Life's a Lesson to be Learned

As we grow older and more experienced in both life and our professions, there's a tendency to think our expertise in any particular subject exempts us from learning from others. This is just simply not true as tacit knowledge - knowledge transferred from one to another through interactions/experiences - is abundantly available...if you care to look for it.

Last night, Downtown Champaign hosted its 16th Annual Parade of Lights which serves as Champaign-Urbana's official kick-off to the holiday season. 2016 was my third year serving on the committee that organizes the parade and second as the committee chair. The 2014 parade was my introduction to the parade, 2015 gave me the opportunity to help put a stamp on the festivities, by the time this year rolled around things were pretty much streamlined.

Thanks to a smooth planning season, we were extremely confident heading in to the day of event. What happened next? Knowledge!

Our pre-parade festivities started out with two bangs. The superhero scavenger hunt planned had far better attendance than we had anticipated, bang 1. Bang 2, there were only two noticeable absences from our roster, 2 of our four superheroes. As soon as we had resolved that issue, our VIP seating arrived to be set up and was 25 chairs short. Once sorted, we realized there were numerous issues with residents parked illegally - for context, when I say numerous I mean 8 towed cars compared to 1 in the previous 2 years combined.

All issues were sorted matter of factly and the only true public impact as a result was a 14-minute delay in step-off as we needed to wait for the final car to be removed from the route for safety reasons. We were prepped to handle each situation and did so accordingly. But I couldn't help sit there and think what could we have done differently as a committee to better handle the laundry list of obstacles that popped-up...I learned a lesson about there never being such a thing as too prepared.

These types of lessons are all around us as long as we keep our eyes open and are willing to accept them!