So, I tuned in to watch the Academy Awards yesterday and The Jerry Springer Show broke out.
You’ve probably either seen the footage or, at the very least, heard or read about it … but the event that’s supposed to celebrate stars, celebrity and cinema is dealing with the fallout from a hit that nobody saw coming.
Especially Chris Rock.
It’s a reminder … and a pretty dramatic one, at that … that even at the most meticulously planned events, things can go wrong.
And that, whilst we’d like to think that our professionalism and expertise can handle the situation when they do, it should be our professionalism and expertise that prevents as many of them from happening in the first place.
If someone was to make a movie about this issue, it would be called Event Management vs Risk Management: The Reckoning.
Event Management and Risk Management do need to live side-by-side but, generally speaking, they don’t like each other because they are such opposites.
There’s three main reasons for this:
1. Firstly, Event Management, on the whole, is about MAXIMISING POSITIVE OUTCOMES, whilst Risk Management is about MINIMISING NEGATIVE OUTCOMES.
2. Secondly, the number of positive outcomes an event can tolerate is limitless. No-one has ever had to plan what might happen if everybody at an event enjoyed themselves a lot more than expected!
But the number of negative outcomes that can be tolerated at an event has always been a more constricting number. Zero.
3. And, finally, Event Planners design events that are based on the premise that everything they’ve planned is 100% going to happen. Risk Management deals with things that are 99% UNLIKELY to ever happen.
But, whilst there are plenty of differences between Event Management and Risk managent, I'll let you in on a secret little connection that they have: you know that wonderful tingly feeling we get when we’re working on a live event … which we like to call adrenaline, which we've missed for two years in the pandemic? About 50% of that joyous, addictive buzz is actually caused by the possibility that, at any moment, something could go terribly, terribly wrong!
Of course, to be a successful event organiser, you need to minimise the chance of that happening and, last year at ICCA’s inaugural Canada Congress I interviewed US lawyer and risk management expert Steven Adelman and he shared a terrific outline of how best to manage risk. I’ll share that with you now:
Step 1. Gather Smart People and Event Stakeholders
Anybody who understands and cares about the risk profile of the event.
Step 2. Answer The Question “What Could Go Wrong At My Event?”
Step 3. Triage the Risk
Identify those things that carry the MOST REASONABLY FORESEEABLE RISKS.
Step 4. Identify Your Tools
What means do you have available to mitigate those risks?
Steven says this systematic method makes you as prepared as possible for the most likely glitches. Which brings us back to this year’s Academy Awards and what can we learn?
DID THEY CHOOSE THE WRONG MC?
Definitely not. Primarily because Chris Rock wasn’t the MC. That role was shared by Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes and Regina Hall and they did a great job in a difficult gig.
Chris Rock was just announcing the Award for Best Documentary.
But his performance is a great reminder that ANYONE you allow to come to stage or to have access to a microphone becomes a REPRESENTATIVE OF YOUR EVENT.
When you’re making your “What Could Go Wrong?” List, as suggested by Steven Adelman, you should consider ALL the people who are likely to speak at your event, and how they may or may not affect the audience.
I would hope that very few would be considered likely to offend delegates (though stand-up comedians, as Chris Rock proved, are always high-risk, especially in our current age of wokeness, inclusivity and sensitivity).
But I would suggest that almost as detrimental to an event is someone being on stage for 20, 30 or 40 minutes who bores your audience (especially if your audience has paid for the privilege).
So, according to Steve Adelman's Risk Mitigation Playbook, you need to identify what tools you have at your disposal to reduce the risk of a bored audience.
These should include:
a presentation skills session for your speakers
Using a professional wordsmith to write an important speech or go over an existing one to insert personality and engagement?
Have someone turn your PowerPoint slides into an engaging support for your speech
These can be relatively inexpensive ways of reducing the risk of creating a bored audience … or boredience, as I like to refer to them.
WHAT ELSE CAN WE LEARN FROM THE SMITH SLAP?
1. THE HIGHLY UNEXPECTED EVENT DOES HAPPEN.
As if we needed reminding of this after all these years of pandemic!
2. EXPERIENCE COUNTS
Whilst people have been critical of Chris Rock’s comments in the lead-up to the slap, his reaction AFTERWARDS was far more professional and fitting.
His EXPERIENCE as a stage performer showed as he put the show first, and his own predicament second.
He’s no hero, of course, but he took a few seconds and, instead of seeking revenge or escalating the incident in any other way, he made a couple of brief comments then moved on so that the impact on the rest of the show was minimised.
If something unexpected was to happen at your event … and something unexpected WILL happen at some stage … do you have someone who can handle it and salvage the moment?
It reminds me of a black-tie Awards Night I MC’d where part of the makeshift stage folded in on itself as two award winners were having their photos taken.
There was an audible gasp from the crowd as the winners disappeared from view. I honestly didn’t immediately know what had happened, or what I was going to do about it to salvage the mood of the evening, but when I walked across to check they were okay and helped them back on stage I got a feeling of clarity I had never felt before.
I strode calmly back to the lectern and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m happy to say they’re ok. It was just a stage they were going through”.
The audience laughed and knew that it was ok to do so. And you could feel the tension and worry that had filled the air, disappear.
3. EVENT ORGANISERS MAY ORGANISE BALLS, BUT DO THEY HAVE THEM?
Will Smith walked up to another human being, hit him, then sat back down, almost as if nothing had happened. Not only that, but a little while later, he walked back on stage, this time to accept an award of his own.
Is it just me or does something seem not right about this?
Sure, Chris Rock’s joke was in very poor taste. And Will Smith was totally within his rights to be offended. But there is a hierarchy of unacceptable behaviour, and physical violence always rates worse than offensive words (in my book, anyway).
By allowing Will Smith to remain in the room after committing what was, technically speaking, a crime, the Academy raised a whole lot of questions about its level of ethics, morality and even its safety priorities.
Event organisers would do well to figure out where they stand on these sorts of matters BEFORE they ever happen.
Of course, they can’t guarantee that everyone is going to love everything they hear … but they need to know what they will do if someone says or does something outrageously inappropriate on stage.
Especially if it means going head-to-head with an industry heavyweight. Or the CEO of your client.
Where is your line? Have you ever thought about what would have to happen to make you want to get someone off stage? Or out of the conference room?
And how would you actually make it happen? I've had to remove someone from the stage only once in my career as an MC ... and it's not easy or pleasant.
I know it seems like an extremely unlikely circumstance but, as I'm trying to stress in this article, these days you can’t rule out ANYTHING as impossible.
Except, perhaps, Chris Rock being on Will Smith’s Christmas Card list.
Darren Isenberg is one of Australia’s most booked and re-booked Corporate MC’s and Presenters. He also speaks to groups on how to improve their Positive Influence and the Presentation Skills.
You can learn more about him by heading to www.dipresents.com.au or by asking his kids. But don’t talk to his mother. She still has no idea … but thinks he’s great at whatever it is anyway.