Corner Office Blog

Are CEOs Ready To Stand-Out In A Complex World?

Our Guest Blogger Jean Letourneau and I met through LinkedIn last August. Points for Social Media Networks! We quickly discovered that we were on the same journey – helping CEOs transform their organizations to create an exceptional experience and business value for all stakeholders. Have a read and discover why we also asked Jean to be a Corner Office Explorer
to help us experiment and pursue the things we don't know we don’t know.

Merci Jean for stopping in Corner Office!

Susan Radojevic, President
The Peregrine Agency

“Today’s complexity is only expected to rise, and more than half of CEOs doubt their ability to manage it”. According to IBM’s 2010 Capitalizing on Complexity Study which performed face-to-face interviews with 1,500 CEOs and other leaders around the world, 79% of CEOs anticipate even greater complexity ahead. Do you view complexity in your organization as a burden to be avoided or see it as a catalyst and accelerator to create innovation and new ways of delivering value?

The CEO’s Predicament

Guidance

CEOs must provide performance guidance to analysts on things that they can’t actually predict and then make those predictions come true. They must undertake transactions that provide investment bankers with fees but return very little to the firm and provide arbitrage opportunities for the hedge funds, all this while keeping shareholders value rising perpetually for institutional investors.

Embody Creative Leadership

To be creative leaders, CEOs must invite disruptive innovation, encourage others to drop outdated approaches and take balanced risks. They must be open minded and innovative in expanding their management and communication style, particularly to engage with a new generation of employees, partners and customers.

Reinvent Customer Relationships

Today’s CEOs must prioritize customer intimacy as never before. Globalization, combined with dramatic increase in the availability of information, has exponentially expanded customers’ options. CEOs must create ongoing engagement and co-creation with customers to produce differentiation. CEOs feel overwhelmed by big data while still being short on insight. They believe a better handle on information to predict consequences of decisions could go a long way in reducing uncertainty and forging answers that are both swift and right.

Build Operating Dexterity

CEOs must keep revamping their operations to stay ready to act when opportunities or challenges arise. They must simplify and sometimes mask complexity that is within their control and help customers do the same. Flexible cost structures, partnerships and supply chain capabilities allow them to rapidly scale up or down.

Craft the Creative Organization

CEOs must recognize that continuous change is the norm. It’s not sufficient to be prepared personally they must equip their entire organization to be catalyst for creativity. For most leadership teams, this requires an entirely new set of capabilities. CEOs must find, recognize and reward creativity!

How ready are you and your organization to capitalize on complexity?

After reading this blog, would it surprise you that many CEOs I meet feel “alone” while being a valued member of a dysfunctional community?

If you share or experience these feelings, the next Corner Office Live Complexity episode will tackle the hot topic of “Embody Creative Leadership”. We will explore why creative leaders must be more comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation and what some companies do to turn complexity into a competitive advantage! Please chime in and tell us what you think by leaving a comment below.

Update: The next #COLive episode and the second installment of the Complexity Series will be back on March 8, 2012 at 4:00 p.m. EST. We will be filming on-location at the InterContinental Toronto Centre Hotel lobby and streaming live right here on our site.

Jean Letourneau is CEO of SBVCG Inc. Jean’s E2E Value Creation Methodology is aimed at improving organizational competence to embrace and capitalize on executional complexity.

Post-Show Conversation: #COLive Episode 7 - How To Make Complexity Work for You?

Our very first episode of 2012 is a wrap! We kicked off our Complexity Series on January 12, 2012. This episode is also available for viewing on our Episodes Page.

Our community tells us that the conversation was rich, engaging, and compelling. Our Corner Office Explorers Debra Pickfield, Jean Letourneau and Special Guest David Snowden discussed different facets of complexity and gave specific action items that our community can start implementing in their organizations right now. In fact, the conversation was so fruitful that we extended the show beyond the usual 30 minutes (a Corner Office first!).

Partners and Sponsors of this Episode:

This show was broadcast live on-location at THiNKSPOT Burlington.

Resources:
- Corner Office Ep. 1 - Decision Making in Complex Environments with David Snowden
- The Origins of Cynefin
- Making Sense... Gaining Cognitive Edge (Event)

We also had a few questions come in after the show aired. Debra, Jean and David have agreed to answer them in the comments section. Please feel free to add to the conversation.

How To Make Complexity Work For You?

Have you noticed how things are no longer simple... or even complicated? Things have become very complex and at times even chaotic! On these occasions I wish I was Captain Picard with access to my very own Mr. Data. He would counsel me on what to do next.

On the other hand, Mr. Data was not alone. He had his pal Geordi, Councilor Troi, Worf, Number One and Dr. Crusher to work with and unmask ‘unknown unknowns’. They didn’t view ‘unknowns’ as challenges. They didn’t complain about it. They didn’t fret when they failed. They just tried a different approach. They embraced every encounter as an exploration. An experiment. An opportunity to learn and improve.

