As the curtains close on the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, the world has watched more than just the greatest athletes going for gold. The city itself put forth a herculean effort to bring the games to life.
For those of us in the management and consultancy world, Paris 2024 offers a playbook of both triumphs and lessons for operational planning at scale. I watched closely as the operations unfolded – tracking the big claims and subsequent wins but also the missteps and shortcomings along the way.
Let’s take a look at three critical takeaways in operations management we can learn from the 2024 Olympics.
Understand Your Infrastructure and Account for the Risks
Paris faced the massive challenge of transforming a centuries-old city into a stage for global sportsmanship. To do so, they made some major promises along the way.
Athletes will swim in the Seine! (The city’s storied river that, FYI, no one has swum in since 1923, the year before the last Paris Olympics). We’ll have the first Opening Ceremony outside of a stadium! You can get to any competition venue in the city by metro!
Some of these promises were kept: The Opening Ceremony dazzled the world with its parade down the Seine. Some were at risk: E. coli tests just weeks before the launch of the Games showed the water was not fit for swimming. (Their mayor bravely took the plunge anyway.)
The Takeaway: Transforming a city for an event as major as the Olympics involves mastering infrastructure and managing risks effectively. If you know me, you know I love bold ideas. But all the ambition in the world means nothing when you ignore potential complexities and pitfalls just to secure a bid.
Ultimately, Paris’s journey underscores the immense challenge of aligning vision with execution. Some feats were achieved, and executed well. However, the setbacks serve as a reminder of the importance of meticulous planning and adaptive management during city-wide transformations, and understanding realistic outcomes.
Show before you tell. Test and iterate first. Nail down your logistics before proceeding. Don’t make enticing claims just for a headline before you know what’s actually possible.
Engage Your Stakeholders and Capture the Community
When it comes to an event as massive as the Olympics, the city’s residents become key stakeholders. Paris 2024 demonstrated why prioritizing citizens and workers is crucial for the success—and the lasting legacy—of such a large-scale event.
While Paris tried to engage local communities and collaborate with international sports organizations, there were bumps and missed opportunities along the way. Notably, the city chose some of its most underserved suburbs to host a majority of events, resulting in backlash from locals and raising questions about how much those who call Paris home would truly benefit from Olympic fever.
The Takeaway: It was to be expected that not all Paris’s residents would welcome the Olympic Games with open arms, but it had the potential to be a more unifying experience for all. Paris 2024 showed that minimizing or misjudging the impacts on residents can lead to frustration and hinder the event’s overall success and reputation. A communications & expectations management failure.
Prioritize your people. When the grandstands come down and the show is over, they’re the ones who are left. This mindset should guide any event, regardless of its size. Building genuine trust among people is essential in rallying them to believe in the vision you’ve created and allowing them to feel like valuable assets in achieving it.
Know Your Return on Investment and Anticipate Unknowns
The Paris Olympics had a provisional budget of a cool 6.8 billion euros. Historically, Olympic host cities often exceed their budgets by an average of 173%. Paris aimed to manage investments more effectively by utilizing existing structures to host events. However, this approach still had its challenges and costs.
For instance, hosting the Opening Ceremony along the Seine, while a novel idea, required costly security measures, particularly in light of local and global political unrest. Some aspects of this work proved more expensive than anticipated, underscoring the complexities of budgeting for an event of this size.
The Takeaway: No matter the size or scale of an event, budgets will always be under intense scrutiny, and even massive ones can underestimate the true cost. Likely, you don’t have an Olympic-sized budget to work with, but it doesn’t matter.
Work within your constraints. Money helps, but you don’t need a ton of it to be successful. You just need to spend properly and not use it as a Band-Aid. Some of the best events I’ve been to haven’t been the most splashy or luxurious; in fact, it’s often the ones that just throw cash at any situation that aren’t the most operationally sound. Stay focused on your priorities, even if it means going against outside opinions or differing viewpoints. If you do, you’ll find yourself on the podium in the end.
Paris 2024, Operational Excellence, and the Showpiece Difference
Cities around the world fight like hell to host the Olympics. Economic studies promise more tourists, new jobs, and better infrastructure, putting the host city in the global spotlight. But behind the scenes of Paris 2024 is the real story—one of wrestling between ambition and real-world challenges.
Operational excellence means more than just pomp and circumstance and celebrating wins. It’s also about facing failures head-on. Whether leading big companies or local projects, these Olympic lessons call for careful planning, flexible leadership, and a strong commitment to resilience.
