Four Lessons From the Oscar Envelope Crisis That Just Might Save Your Reputation

The fallout from the fiasco at the 2017 Oscars ceremony continues with accounting firm PwC nursing a huge black eye. The firm, which has an 83-year history with the Academy, and is  known for its attention to detail, mistakenly gave Best Picture presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway the wrong envelope, causing them to announce that “La La Land” captured the “Best Picture” prize,  when in fact, it was “Moonlight.”  The rest, as they say, is history, with a confused Warren Beatty and Fay Dunaway announcing that the wrong winner. Just as the “La La Land” team started their speeches, it was clear that there was an error, and they graciously relinquished their statuettes. “Moonlight” never got its full moment in the sun.

Let’s be clear that no one died or was seriously hurt by this mistake. PwC, however, will be the butt of jokes for a while, and may lose its contract with the Academy. The firm’s partners responsible for tabulating the results aren’t coming back. Even if PwC remains, the relationship has taken a huge hit.

Beating PwC up about the mistake isn’t very productive. The incident however, offers some powerful lessons for us all. 

Don’t Tweet/Text/Email While Doing Work

Tweeting, like texting or sending email, can be just as dangerous in the workplace as when driving. Multi-tasking takes your mind off the task at hand.  Research at Stanford University has shown that multi-taking isn’t good for us at all. It lowers cognitive function, causing us to be less productive than undertaking one task at a time. It makes sense. Imagine throwing the spear at the lion that is charging you, then stopping to Tweet to all your friends “About to kill the lion #dontgeteaten.” That would not work out well.  

Apparently, PwC partner Brian Cullinan, who is responsible for the Academy work, was tweeting a photo of Emma Stone just before the envelope handoff occurred.  That action distracted him and he took his eye off the ball. 

Be Fully Present

Reading your email while working on a project and talking on the phone is equivalent to having a conversation with someone and looking everywhere else around the room. It’s disrespectful, and chances are you haven’t really listened. Actively listening is essential for effective communication. 

When I attend conferences, I often live tweet. My rationale was that it was a good way to take notes, connect with others at the conference, and increase my followers. The reality is that, in the process of capturing the interesting nugget, using the right hashtag and crediting the speakers, I often miss out on the content. Yes, I have snippets of the talk, but they are all taken out of context. I often miss the full thrust of the remarks. My attention is bifurcated.  I’ve gone back to taking notes by hand so I can be fully aware of what is happening so that I can react and respond in the best possible way.

Avoid Complacency

Arrogance often is at the root of situations gone awry. In an interview with Huffington Post just a few days before the Oscars, Mr. Cullinan was asked what would happen if someone got the wrong envelope.  His response: “We would make sure that the correct person was known very quickly,” Cullinan said. “Whether that entails stopping the show, us walking onstage, us signaling to the stage manager — that’s really a game-time decision, if something like that were to happen. Again, it’s so unlikely.”

The operative phrase here is that he thought it was so unlikely that he and his fellow partner, Martha Ruiz, weren’t mentally prepared, and took longer than they should have to follow their own protocol. Complacency and arrogance set in when we have been at a task for some time and we feel we know what we’re doing. We let down our guard or we simply have blinders on and can’t see what’s come.

When we do crisis planning, we tell people to imagine the worst possible things that could happen. It’s not enough to plan for them. You have to make sure that people are prepared to act. That is why hospitals and emergency responders do drills so that when panic and shock set in, they can still act. 

Step Up – Fast!

On Oscars night, his film might have lost the most coveted prize, but producer Jordan  Horowitz wins. “La La Land” acceptance speeches had gone on for more than two minutes – a lifetime in TV time – while people scurried about behind them. It might have been PwC partners who cleared the fog. Or it might have been show host Jimmy Kimmel. Instead, Horowitz steps up, strides toward the mic, and says, “I’m sorry, no. There’s a mistake. ‘Moonlight,’ you guys won best picture.” And he followed it with, “I’m going to be really proud to hand this to my friends from ‘Moonlight.’” It was gracious. It was authentic. It had to be painful, but Horowitz proved himself a winner regardless of who held the gold-plated statue.In the end, the Oscars will go on, PwC will continue to be a great firm despite this stumble, and we all will appreciate great filmmaking that the Academy Awards celebrates. But let’s not forget that a tweet and our own complacency can create havoc. Just ask Brian Cullinan.

 This piece originally appeared on Huffington Post.