what just happened to you. And what’s the best solution because what you end up with when you react is probably, some series of unintended consequences that flow out of the original problem. And it’s really important to respond rather than to react. So I’ll give you an example of how that worked with the blackout. We knew, thanks to the law enforcement community and our security team, that this was not a cyber terror attack…and it was a it was a physical failure. We knew that because the the building was working on it, their operations team was working on it, law enforcement was working on it, everybody figured it out really, really quickly. And the first thing we had to think about, what the first thing you had to do was, and it’s going to come back to the word communicate. And I apologize for that. But that was the most important thing. It wasn’t get the plug back in the wall. It was what do we tell the 74,000 people who are right outside my window? Because what you don’t want is for them to start creating the narrative. What happened? Oh my god, let’s check Twitter, because that is the best answer for anything. Let’s check Facebook. Let’s check LinkedIn, let’s check Insta and find out what happened to us. We had to be the arbiter of the right thing to say. And it was… on the 60-Minutes piece, they capture that it’s like okay, what do we tell people? That’s the first thing we have to talk about? What do we tell people? Do you want them to stay in the building? Or do you want them to evacuate? Because if it’s a cyber, if it’s a terror attack, you have to figure out whether there’s more people outside? Or and they’re safer inside? Or is it less safe inside more safe outside? So you have to go through that really, really quickly. We went through that really quickly, we determined it was a power failure based on structural problems with the infrastructure, not not architecturally, let’s keep people in the building, we got to tell them. And the wonderful thing about stadiums and arenas, major places of public assembly, is that their sound system for announcing emergencies, has a battery backup. So if your power completely craps out, you have the ability to talk to people for at least 30 minutes. And so we were able to tell people, you know, be calm, stay in the building will be underway, we’re working on the problem, etc. So that was the first thing we did. When the lights came back on, it was 24 minutes after the original power failure. That’s when when the lights came up to full color temperature and you could imagine the pressure from the broadcasters and everybody else to tee up the ball, and let’s go. And we stopped. And we said hold on. There are lots of things that require power. We could have teed up the ball, but we needed to check whether the instant replay system was working, whether the coach-to-quarterback systems were working, whether the score clock was working, whether all of the systems you need to have a real game, without any question of whether there was a conspiracy or something nefarious going on. We needed to make sure everything was up and running. We took 10 more minutes to do that. And my and my response was, hey, listen, we’ve been dead in the water for 24 minutes. What’s another 10 to get it right? Let’s make sure it’s right. And sure enough, you know, one of the coach-to-quarterback systems didn’t work. So we repaired it, got it repaired, and you know, when we got started at 34 minutes after, you know, the blackout clock began, you know, we’re ready to go. The reaction would have been Alright, you know what television is important, we’re worried about ratings, etc. And of course, we are very respectful of that. But what if there was another score or there was a controversial play and the official goes under the hood and he looks at the instant replay and there’s nothing, right? What’s the story now? What’s the story now? It’s not about the blackout. It’s about how could they have gotten the game started again without making sure that all this stuff was working?
Yeah and the repercussions “Why didn’t you stop to check?” And you know, as I mentioned earlier, this is a more complex thing than the Thanksgiving Day with my producer Brian Kruger out on a sandlot diamond, his coach-to-quarterback communication is really a stick drawing in the dirt or the snow depending on what the weather’s like in Michigan that day…
As long as it works. Yeah, nothing wrong with it doesn’t have to be high tech. It just has to work. And after the fact, when we get to evaluate, you know, the Step Five, which is really taking apart what you did, was your response a reaction or was it well reasoned? Did you take the right steps? What would you do to avoid a blackout in the future? But if you did have another one, is this the right playbook? And the answer to that was generally, yes. But there were some things that we needed to make sure that we understood about how electricity flows into a stadium that I never knew. I’m not a physicist, I’m not an electrician. I don’t know anything about that. But what I did come to understand is there’s something called an electrical budget, how much electricity is used in different places, when it’s being used and understanding what happened to this relay, this, this giant circuit breaker was essential for other people who were managing Super Bowls and other major events to better understand. It also ended up really fueling a changeover to LED lighting, which is instant on and instant off. Back in in Super Bowl XLVII the stadium lights were vapor lamps, so it took a long time for them to warm back up again.
Richard Helppie 36:49
Some of the parallels in business, probably not an exact parallel, but there were times we’d lose a bid and we’d call the client and say, you know, we respect your decision, but can you tell us what we could have done better? And those were very instructive. But also when we’d win– Why did you pick us? And that’s constantly asking that question –Why? Why? Why? It just makes you better. You know, Frank, you’re clearly the guy in the center who can kind of lead and program the exit from a crisis and a lot of that’s pre-thought. Are there other common characters in a crisis? I know that I have my view and observations on those, and you know, when you think about the personalities that emerge, is there anything that you’ve said, Ah I’ve seen that guy before– I’ve seen that person? You know, in the past.
