Here’s an uncomfortable question:
Who could get the flu tomorrow and cancel your circus?
That’s another one of the lessons I wrote down after visiting the Ringling Museum in 1997.
The show must go on.
Think about what that meant for a traveling circus.
You couldn’t have one trapeze artist who was the only person capable of doing the act.
You couldn’t have one person who knew how to get the elephants into the ring.
You couldn’t have one guy who knew how to raise the big top.
Because thousands of people had bought tickets.
They were coming at 7:00.
And the show was going to start.
Nobody cared that Larry called in sick.
The show must go on.
That’s a useful test for any business.
Look around at the people involved in delivering what you promise and ask:
If this person disappeared tomorrow, what would stop?
Sometimes the answer is frightening.
And sometimes…
the person is you.
There are businesses where one person has all the knowledge.
One person has the relationships.
One person knows how the system works.
One person has the passwords.
One person can solve the problem when something goes wrong.
Everything looks perfectly fine…
until that person isn’t there.
That’s what I think of as a single point of failure.
The circus couldn’t afford many of those.
They needed understudies.
Backup performers.
People who knew how to step in.
Processes that could be repeated.
The ability to deliver the show regardless of what happened behind the curtain.
And that’s an interesting distinction.
The goal isn’t to make everybody replaceable.
It’s to make the promise reliable.
Your customers shouldn’t have to wonder whether they’re going to get what you promised because somebody is sick, on vacation, overwhelmed, or unavailable.
They bought a ticket.
They’re sitting in their seats.
The curtain is about to open.
And they expect the circus.
So the question is…
Who could get the flu tomorrow and cancel your circus?
Once you know the answer…
you know exactly where to start.
The audience doesn’t need to know how the elephants got there.
But somebody besides Larry should probably know. :)
Dean