The importance of a pause

The importance of the pause

During the Phillies-Marlins baseball game, Trea Turner was called out by the first-base umpire on a third strike. However, the home-plate umpire thought it was a hit batsman. So did the Phillies, so they challenged the call on the field, hoping to establish that the ball hit the knob of the bat versus Trea's wrist. The umpires gathered, watched the replay on the big screen, and listened to the comments through their earpieces from the designated replay officials at the Replay Command Center in Manhattan. Fans and commentators began conversing about the rules of the game and how the situation should be handled. The game was paused while they worked through the challenge. That pause created something that is often missed in operational environments: time between disagreement and the next decision.

The original decision had already been made, and the game could have continued. However, someone challenged the situation to ensure that the outcome was correct. Rather than immediately continuing play and moving on to the next decision, the process created an opportunity to look again, consider additional information, and ensure that the decision was consistent with the rules. There is something about that process, the pause, that has been resonating with me lately.

Many experiences I have been part of lately have had complacency as an undertone. Consider a safety incident involving an employee who didn't pause when faced with an upset condition. Or consider that a really hard rain has just started, but I need to leave on time to get to my destination. Those are moments where something changes in front of us, but we continue to operate as if nothing has changed. The ramifications of not pausing can happen quickly because we don't recognize that the change in conditions has created an increased risk that requires additional attention.

What if I have been looking at the importance of a pause wrong this whole time? What if the pause created by a challenge isn't an interruption to the decision-making process, but an important part of it? What if the pause is a component of the outcome rather than an unplanned task? The pause should be a step or task within the sequence of a process.

In most cases, the time to insert the pause is when complacency begins or when conditions change. It is easy to see a pause missing when looking at videos or incident reports. We often ask in the post-mortem, Why didn't we pause? or Why didn't we have a two-minute huddle? The answer may be that the complacency equation is compounded when we see a pause as a deterrent rather than simply a step to ensure we stay on task and stay on mission.

It is the framing of the intent that is important for a pause to be launched. If the pause is viewed as stopping the work, it becomes something to avoid. If it is viewed as part of the work, it becomes something we can intentionally use when the conditions call for it. The paradox is that doing nothing may be the most important thing that we do.

That is what happened with the baseball game tonight. The umpires didn't gather because they had necessarily made a bad decision. They gathered because the decision was challenged. They were allowed to look again, listen to additional information, consider the rules, and make sure the next step was correct. The value of the pause wasn't necessarily in proving that the umpire was right or wrong. The value was in creating a process and habits where the decision could be examined before the game moved forward.

We often talk about making decisions, responding to change, and continuing to move forward. However, we don't talk enough about the space between those actions that increase the probability of success. There is a moment when we recognize that something has changed, followed by a decision of what we are going to do about it. What happens in between those two moments can matter. That is where the pause should live and thrive. The pause allows us to recognize that the conditions may not be what they were when the original decision was made. It allows us to challenge our own assumptions before the situation challenges us to have better luck.

The ruling was right. The ball didn't hit the bat. The first base umpire's original decision was confirmed, and the pause still mattered. The pause allowed the decision to be examined, and the game to move forward with confidence. That is the real importance of the pause. It isn't necessarily about stopping, but about making sure that when we start again, we are starting from the right place.