Now I can hear you saying Susan…Star Trek was a tv show. Yes it was. But here’s the thing. Like some of us who navigate organizations and lead teams, Captain Picard also led a group of curious and knowledgeable people. The only difference is they figured out how to make complexity work for them.

As we shared in our last episode, the purpose of Corner Office is to pursue the things we don’t know we don’t know. On January 12^th, 2012 at 4 p.m. EST (in Corner Office) we are launching a series on complexity and contemporary business.

Our Explorers, Debra Pickfield and Jean Letourneau will be joined by David Snowden, a Corner Office friend. David was our guest in Corner Office for our premier episode in 2010. Decision Making in Complex Environments is our most viewed episode.

In this episode Corner Office Explorers and David will embark on a journey to uncover:

Why addressing complexity in business is no longer an option but a necessity?
How to move from concept to application?
And bust open some myths about complexity and decision-making.

We will be streaming live and invite you to join the conversation. For 30 minutes you will have access to three innovative thinkers. They will challenge you to think about your organization and the world in a whole new way. In fact, you can tap into their wisdom right now and pose a question right below on this blog. We will monitor this channel and answer your questions during the show.

In the meantime we have a question for you. How is your organization dealing with complexity?

If you have any questions or thoughts you would like to share about this post, please register or login to leave a comment or contact Susan via your preferred method (Twitter: @SusanRadoejvic #COLive)

Introducing Corner Office Episode #6: Experiment No. 1

Like most people I have been following the EU debt worries, specifically the call, by the former Greek Prime Minister Papandreou, for the now defunct Greek Referendum and the Occupy movement. There are three points that I observed from watching these stories unfold.

First, they are experiments exploring solutions to some tough issues
Next, with experiments we don’t always know the outcomes
And finally, experiments require us to give up control

Case in point, Prime Minister Papandreou called a referendum because he wanted to hear from citizens their thoughts on the financial issues they are facing. EU Leadership thought this didn’t fit into the discussed plan and encouraged him to shut it down. And while we sympathize with the people in the neighbourhoods where the Occupied are sitting and with the Occupiers, the point recently made by the London Ontario police, when they arrived in the middle of the night to remove tents and Occupiers’ belongings, is that local politicians don’t know what outcomes will develop and are concerned it will get out of control. Therefore they thought it best to shut it down. In my opinion.

Side bar: None of these reactions have contributed to or produced a viable solution.

The thing about experiments is they can also be very powerful leadership intervention tools. This is why, at our Agency, we decided to use our online business show Corner Office to conduct our own experiments to show corporate leaders how to bring about positive and long lasting results.

Live streaming on November 17^th, 3 p.m. EST Debra Pickfield, Principal of THiNKSPOT Burlington and Jean Letourneau, President & CEO of SBVCG Inc. will put on explorer hats.

For 30 minutes, our Explorers will share the Corner Office story – its purpose, goal and ongoing evolution. We will explain how we experimented with methods, resources, tools and technology to create an experience that:

Is relevant to our in-house audience and online community
Offers practical take-aways
And creates a safe environment to participate

Together we will paddle in unchartered waters, deal with unknown outcomes, unpack complex challenges and answer unasked (more like those avoided) questions. Oh and did we mention our in-house audience and you, our online community are invited to participate.

We’re giving up control and we don’t know what the outcomes are going to be. That said we do believe it will be a thought-provoking journey that you may not want to miss so…join us!

This episode is now available for viewing on our #COLive Episodes page.

If you have any questions or thoughts you would like to share about this post, please register or login to leave a comment or contact Susan via your preferred method (Twitter: @SusanRadojevic. #COLive.)

What Is The Purpose of Your Organization’s Event Portfolio Investment?

Recently I was reminded of something my mother once said to me when I was growing up. She said, ‘Susan before you start this project take some time to understand why you are doing it.’ I believe my mother was on to something.

Finding solutions to today’s complex opportunities require a clear understanding of purpose, tapping into the wisdom of many and (carefully) investing something we cannot get more of…time.

Take for instance a recent Request for Proposal (RFP) we received to perform event portfolio alignment. The 25-page RFP (initially) revealed the organization’s leadership was on the right track.

They had identified that their event portfolio investment was no longer effective.
And they had decided to invest time, human and financial resources to find a solution.

Side Bar: If an organization allocates an average of 32% of its annual marketing investment to its enterprise-wide meetings and events and if only 5% (on average) of their outlay is aligned, measured and designed to drive a return on value and investment. It makes sense to find out why isn’t the other 95% of the 32% investment also aligned to drive a return.

