Six stages of Olympics

Michael Pirrie, adviser to Sebastian Coe, describes the 6 stages of an Olympic organization:

1 - Euphoria at winning the bid,
2 - Shock of understanding the scope,
3 - Rise of instant experts who had been against the project,
4 - Persecution of the innocent for minor flaws,
5 - Successful Olympic Games, and
6 - Glorification of the uninvolved.

Can apply to other types of projects as well. The quote in full is in today's NYTimes.

“There’s the euphoria of winning the bid, then the shock of understanding the fully massive scale of what’s required,” Pirrie said in an interview. “Then there’s the rise of the instant experts, the people who said you’d never win the bid or that your city or country didn’t need the bid but now are telling you how to deliver the Games. “Then you have the persecution of the innocent, whereby anybody connected to the organization of the Games is somehow responsible for any major or minor detail of the planning going slightly awry. Then you have the successful delivery of the Games, with the help of the volunteers and everyone involved. And then, finally, you have the glorification of the uninvolved, all the people who sat on the sidelines and watched it all evolve and then suddenly were the ones who helped deliver it.”