Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Do Event Planning Backwards Only If You’re the Gambling Type

When planning for a major event involving multiple parties and agencies, particularly when multiple specialties are involved, effective communication is absolutely critical.  Everyone needs to understand who’s in charge, where they will get information from, and who they will give information to.  You need to have a solid command, control and communication (C3) structure in place and make sure everyone understands it absolutely clearly.

Unfortunately, sometimes things are completely backwards.

I am struggling right now, trying to piece together just what the C3 structure is for a particular series of events.  On the one hand, I have agencies that I’m helping asking very reasonable questions related to the C3 structure.  They need to know where they will be getting information and direction from, and whom they need to inform of developments on their end.  On the other hand, I have an overarching planning apparatus that (a) isn’t saying much, and (b) appears to still be working out the C3 structure.

Once you know who the players are, the C3 structure ought to be one of the first things you decide upon and clarify with everyone.  Once the roles, responsibilities, command and communication are all established, each party then goes off to plan for themselves how to do what they need to do.  That would be the sensible way to do things.

Unfortunately what I’m seeing right now is something almost completely backwards.  Each area seems to have planned for their own portion, and now everyone’s trying to figure out how we all tie it together.

It’s going to be a jerry-rigged ship that we’re launching into the water.  If everything goes smoothly, nobody will mind it and people will say, “See, there was nothing to worry about!”  If anything goes wrong, though, everyone will know that we are not in a high-performance ship and our ability to resolve things well will depend far more on individual heroics than should be needed.

If you are responsible for leading a team, organizing an event, or pulling anything together that involves more than just yourself, you’ll benefit greatly from making the C3 structure absolutely clear to everyone right from the start.

Or, if you’re the gambling sort, feel free to do it ass-backwards and hope everything goes well!