A Classic Move

Next, the organization’s leadership did something that 9 out 10, who decide to assess their event portfolio investment, do. They jumped directly to tactics. The reason for this classic move is because its leadership failed to recognize their portfolio of events as a whole system and a strategic leadership intervention tool (an approach that empowers leaders to bring about a lasting and positive change in behaviour and attitude in people). As a result they missed exploring a whole systems thinking approach to answer key questions which can impact the success of the event alignment goals. Questions like:

Why invest in an event portfolio in the first place?
What corporate goals are events currently driving?
And how is the event portfolio supporting the organization’s purpose?

Hard as we try, to prove otherwise, the fact remains that multi-faceted projects involving people (like an event portfolio alignment) is not a fast, easy or cookie-cutter task. It takes the right methods, resources, tools, technology, support and guidance to deliver. Because the possibilities are emergent, event alignment cannot be performed in a vacuum using linear decision-making.

As Event Alignment Strategists, our experience tells us, for an organization to achieve the greatest success with their portfolio of events; corporate leaders need to understand the purpose of their events and the alignment and how each relates to their vision and overall business strategy and goals. Missing this critical first step will produce results that fall far short of the investment of time, human and financial resources made.

So let us ask you, what is the purpose of your organization’s event portfolio investment?

If you have any questions or thoughts you would like to share about this post, please register or login to leave a comment, or contact Susan via your preferred method (Twitter: @SusanRadojevic. #COLive.)

Related Post: Event Portfolio Alignment 101

How Physical Space & Design Help Achieve Event Goals

I like John Abele’s provocative thinking. So when I was invited to be a guest blogger on the Kingbridge Collaboration Blog, I gladly said yes!

This is an excerpt from the blog: How Physical Space & Design Help Achieve Event Goals

"In July I watched (online) a presentation of SAP’s SAPPHIRE NOW case study funded by the MPI Foundation. The design and outcomes of SAP’s annual business technology conference is a brilliant example of how physical space plays an important role in event design to drive business goals.

Side Bar: We define events as face-to-face, virtual or hybrid gatherings that an organization invests in for the purpose of building business success.

Click here to find out why I was inspired to write this blog post.

Collaboration is a Good Thing - Honest!

Our Guest Blogger Debra Pickfield, Founder of THiNKSPOT Burlington offers a prelude to our live Corner Office broadcast on September 21st, 3 p.m. ET.

Thanks Debra. Looking forward to hearing more of your insights.
Susan Radojevic, President
The Peregrine Agency

We've never been more connected in our lives - smart phones no longer allow us to hide. Yet we've never been more isolated for the same reason. Technology instantly connects us, yet invites us to email a family member instead of actually talking in person. I'm embarrassed that the other day I sent a LinkedIn request to a family member since we hadn't talked in a month or so - we live in the same city! Yes it's my problem and while I hope that I'm the only one doing this - in all honesty I'm not so sure.

There is an insightful phrase that describes collaboration "faster alone, further together." When you combine technology that allows us to exist in isolation, and a knowledge that if I do the work on my own the odds are I'm going to get the job done much faster and to my level of satisfaction, why would anyone take time to co-create when they are faced with deadlines and scarce resources to get a job done?

It's such a buzz word - Collaboration.

Overused, misunderstood - an excuse for why something became stuck and didn't move forward. Tim Glover and Sharon Gilmour-Glover of Jump-Point put it well: "People think they are collaborating when in reality they are simply co-operating - playing together in the sandbox." Truly working with people in collaboration is tough - it involves relinquishing something that is incredibly valuable to each of us - our ego. Knowing how to put it aside so we can come together as equals to create an unknown outcome, is frankly threatening and frightening. We've spent decades of our lives investing in who we are and what we've accomplished - developing our story of accomplishments and value. Now we are asked to put that aside. It's almost heretical.

Our ego is incredibly valuable. It's what gets us up in the morning and is what allows us to move forward even when we're not entirely confident in the next steps. But knowing when to park the ego and allow others to step forward with their ideas is difficult and often messy. So how can we overcome this?

A favourite example was an evening event at THiNKSPOT where a CEO came to listen to feedback from line people out in the field who do the work every day. After a great catered dinner everyone settled down in the comfortable couches and chairs and started to talk. At some point the CEO started to become defensive and push back against some of the comments being made. The normal response to a CEO pushing back is for people to retreat and disengage - it's rarely worth going up against the person who controls your paycheque and ultimate sustainability.

Fortunately a manager who had been here a week before understood the language - "THiNKSPOT is a safe place to say what you need to say" - so they in turn pushed back to the CEO and said "this is a safe place, your job is to listen." The outcome according to the manager? "The CEO heard things they had never heard before."

What makes a place safe for people to share their honest opinions?

Our experience suggests that a combination of physical elements (a nurturing environment with a less institutional feel, components of fun and playfulness to challenge and surprise the brain); combined with a community of facilitators who are experts at harvesting the wisdom in the room; thought leaders who spend their careers understanding the dynamics of human interaction; and process experts who challenge us to re-think how we engage and interact; create an elixir that brings the best out of the people who come together to tackle the tough challenges in their organizations.

