This is the fourth in a series of blogs posts, written collaboratively by our team, which uncover lessons learned in advising dozens of our clients on their events in the time of COVID-19. Although each situation has its own unique issues, we hope you find nuggets to help you with your disruption response and planning. Over the past couple weeks, conversations with our clients have shifted from crisis decision-making for conferences occurring in the near-term (reactive) to scenario planning … [Read more...]
Conference Reform Requires Cultivating Leaders With Moral Purpose To Make A Difference
Many conferences are stuck in the rut of legacy routines, age-old rituals and cloned programming. Conference organizers and its advisors replicate the past maintaining the traditions and well-established procedures of yesteryear. The event is nothing more than a zombie conference—a conference that appears to be alive yet in reality creates the walking undead. If you want to refresh, reimagine and reform your zombie conference, you’ll need a team of people pushing in the same direction. … [Read more...]
Has Your Leadership Evolved For The New Normal?
Change is hard. Foresight—looking forward—is hard. Why? Because we prefer certainty and concreteness to ambiguity and abstraction. Becoming a new normal leader requires shifting your perspective. It means becoming biased towards consistent, persistent evolution, not inclined to keep things the way they are which results in stagnant-status-quo-sameness. Your organization’s sustainable success depends upon you transforming from normal to new normal leadership says Radar’s Tod Martin. And … [Read more...]
The Achilles Heel Of Association Leadership
One of the ironies of associations is that the strengths that led to their initial success may actually be detrimental to their ongoing growth. Most associations start with a group of passionate volunteers that serve in many roles. They are intricately involved in all the functions of the association. These core volunteers oversee the organization’s daily operations, make all the decisions, manage each committee and approve every purchase. While the role of these early volunteer leaders is … [Read more...]
Even More Buckaroo Breakaway Cadillac Conference Programming Trends – Part 2
Expect the unexpected…just as Buckaroo Banzai did in the 1980s movie of the same name. Buckaroo and his merry band of cavaliers were ready to save the world from whatever came their way. They would embrace the context of each dimension much like you need to embrace these current conference programming trends. While these trends won’t help you overthrow a menacing alien dictator, they will help your participants stay in step with the every changing world around them. Take a look at them. … [Read more...]
Many Organizational Leaders Prefer Dysfunction
Your organization needs to change because it’s broken! Or is it? “There is no such thing as a dysfunctional organization, because every organization is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it currently gets,” says Jeff Lawrence. The Illusion Of A Broken Organization? So is your organization broke? Or is it working just fine… Even though some of its stakeholders feel it is dysfunctional in some areas… Even though it faces some turbulent waters and potential danger just over … [Read more...]
Future Forward Thinking Cultures Lead To Extraordinary Results
This is part four of a series on being more future focused in our planning. See part one here, part two here and part three here. So how do we develop, foster and leverage future focused leadership? How do we encourage our committees, volunteers, staff and customers to laser focus on what’s next, what’s coming and co-creating a future together? It’s so hard to look ahead when we are often struggling with the past. Leaders need to look farther out than anyone else. Too often they have a … [Read more...]
Start Today By Stepping Into Your Future With Your Feet Firmly Planted In Reality
This is part three in a four part series on being more future focused in our planning. See part one here and part two here. Strategic foresight is a competency that all leaders need today! Yet rarely do we discuss it. Much less practice it for our future planning. And hardly ever do we foster organizational cultures of future forward thinking instead of lollygagging leadership. So how does a leader develop and refine this skill? What exactly is strategic foresight? And how can we use … [Read more...]
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