Frank Supovitz 37:34
I think the the most common character, and it’s about 100% of the people… are confused. We’re all confused. What just happened. There are the people who want to solve the problem right away. You know, those are the reactors, you have to be respectful of the fact that they are probably reacting with some amount of skill and expertise in their toolkit. Don’t discount the things that they’re saying, but don’t feel you have to do those things right away. Think through those unintended consequences of a particular action. So I think there’s the reactors, there is also the over-thinkers, the people who will spend too much time trying to resolve things. You used the word flawlessly before. I’ve yet to encounter a project that was flawless. As you know, perfection is the enemy of very good, of great, you know, so overthinking is something that’s, I think, is something that you have to be really careful of. And then there’s the panickers, you know, the people who just lose it. When you’re faced with a person like that in your command and control center, in your conference room, in your cafeteria, where you’ve where you’ve collected people, get them out of the room. Just get them out of the room. They can’t help it, they’re not, they’re…it’s out of their ability to control, they are unable to make rational decisions. And they may just, you know, panic is somewhat contagious. You have to make sure that you as the business leader don’t do any of that, because either people stop listening to you entirely or they start panicking too and either one of those things is not a good thing.
Richard Helppie 39:35
I’ve seen that the panic stricken will sit there just desperately trying to drag the situation back to Plan A and Plan A is already gone. Kind of reminds me you know, I love that famous Mike Tyson quote, right? About you can…”everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” It’s like okay, we’ve just been punched in the mouth. We now need a different approach here. Frank as you, look, it’s just got to be interesting with your field of study. If we can broaden this to some, you know, maybe current period events or situation. If you looked and said, you know, I witnessed a crisis here or there, anything that comes to mind about best or worst responses? I mean, like I think about things like, of course Apollo 13, the 9-11 attacks in New York, the BP oil spill in the Gulf, the heat and the power out in Texas and in California, Coronavirus– and we had lots of characters in there. As you observe this, what are you thinking about in terms of Oh, my God, or Oh, good move.
Frank Supovitz 40:37
I think there’s a there’s a couple of things. One is, never lose your authenticity. I think that’s really important. Let’s take the situation, the recent situation in Florida with the building collapse. (Rich: Mm hmm.) Now, I don’t know a thing about architecture, what makes a building stand up or fall down? I don’t know a thing about that. And I’ll bet most of the people who are talking to us right now, they don’t know very much about it, either. But they’ve remained very authentic, notwithstanding the anxiety that the community and the families are enduring, or have endured, they are very communicative. And one of the things that’s really important, is that they’ve they tell you when they don’t know something, and that’s okay. It’s better to just be right up front and say, here are the things we have to find out. There are certain things we don’t know, we are taking our time digging through this, because you can’t just pull Jenga blocks out of the bottom and have this collapse on the rescuers. There’s a fire underneath the rubble, there is uncertainty as to the stability of this particular location. The authenticity of their communications plan, at least, has been I think, remarkable. I can’t tell you whether their response is remarkable, I don’t know any of that. That’s going to be something that we’re going to find out later. In the meantime, I’m not here to judge that. All I can say is they’ve done a very good job of telling people what’s going on.
Richard Helppie 42:21
There’s millions of condo units all over Florida with that same fundamental design, the concrete layers and such. And of course, given the awful state of our reporting industry, there were stories written about this as Governor DeSantis’ problem, or it’s somehow President Biden, or maybe maybe Governor Cuomo of New York, who sent lots of New Yorkers down to South Florida, I don’t know, but there’s that ilk as well out there.
Frank Supovitz 42:47
Well the blame part of the equation is so unimportant, in the heat of the moment. It’s not important, you almost have to take that and say, that’s part of the evaluation process. We’ll figure out who’s to blame, what was to blame, whether it was a structural failure or a design failure, the the ground wasn’t prepared, the materials were insufficient, we don’t know. We don’t know. And we’re not going to find out for a while.
Richard Helppie 43:14
We will not have a fact set for some time, but I will bet you coffee or beer or whatever you wish, that right now today, there are articles being written to pin blame on one political opponent or the other. (Frank: It makes good reading.) There’s a willing audience out there, even if it becomes disproven, they will hang on to that, which is of course, something we’re trying to fight against on the Common Bridge. Frank, just to be a little dangerous, any comment on the way our past president or perhaps our current president, is dealing with the pandemic crisis?
