My high school soccer team played its home games at Columbia Park, now called Joe Moakley Park, in South Boston across the street from Carson Beach.

From left: Flemmi, Weeks, and Bulger sitting in lounge chairs at Columbia Park in South Boston in the 1980s, the same field where the author played his high school soccer games. Republished from Boston.com (DEA photo by Special Agent Mike Swidwinski)
During the years I played there, Whitey Bulger, Steven ‘the rifleman’ Flemmi, and Kevin Weeks used to meet on folding chairs in the field adjacent to ours to ‘discuss business’. Staying far away from probing wiretaps, they were still being photographed by police surveillance cameras. It was a tough time to be in South Boston. Busing as a means to solve racial segregation had been forced on “Southie” by a suburban judge, and the city had turned into a war zone. Thirty special MDC police patrol cars would line our field every afternoon, positioned so they could take in a soccer match while waiting for the inevitable call to duty. When the call came, all 30 cars would start their engines, turn on their blue lights, and race around the corner to G Street and South Boston High School where the school buses would be loaded, and required an escort service to get through the gauntlet of racial slurs, obscene gestures, and occasional rocks and bricks. All while the games went on.
The Southie Park was a plethora of activity. One game at the park, Johnny Mac, my team’s goalie, yelled over at our bench “Hey Coach! We’ve got a situation!” While play continued at the other team’s end, a bag lady had started making her way right across our field, in the direct path of any counter-attack our opponents might mount. “Excuse me, Mr Referee?” my coach calmly asked. He was a veteran coach, had seen it all through hundreds of matches, and this was no big deal to him, just another challenge along the road. The ref stopped the match, and coach dispatched me and three teammates to help move the bag lady along. I took her grocery cart, with all of her earthly possessions, and pushed it over to the sideline. My teammates picked her up, much to the lady’s chagrin and protest, and moved her out of harm’s way. We got back into position, and the ref signaled the resumption of play with no cards issued. Minimal disruption.
A few weeks later, Mac called over again. “Coach!” This time two stray dogs had selected the top circle of our penalty area, about 18 yards directly in front of our goal, as their romantic spot to produce baby pups. Another unexpected obstacle. Another challenge for our calm and experienced coach, easily handled.
All around us distractions arose, including cop sirens, police escorts, gangster meetings, and misdirected bag ladies; my Coach calmly dealt with whatever came up and kept our focus where we needed it to be.
ERP implementations inevitably have their own unexpected challenges and distractions. And a good coach can help. Some interface to a shipping manifest that everyone on the implementation team had forgotten about until two weeks before go live, a customer insisting on a certain format for their invoices, the new holding company demanding more information that the legacy system had tracked. Each time these things come up, experienced ERP consultants and implementation managers have to calmly address them. Their experience at solving the unexpected becomes invaluable.
In an ERP implementation, expect the unexpected. Calmly assess and determine the best solution with minimal disruption to the flow of the project. Manufacturers are used to challenges in the process of making things: Machine breakdowns, employee turnover, supplier performance, quality concerns, and inventory shortages; which are all a fact of life for manufacturers. So too, ERP Software and consulting firms should leverage their ERP implementation experience to deal with the unexpected during software implementations. Experience from consultants who have gone through many implementations and who have seen all sorts of unexpected challenges should be a critical piece of the success.
And when the figurative bag lady decides to take her grocery cart through the manufacturing shop floor during a production cycle, the experience of your ERP software vendor and consultant should be used to help folks remain calm, determine solutions, keep the team focused and minimize disruption of the project. Meet each as just another challenge along the road to be overcome. Calming experience, dealing with challenges one at a time with minimal disruption, and keeping focus is the key to success in ERP implementations.
If you’ve encountered unexpected bag ladies during your implementations, I would love to hear about them and how you dealt with them! Shoot me an email or a comment.