It snowed and snowed!
Assembling our team in Vermont had been a challenge (Getting to Vermont). The weather and flight delays meant our team weren’t able to get together to do their final preparations until less than 24 hours before their first presentation.
When I landed in LA, I found our WhatsApp phone group for our team had been in overdrive. One of our team members hadn’t even left Adelaide and found his flight was cancelled. He discovered it by accident and had to hurriedly rebook.
Church Street Burlington
Then, around lunchtime on my first full day in Burlington, WhatsApp lit up again as another team member got caught in the bedlam that is the San Francisco customs hall and missed her connection. The impact was a delay of more than 24 hours and a very rattled team member. Not an ideal start.
Fortunately, being in the US meant I could chat with her as she worked through options to get to Burlington.
Eventually, and much later than planned, she, our last team member, arrived. I met her at the hotel reception, or the card table, as we affectionately referred to it (The hotel was being renovated, and reception was crammed in next to a lift, pretty much on a card table) and helped her settle. By that time, it was less than 24 hours until the delivery of our first case presentation in the competition. It was far from ideal preparation; however, with the team all in the same room, they could at least put the finishing touches on their first presentation. Unlike subsequent cases, they”d had a week to prepare so. Subsequent presentations were given to the team just 4 hours before they were to present. Continue reading
As summer finally came to Adelaide, I was setting myself for a predawn flight to Sydney before flying to Los Angeles and then onto Charlotte and finally Burlington, Vermont, my destination for the Schlessinger Grossman Family Business Competition, where I was coaching a team of MBA students from Adelaide University.