Own Your Own Fear: Decision Making – Part Five
Making key decisions is something that many fear as if these decisions are wrong, it can damage the reputation of a company, lead to death or injury or can have a huge financial impact on the organisation.
Making key decisions is often shied away from causing difficulties for others further down the line. We must ensure that the most appropriate person takes accountability and responsibility for the decisions made.
Many years ago during my formative years as a promoter and during the Brit Pop explosion, I promoted a very famous band at my venue. The event was going well until as the lead singer as he says in his biography,
“These dates had only one real hitch. At the Woughton Centre gig in Milton Keynes the band was banned from performing there ever again after **** jumped into the crowd with his bass and smacked a young fan across the head, sending him to hospital with slight injuries in an apologetic tour managers car……This was an isolated one-off accident and we’re really sorry about it.”
I was asked by my assistant what to do and I decided because of the nature of the incident that I would put a ban on the band from playing at the venue.
This may seem a bit harsh in retrospect but I was young and impulsive and a stickler for health and safety.
Given the nature of the incident and the health and safety of the crowd, I had to been seen to doing something to ensure the safety of the audience and to ensure that I had covered my back.
The next day we appeared in the newspapers with the headline “Band banned from venue”.
We had journalists ringing throughout the day, which we ignored.
I stuck to my guns as I believed that I was right and was ably supported by those who owned the venue.
Looking back, although it seemed a risky thing to do at the time, I gained a lot of respect from other promoters and managed not to damage the reputation of the venue.
The band was furious but it soon died away.
However, on the night of the Brit Awards, when the band went up to get an award the lead singer made a great speech thanking everyone except me he said,
“I would like to thank everyone for supporting us during this period apart from Clark Kent who banned us from his venue.”
I felt gratified that he had got my name slightly wrong and called me after Superman.
I still feel today that I made a stand for the right reasons and still maintain that the decision was the right one.
#decisionmaking #ownyourownfear #leadershipdevelopment #bealeader #thepitz #woughtonleisurecentre #britawards #livebandnights
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