Dealing with Disaster

A two-part, 30-45 minute session to build thoughtfulness and resilience around common presenting problems.

Be aware that participants may find it worrying to consider what could go wrong – I reckon that this exercise is best if it reduces anxiety. To work well for me, this exercise needs to be particularly playful and full of laughter – and I need to remember to get everyone's buy-in before starting this topic.

You'll see from the examples that this was built to be used in the SpeakerPrep workshop. I've used similar exercises at clients to explore unthinkable futures on projects and for products in use: the very different stakes in those circumstances mean that I need to take care not to enable the group to manage corporate anxiety by trivialising distant impacts.

What disasters?

Workshop in groups – set group size and tasks to allow 5 mins work, 5 mins debrief.
Q1: What disasters might happen (3 mins)
Q2: Classify those – aim for a small handful of classifications (2 mins)
Debrief: Each group to tell the room 1) your classifications 2) a couple of examples per

Facilitators to:

• give visibility to all (and support memory) by writing up
• make disaster safe by ¿delighting in the failure? ¿peer work? ¿owning failure?
• Fill in the gaps: Give the room the chance to offer situations that don’t fit any existing classification. Facilitators should offer situations whose broad family haven’t been considered (i.e. if the room’s only got tech issues). See examples below if uninspired.
• Quietly assess classifications – why are these classifications in use here? Are the classifications focussed on source, situation, response – and what can be learned if not?

How to deal with it?

Prime the room to consider:

• response vs reaction
• who’s frustrated by by the problem, who has the power to fix it, who feels ownership / will be embarrassed by it
• resources that can address it: organisers, allies, younger you.

Form groups again. Different ones?
Pick things to work on, based on classifications / examples.
5 mins to workshop responses / ideas
5 mins to prep a 1-minute summary

Deliver summaries – facilitators to write up a flipchart sheet for each
Open floor to conversations, add to flipcharts.

Facilitators to post on walls / add to this on GitHub.

Example classifications and some approaches to dealing with it

Sources: Things that the presenter is bothered by, can fix – ie technology failures

• Have you got an alternative, and are you prepared to switch?
• Can your message do without the thing that’s gone? Do you need to restructure? Tell rather than show?
• Can you truncate the talk?
• Can you put the failed thing later?
• Do you have an ally in the audience who can work to fix while you continue?
• How can you prepare for common failures, or for high-impact failures?
• Can you choose more-resilient tech?
• Can you deliver your message without tech?

Situations: Things you can’t control or prepare for / Situational problems

• Stay calm
• Involve the organisers
• Involve the audience
• Q: Acknowledge, or ignore?
• Q: Is this your problem, the organiser’s, the venue’s?
• Q: you’ve got people’s attention – do you keep it and lead, or defer

Responses: How to cope

• What needs to be dealt with? The message, or the problem?
• Some things don’t matter.
• Be on the audience’s side – they’re on your side. Empathise with what they want / need – message / information, entertainment, leadership.
• Stay calm, recognise a proportional emotional response. Respond, rather than react. Be aware that you’re probably already over-alert.

Example disasters

• Someone in the audience becomes ill
• Someone storms out
• The audience starts to leave
• Your interactive workshop has too few people in it
• Your interactive workshop has too many people in it
• No one shows up
• You’re forced to delay the start by 15 minutes – but not the end
• The projector dies
• There’s no sound
• Something worked before the talk, and fails after the talk starts
• Your laptop dies and you rely on slides
• Your demo doesn’t work
• You need the internet. There is no internet.
• You get dreadful news just before you go on
• You forget what you’re going to say next
• You spill something
• Fire alarm
• An organiser interrupts
• Your phone goes off
• Someone emails you mid-talk, and their email comes up on-screen
• Your screen shows the audience sensitive information
• Hecklers
• Code of conduct issues
• You say something that you instantly regret
• You reveal sensitive information about your project / organisation / client