Frank Supovitz 43:48
Well, I’m going to stay out of the politic and go back into the factual because because I think it’s more important to deal with the factual and (Rich: absolutely, that’s what I’m asking.) I go back to the question of when you assign blame. You assign blame when you’ve got your facts straight. And then when you’ve morphed from, I think I know, to I definitely know, that’s a big difference. I’m going to compare and contrast the way that government handled the COVID crisis in the beginning with what happened, what’s happened in Florida with the business building collapse, as an example, and that is that they lost their authenticity early. And the reason they did was they presented facts, forgive the law analogy, not in evidence, right? At no time do I recall and I and you can correct me if I’m wrong, please do, where they said, We don’t actually know. (Rich: I agree.) But while we don’t know, here are the safest things for you to do. We need your help to do these safe things so that regardless of what works and what doesn’t, we have a better chance, but we don’t know right now. Instead it was, don’t wear a mask, then wear a mask, then wear a mask on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. I’m being somewhat facetious on the last point, but it had gotten to the point where you didn’t know who to believe or what to believe. And then the cast of characters continued to change. So you didn’t know if although many people speculated and certainly watch a new service, and they’ll tell you which ones, that when characters exited, it’s because they said something wrong or did something wrong or whatever, they lost their basis of authenticity and factual transparency early, and they could never get it back after that. And I think that was the biggest problem.
Richard Helppie 45:43
I concur, and I’ve said on this podcast or in other forums before, had, then President Trump gone out and said, Look, we don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with, we don’t know exactly what’s happened in China or Italy, or what’s happening in our own borders, we’re working hard to find out. And in the meantime, here’s what we’re going to do. You know, we’re going to make sure our hospitals are equipped, we’re going to fire up vaccine development. And if you’re out of work, because of no fault of your own because of the pandemic, we’re going to, you know, go to the Congress and make sure that you’re not going to suffer economically. And those are things they did, but they didn’t communicate them. And they never said we don’t know, which would have been the right public response.
Frank Supovitz 46:29
I think so. But it’s hard. It’s hard for a leader, any leader to say, I don’t know, because everybody’s looking to that leader for answers. And there’s this fear that if you say, I don’t know, but I’m going to find out, well, why don’t you know, and you should know. And, and so, you know, we get to that other character we talked about, about the people who are panickers and the people who are reactors and all that, you’ve got the critics. And there’s an awful lot of that out in the marketplace too, right? When it comes to COVID-19, that’s everybody. Lots of companies will be dealing with challenges that don’t find their way to the public mind. But they can, even if you’re not dealing with the public, you know, one of the people that you are one of the publics that you really have to keep informed, are your own staff. What is our company doing to take care of this problem, even if it’s internal to the company? And again, keep that authenticity. Keep that transparency. If you don’t know, I don’t know. One thing Roger Goodell taught me that I thought was a really incisive piece of advice, I would tell him something that I would want to do, and he’d say, “Well, why do you want to do that?” And I’d say because, this? And he said, “Well, do you believe that? Or do you know that? There’s a big difference.” And here again, is when you talk to the public, when you communicate with your staff, you have to know the difference between belief and you know, definitive knowledge. And you have to make sure you make the distinction.
Richard Helppie 47:59
I think you and I share a view on that. When 9-11 hit, a little less than half of the workforce in my employ, about 600 people were out on client assignments, that required them to travel by airplane. And the first thing we did after establishing a command post was, we want to hear from everybody by voice to voice and no other communication. And we told people on our corporate communication systems, that’s what we were doing. And I remember the relief, near the end of the afternoon where I was able to communicate, all of our people are safe. And we were working at the hospital closest to ground zero. We had a large contingency there, and outside the Pentagon as well. So that ability to again, your phraseology, I really like this, Do you know it? Or do you believe it? You know, don’t assume nag, go find everybody, fan out, check in, make sure we know where everybody is, you know, are they safe? Do they have a place to stay? Frank has any of your thinking changed with the pandemic about any of the great management and crisis management principles that you’ve been able to codify so well?
