Did you ever play the board game of Chutes and Ladders? The object of the game is to get to the end of the path first. You avoid landing on a chute, which makes you slide backwards. And take advantage of the ladders which help you climb ahead. I played this game a lot with kids in my early teaching career. Some of my students were fascinated with sliding on the chutes because it reminded them of playground slides. They would squeal with glees as they slid down chutes. Ultimately, landing … [Read more...]
In Today’s Economy, Significance Precedes Momentum
So many people ask me, “If ______________ (fill in the blank) is so important for conferences, why aren’t more conferences implementing it?” “So you wait to make changes to your event once you see other conferences are already doing it?” I respond. “You wait to copy someone else instead of being the leader?” Frequently, conference planning teams wait until others have tried something before they’ll embrace it. They are risk-averse followers, gripping on to the status quo instead of … [Read more...]
Getting Attendees Wrong: The Age Of Discontinuity
Some conference planning teams get their attendees wrong! So why do we get it so wrong? It has everything to do with the rapid pace of change—the age of discontinuity as Drucker called it—and our default thinking. The heart of our current organizational challenges is that we rarely diverge from our default thinking. We assume that all of our conference attendee challenges can be solved by analyzing our past. We embrace quantifiable metrics which is particularly ill suited for analyzing … [Read more...]
Silos Suffocate Your Successful Conference
Imagine an extended family of eight living under one roof together. Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, Dad and four siblings. Everyone lives in a separate room. Imagine they never speak to each other except once a week at a Sunday lunch. Each engages in their own personal activities in separate schedules. They just pass each other coming and going. Would you consider this a healthy family? Probably not. (Conference adaptation of a great analogy from strategist and author Tony Morgan. Hat tips to … [Read more...]
Feeding A Zombie Project And Getting No Results
Is your organization stuck maintaining and nurturing a zombie project? A zombie project is one that continues from year to year regardless of its effectiveness. It sucks the very life and resources from your team and organization says authors Scott Anthony, David Duncan and Pontus M.A. Siren. Often many people feel these zombie projects have a birthright and should always be delivered regardless of the outcome. The organization and its leaders have strong emotional ties to its spawning, … [Read more...]
Your Conference Renewal Begins With Wondering
Where does true conference improvement begin? The conference revitalization process is probably very different than many of your past experiences. It’s so different that we have to view it through new lenses. By taking charge of your own understanding of conference improvement and transformation, you begin a new journey. You are exploring uncharted territory. You are on a discovery adventure. Where Does Your Journey Start So how do you start this journey of conference transformation? … [Read more...]
Rebalancing Conference Vertigo By Starting With Design-Less Strategies
Leaping to action without a solid comprehension of your conference target market and their needs causes all sorts of mayhem. Some conference organizers and their planning team members don’t even realize they are in the eye of a storm. That mayhem is their blind spot. Planning a conference without a deep understanding of what makes your target market tick is like building a house without a blueprint or foundation. It’s a shaky conference foundation. It’s like the parable of building your … [Read more...]
Constrained Collaboration Can Derail Conference Improvement
Collaboration – it’s one of the buzzwords of business today. Collaboration is when people work together to achieve a goal. Multiple individuals from different departments work together to accomplish a task or project. Evan Rosen in his book The Culture of Collaboration says “[Collaboration is] working together to create value while sharing virtual and physical space.” Eric Schmidt, Google Chairman, sarcastically and succinctly said that the average 45 year old thinks collaboration is teams … [Read more...]
