Every Planner’s Best Friend Should Be The Worst Case Scenario

Cancelled flights. Double-booked schedules. A contagious cold. Too many meetings, not enough space. These are a few of the “worst case scenarios” any event professional is familiar with, haunting every regular check-in with a hint of “But what if…”

But what if… these petrifying possibilities actually fueled your planning, instead of derailing it? À la Murphy’s Law: If you know, inevitably, something will go wrong, why not take control of that narrative from the beginning?

This is by no means the end-all cure to event anxiety. (In fact, if anyone has that, please message me ASAP. 👀) Instead, here’s a few of my personal perspective-flipping suggestions to stop fearing the worst and start using it as your motivation.

1. Address anxieties first so they can’t sneak up on you later.

Picture being a little kid, afraid of what might be hiding in the dark. Remember how comforting it felt to throw open the closet door and confirm there were no sneaky monsters? Apply that same thinking to your planning.

Instead of letting the potential bad things build up in the back of your mind, dedicate specific time to listing them out from the start. Set a timer for 10 minutes to let yourself only list out the bad possibilities, or add an item to your kickoff agenda for every participant to voice at least one worry. You don’t have to solve them on the spot, but shining a light on problems from the start will make them much less terrifying as you go.

2. Use your tools to think ahead, even if you think you won’t need them.

Before you’re on-site in all the chaos, take a few extra minutes to understand the finer details of the tools in your event kit. Knowing how to immediately send a push notification in your event app may be the fast answer you need to let everyone know the night’s reception is now inside because of a storm.

Ask questions, take notes (more on that in a second), do a demo or set up a test environment you can play around with. Even if you’re not the go-to app or registration or gamification or overall tech person, familiarize yourself with the basics and the language of the tool – even if just at least so you can ask more informed, efficient questions.

To that point: Always keep a list of direct expert contact(s) you can go to for quick fixes. (And make sure they’re aware of the general times you may need to “phone a friend” for the answer.)

3. Make a backup plan for your backup plan.

Don’t worry, I’m not saying you need an endless funhouse mirror string of plans. But what can help is knowing what or who you’ll turn to in case a backup fails – What factors will need to be top priority to consider? Who will be your decisionmakers? What tools will you need to have access to quickly to execute the new plan?

Am I suggesting to make a plan to make a plan? Okay, fine, yes. But I can 99.9% guarantee already having those few simple details on-hand in a crisis will help you move that much faster.

4. Write it down. All of it.

Find a notetaking tool that works for you and use it religiously during planning–and I mean, religiously. Whether it’s a physical notebook with sticky notes and tabs or a digital workbook (OneNote, Google Docs, Notion, etc.), have a single source of truth that remembers everything for you.

Decide a format to label every conversation. Color code or use keywords for specific types of information. Keep a running to-do list that you organize later and commit to adding to it after every meeting. You can always remove or update information, but you can’t do anything if it’s not there in the first place. (Unless, you have some magical photographic memory I’m very jealous of...?)

Once you’re months deep in planning and need to find that note on session themes so you can pivot your strategy, searching your system for the possible answer will be a much swifter starting point than waiting for an email response.

5. Let go, and remember to breathe.

This is as much for myself as it is for my fellow event folks, so take a deep breath and repeat after me:

Know that no matter how meticulously you plan, something will go wrong. And what matters in those moments is how you handle it.

You can’t control everything, but you can control your preparation.

You can’t anticipate everything, but you can arm yourself with tools ahead of time.

You can’t predict everything, but you can plan for the worst and manifest the best.

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