The Business Case for an Event Strategist
The Event Strategist is a relatively new role. As such, not much is known about it. There’s no competency model that outlines the required knowledge, skills and abilities that determines job success. There’s no clearly defined job description.
Yet, there’s little doubt that there’s a genuine need for such a role.
The changing nature of work
The world of work is changing for a variety of reasons, technological innovation, demographic changes, globalization, etc.
As an example, these jobs are unlikely to be around in 10 years:
- Travel agents (online travel agents)
- Cashiers (cashless transactions)
- Bank tellers (online banking)
- Postmasters, postal sorters, mail carriers, etc. (electronic delivery)
- Airline pilots (automation)
- Shared ride drivers like Uber and Lyft (driverless vehicles)
And here’s some jobs that weren’t around 10 years ago:
- Shared ride drivers like Uber and Lyft (making both lists is not a promising sign)
- Driverless care engineer (see above)
- App developer
- Social media manager
- Cloud computing specialist
- Data analyst/data scientist
The bottom line: due to the relentless pace of change, just because a job exists today is no guarantee it will exist tomorrow.
The job that event professionals have been doing since…forever, is unlikely to be of much use tomorrow.
Simply put, what got us here won’t get us there.
Adapt or die
Like many other occupations, as the world of work evolves, event professionals must adapt or die.
The job of an event professional, as it currently exists, is basically being an expert in all things events. This is no small feat as events require performing a wide variety of tasks across a number of unique domains like registration, transportation, housing, food and beverage, audio-visual, etc., As the Meeting and Business Event Competency Standards (MBECS) makes clear, doing this job well requires proficiency in a dozen different competency areas like project management, risk management, financial management, stakeholder management, communication, etc.
With such a broad scope of responsibilities, you’d think event professionals had lifetime job security, but that’s not the case. There are already changes taking place that threaten the traditional role and responsibilities of event professionals.
Tomorrow’s threat, today
For example, today there are tools like apps and platforms (software-as-a-service or SaaS) that non-event professionals are using to successfully plan and execute events. And in the near future, according to some estimates, 25 to 40% of the jobs in an industry like ours are vulnerable to automation.
“Not my job,” I hear you say. “My event’s too big to pull off without me. I’m irreplaceable.”
I agree that there’s something to be said for the scale or sheer size of some events. However, I’d argue that the changes we’re talking about are likely to impact large events to a greater degree than smaller events because that’s where the most significant cost savings or efficiencies will come from. It will take less time for these solutions to scale to your event than you think.
But the greater truth is that nobody’s irreplaceable and if your job security is threatened by an app on a smart phone, it’s time to reevaluate your value proposition.
In the short term, the job of an event professional is likely to expand before it contracts. This means additional roles and responsibilities are likely to be added to the current job description before things like technological innovation or automation eliminate others.
In the long term, the job of an event professional must evolve into one that creates more value or risks becoming obsolete. That’s where the Event Strategist comes in.
How you add value
There are basically two ways you can add value to your job:
- Doing things differently
- Doing different things
Most event professionals are perceived as doing the same thing, over and over again. There are some who strive to do things differently, but it’s difficult to say what impact their efforts have had.
It’s so hard to say what impact these efforts have had because there’s no adequate assessment and evaluation systems in place. Such systems indicate how well your event is performing and, more importantly, where to make process improvements.
Unfortunately, for most event professionals, doing things differently is a relatively hit-or-miss proposition. That’s not a very efficient way to add value.
If one really wants to add value, you’re better off trying different things.
Doing different things
Doing different things implies more than doing things differently. Both contribute to innovation, but doing different things is more about exponential vs. incremental change. And in a world that’s constantly changing, incremental change isn’t going to cut it. Incremental change isn’t going to help you differentiate your event from others or stand out in a crowd.
Because ultimately, what’s at stake here is relevance – yours, your events, and your organization’s. With so much vying for your audience’s attention, you have to work that much harder just to keep up, much less stand out.
In a world that valued efficiency, the job we did as event professionals worked quite well for quite a long time. But because the world is constantly changing, what once worked so well is now showing increasingly diminishing returns.
What the world values now is effectiveness.
Doing things differently is all about efficiency. Doing different things is all about effectiveness.
Today’s event professionals are masters of efficiency. In order to add more value, tomorrow’s event strategist must be a master of effectiveness.
Doing different things is harder
Make no mistake, doing different things will require much more effort. It not only requires event professionals develop new knowledge, skills and abilities. It requires change. And our industry has often been resistant to change. We’ve always been much more reactive than proactive. A myriad of trends have completely transformed other industries before they’ve even touched ours.
The good news is that, in the long run, doing different things means that as an industry, we will be much better prepared to manage the changes that are coming.
Becoming an event strategist is about future-proofing the profession.
Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results…there’s another name for that.
So, in order to do different things, the best place to start is with a new competency model and a new job description.
Summary: In an evolving world that places effectiveness over efficiency, event professionals must transition into event strategists in order to continue to deliver value to their stakeholders. Because events are not about making things more efficient, events are about making a difference.