MY SON had his 8th birthday party last Saturday. Apart from the bewildering realisation that he is growing up too fast, the day brought lessons for us as event organisers.
From time to time I have spoken of how information and experience translate into knowledge. I will use Junior's party to demonstrate the next step in the evolution of business decisions learning from our mistakes and seeing these as opportunities in the first instance, which is a core concept of any Lean or continuous improvement initiative.
When a situation like a gang of 8-year-olds descending on a venue (in this case Laser Tag) arises, you need to evaluate whether you are skilled or experienced enough to deal with it and make the right decisions. We had just successfully managed our daughter's 10th birthday party, a mid-year Halloween. This included 10 screaming young girls who generated more decibels than a jackhammer. We thought we could handle anything after that.
Lesson 1: Invariably all situations you face in business will be different to varying degrees. There might be some situations where you think you have all the skills and experience you need when consulting with an advisor could avoid a few or many pitfalls. In the case of Saturday's party we needed to reach out to others, "as no two parties are alike".
Handing our event over to an experienced professional was very much the right decision. Not only was I impressed that this is a business doing exactly what our economist friend (Mr Eaqub) prescribed (utilising existing resources and adding value to them), the team was professional, had a plan for our day, as well as different and exciting game options.