Good outcomes are a result of fulsome decisions made from knowing as many pertinent details as possible. To do this we have to wade through the data and information to capture the insights. The elixir to capturing the insights is respect and trust - when that is present and consistent, people will share their wisdom and knowledge and we can all benefit from the intellectual capital we all hold. When we are open to Being, Thinking, and Engaging differently, new ways of creating together emerge from the wisdom within us.

If you have any questions for Debra or thoughts on this post you’d like to share, please register or login to leave a comment, or contact Susan via your preferred method (Twitter: @SusanRadojevic, hashtag #COLive). We will answer your questions during the live broadcast of Corner Office on September 21st, 3pm ET.

Update: This episode is now available for viewing on our #COLive Episodes page!

Corner Office: Video Press Release

Media Contact:

info@theperegrineagency.ca

416-661-4186

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Peregrine Agency Announces

Corner Office Going Live!

August 24, 2011 - Toronto, Canada - The Peregrine Agency announced today a new live format for the Agency's online business show, Corner Office.

"The manner in which c-level executives use online video is evolving and we're paying attention" said Susan Radojevic, President of The Peregrine Agency and Host of Corner Office. "From its inception Corner Office has been about sharing forward-thinking business intelligence on driving business performance and profit using strategically aligned events. The design of our new live format connects corporate leaders and innovative thinkers virtually, in person and in real time."

The Peregrine Agency selected ALLTalkTV.com streaming technology to bring its Corner Office global virtual community and in studio audience into the conversation.

Corner Office premiers on September 21st, 2011 at 3:00 p.m. ET. The first live 30-minute episode will be on location at THiNKSPOT Burlington with Principal and THiNKMaster, Debra Pickfield.

The live show will be available for viewing on The Peregrine Agency website under the new webpage - Watch Corner Office Live. Episodes will be recorded and available for later viewing on The Peregrine Agency Corner Office Episodes webpage.

-end-

About Corner Office: Corner Office is a virtual resource to help corporate leaders drive organizational performance and profit using meetings and events as a business builder and leadership intervention tool. Episodes are live and online.

About The Peregrine Agency: The Peregrine Agency is a global consulting firm. The Agency analyzes the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization's portfolio of events to determine appropriate investment allocation.

Is Knowledge and Information the Same?

I have a confession to make. I’m an information junkie! I carry a Harvard Business Review issue with me everywhere I go. I clip newspaper and magazine articles, and highlight and write in all my books. On those rare occasions when I find myself without reading material, the labels on condiments will do! And in the name of full disclosure, I also read online (though, I don’t enjoy it as much).

Between print and online material, as well as the growth of social media networks which have evolved into digital content sharing tools, we are inundated with information. Unfortunately, if enough time is invested in searching the web, we often find that it’s the same information simply reworded and repackaged.

Is it useful information? Possibly. Is it noise? Probably.

As web developers have created more sophisticated forms of online self-publishing tools in the last few years, and offered them for free, they have made it easy for anyone to publish anything they want on the web. We can find information from how to tie a tie to how to sue an employer.

**So we must ask ourselves: Is it information or knowledge we’re gathering?**

Consider for a moment the difference between someone obtaining random information on a particular subject matter compared to an individual who spends four years in law school and another two or more years working towards becoming a full partner. Would these two people have the same level of knowledge and wisdom?

I believe not. We go to school to get information. Then we work to convert information into knowledge through real life application. And we invest a considerable amount of time to harvest the knowledge and obtain experience to give us the professional acumen, or wisdom, as in our lawyer example above.

Information + Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom.

The point is: being exposed to vast amounts of information doesn’t make us knowledgeable and it doesn’t give us wisdom on the subject matter. What it does do is connect us to folks with the business acumen we need to lead more effectively.

Leading in today’s tough economy through available wisdom

In our blog post, Return on Investment, Return on Value or Both?, we provided a strong case for a new approach to business in order to thrive in today’s economy. It involves both people and profit. The 2009 Forbes Insights series, “Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy,” helps bring this point to light.

The first survey in the series, “Playing Both Offense and Defense,” reports that c-level executives occupy 61% of their attention with the defensive maneuver of cutting and managing costs to navigate and lead. However, in doing so they neglect the offensive tactic of gathering and managing the intellectual capital available that is key to attract and retain customers and drive innovation.

By making people just as important as profit, organizations can gain competitive advantage.

A business and leadership tool for today’s economy

As Event Alignment Strategists working with Fortune 1000 organizations globally, we are exposed to lots of information. In our capacity as advisors, we filter through the information to help our clients be more productive and profitable by leveraging their event portfolio investment more effectively and efficiently.

So what if there was a way for corporate leaders to filter through the information to:

Learn about how to leverage their organization’s intellectual capital to drive corporate goals; and
Connect with innovative thinkers of meeting and event methods, resources, tools and technology, like David Snowden?

