Patrick Mosher describes a failed facilitation in New York City where his core strength became a blind spot, then draws a parallel to the Titanic to show how confidence can mask fatal assumptions. He offers a rule: find the fatal flaw before it finds you, with three reflective questions leaders can use monthly to surface hidden risks.
Chapters
9 AM in New York City, standing in front of a large conference room with 24 executives, leaders of their 4 respective companies: New York, LA, London, and Singapore. Confident of my facilitation skills, we dove in, and by noon I felt beat up, exhausted, and grossly unprepared. My supervisor said he would take over facilitating the meeting for the afternoon. What happened? The week before the meeting, my supervisor and my team kept asking me with worried tones, "Are we ready?" And my response, "Trust me," or "I've got this," or "I'm a world-class facilitator." Overconfidence. I let my world-class facilitation skills block my view of what we needed to succeed. Have you ever gotten so good at something you slip into going through the motions? Most times this works. We get used to success and we prepare less. And that fuse is lit. It's only a matter of time. Our strength turns into a ticking bomb, our biggest blind spot. What is your core strength? That one characteristic that customers, collaborators, supervisors give you consistent A+ grade. Pay close attention to that core strength. Care for it like a precious tool in your workshop. Oil it after each use before putting it away. Before the Titanic set sail for its historic journey across the sea, the captain was quoted as saying, "I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel." Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that. Captain Smith was a seasoned sailor. He knew shipbuilding. He was extremely confident in the ship under his feet. He made a reasonable assumption. Shipbuilding had progressed in the prior two decades. Titanic was designed by the best designers and was built by the best shipbuilders of the era. Their assumption about the ship's strength was one of the factors that led to the Titanic's disaster. Assess your strengths as potential blind spots. Comprehensively and continuously challenge your assumptions about success. My wife once asked me about my favorite phase of a project, and I responded, driving to the, to the client on day one. And she responded, "So it's all downhill after that?" Well, that got me to thinking. When I start a new project, I'm always hugely optimistic. Contracting is complete. We nailed down all the scope, budget, and timing issues. Now let's get the work done and cruise to our destination in world-class style. Then reality sets in. It may not be day one, but it inevitably happens. Something wasn't clearly articulated in the contract. A deadline, a requirement, a responsibility. Learn from the hard knocks like that fateful day in New York. I developed a rule of thumb which serves me well as I engage any project. I'm an extremely optimistic person, so this may sound a little negative, but here's my ongoing assumption. Every project has a fatal flaw. Find the fatal flaw before it finds me. This rule keeps us vigilant as we continuously challenge assumptions of success. I've turned it into a challenging game. Find the fatal flaw. On every project, I discovered fatal flaws before they became, well, fatal. I wish I could say I always found them before they found me, But unfortunately, that's not true. Sometimes the fatal flaw found me first. It was like getting a chunk of my leg bitten out by a very mad dog. Fortunately though, the wounds were never fatal. Whether I found that fatal flaw first or it finds me, bringing up a potential fatal flaw is never fun or easy. It may mean a reallocation of resources, an adjustment of budget, or a sliding of a deadline. Ouch. Think about your most significant project and answer these 3 questions to challenge your assumption about being unsinkable. The first one: What are 3 risks of going through the motions with your core strength? Number 2: What assumptions are you making that may be overoptimistic? Consider timelines, scope, resources, and results? And number 3, what monthly practice will you put in place to stay vigilant to find fatal flaws before they find you? I shudder when I think about that fateful day in New York City. Relieved of duties, I felt defeated. I felt like I had not only damaged our credibility on the project, but possibly damaged the long-term relationship with the client and the possibility of future work. I even wondered if I would lose my job. While waiting for the cab to go to the airport that evening, I felt like crawling into a hole. Where could I go? Jamaica. That's it. Instead of going home, I could just fly to Jamaica instead. No one would miss me. As the cab slowed down on 6th Avenue, I threw my bag into the back seat. "Where you going, mon?" I looked up to see the cab driver wore a multicolored Rasta cap. He had a broad smile on his face, and I smiled. "To the airport, please." On the ride, we talked about places to visit in his homeland of Jamaica. The universe smiled on me that day and gave me a sliver of hope and a wisdom story to share. No ship is unsinkable. By continuously assessing your assumptions about success, you can miss the icebergs that can sink your ship. Find that fatal flaw before it finds you. Cruise to your destination. Well, Unsinkable is one of the risk assessment components of our Titanic Diagnostic. Check out the other 9 on our Titanic Diagnostic app in the Apple Store.
