"The costs of possible failure were always greater than the benefits of possible success"

I was surprised to read Matthew Parris' opinion piece in today's Times 'Hurray. But it wasn't worth the colossal risk'. Parris' acknowledges that the Games have been a success but speculates, sceptically, that a future cost benefit analysis of 'The Games' will seek to argue that we've all benefited as a result of the 'happiness and feel-good legacy ', yet miss the fact that it could all of gone so terribly wrong: "The costs of possible failure were always greater than the benefits of possible success" - we escaped by the skin of our teeth as some of the potential risks just didn't materialise. Parris' view is that we couldn't afford The Games and we couldn't afford the debt which will be the additional cost on society.

I'm afraid he forgets that the Olympics delivered an unintended consequence of providing the construction sector with something to do when we hit the global financial crisis five years ago.  'Things happen' - we hadn't planned the crisis but the Olympics provided an initial buffer.  When something unintended happens you have to respond - our failure was in not recognising that breathing space, excuse the pun, constructively.

But let's not forget that the Olympics have provided us all with some useful procurement disasters. We escaped by the skin of our teeth some of the risks which didn't materialise, but we also escaped by the skin of our teeth some of the risks which DID materialise! Just have a trawl through my blog for a plethora of useful procurement mishaps or even recall the outcry over the logo procurement.  Why do I say 'useful'?  Well quite simply we need to learn and step away from what I feel is wrongly celebrated as a virtue of 'Keep Calm and Carry On'; muddling through by any other name.  That's not in the Olympic spirit, it's folly and complacency.  The Olympic spirit is the success derived from constant learning, improving and refining.


To misquote Parris, the cost of past short-term failure has the potential to deliver exponential long-term benefit.  Those future benefits can never be measured - it's cost avoidance though. But will we learn?  I would really like to see a procurement critique of The Games - that would be a real benefit. I suspect we will forget the failures, we'll continue with the rhetoric of risk management and pretend we all carry out risk assessments.  We'll celebrate the Olympic success but through rose tinted specs and miss their real procurement legacy.