After Action: The Anatomy Of A Decision
If you caught me last Thursday for a phone call, as many of you did, you might have been treated to an analogy I’ve now used way too many times. But hey, it fits. So I’ll tell you.
“I feel like Neil Armstrong, showing up on the big day. All strapped in the shuttle, fully trained for months and months, now very prepared, all ready to go. Only right before the countdown begins, someone comes over the loudspeaker and informs me they forgot to fuel the thing. ‘Go back home, Neil, we’ll be ready to go in a year.’”
Not in my wildest dreams would I – or anyone – expect this would be the outcome when we first began our efforts to host GovCity 3 in Austin for SXSW. We aren’t alone in this, obviously. The impact of just one event (or rather, thousands occurring under the umbrella of a “one”) is being felt the world over in many ways.
But you know what? Today, there are zero known cases of Coronovirus contracted at SXSW 2020 in Austin, Texas. And its certainly not because it didn’t sure as hell worm it’s way all over the globe to find itself knocking at the door, begging to be let in. A noble effort, pandemic, but nah.
My first conversation about the vision to take our tribe to SXSW 2020 happened in May of 2019. In another post, I’ll share that conversation, because it’s a special one — and it has to do with men supporting women. On BIG THINGS, in BIG WAYS. That isn’t normal or frequent, as much as you might suspect. Maybe you don’t suspect this. Maybe you’re thinking, “Duh, Molly.” Regardless, aside from one incredible female boss over a decade ago, my greatest mentors have been men who have kicked open doors and figuratively slapped me around when I’ve made mistakes I could learn from. All of them, have encouraged me to pursue big things. This one conversation was the moment I adopted just such a man in my life and added him to an arsenal of superheroes that have helped me realize my capabilities and kept me standing when I doubt the strength of those skills. I wish for every ambitious woman to meet even one man like this. I’m fortunate to have about a dozen. But I’ll tell you about this specific character another time.
In August, things got real about SXSW. Around Thanksgiving, deadlines arrived and deliverables began to lock down. The process to implement a SXSW activation is not normal. More specifically, from a government approach/typical gov procedures, you’re basically required to do everything backwards. It requires a lot of phone calls that sound like this,
“So, I can’t tell you the time and the place, but can you do it?”
I’m very fortunate to surround myself with people who don’t panic (too much) when I ask them this. You’d be shocked (or maybe not) how often I make phone calls with wild suggestions. You’d be even more shocked (or maybe not) by how many people jump in on them and help me take them to the finish line. I love a lot of people for their level of creative faith and grit in big ideas.
I recall a conversation around Christmas in which our planning crew had a very specific phone call. If I were to label this phone call, I’d name it the “We cannot turn back if we hit submit on this particular item,” phone call. It was our commitment call. Obviously, we made the commitment.
The back end hustle around creating a SXSW activation is unlike any I’ve encountered. And I’ve worked on some high energy projects over the course of my career. Big challenges fuel me, but I didn’t realize the magnitude of this one until we were all the way in it. On the bright side of the outcome, where we find ourselves today, I’m thrilled we went all the way to the event and had only seven days left to go. The gorgeous agenda we had crafted, the power in the room, the caliber and diverse contributions of our speakers, the conversations and connections that were set to take place.
A masterpiece.
The last seven days was all about, picking up t-shirts and ordering TexMex catering, remembering to eat and sleep so we were powered and ready to go — easy stuff. Behind us, was at LEAST seven months of some of the most complex puzzle-navigation, challenging human, event and collaboration work I’ve ever executed. Ever. And I shouldn’t use the word “I” either — because there were too many people, agencies and industry partners who poured sweat equity, real funds and time into the effort with us. Truly the most incredible collaboration I hoped for but never expected we’d surpass so impressively under the shared roof of GovCity. Not an over-exaggeration, it’d be impossible.
As we headed full speed into SXSW, we also held our second GovCity at Red Hat Labs in Boston in November. This allowed us the unique opportunity to test out some cultural experiments on our willing and creative cohort — which we further refined and wove the most well-received iterations into our SXSW plans. So there’s that. And that, was not an easy feat. But certainly an innovation exercise that I swear by today and we will continue to do.
