What to Learn from an Awful Management Decision

  
Lots of folks were talking about this play last night and again this morning. When looking with the all knowing eye of instant replay it’s obvious it never stood a chance. But they snapped the ball anyway. 

Here is the disaster:

Coach Pagano quickly took the responsibility for not communicating clearly enough what had to be done in various scenarios. Good leadership there. But how did they get there?

They took a chance. They lined up hoping that the oddity of it would fool New England’s special teams unit and it didn’t. If it had then they might have picked up the line to gain. It was worth the risk. Since it didn’t work at all, there are a few things to learn:

1. If we are good leaders, we’ve had decisions go at least that badly. Most leaders don’t have to think back that far to remember when they tried something that seemed good at all the time but exploded from the word “go.”  Risk is necessary for leadership. Have grace on yourself when it is a disaster. 
2. Everyone saw it was bad but the one making the decision. Even the quarterback knew this wasn’t going to work; he was surprised when the ball was snapped. The one person that had to make the decision (the wideout tasked with playing center) couldn’t see it or didn’t know what to do. Football is too fast to get much feedback. But if someone could have spoken into his helmet they could have alerted to the impending disaster. The people with a little distance may be able save you if you can listen to them. 
3. If a few things had gone different, we’d be talking about the genius of it. Coach Pagano explained that the play had two ways to catch New England in a penalty (offsides or 12 men/substitution penalties). It also could have been a three yard run if New England had only put two men on the ball. And the escape valve was a delay of game that wouldn’t cost the punting unit at all. The difference between success and failure is sometimes small. 
4. Preparation matters. Snapping the football wasn’t the only mistake. The entire line was in a wrong formation. However much this was practiced, it wasn’t practiced enough to keep the ball from being snapped in a clearly losing situation or to keep the line from missing the formation. In this case better preparation would certainly have made the difference between a decent attempt at trickery and the disaster we saw. 

Rarely do our mistakes get played out in HD with the entire field in clear view. What can you learn from the Colts disaster that will help you lead?