As an event planner it is imperative to the success of your events that you follow the following axiom. Don’t hide the elephant in the living room. Let me repeat this, as an event planner it is completely unwise to hide the elephant in the room. Let’s first start with a definition of the term for those of you who are unsure what I mean by not hiding the elephant in the room.
An elephant in the room is a problem that everyone knows very well but no one talks about because it is taboo, embarrassing, etc.
As an event planner it is career suicide to hide the elephant. Let’s look at an example of two individuals who have had elephants and how they handled the elephant in the room.
Richard Nixon. President Nixon was considered by most to be on his way to becoming a great president UNTIL he decided that the Watergate issue was an elephant that needed to be hidden. The moment he went in that direction his presidency was completely ruined. Why you ask? Because eventually someone is going to see the elephant… because it’s an ELEPHANT and it’s IN THE ROOM WITH YOU! Even Nixon himself said as much when he made the following statement saying that he “was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy.”
Let’s take a look at how to handle an elephant. John F. Kennedy did this well. The Bay of Pigs incident which was an unsuccessful attempt by a CIA -trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support from US government armed forces, to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. As stated, it failed MISERABLY and that failure was indeed the elephant. A HUGE elephant at that, however Kennedy did exactly what you should do when there is an elephant in the room, he owned up to his part in having the elephant in the room and focused on what to do to get said elephant out of the room.
He did what Nixon didn’t do in that he acted decisively and forthrightly in dealing with the incident. In response the nation loved him and even to this day he is revered as a great president.
What does this have to do with event planning you ask? This has EVERYTHING to do with event planning. Event planning is fraught with situations where there can be elephants in the room. The caterer could be late, the DJ can have cancelled, the wedding cake could be chocolate as opposed to vanilla, you name it, it could happen. What you want to do when a situation arises IF you cannot resolve the situation by yourself, is to let everyone that needs to know understand that there is an elephant in the room and what exactly that elephant is. After that you need to let everyone, who needs to know, know exactly what you plan to do about the elephant.
This stance will do 2 things; first it will make you as an event planner appear to be responsible and professional and second it will let your client know that you are concerned with their event and whether it rolls out smoothly. It is ALWAYS better to not hide the elephant in the room.
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