This is why Corner Office, our online business series, was created. Corner Office acts as a filter to find relevant and compelling information to help empower corporate leaders to bring about positive and long-lasting change in behaviour and attitude in people, giving them a vested interest in helping the organization realize its corporate vision.

(There’s another way organizations can gain an edge, but you’ll have to wait until August 24^th for that exciting news!)

As corporate leaders, our time is limited. Please help your fellow Corner Office members and share how you decipher between information and knowledge by posting a comment below.

Why Does Your Organization Exist?

Even before reading Simon Sinek’s best-seller, “Start With Why,” I’ve been fascinated by 'why' questions. I believe some of the most powerful outcomes are a result of asking questions that start with why. “Why not?” And, “What if?” My parents tell me some of my childhood 'why' questions were: “Why isn’t the sky purple?” and “Why is it okay for me to have a lemonade stand and sell lemonade when I’m six years old but it’s not okay for me to have a job?”

When we perform the Corporate Wayfinding™ step of our Strategic Event Alignment© Framework for clients, we ask CEOs why their organizations exist. Many times the answer is not always forthcoming and sometimes it’s, “to make a profit.”

However, according to Sinek, people buy why we do what we do, not how or what we do. If you haven’t yet read “Start With Why,” Simon addresses this in his TED talk, “How great leaders inspire action.” He says,

“Profit is a result. By why I mean what is your purpose? What’s your cause? What’s your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning and why should anyone care?”

I recently posted the title of this blog post on the LinkedIn group, CEO Success Network. I received over 40 comments and it was the most popular discussion for two weeks. (Click here to access the discussion.)

The answers were fascinating. A few answered, “Profit,” but most of the comments were aligned with our belief (and Mr. Sinek’s) that for a sustainable business in today’s market, corporate leaders must dig deeper for an answer. They must find or remind themselves of their organization’s purpose so they can empower, grow and inspire action from all stakeholders, both internal and external.

As we blogged about in, “Return on Investment, Return on Value or Both?” organizations in the past used a linear business approach that placed achieving profits above all else, at all costs. In the Digital and Knowledge Economy, where people have gained more power in the long-term success of business pursuits, this is like putting the cart before the horse. People = Profits.

Without an effective means in place to tap into the collective mindset of an organization’s people, clients, customers and vendors, an organization may risk losing its competitive advantage if intellectual capital is unmanaged.

At the Peregrine Agency, we believe meetings and events provide an interactive and open environment where information is shared and innovation is born. When leveraged effectively and efficiently, meetings and events become an essential business and leadership intervention tool to build intellectual capital and improve organizational performance and profitability.

In our business we’ve found:

Corporate leaders can leverage their event portfolio (enterprise-wide meetings and events) to help them answer, “Why does your organization exist?”
Corporate leaders need to ask themselves, “Why does our organization allocate an average of 32% of the annual marketing investment to an event portfolio, if we’re unsure it’s aligned to drive organizational performance and profit?”

An organization’s aligned and measured event portfolio has the power to effectively place people before profits for a more sustainable business. As Event Alignment Strategists, we help leaders align the reasons why their organizations exist with the reasons why they hold meetings and events.

Now that we’ve shared our why, we’d like to know: “Why does your organization exist?”

Places and Spaces for Collaboration

John Abele and I believe that human capital is the greatest asset for most organizations and the key to success is finding and using effective communication tools. We believe aligned, well-designed and measured meetings and events can achieve their greatest potential when they are used to tap into an organization’s stores of social, human and intellectual capital.

In this blog post John shares his thoughts on collaboration platforms that generate ideas and inspire all stakeholders on an individual level to take personal responsibility in contributing to organizational success.

Thanks John for stopping in Corner Office!
Susan Radojevic, President
The Peregrine Agency

‘Working together to achieve a goal’

Collaboration definition –Wikipedia

Photo provided by: Kingbridge Conference Centre and Institute

Increasingly, the best ideas and creative innovations are happening through collaborations of organizations and individuals. Which means that these innovations are not occurring at any particular organization – so where are they happening? In the places and spaces between…………….

Satish Nambisan; social innovation researcher recently published an article entitled “Platforms for Collaboration” in the Stanford Social Innovation Review that explores the importance of places for people to work together across sector and organizational boundaries to foster innovation.

Whether virtual or physical, Nambisan’s research highlights the importance that each of these platforms be a neutral space where everyone has equal footing. Of equal importance for any collaboration is the dedication of everyone involved to assist in cultivating a network culture – beyond their own organizational or sector boundaries to include broader perspectives.

Nambisan identifies three key platforms needed for successful collaboration and innovation; exploration platforms where the problem is jointly identified; experimentation platforms where solution ‘prototypes’ are developed and execution platforms; where the recommended solutions are first put into action.

The infrastructure to support such platforms for collaboration is still underdeveloped and so those places and spaces that do strive to serve as platforms for collaboration such as MaRS, Johnson Foundation and Kingbridge are the pioneers of the collaboration frontier.

