Written by “The Olympics have the power to bring the world together, to inspire, to show what’s possible,” said World Health Organization boss Tedros Adhanom. He added, “May the rays of hope from this land illuminate a new dawn for a healthy, safer, and fairer world.”
Yet, the opening ceremony for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is tomorrow, and there is still uncertainty regarding whether the games will be allowed to go on. Chief of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, Toshiro Muto, declined to rule out a cancellation of the games if COVID-19 cases continued to spike. Muto is likely trying to appease Japanese citizens, who largely oppose going on with the games amid Japan’s current surge in cases and slow progress in carrying out vaccinations.
A cancellation is unlikely. The International Olympic Committee, which has the final say, has made it clear that the games will go on, with strict protocols and without fans.
Tedros believes that the games can be a great example and will allow its organizers to show leadership to the world. He went on to criticize the leaders of the G20 nations for not already ending the pandemic with a fairer distribution of vaccines.
That’s a fair point. We need more leadership. Our leaders could start by coming up with a better strategy than hoping everything will be OK. How’s that working so far during the pandemic? We hoped the virus wouldn’t spread across the globe. We hoped washing our hands, social distancing, and wearing a mask would help stop the spread. We hoped testing and tracing would work. He hoped we could create an effective vaccine and, when there were four of them, we hoped we could get people to take them. We hoped it would all be over with by now, and we could go back to acting like we were back to normal.
Hope is a beautiful thing, but it is not a strategy. In my years of managing projects, I learned there was no more dangerous red flag than when someone used the “H-word” in a status report. When someone says they hope to mean a deadline, they acknowledge a goal while absolving themselves of committing to it. “Tell me what you will do,” I would always say in response.
I have a framed miniature version of one of those positive thought posters I always keep in my office, titled “LEADERSHIP.” It has a picture of a lighthouse surrounded by crashing waves. It says, “Leadership is about capturing the imagination and enthusiasm of your people with clearly defined goals that cut through the fog like a beacon in the night.”
Leaders turn visions into achievable plans and communicate who needs to do what to deliver by when. They manage expectations. When the plan goes off course, good leaders develop a new plan and start all over again. Bad leaders carry on and hope it works out.
I want the Olympics to happen. I want to enjoy them and see the athletes compete for a chance at achieving their goals. However, our leaders are doing a poor job of managing our expectations against a lousy plan.
Let’s start with the plan. It sounds like a Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler “Really!?!” sketch from Saturday Night Live. We bring eleven thousand teenagers and young adults together from 203 countries across the globe to a densely populated island for a two-week event during a resurgent pandemic. We house them together in a compound with cardboard beds and expect them to behave. We don’t require them to be vaccinated but put them under strict protocols. We don’t allow their families to join them and prohibit fans of any kind from attending the events. Really!?!
The “bubble” approach worked well for professional sports. However, they were much easier to control. The scale was smaller, with fewer athletes from fewer places. The athletes were older and represented by their players’ unions. Seasons were much longer, allowing leagues to reschedule games if needed.
UEFA successfully ran its Euro 2020 tournament this summer, an event with more comparable scope to the Olympic games involving multiple countries and a condensed timeline. Along with being significantly smaller, it benefitted by ending nearly a month earlier ahead of the surge caused by the new “Delta Variant.”
Ugh, here comes the H-word. Like all of us, the organizers hoped it all would be over by now. Considering the high stakes involved, they could have used a better strategy. Why not think outside the box or have a backup plan on the location? Instead, they assumed they could take their original schedule and add one year. Does that cut through the fog like a beacon in the night?
They also could have done a better job at managing our expectations. Not only are there a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but they all also seem to be saying different things with an underlying message of “the show must go on.”
To set expectations properly, you have to communicate the expectation, gain a buy-in commitment from all parties involved, and establish consequences to maintain accountability. The motivation behind the expectation should be clear. Is it the safety of the players? Is it to bring the world together and show us what is possible? Or, is it to make good on its commitments to the broadcast networks and the sponsors?
Certainly, someone somewhere could have envisioned the current scenario and guided us through a thoughtful decision-making process. Instead, we are on the eve of last year’s Olympics, scratching our heads wondering why they went forward with it, and hoping that Simone Biles and the other athletes we want to see go through the next two weeks without a positive test.
Really!?!