Husker Do's and Don'ts: Learning from the Failed Iowa Caucus
Well, that didn’t go as planned.
You would need to pretty much be in a total news bubble to not know this: the hugely-anticipated kickoff to the 2020 presidential campaign, the Iowa caucus, occurred this week with lots of anticipation, tons of press, and over $50 million dollars of investment by political campaigns eager to energize their supporters. But by the end of the day of the caucus, the most important part was missing: the results.
And the aftermath hasn’t been pretty.
Iowa has always had a quirky presidential nominating process, and this year it was already in the hot seat for two reasons: (1) as a modestly-populated state, there has been a growing sense that Iowa has a disproportionately important role in our nation’s primary calendar (compared to more populous states), and (2) in a rapidly changing nation, Iowa caucus-goers aren’t at all representative of general U.S. demographics. But after this dramatic week, those critiques are almost an afterthought: in the equivalent of a national playoff game for the 2020 electoral super bowl, the Iowa Democratic Party didn’t just drop the ball; it pretty much let the ball, and the entire stadium, explode in the nation’s face.
Sure, being first is never easy. There is always a bright spotlight and a ton of pressure. But this didn’t need to be so hard. Or so bad. The #IowaCaucusFail was the result of some MAJOR mistake that were made by the caucus organizers that were forseeeable and avoidable.
There is a silver lining to the whole situation, though. The ‘optimistic hot take’ is that your organization can learn a lot from the #IowaCaucusFail. In fact, you don’t need a pollster to tell you that applying these fives lessons will increase your organization’s odds of success when undertaking complex projects.
So what are they?
1. If it sounds too complicated, it probably is. The Iowa caucus is already complicated because, well, it’s a human endeavor spread across 1,681 distinct precincts with some unusual rules and a lot of moving pieces (and bodies). But this year, the Iowa Democratic Party made it even MORE complicated, introducing a technology tool (more on that below) to help add “efficiency” to the process, and a plan to publicly share not just one, but THREE sets of data that needed to be rapidly gathered from across the state (and that all need to be correlative). Sure, it’s never bad to innovate and be transparent, but maybe one or two changes to the process would have been enough, especially in the blazing spotlight of national attention in a high-stakes election year. More changes? More problems. So the key takeaway? The “keep it simple, stupid” mantra has endured because it is true: when you overthink your process overhaul, your might overcook your goose.
2. Don’t over “app” it.You know the saying, “there’s an app for that?” Yeah, well it’s not always true, and this was one of those cases. Sure, a smart technology firm with a lot of smart developers (and slick marketing) can convince you to create an app that helps make an inefficient process (like calling in precinct results) more efficient. But just because you can affordto build an app doesn’t mean you shouldbuild one. Far too many organizations get blinded by technological possibility (and smooth sales pitches), and the #IowaFail shows that if you are going to dive into the digital waters, think twice and be prepared to swim for a while, especially in the deep end (or in the deep doo-doo).
3. Run the tests and listen to the warning signals. If you ARE going to make a bunch of process changes, or build an app, then make sure you do plenty of testing and feedback listening early and often. While we will learn more about why the Iowa Democrats’ particular app didn’t work (reports are there was a major coding error), this much is known: weeks before the #IowaFail there were concerns about the app and how users would engage with it. If those signals were already surfacing in the news (by reporters like NPR’s Miles Parks), they should have been heard by the Iowa Democratic Party’s leadership. And as for product testing? “Go time” (in this case, caucus night) is never the time to find a major coding error. In fact, without rigorous testing, biases (especially certainty and proximities biases) may cloud your team’s judgment and result in spectacular failure. The solution? Check your bias, check your code, and listen carefully to the voices that might tell you what you don’t want to (but that you NEED to) hear.
4. The backup better work. You know the saying “always have a Plan B?” Yeah, the Iowa Democratic Party didn’t have that either. Their confidence in their technology solution was so complete that they didn’t plan to have enough volunteers staffing the phones to take the calls from those 1,681 precincts in case the app didn’t work. In other words, failure got compounded by failure, and the consequence was so frustrating that some precinct captains went to bed without even getting their results called in to the state party leaders! Lesson? No matter how confident you are in Plan A, Plan B is always imperative, and you need to test that too. Effective contingency planning might not be sexy, but redundancy sure works better than failure on top of failure.
5. Own the error. Last but not least, when things aren’t working right (and especially when everyone is watching) the thing NOT to do is to delay taking ownership and demonstrating transparency. By the end of the evening of the Iowa caucus EVERYONE knew there were problems with the data collection and tabulation of the precinct results. But the Iowa Democratic Party didn’t take real ownership of the issue until 5:00 PM the NEXT day, which was long after everyone had already assessed the problem (and started assigning blame). And although, in the end, the Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party did apologize and own up to the failure, the damage was already done: not only did people question the ability of those in charge, but they questioned their transparency and trustworthiness well. In other words, like any good crisis communications firm will tell you, when things go south, the sooner you raise your hand and acknowledge it, the sooner others will give you a hand (or patience) to fix it.
That’s it: five key lessons from the #IowaCaucusFail. Sure, they might not make anyone feel more optimistic about the 2020 election campaign, but they should make you a bit smarter about how you can avoid the same issues in your own organization.
And that’s a strategy worth voting for.