To that end, GovCity is a living, breathing experiment. I don’t believe there will be a day that it is not that — that’s my goal, at least. While we withhold many of the finer details for various reasons, I am certainly vocal about many of our inner-workings. We can’t iterate and grow if I tell you that it’s all figured out. No, it will never be “all figured out.” How boring that would be.
Here’s one of those moments in these stories where I reiterate that I’m so proud of our team for taking on that intentional overlapping effort. A lot to bite off, a lot to chew, but I saw it as a critical step toward furthering the proof of concept that is GovCity. A very important step in our life, to lead to all other steps. Many people understand this, most have been to a GovCity, others just know me and have heard me passionately describe where I theorize we’re going with this effort — and I’m proud to know all of you crazy people and to be supported by you. You are alums, mentors, government employees, entire agencies, departments, startups, corporations, entrepreneurs, partners, and the rest of the crazies who have poured into GovCity at any point over our one-year journey. We’re a lean team by formal definition, but we are not a lean team when you count the heartbeats that surround us in the many wonderful ways they do.
I keep jumping around. Let me rein myself in here.
I need to hit on something that I’m not publicly known to discuss often because I hate to ruin my brand of flippant creativity and aversion to status quo.
I love…Process.
Please don’t tell anyone.
That’s where I am tonight, thinking about process. Every step of the way, this was process. I’m hoping to grab all the notes I’ve made along the way and officially document some of these thoughts and learnings because I believe it can be of value to the right person who reads it at the right time. To share the “process” that emerged from this exercise. I will gather a series of moves that we made that complicated or simplified our process along the way (I’d say equal parts bad and good), but I’m not going to put together a manual with step-by-step instructions of how to do this next year. I’m obsessing right now about the right way to capture the flexible fortitude that became the verb of our process.
One big part of the process, was the moment I turned off the lights.
We’re now one week post cancellation of our March 14 event (and the corresponding cohort which was to be March 13/14/15).
I made the final decision for GovCity 3 without guidance from the government, with the cancellation of SXSW preceding us, or leaning to anyone to make that decision for me. I tell you that part specifically because aside from very personal decisions we all have to make because well – we’re flawed humans who have chances to choose all day every day – it was the most difficult decision I’ve had to make. If I was alone in a bubble with no one, no entity, and no eyeballs to answer to, perhaps it wouldn’t have been so difficult. But to choose to lead something big, you better damn well accept that sometimes you’ve got to make really painful decisions. It’s the part most leaders don’t talk about in detail very often. I, obviously, talk about many things in detail.
I’ve spent many days this week running through moments that might be remotely same-weighted, and I can’t land on one. So for now, I’ll call it the hardest decision I’ve had to make…so far. Where we’re going with the GovCity effort, I’m sure there will be more. Uncharted territory requires those. It’s fun, challenging and horrifying, all at once.
Let me run through the anatomy of the decision. I’ll attempt to go in order of my thought process too, just for history’s sake. For me, it started on Monday evening. Three business days before we were the first all-government-focused “activation” (SXSW lingo) to pull our own power cord.
That Change.org petition is getting mighty big. Like…every hour. Every half hour. Is there a troll farm tending to this or is this just….okay yes, it’s this big.
The comments section of that petition has a very real and vocal focus aiming at the failure of “government” to make good decisions on behalf of the larger population. People are really scared. It doesn’t matter if it’s warranted by science or not (personal opinion). Big crowds of scared people are not to be ignored. Also, scared people need something to blame. I see why they’re pointing at the government. I’m not entirely in disagreement.
This is a reminder that I’m certain there are a lot of gov folks analyzing the situation and watching certain triggers – I know many of them. I like them. I know they mean well. They can only move as fast as their systems allow.
I hate that government is not so nimble that they aren’t just making the right decision before we have to collect all this heartburn and business impact. Government is not nimble. Ugh.
Wait a minute. GovCity exists because I believe --- nay, KNOW – that we can help with this. An infinite move toward enabling our government and the leaders within it to move faster, smarter, better, and see humans in our decisions. We are playing a role in this as we speak, why would we not do that in this very moment?