To read more on this, I recently had the opportunity to contribute an article to the Harvard Business Review for a special issue focused on collaboration. I was somewhat amused by the fact that when I asked if authors would have the opportunity to discuss their work and integrate some thoughts that this wasn’t possible – ironic perhaps considering the focus of the issue.

You can view the article abstract here.

John Abele is Co-Founder of Boston Scientific Corporation and Owner, Kingbridge Conference Centre and Institute.

Corner Office: Hello My Name is Meetings and Events

Some stories delight and thrill us because they engage our emotions. While other stories ignite our imagination and change our lives forever! So get the popcorn out because we've got a hot message for corporate leaders and its best told as a story...

Click here to visit our Episodes page to view past Corner Office instalments.

Return on Investment, Return on Value or Both?

Every great leader knows there’s more to life than money. They also know that money is an important part of the equation. But how does it all fit together? Being the whole-system thinkers we are, today we discuss Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Value (ROV).

Google Analytics is our friend. Ever since we revised our website and began our adventures in social media two years ago, we’ve been tracking and analyzing our web traffic on a weekly basis. And the information revealed has been both surprising and impressive!

According to our recent 6 month analysis (we compared traffic from September to December and January to May), we found:

Our Corner Office blog and on-line show are our most visited web site pages. This is also the web site section we share most often on our social networks.
Most of our traffic arrives from Twitter. We deduce that our most popular content has become so, because our social networks are sharing it with their networks.
Between the length of time spent on the blog, returning visitors and blog comments, it’s clear that we’re successfully building a community of advocates.

Since our social media goal is to build brand awareness for The Peregrine Agency and Strategic Event Alignment©, and considering the steady traffic increases to our website, we feel confident in proclaiming that our efforts are indeed paying off!

And what does “paying off” really mean? My financial experience tells me it’s tangible, as in dollars and cents. My meetings and events experience says it means the intangibles, as in relationships and people. And as a leader and Event Alignment Strategist, I believe strongly that in the digital and knowledge age, a return means both!

Return on Investment (ROI)

The return on investment is the percentage of net profit over the financial investment made upfront to something intended to grow revenue. And the result of measuring the investment is based on mathematical calculations. In the industrial age and unstable economic times, CEOs have been forced to determine the ROI of all their initiatives and reduce costs, or perish.

Times have and are continuing to change, and the old, tried-and-true business approaches are no longer as effective. As we mentioned in Preparing for the Next Economic Upswing and Why is Event Portfolio Alignment Important to Corporate Decision-Makers?, we’re in a time of transition and things are not simple or complicated, they’re complex. And that’s okay! Because, although ROI is still just as important, people are becoming an even bigger essential piece of the successful business model.

Return on Value (ROV)

Even as Traditional Professional Planners, we felt ROI was not exactly the correct term to use when measuring the effectiveness of meetings and events, as they are better used as a communication and leadership tool. When people are involved (customers, employees, vendors, etc.), there are always intangible outcomes.

For an organization to flourish in today’s economy, they must assess the intangible yet far-reaching business gains of all their investments. Things like better and faster decision-making, innovation, enhanced sales effectiveness, organizational learning, strengthened customer loyalty or greater productivity and flexibility to respond to rapidly changing markets.

A return on value takes into account these important intangible benefits that are more characteristic of the broader, more diverse contours of the changing business world. And these types of results do not appear overnight. They drive revenue over time, making them a long-term investment.

Tony Hsieh, an innovative thinker who has built several successful businesses, considers intangible gains as the key to his success. From his book, “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose”:

“Zappos.com has been around for over 10 years now. We grew from no sales in 1999 to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2008. In looking back at the major turning points in the history of the company, it seems that most of them were the result of pure luck. Things happened that we could not have possibly predicted, but they were the result of relationships that we had started building 2-3 years earlier.”

A New Approach to Business

Word of mouth has always been the most powerful profit-building tool. Now with social media, it’s become even more powerful. Take for example the story of how an unsatisfied customer used social media to complain about the service at United Air Lines, creating a viral effect which most certainly affected the company’s bottom-line. (Source: article in The Los Angeles Times)

Still corporate leaders are asking how five hours on Facebook and Twitter equates to dollars and cents. The thing is we can no longer apply the standard status quo to business. By focusing solely on ROI, there’s a clash with today's economy.

As business leaders, we must evolve with the times and develop a new mindset that involves both money and people. We need to value our investments from all perspectives: financial, customer, internal and organizational learning. To thrive in today’s economy; we must blend ROI and ROV when evaluating the return on our investments, and remain flexible as we analyze results from our efforts.

Are you evaluating (as best as you can) and investing in both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of your business, including your enterprise-wide meetings and events?

If you have any questions or thoughts you’d like to share about this post, please register or login to leave a comment, or contact Susan via your preferred method (Twitter: @SusanRadojevic).

