The insanity of relocating the Olympics every four years
My friend Venkat pointed out this article on the loss of knowledge associated with having the Olympics at a different venue each time. "The heart of the problem is that the Olympics--for no unassailable reason--alters its location every four years. With every change of venue, millions of staff-hours of know-how are lost. That's not how most other major sporting events are organized. Professional golf tournaments return to the same courses year after year, allowing the staffs there to learn from their mistakes. Same with tennis: The groundskeepers at Wimbledon have had decades to practice pulling out the rain tarps and emptying out the parking lots. Yet the Olympics tries to reinvent the wheel every time, fielding a new team of planners, contractors, accountants, technicians, security personnel, and volunteers every four years, and expecting them to execute myriad complex logistical tasks perfectly the first time out. As Atlanta's Olympic finance chief Pat Glisson explained to CFO magazine, her job was to "create a Fortune 500 company from scratch, then take it apart at the end."Permalink | Monday, August 23, 2004
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