Photo courtesy of Badge Monkey
About five months ago, I made the decision to leave my post with the Case Foundation to go to work on President Obama’s re-election campaign back in my home state of Iowa. As this was the first presidential campaign that I have ever formally worked on, I learned quite a bit: sleep is a luxury, the work never ends, and the amount of fast food one must consume is cruel and unusual. I also learned that life on a campaign in no way resembles that of Ryan Gosling’s character in the movie The Ides of March. Looking back on my experiences, I’ve been able to turn much of what I learned into life lessons about active citizenship, and civic engagement.
But it was the mistakes – the things that you tried to avoid the most – that taught me a rather significant lesson as well.
Campaigns are not perfect, nor should they be. One reason for this is because candidates aren’t perfect; they are human beings. While the best campaigns find success in consistent execution of good strategy, mistakes are bound to happen. Whether the candidate has an off night during a debate, or top staffers miscalculate the effectiveness of a celebrity appearance at a convention, campaigns just have a way of serving up curveballs.
Since mistakes are an unavoidable part of the game, the advantage usually goes to the team that can adjust most quickly after a misstep. Here’s a nuanced example that I observed, which shows what can be gained from mistakes and why they are valuable. While much hay was made when the Romney organization’s ORCA computer systems (a mobile-optimized web application used as a component of the "get out the vote" efforts for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign) failure on Election Day, little did the national media know that in the battleground state of Iowa, the systems were experiencing difficulties as well. Within minutes of the first early morning reports, the system all but shut down as many people were trying to access it at one time. The network simply could not support all of the traffic and was crashing. Surely the campaign expected increased traffic on that day, but anxious staffers made the mistake of constantly refreshing their browsers in an attempt to have the most up-to-date figures.
This would prove to be troubling at first, however it was not catastrophic because the data team in Iowa was able to tweak the reporting system almost immediately after the problem was discovered. Organizing for America - Iowa Headquarters communicated via a staff-wide email instructions on what to do next. And not only were they able to adjust to the situation with lightning speed, but the tech team created systems where operatives could report metrics using a dial-in option, or via email as an alternative. The data team had also built a backup reporting system beforehand to be used in the event of a total failure. It was as if they were designing protocols with Murphy’s Law in mind.
Since President Obama’s victory, his much talked about data geeks – the software engineers and computer scientists whose tech innovations helped revolutionize the modern political campaign – have captured the national spotlight for the role that they played in his re-election. But what made these tech gurus even more impressive was their ability to roll with the punches and troubleshoot issues on the fly—a life lesson that can be applied to everyone both on and off the trail.
While there was a fair amount of mistakes to contend with, the campaign should be commended for its impeccable ability to respond, but almost equally important, its ability to foresee potential obstacles that lie ahead and create fail-safes. When combined, these abilities become a good predictor for success.
For all of my efforts to do a good job and not mess up too much while I worked in Iowa, strangely enough I learned that good campaigns know that mistakes aren’t always a bad thing, and if they are handled correctly, can really highlight the resilience of a candidate — a trait America loves.
This special role that mistakes and curveballs play in relation to a campaign is also a good lesson for governing, philanthropy, and business. With the inauguration just days away and a new Obama Administration readying itself to tackle issues of enormous scale and consequence, as a nation, it is worth remembering that not everything will always go as planned. The battle of ideologies will ensue as the country strives to address the problems we face through meaningful legislation. It will not be a perfect process, mistakes will be made, but we cannot let that fact paralyze our progress. Instead, as this nation tweaks, adjusts, and modifies – just like a good campaign – I’m confident we will find that special resilience to press on.