Your Burning Questions About Event Portfolio Alignment Answered

Earlier this week, Managing Editor of CM&E magazine (Corporate Meetings & Events), Sandra Eagle, sat down with the President of The Peregrine Agency, Susan Radojevic, to better understand Event Portfolio Alignment. Based on this conversation, we decided to revise our FAQs so all your burning questions about Strategic Event Alignment © are answered more thoroughly.

If you regularly read our blog, you’ll know that from our perspective as Event Alignment Strategists, meetings and events have an incredible, unrecognized potential. Strategic meetings and events are in fact a business and leadership intervention tool which, when implemented properly, have the ability to drive business goals, improve organizational performance and increase profitability. Side Bar: We define leadership intervention as a term used to describe an approach that empowers leaders to bring about a lasting and positive change in behaviour and attitude in people. Success is achieved through education, developing organizational leadership and building integrated strategies.

And in this time of continuous change and economic uncertainty more c-level executives are beginning to realize the power of strategic events! Earlier this week the Managing Editor of Corporate Meetings & Events magazine, Sandra Eagle, interviewed our President, Susan Radojevic, to explore the value that The Peregrine Agency is currently offering organizations and the meetings and events community .

As they chatted over a cup of latte, Susan answered Sandra’s questions for her investigative piece. Some of these inquiries included:

What is Event Portfolio Alignment (Event Alignment) and why is it important?
How can c-level executives use Event Alignment for business growth?
How big does a company need to be before Event Alignment is worth the investment?
How do traditional professional planners initiate Event Alignment with c-level executives?

This CM&E article will be published within a month and when it is, rest assured we will share it with you. We are confident it will demystify Event Portfolio Alignment and better explain what Event Alignment Strategists do for corporate leadership and organizations. Until then, we invite you to read our revised FAQs, an excellent introduction to the information that will be in Sandra’s article.

Did we adequately answer all your questions about Event Portfolio Alignment in our new FAQs? If not, please send your burning questions to info@theperegrineagency.ca or to Susan directly through Twitter: @SusanRadojevic.

Why is Event Portfolio Alignment Important to Corporate Decision-Makers?

The economy is slowly reviving – have you noticed the business landscape transforming as a result? Some organizations and leaders are adapting to these changes and successfully responding to new economic demands. Today we remind leaders of a powerful tool their organization already has at its disposal which, when effectively leveraged and properly directed, allows leaders to thrive in transforming and complex situations.

Every month I religiously read the latest issue of Harvard Business Review. And every day I voraciously devour the Toronto Globe and Mail. On the weekends, it’s my Sunday afternoon mental stimulation and I love everything about it – even my ink smudged hands!

I’ve noticed more stories that describe an innovative economy and how successful organizations are choosing to react to it. It excites me to read how some provocative thinking C-Level executives are now investing more in areas like Research & Development and programmes to develop organizational leadership, corporate social responsibility and satisfaction for both customers, clients and employees.

This news is exciting for us at The Peregrine Agency because it proves enterprise-wide meetings and events are relevant to corporate decision makers and business growth! Allow me to explain…

While successful businesses in the Industrial Age capitalized on the efficient production of goods and services by Manual Workers, the Knowledge & Digital Age is driving an entirely new economy. With a workforce dominated by Knowledge Workers (a 4:1 ratio according to Management Information Systems for the Information Age) along with the Internet and Social Media driving audience engagement and collaboration, the resulting Knowledge and Digital Economy demands organizations to produce faster and more frequent ideas, innovation and stronger relationships.

Human capital is the greatest asset for most organizations and the key to success is finding and using effective communication tools. As Event Alignment Strategists we understand the intrinsic value of a strategically aligned, well designed and measured event portfolio which transforms every meeting and event into a powerful communication tool. Meetings and events can achieve their greatest potential when they are used to tap into an organization’s stores of social, human and intellectual capital. At the same time, they double in power with the ability to inspire and motivate all stakeholders on an individual level to take personal responsibility in contributing to organizational success.

Business Growth through Strategically Aligned Event Portfolios

Last year, I had the honour of collaborating and presenting with my colleagues, Mary Boone and Patti Phillips, The Case for Meetings: The Four Elements of Strategic Value. The basis of the 4-city road show discussion was simple - the value of meetings and events are realized when they encompass four elements:

Portfolio Management (a.k.a. Event Portfolio Alignment) is the application of strategy to an organization’s overall meeting and event portfolio so that it (as well as individual meetings and events) achieves the corporate mission, vision and goals. Similar to a financial investment portfolio, Event Portfolio Alignment is an ongoing process which analyzes the effectiveness of the organization’s portfolio of meetings and events to determine appropriate investment allocation.
Meeting Design is the process of creating effective meetings through form and content using methods and technologies to achieve predetermined objectives.
Measurement is necessary to collect data from standalone meetings and events in order to analyze their return on investment impact.
Advanced Logistics is where Traditional Professional Planners shine and it is integral for cost-containment and event efficiency.

