Failed! The fact this was the first time ever, in 12 years, didn't make letting a client down any easier to accept.

Our job, put simply, is to deliver professional speakers to conferences, client events or corporate briefings. We are not concerned with the marketing, the logistics, the entertainment, not even the programme, really; usually just to inject that special individual into an event session.

I say 'just', but there's actually a long process of things that really have to happen for an event manager to get to that very point on the agenda, on that specific day, where is all comes together triumphantly. For us, it means a journey from the initial briefing, pulling ideas together, proposing and consulting on the right fit with our client, securing an equitable deal, and preparing the speaker for the presentation. Oh, but then there's also the speaker logistics.

When I think of all the things that go into pulling off a successful event, I often joke that it's a bit like a golf swing: there are so many moving parts -- the stance, the grip, the swing, the head position etc -- it's almost a miracle you hit the ball at all, let alone sweetly, straight down the fairway! Yet straight down the fairway is what it has to be, every single time! Yet, even if a few things are not quite right in the lead-up phase, a few wobbles along the way you have to rectify, what ultimately matters is that crucial moment when the club hits the ball, or when the speaker steps up to deliver their insights.

Although I digress a little off the main thrust of this blog, my point is that it may only take one thing to go wrong to potentially produce a bad outcome. The manager of an event, sometimes with a partner like us involved, should recognize that this perfect outcome (the expected outcome) will not just happen by accident; we always need to be thinking one step ahead throughout the process and to think "what could go wrong?"

For over twelve years I have declared proudly that we had never once let a client down with gaping hole on their agenda, though I quietly go into a cold sweat thinking about some of the near-misses we've had! But the fact remains, if there were problems we could solve, we solved them, sometimes thanks to some heroic efforts on the part of the speaker. There's collectively an overriding sense of duty to the notion that 'the show must go on', with the audience ideally oblivious to the drama of the remedial action involved.

So much about hiring a speaker can indeed be managed, so if the results are not good you really only have yourself to blame; did you really plan thoroughly enough? did you actually invest and select quite the right person? did you work hard enough to provide a proper briefing? were you diligent enough in all the preparations? did you have some level of contingency planning in place?

But sometimes some thing comes along you just can't manage. Earlier this week, Hong Kong was hit by Typhoon Mangkhut, the most intense storm in the territory's recorded history. Only now are we are only beginning to hear the full extent of its destruction, particularly in the Philippines, and we are saddened by this. It makes all our talk about disrupted flights and cancelled conferences seem trivial in comparison, and our prayers go out to those who suffered. But this blog is not about about this natural disaster, it's about managing events.

My point is that this storm didn't suddenly appear on Sunday; we know that this is typhoon season, and we had more than five days' warning that this might well hit Hong Kong. I sympathize with conference managers having worked on a project perhaps for up to nine months only to see their efforts literally blown away. Mother nature often makes us realise how vulnerable we really are. While most things we can manage, others -- like extreme weather -- we cannot, however we can try to anticipate and minimize the risk and make contingency plans.

My job this week was simply to get one speaker from Hong Kong to Bali. Our original contingency plan catered only for the possible cancellation of a Cathay Pacific flight. Easy. But the prospect of finding all flights out of Hong Kong being grounded with no option to fly out earlier or later posed an altogether different problem. On Tuesday we started to wonder. On Wednesday we were started to worry. By Thursday -- arguably we should have started earlier -- we were dropping everything to look for alternative routes and, without even telling the client this, looking for possible alternative speakers to fill in. We quickly exhausted all possible alternative travel options. Rearranging the speaker slot time was out too. It left only three possibilities: a. suggest a video link presentation, b. find an alternative speaker, or c. abandon the session altogether.

Although we had started to investigate the live video option, and despite we miraculously identifying not one but two top-notch speakers who could have stepped in, consultation with the client, the decision was sadly the latter.

I sat at my desk late on Friday evening, staring out the window contemplating our apparent failure. If you lose a game of sport, or lose a sales pitch at work, or lose in some other way in life, and know in your heart of hearts that there was more you could have done you, if you had been more resourceful, if you had been better prepared, better equipped, simply tried harder ... yes, it should bother you! But we had done our best, and that was soon rewarded when my client wrote to acknowledge how many hours we'd put in to try to make something work, and to tell us how truly very appreciative she was. If you do everything you can to avoid the risks and to rectify problems, no one can expect more. She added, "It means a tremendous amount to me that you were able to go to bat for us. Thank you again." If that's failure, I can live with it.