A Week for the Ages
Scott Adams
The first full week of April 2017 was a doozy, in more ways than one.
Here in Georgia, it’s known as Master’s Week. As the week started I could feel my excitement growing for all the activities I had ahead of me. On Monday night, my 70-year-old father arrived at my house so that we could go to the Masters the next morning. He told me years ago that seeing Augusta National was a bucket list item. I didn’t realize though how rewarding the experience was for me to walk alongside him. We walked nine miles that day. Motion is medicine, as my good friends at DJO say. My father, who walks on average five miles a day, literally walked circles around me on that course.
The next activity for the week was the Hall of Fame dinner. I woke up Wednesday and headed to the airport to find out Delta had been delaying/cancelling flights all day. We were hosting this year’s dinner in Chicago, and there were 200 people flying in for it. I was lucky — I made it in around 11 p.m. on Wednesday, but the rest of the team was stuck in Atlanta.
By 11 a.m. Thursday, we realized no one from our team would make it in time for the dinner, so I was on my own, or at least I thought I was. Julie Berry from HIDA heard what was going on and jumped in to save the day. This just reinforced my conviction that we work in an incredible industry with incredible people. Julie didn’t have to help, but without skipping a beat she and Repertoire Editor Mark Thill helped pull the night off. Thank you to both of them.
Delta Airlines had a terrible week as far as cancellations and rebooking’s were concerned (and United, but for a very different reason). Delta obviously had no control of Mother Nature, who played a pretty strong part in this debacle. However, Delta took full responsibility for the delays and cancellations. The airline sent out apologies in the form of 20,000 Sky Miles to thousands of passengers whose travel was disrupted. Delta took a disaster, accepted responsibility for it and then did everything they could to make it right.
So what did I learn in the first week of April?
- Giving to others is a rewarding experience
- Keep moving
- We are surrounded by incredible people in our industry
- Bad situations happen. Own them and do everything you can to make them right.
Dedicated to our industry,
Scott Adams