There’s no way in hell I can put that many incredible speakers and mini-sessions in one room for a 16-hour day and attract the general public into our space. Not if I want to sleep at night ever again. It’s all but guaranteed we would attract some of the world’s top entrepreneurs, startups and of course, our allies and friends in and around the government space to experience what we’ve designed. That is simply….irresponsible.
Sub-bullet: Here was the hardest point of the decisioning. The point to choose responsible over reward.
Let me call all the people. Everyone I can in the few hours that I have to do it. Sponsors, partners, speakers, stakeholders. Let me hear their voices and gauge the tones as I tell them we are shutting these doors.
As I pressed send on the email to our internal GovCity family on Thursday evening (about 200 people), a wave of relief just swept over me. More weight was lifted off my chest when I tuned back into the noise (I had turned off all things to deliver that note to our loyals) and discovered Capital Factory had cancelled their programming only a few hours before.
Even when you know you’ve done the right thing, you do still enjoy a healthy dose of regret and second thoughts. I was living this real-time, immediately wishing email had a better “I take that back” button. Making that decision before any officials did meant there was still a chance the show would go on all over town. That we had punched our partners, and ourselves, in the stomach with a premature decision, swirled around my mind.
After worrying about the care and feeding of our champions and tribe, then came the thoughts that revolve around the personal cost, financial hits and just, “Oh crap there’s so much work to do now to unravel this beautiful quilt we’ve worked so hard to stitch together so lovingly” repercussions that come packaged with a decision like that. But knowing others had and were doing the same – specifically knowing my longtime startup ally, Josh Baer, down in Texas startup land and his team were walking the same path that day, somehow made it sting a bit less. Misery loves company? Or in this case, it was more the comfort of sharing an experience no one else could fathom. Far more than a commitment of time, effort and care factor. Many of us were doing this out of belief and out of trust.
To the government agencies who joined us as partners, I KNOW how difficult it is to sell an idea internally, much less a new and completely alien one. To our industry partners, two of which were using this space to announce the biggest launches their businesses have ever undertaken. To the startups who were expecting the opportunity to pitch on our roof that afternoon, I know you’ve prepared and you were so ready. To the sponsors who bought in with the phrases, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” or “What do you need from me, here you go,” and the most loving one I received, “I will always stand for your greatness, I’m in. Always.” To our cohort of GovCity 3, I cannot wait to put you all together in a room at a socially distant spacing and introduce you to each other. Since I know what we have in store for you, I think you’ll be really excited to have been part of this uniquely experienced class. To our GovCity Council Board Members, oh the fun is just beginning.
Every fiber, every lesson, every human, every moment over the past seven months that blends into the recipe of GovCity 3 matters to me. Very much. You all have my deepest gratitude. And my commitment that this a great part of our journey, it’s sent me and many others into some very creative directions and ideas, many I’m thrilled to already be building on. Yes I would have loved to see GovCity 3 in action on March 14. But to be here, right now, is a perfect chapter to include in our story.
We aren’t postponing, or calling the next GovCity, “GovCity 3.” No, our next GovCity is GovCity 4. And while it makes absolutely perfect sense for other events/conferences to take their efforts online to accommodate today’s landscape, we’re not transforming GovCity 3 into a virtual setting. Our agenda is stellar, our speakers are legit, but putting on an event isn’t what we do — it’s the path to what we do. Virtual recreation doesn’t serve the intended purpose for us, our partners, our ecosystem. No, GovCity 3 has happened. In fact, it’s happening right now.
Obviously not as any of us planned, but experiences that are THIS unplanned, often make the best stories.
To the story of SXSW 2020, there’s so much more to tell. About 24 hours after we cancelled, the City of Austin officially declared a disaster. In those early hours, I’d definitely agree. It felt disastrous.
And then some really interesting things began to rise from the ashes. Not just for GovCity, but for our friends over at AFWERX, our friends at SXSW, our friends at Capital Factory. And many more.
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Carrier pigeon broke, opted for blog instead.
Molly Cain is the founder of GovCity, Host of the unpredictable dinner series, “Deviant Dinner,” and government ventures strategist. She is an internationally recognized business communicator, turned cultural futurist and ecosystem builder dealing in relational equity, Molly is in constant pursuit of answers to plug in where they’re not invited and good humans where they’re needed most.
