My “No Pelicans” Moment
Alright, let me tell you about a time I learned a thing or two about predictions. It wasn’t about sports, not directly anyway, though the name stuck in my head. It was during a project I was managing a few years back. We were rolling out a new system, something I’d poured months into designing and testing.
I was absolutely convinced it would go off without a hitch. I mean, utterly certain. We’d done simulations, tested components, everything looked green. I remember telling my team, “Guys, this launch is a sure thing. It’s like going to the coast and expecting to see pelicans. They’re just… there. It’s predictable.” Yeah, I actually said that. That was my “pelicans prediction”.
So, based on this rock-solid belief, we pushed forward aggressively.
- We set a tight deadline.
- We maybe didn’t build in as much buffer time as we should have.
- We communicated to stakeholders with absolute confidence.
Why worry? The pelicans would be there, right? The system would just work.
Launch day arrived. We flipped the switch. And guess what? No pelicans. Not a single one. The system didn’t crash and burn spectacularly, but it had these weird, specific bugs under real-world load that none of our tests caught. Integration points we thought were solid started acting flaky. Performance wasn’t what we projected in certain key areas. It wasn’t a disaster, but it definitely wasn’t the smooth sailing I’d predicted.
We spent the next two weeks in frantic firefighting mode. Long nights, stressed team members, awkward updates to stakeholders. It was humbling, to say the least. My certainty felt foolish in retrospect. Those predictable pelicans? They decided to go fishing somewhere else that day, apparently.
What did I take away from that mess?
Well, for starters, I stopped making predictions with quite so much swagger. I learned that testing can only cover so much. The real world always has surprises. Now, I still aim for success, I still plan meticulously, but I always, always build in contingency. I think about what happens if the pelicans don’t show up. What’s Plan B? Plan C?
It made me a more cautious manager, probably a better one. You prepare for the best, sure, but you have to be ready for things to go sideways. So yeah, that’s my “no pelicans prediction” story. A reminder that confidence is good, but humility and a backup plan are better.
