Random thoughts, opinions, observations, comments, questions…

Events that simply meet the status quo are no longer sufficient. You have to exceed expectations in order to differentiate yourself from the crowd these days. Never be satisfied with the status quo. There’s always room for process improvements. How are you exceeding expectations? How are you identifying areas and opportunities for process improvement? Most importantly, how committed is leadership to following through?

If decades of research tell us the top two reasons folks attend meetings and events are for the educational program and the networking (formal and informal learning, respectively), and everything else pales in comparison, why do event professionals spend the least amount of time on these?

What’s the business value of your meeting or event? Is there a more important question to answer than this? If not, why can’t most event professionals answer it? Would an answer this question be valuable to your stakeholders? Would it help you defend your budget? Would it help you secure your job security?

Determining the business value of events is a calculation. Analytics is about correlation. While a calculation is helpful, a correlation is much more meaningful because it points to relationships that are not always obvious but are often significant. While it’s important to be able to calculate business value, how do you identify patterns and trends in the data you’re collecting and their relationships?

Event technology companies are not your friends. Their business model depends on selling products to customers. For the most part, their business models do not depend on providing services to customers; services that might help you use their products more efficiently or effectively. More often than not, once you’ve made your purchase, you’re on your own. It would be nice of these product-centric companies saw the value in providing value-added support services to help you maximize your investment in event tech, but until that time, as always, buyer beware.

I love words, especially the etymology or origin and meaning of words. As such, I’m sensitive to language and how we use it. Business professionals talk in terms of “saving” or “spending”; “divesting” or “investing”. Saving implies divestment. It’s a conservative stance. Spending implies investing in the future. When it comes to events, the mindset of owners and event professionals is often focused in saving money. This prevents us from thinking in terms of investing in events in order to add value. Saving money rarely results in adding value, only spending or investing can do that. If we want to add value to our events, we have to invest, wisely. After decades of cost cutting and cost-efficiencies, business professionals are starting to shift their thinking toward adding value. How (and where) are you adding value to your event?

As I’ve mentioned many, many times before, without goals and objectives, there’s no way you can determine whether your event is successful or not. No way. No how.

Using design thinking as a business strategy is the only way to simultaneously lower costs while adding value. No other strategic tool or tactic provides these dual benefits. Still not convinced of the power of design? Design-centric companies have far outpaced the S&P 500: https://www.dmi.org/page/2015DVI and OTW

Asking participant’s to rate their “satisfaction” with different aspects of your event on your post-event evaluation, is no indication of the value a participant received from attending. It’s simply a reflection of your job performance. If you’re still using “satisfaction” as your participant’s performance metric, it’s time to revisit your evaluation system.

Past industry attempts at determine efficiency and effectiveness of events (ROI) have fallen on deaf ears. “We’re too busy.” “Not my job.” “That sounds complicated”, are some of the excuses we’ve heard over the years. Because event professionals have basically balked at taking responsibility for event outcomes, they still can’t say with any certainly whether a particular event contributes to business value or not. We’ve kicked the can down the road and now there’s a reckoning on the horizon in the form of another economic downturn. During the last economic downturn, heads rolled and businesses folded. We’re no more prepared today than we were then because we’re not collecting the data that will help mitigate the impact of the coming recession on our budgets and our businesses. What are you doing to prepare your event for the coming recession?

Your event’s performance hinges on a few key variables. How does your event match up?
Market performance: How well are you targeting your market(s) and what direction is your market share headed?
Products and services: How well are your existing event products and services meeting the needs of your target market(s)?
Operations: How efficient are your processes? How effective are your tools? How well are you managing your limited human resources?
Finances: How profitable is your event? How healthy are your margins? More importantly, how’s your cash flow? How well are you managing your limited financial resources?
Organization/People: What’s your event’s organizational structure? Do you have the right people on each event team? Do they have the necessary competencies (knowledge, skills and abilities)?

Strategic planning doesn’t question – isn’t explicit about – what a company does or doesn’t do. Planning doesn’t question assumptions. Its dominant logic is affordability – what’s affordable, not necessarily what’s right.