Expect the unexpected

Original post:  Oct 25, 2012

Why don't things work out the way that I planned?

In my mind, everything just seems to resolve itself. I am always capable of that maximum effort. All of the project deliverables are completed perfectly and on time. Every team member outperforms expectations and we come in under budget and exceed our original projections.

Unfortunately, real life often falls well short of those meticulous plans. A missed meeting here, a minor setback there and soon the whole enterprise seems to border on chaos.

Some recent project work has run into unanticipated hurdles. Some of them were due to the ambitious and aggressive timelines set. Others were the result of quirks in the system that we had yet to encounter. Still others are the natural result of trying to gain familiarity with something new and different. It takes some time to learn how a system operates and to adapt your own processes to fit.

I was watching the World Series last night. I had expected a tight, well-pitched ballgame. When I turned it on, it was only the third inning. Justin Verlander, widely considered one of the best pitchers in baseball, had given up a run in the first but it was still a taut affair. He threw a well-placed pitch that was chopped over to third base. It looked like it would be a routine groundout that would only be close because of the speed of the batter. All of a sudden, the game took a most unexpected turn.

Instead of bouncing up into the third baseman's glove, the ball glanced off the third base bag and caromed off into left field. The runner alertly kept going for the softest hit double you will ever see. Verlander would have to face at least one more batter. Marco Scutaro then put up a terrific fight and lined the ninth pitch of the at-bat into center field to score a run. Pablo Sandoval followed that up with a home run.

In what seemed to be the blink of an eye, you could argue that one bad break ended up changing the entire course of the game. If the runner is thrown out (as would likely happen 99 times out of 100), the inning is over and it is possible that none of these later events occur. But it did and they did and there you have it.

I wonder what twists turns are in our own futures.