Something Doesn't Feel Right

Greetings!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend. July is upon us and for kids here in Tennessee, that means they enter the home stretch of vacation before school starts. I’m glad we are over that season of life!

This week I’m going to try something new. The button at the top is for you to LISTEN to this week’s INNER CIRCLE post. Of course you can read it below by just scrolling down.

I started playing with the audio feature of Substack as I recorded the audio book of Get Your Mind Right! (By the way, you can LISTEN to the first few chapters of that book starting NEXT Wednesday! I’m really happy how it turned out. You can also get the paperback or Kindle version on Amazon).

Let me know what you think ok? You should be able to listen from the email but I think if you click it, you can also listen to it on your favorite podcast app.

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And now… Something Doesn’t Feel Right

It’s 4:00 AM on a Thursday morning in July 2016 and I’m dropping my rental car off at the Albany airport in New York. I’ve just spent a couple of days up in Montreal doing a workshop for a communications company. It’s much more convenient to fly Southwest to Albany and drive across the border than to have the headaches of navigating customs at Trudeau Airport in Montreal.

I’m flying home to Nashville, via Chicago Midway. It’s the first flight out which usually means zero headaches. Let’s hope that holds true this morning. I do everything I can to avoid a travel SNAFU. SNAFU is an acronym for Situation Normal All Fucked Up. I think the military invented that. Likely because it fits. I know. I was in the Navy for 15 years.

Albany is one of those airports where the National Car rental doesn’t have the Emerald Executive option which means you have to wait in line at the counter. That’s a giant pain in the ass. When you drive out though, you don’t need to stop at the gate. It’s a straight shot out. Then, a straight shot back in when you need to return the car. I park my rental and leave a half-filled water bottle in the cup holder. I open the trunk to get my bags and lay the key on the front seat. Then I head to the terminal.

Albany is a small airport, and nothing is open this early. I walk around for a bit, then get in line to wait for the Starbucks to open. Fortunately, I’m first in line. Finally, the green-clad barista unhooks the velvet rope, and we file into the shop. My order is easy. Grande Pike with room for cream and one of those overpriced Egg McMuffin knock-offs Starbucks sells. Everyone else orders a double foam cold brew, three pump mocha chai coffee with two shots, topped with Madagascar cinnamon and monk fruit sweetener. Complete with the little green stick that plugs the hole in your plastic lid. Thankfully, I’m ahead of them in line. I’d like to be able to enjoy my coffee sometime before Christmas. I head to the gate.

On the overhead pager, I hear a muffled announcement about flight delays. I walk over to the monitor and see that all Southwest flights are shown as cancelled. Apparently, there is a computer glitch.

The gate area is already packed with mostly vacationing families and the line at the counter is long, so I jump in and pull out my phone to call Southwest. The rep tells me they normally can’t switch my flights over the phone, but this was a big deal, and she would do what she could. She keeps apologizing profusely and manages to get me on a 10:30 AM flight to BWI with a connection at 4:20 PM to BNA via a quick stop in Cleveland. I will arrive at BNA at 6:40 PM. She sets it up and my boarding pass shows up on my Southwestapp. This is just one of many reasons I never check bags. I like keeping my options open. I thank her and then head off to look for a comfortable place to sit for the next 5 hours.

But something doesn’t feel quite right. Passengers (again, mostly travelling novices) are getting frustrated. I hear a loud scream and shriek coming from the direction of a young mom with a toddler who is having a meltdown of Biblical proportions. The mom, not the toddler. Then I see a group of Southwest flight attendants all talking. I hold my phone up to my ear pretending to be on a call and walk close by to eavesdrop. They are having trouble connecting to their dispatcher (from what I can tell) and none of them know what’s going on. SNAFU was turning into TARFU (Things Are Really Fucked Up). I have a decision to make. Things are probably going FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) and I don’t want any part of it.

I need to get home tonight. I have a local workshop in the morning. If things don’t get on track and my flight from Albany to BWI is cancelled again, I may not get a later one out and miss my connection in BWI. Also, I watched the weather reports the night before and there are thunderstorms forecast for the Midwest. This is normal in the hot summer afternoons. That could delay or cancel the flight going through Cleveland. I don’t want to spend the night on the airport floor. I’m usually too cheap to get hotels and spent more than a few nights sleeping in airports.

There is another option though.

I could drive the distance home.

Yes, it will be long but at least I know I’ll sleep in my own bed tonight. It’s a roll of the dice though. What if I drive it, and the FUBAR Southwest situation gets fixed? It’s a dilemma. I’m not sure what to do, but I better decide soon.

I opt to re-rent my rental car from National and drive home. It’s still sitting in the garage with the key on the front seat. And the still-cold, half-full water bottle. I start the car and plug in my phone for Google Maps. Travel time is 14 hours and 20 minutes. I start the car and head for the interstate.

It’s a long drive. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, then finally to Tennessee. I make it to the Nashville airport, where I need to turn in the rental and pick up my car, at 8:15 PM. The flight I was booked for, Albany to BWI, BWI to Cleveland, and Cleveland to BNA flight arrived well before that at 6:32 PM. A few minutes early. My decision to drive turned out to be the wrong one. I thought back on my process. Maybe this will help you. I had 14 hours and 20 minutes to think about it. It’s an acronym called OSGO.

O – Objective Data

When I knew there was a problem in Albany, I looked at what I knew:

· The flight was cancelled.

· Cancellations have a ripple effect.

· Summer flights are booked to capacity so it’s hard to rebook if you get cancelled.

· There would be storms in Cleveland.

· At the time, Southwest employees were still in the dark.

S – Subjective Data

I then reflected on what I assumed:

· At the time, I was flying about 3 weeks a month. 99% of the time, I flew Southwest. They are reliable but usually booked to capacity.

· I had already experienced computer glitches twice before, once on United and once on Southwest. It’s a mess.

· I saw the meltdowns at the smaller Albany airport. I didn’t want to see the probable mob at the much larger BWI where people would be getting cancelled out of vacation flights to Cancun, Aruba or Jamaica. There would probably be no place to sit and no open outlets to charge my phone or laptop.

G – Gut Feeling

Something didn’t feel right.

Based on previous experience, I just didn’t trust that my new, complicated itinerary would work.

So I decided to drive. And it was the wrong decision. So I then agreed to…

O – Own It

I followed the progress of the flight on the Southwest app at every stop on my drive. I felt good when I saw the Albany flight was delayed by 45 minutes. I was just a little bummed when I saw the flight left Cleveland on time. I was angry when I saw it landed at BNA and I was still driving through Louisville.

But I owned my decision. I used data and my gut reaction. Given what I had, it was the best decision.

Not to mention I came up with a new decision model I later used in my workshops, a new story, 3 new ideas for management curriculum, and caught up with an old friend on the phone. Overall, I think it was a win.

So what about you? When it’s a big decision how do you decide? Next time, think about how to OSGO your decision to prevent TARFU and FUBAR.

Have an AWEsome week!

ps. Next week starts my new sequence of posts. Tuesday is the regular, free INNER CIRCLE. Wednesday is the first part of Get Your Mind Right! Free for three weeks and then the paywall goes up. Thursday is an additional post for paid subscribers. But I’ll keep it free for a couple of weeks. Hopefully you see enough value to be a paid subscriber!