But the athletes didn’t panic. Apparently the Olympic Curlers saw the blackout as an opportunity to dance and play air guitar with their brooms.

As someone who loves to curl, and can claim from first-hand experience that it’s the only Olympic sport one can perform while simultaneously drinking a beer (damn I wish someone had taken a photo that day), this behavior 100% tracks.

But do y’all remember when the power went out — at the Super Bowl?!

It was a tad more chaotic. And I’ve got the inside scoop on that madness for you today…

P.S. — It’s the last day to join Naked Newsletter Accelerator. Literally. We kick off TOMORROW! Omg.

👉 Learning isn’t linear, so it pays to regularly revisit your past experiences

👉 You never know when a nugget from 20 years ago will save your ass today.

And now — the story behind why this advice matters. 👇

The year was 2013.

Inside the New Orleans Superdome, the Baltimore Ravens were leading the San Francisco 49ers 28–6 in front of a live crowd of 70k+ football fans.

Over 100 million viewers were tuned in globally.

And Frank Supovitz, the man responsible for producing the Super Bowl that year, was giving an interview to 60 Minutes from inside the NFL control room when something went “terribly, horribly, and spectacularly wrong.”

Shit.

The power mysteriously went out. Darkness rapidly engulfed the stadium.

What was happening? Was it a terrorist attack? A cyber attack? Was the entire city of New Orleans blacked out, or just the Superdome? Do we need to evacuate? Shelter in place? Cut the live feed because, ya know, we’re broadcasting live to millions of televisions around the world?

The confusion was palpable, and panic was beginning to take hold everywhere—

Except the control room. This was the kind of crisis that Frank had spent his entire life preparing for.

And he was the man in charge that day.

Frank Supovitz may not be a household name, but you’re familiar with his work.

Not only has he produced 10 Super Bowls ( 🤯 ), he also: 

But I’d like to take you back to a sweet 15-year-old Frank — an usher at Radio City Music Hall…

“I was a child of the subway,” Frank told me. “If you can get to places, you can do things.”

Having proximity to such an iconic venue drew him in like a moth to the footlights.  And it was Frank’s time as a high school student / usher at the world’s most famous theatre that he stumbled upon a career-saving lesson:

But this lesson was lost on the executives at Radio City.

In their mind, the guest experience started when the curtain went up — not when folks stepped off 6th Avenue into the Art Deco palace that Frank was lucky enough to call his workplace.

They didn’t realize that:

You might be thinking, “Wow, what a great lesson to learn so young!”. Except Frank didn’t really learn this lesson. At least, not as a teenager.

“Learning is not linear”, Frank reminded me. “Changing how you do things is not linear. So although I learned that at Radio City, I didn’t really come to understand that until I got to the NFL” — 20 years later.

Well damn. That means that for 20 years of his career, Frank was sitting on absolute gold without even realizing it.

But that’s ok, because the lesson saved him when he needed it the most.

By the time Frank found a home at the NFL, the organization had begun re-thinking the stadium experience. Ticket sales were steady, but attendance was dropping. Broadcasts featured rows and rows of empty seats. Not a good look.

People were literally buying tickets to games — and not going.

WTF. 🤨

Frank and his team realized that it was no longer good enough to simply put on a great show inside the white lines. Clearly, something was keeping these folks out of their seats.

Every step of the fan’s journey was vitally important, yet they were only focusing on what happened on the field. It was Radio City Music Hall all over again. But this time, Frank was in a position to make a change.

So he brought in the big guns —or should I say— the top mouse.

The Disney Institute worked hand-in-hand with the NFL to transform the game day experience from one that was full of long lines, horrible hassles, and grumpy security guards, into…

This is when Frank made a major structural improvement that had not yet been attempted in the world of broadcast sports — he put the front-line forces in direct communication with the control room.

Recalling his own experience as a front-line worker back at Radio City, Frank realized that he needed to empower those guys by “inverting the pyramid” and prioritizing the people who were —ya know— actually interacting with customers.

What a concept. 🤷

Back to the Superdome blackout, where Frank didn’t take control of the situation — or at least not Frank “the man” per se. It was the system Frank set up for quick decision-making and clear communication that took control.

This system allowed him and his team to get out of their own heads (and ignore their soiled trousers) to focus on finding a solution to the problem.

To be clear, lots of meticulous planning, quick thinking, and talented people contributed to the professional handling of Super Bowl XLVII’s blackout—

👉 But it was the culture-shift of empowering the front lines that Frank initiated which kept everyone at work that day calm, collected, and in control.

What could have a been a catastrophe of biblical proportions turned into a small sliver of sports history that many may not even remember.

Frank’s book, What to Do When Things Go Wrong, dives deeply into his thorough approach to crisis prevention and management. (I highly recommend you read it. It’s my bible, and has saved my ass on more than one occasion.)

But I believe that Frank’s true genius lies in his ability to remain connected to his past experiences. He doesn’t just ask questions of the people around him — he asks those same questions to past versions of himself.

It’s easy to move on from an experience, collect your immediate learnings, then put it to bed. But there’s far more juice left in that squeeze for folks who are willing to hop in a time machine and revisit “finished” chapters of their career.

Because if you pay attention, those chapters are never truly finished.

Cheers! 🍻

-Kristin

P.S.— One of the best ways to access lessons from your past chapters is to start writing a newsletter. This is precisely what it did for me. So join Naked Newsletter Accelerator and we’ll get your newsletter launched together. 👊