Frank Supovitz 49:17
It actually strengthened my belief in the theories that we’ve been talking about today. One being communication, and how many lives actually may have been saved by better communicating, not about vaccines, we’re talking about how to communicate and how to instruct people on what they need to do. A lot of people, they may want to be able to make their own decisions, and I think that’s the American way in many cases, but you know, they have to understand why you’re asking them to do something. The other thing that it brings to mind is that problems, don’t follow patterns, but solutions do and so when you think about Covid, you know there was clearly a public health crisis and that’s first and foremost, and saving as many lives and the health of as many people as possible, paramount. But from a business perspective, or and from a business perspective, what it also indicated was there were a lot of things that happened, that we could have been better prepared for. In some cases, we are prepared because businesses have cash flow emergencies, right? Well, this created cash flow emergencies, it created an emergency, that included people not being able to get to their place of business. Those are actually very common problems, that maybe they all happened at the same time and for the same reason, but they could have happened for other reasons too. A fire, civil disobedience, who knows. I mean, pick the thing, a transit strike, I’m in New York, we remember transit strikes. So you know, you could have a plan for those kinds of things, and then you roll those things out, and of course, change them as as you go along. But it really showed that regardless of the complexity of the problem, a lot of the response can be similar to things that you should have been prepared for or could have been prepared for better. I think the other thing that it’s done in terms of changing, is we think a lot more about the health and safety of our, in my business of entertainment and sports, we think about the health and safety of our participants, our athletes, our audiences, and everybody who’s in the stadium, in the arena, on the street, wherever it happens to be. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing to keep, in our minds. One of the things that that I started to talk about early on in this was because they were saying, well, we’re going to be taking people’s temperatures from now on. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing. If I’m going into a stadium with 74,000, 80,000 people, I wouldn’t mind if they checked to see who has 103 temperature and are they going to be standing next to me and on the line to the men’s room. You know, you have 103 temperature, honest to God, you shouldn’t be in a place of public assembly (Rich: Cheering loudly behind you.) Yeah, I mean, I, you know, we’re so attuned to saying, oh, when will we be able to stop taking people’s temperatures? I think we should be doing that, as a matter of public safety. And frankly, I think it’d be a tremendous public service to be able to say, I’m sorry, you know, Mr. New York Rangers fan. Today, you have 102.7 fever, we think you ought to see a doctor instead of coming to see the Rangers game.
Frank, this has been a great discussion. What did we not cover that maybe we should have? And perhaps, who ought to be reading your book or calling you for consultation and any closing thoughts that you might have?
Well, there’s tons of things we didn’t discuss. And that’s pretty natural of any interview. So we’ll leave it at that. You know, there’s, lots to talk about, maybe we’ll have an opportunity to chat again. In terms of who should read the book, you know, what I’ve been told is, it’s a great guide for people who are in small, medium and large businesses, just in terms of, again, being able to step away, take a look at how people, not just me, by the way, the book has stories about other people who have either handled a crisis well or not well, and it talks about some things at my expense; just in terms of things that went south on me that, you know, I wish I had done a little bit differently, maybe a lot differently. So I think it’s a great guide, in that regard. And of course, I’m going to say that since I wrote it, and I’d love for people to read it.
Richard Helppie 54:01
As a reader of “What to Do When Things go Wrong,” I will say it’s a lively read or a lively listen, and I think you captured it. It’s just a great guide, for anybody in any profession, whether you’re renting homes, or you’re running a project or you’re working on a scientific bench, whatever you might do. It’s just a really great guide to comprehensive thinking. I got mine at Barnes & Noble. I’m sure it’s on Amazon and elsewhere. But I would strongly recommend. Frank closing thought please,
Frank Supovitz 54:37
There’s no harm in getting help. When you’re, when you’re looking down the barrel of a bad situation, the reaction is frequently to try to contain it. And I get that, but get help, get help from people who can take something off your shoulders, people who have a little bit of expertise that you may not. You know, share the pain and you know, the more brains you have thinking about how to solve a problem the better off you are so you know, don’t keep it to yourself. The other thing at the risk of being mercenary is you know, check out the When Things Go Wrong podcast because there’s new points of view all the time about business, about sports, about crisis management about personal crisis management, and i think you know, I’m not going to tell you to go listen to every single episode. Pick the ones that resonate with you and that you know, follow your own life because there’s a lot to talk about. Things going wrong. It happens every single day and if it hasn’t happened to you it just hasn’t happened to you yet.
Richard Helppie 55:51
Any wiser words were never said. Frank, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you in terms of website or social media, which channels are you on?
Frank Supovitz 56:02
Well, you can you can find me on Twitter at @supevents. So it’s @supevents, you can find me of course on LinkedIn under my name, my website is fasttrafficevents.com. If you’d like to, you know chat with me there is a contact form, you know, fill it out, I respond very very quickly. My business is in the as as we’ve been talking about, in the sports and entertainment business, but so much, so much of what we deal with in terms of project management is so similar because that’s what events are; events are just these big, complex and very visible projects. So you know, if I could ever be helpful to any of your listeners, please don’t don’t hesitate to visit the website, fasttrafficevents.com and go to the contact page and get in touch.
Richard Helppie 57:00
And I do look forward to having you back as a guest in the future. We will put all the contact information up on RichardHelppie.com, as well as a link to a full bio on Frank Supovitz. This is Rich Helppie on today’s Common Bridge podcast and YouTube TV with Frank Supovitz, expert on crisis management, author, podcaster, consultant. Again I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast channel or channels including Apple, Amazon, Buzzsprout, iHeart Radio and Spotify. Please follow us on YouTube TV rate us if you will, rate as high please, and if you would like to please register for free at Richard Helppie.com we have some new products and services coming up that we want to be sure to share with everybody. This is Rich Helppie, your host Richard Helppie’s Common Bridge signing off with our special guest Frank Supovitz. So long.
Brian Kruger 58:01
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