We’ve always done it this way and it’s worked. So why should this time be any different? It’s a classic proclamation used to silence any discussion about changing directions. History becomes weaponized and used as a machete to clear the path for personal agendas, influencing others and legitimizing staying the same. Ultimately, weaponizing your conference’s history when making future decisions is lazy thinking. Peddling historical conventional wisdom is superficial and unproductive. The … [Read more...]
Start Your Conference Improvement Process With Enrollment
As conference organizers, we frequently ignore the evidence all around us of what’s working and what’s not. That evidence is everywhere. It’s just that we don’t know what to do with it once we have it. Often our conference planning teams and volunteer advisors follow our lead as we give more precedent to what feels right. Together, we willingly ignore the evidence in favor of what’s worked in the past even if our past outcomes point to the fact that we should change. So before assuming we … [Read more...]
Making The Common Conference Uncommon
Who wants to attend a common, ordinary, ho-hum, everyday, I’m-just-like-all-the-others traditional conference? Even worse, who wants to pay to attend one? And who wants to plan or sell one? Your conference growth and revenue depends upon repeat paying attendees year after year. Customer loyalty is the cornerstone for your event’s success. And your customer loyalty is built upon making your common conference uncommon. Routine Been-There-Done-That Conferences How many people will go out of … [Read more...]
Meeting Professionals Anxiously Want To Start Their Improvement Planning Process Yesterday
Conference and meeting professionals like action when planning their events. They are accustomed to juggling multiple demands. They have long to-do lists that require their attention and often exceed their available time. So, they have the tendency to want to hurry up and check-off items on their to-do list--yesterday. Herein likes one of their challenges when starting a conference improvement process. They have to put on the breaks to avoid jumping into planning before they’ve identified … [Read more...]
Transition Becomes Your New Conference Threshold
What’s your favorite room in your home? I have two: my front porch with its porch swing and my master suite that looks out into my backyard. I cross the thresholds of those spaces daily without much thought. We rarely think about thresholds. Yet, we spend a lot of time traversing them—both literally and figuratively. Crossing from a room that is comfortable and familiar into one that feels uncertain and unpredictable, can be frightening and disconcerting. As you embark on a new vision of … [Read more...]
Encouraging Words For Professionals On An Association Journey Including Stay Curious And Hungry
Nothing we do is inevitable. Our success as association professionals is not inevitable. Achieving a thriving conference and burgeoning membership is not inevitable. We are not guaranteed that our association will stay small or that it will grow big. Nor are there any assurances that if we do everything right, at the right time, with the right people, we’ll succeed spectacularly—or nose dive miserably. So as long as you choose to take this amazing, exciting, frustrating, uncertain, … [Read more...]
Abandon All But Tomorrow When Planning Your Conference
When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose? asked management guru Peter Drucker. It’s one of Drucker’s signature strategies: abandoning the past for tomorrow. He called it the concept of purposeful abandonment. Purposeful abandonment doesn’t sound very attractive. Few leaders brag about the product, service or idea that they abandoned. Yet deciding to abandon a conference programming element can clear the way for new successful traditions to take … [Read more...]
Six Conference Paradigms To Bust Immediately
If there’s something strange in your conference-hood Who you gonna call? (paradigm busters) If there’s something weird And your event don’t look good Who you gonna call? (paradigm busters) I ain’t afraid of no paradigm I ain’t afraid of no paradigm (Adapted from songwriter Ray Parker Jr. Ghostbusters lyrics.) Who You Gonna Call? Paradigm Busters Our cognitive frameworks—our mental models and paradigms—shape our thinking, behavior, operations and success of our conferences. The … [Read more...]
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