While these four elements are presented as standalone components (read Mary Boone’s briefing paper for clarification), we at The Peregrine Agency believe the highest strategic value of meetings and events result when they are practiced together in one cohesive strategy. This comprehensive strategy is realized in the first element listed above, Event Portfolio Alignment and it is the key to capitalizing on the opportunities and solving the challenges leaders face today. (addressed in Event Portfolio Alignment 101)

An analogy we like to use is: building an organization using strategic meetings and events is like building a home. Meeting Design, Measurement and Advanced Logistics answer the what, how, who, where and when of the construction project. Event Portfolio Alignment is the blueprint, the CEO’s vision made tangible, and it encapsulates all of the building plans as a finished product from a bird’s eye view. Blueprints are created with multiple factors in mind, such as the surrounding environment, to ensure sustainability. Every detail included has a reason or purpose and therefore answers `why’ the house is being built in the first place and in this particular manner. Although an experienced construction company could theoretically build a home without a blueprint, the finished product would most likely lack structural integrity and functionality. Similarly, while we agree the four strategic elements of meetings and events can be performed separately, the greatest value is when an organization creates a blueprint for success.

Event Portfolio Alignment integrates an organization’s portfolio of meetings and events with its overall corporate vision, strategies and delivers goals.

If you have any questions or thoughts you’d like to share about Event Portfolio Alignment, please register or login to leave a comment, or contact Susan via your preferred method (Twitter: @SusanRadojevic).

Who is this New Breed of Professional Planner (a.k.a. Event Alignment Strategist)?

Last week I attended a panel discussion put on by the Toronto Chapter of Meeting Professionals International (at 23,000+ members it is the largest community dedicated to meeting and event travel & hospitality planning). The topic was Strategic Meeting Management (SMM) which we recently wrote about here.

The discussion raised many questions. One in particular caught my attention: Why is little thought given to the knowledge and skill set required to charter the rapids of implementing an enterprise-wide cost cutting approach like SMM?

It stunned me to hear the process being described as simple and easy to implement. The presenter went as far to imply that after attending the 40-minute PowerPoint presentation, participants would have the necessary accounting and change management knowledge to implement the process.

I don`t know about you but my professional financial experience tells me it requires more than 40-minutes to learn and understand the framework and concepts of Business Accounting 200!

This type of irresponsible and ill-informed rampant discussions confirms that a need for a highly qualified New Breed of Professional Planner has never been greater.

Why the New Breed of Professional Planner and Where Did She Come From?

She has emerged from the ashes of the Industrial Age to help usher today’s leaders into the Global Knowledge and Digital Economy. She does this by showing them how to use an under leveraged tool they already possess: corporate meetings and events.

The reality is we are now living in a complex environment. If you’re not sure what we mean by this, check out the pilot episode, Decision Making in Complex Environments, of our on-line business show, Corner Office. One takeaway from the show is that we’re moving from a traditional broadcast messaging communications approach to one that ‘connects, informs and engages’.

Our experience tells us that participants’ understanding is greater when they are engaged in the process instead of being talked at. Meetings and events present an ideal medium for this type of communication and leadership style.

In addition, in our blog post, Preparing for the Next Economic Upswing, a Forbes survey found that thriving in this new business landscape, enabled by social media and technology, will require a stronger cohesion between corporate strategy and operations. We believe a big part of resolving the challenges corporate leaders face today, including their top and bottom-line results, are when leaders:

Recognize meetings & events are a business building and leadership development tool.
Create and implement an event alignment framework which aligns the organization’s event portfolio investment with its goals and uses it as a marketing/communications tool.
Have access to an experienced and knowledgeable team (along with the right technology) to align, design, measure and manage the company’s event portfolio investment (which makes up 34% of an organization’s annual marketing budget).

We’re here today to advocate that the new breed of professional planner, Event Alignment Strategists, can provide leaders (like yourself) with what they need to raise their organization to new heights!

What is an Event Alignment Strategist and What Does She Do?

An Event Alignment Strategist has a unique blend of business acumen, strategic planning and meeting/event design and measurement experience. This rare combination of intellect is essential for an Event Alignment Strategist to accomplish the two strategic event portfolio alignment goals:

Event Effectiveness (outputs): how enterprise-wide meetings and events fit in with an organization’s business goals.
- Measurement (Return on Investment and Return on Objective)
- Design (Content and Message)
- Logistics (Planning and Delivery)
Event Efficiency (inputs): addresses best practices, travel and hospitality cost consolidation and data centralization of an organization’s meeting and event activity.
- Communications
- Change Management
- Policies
- Procedures
- Technology Evaluation
- Sustainability Plan

An Event Alignment Strategist takes a whole-systems thinking approach to design an alignment portfolio framework. She understands it is a process of discovery and that executive level commitment is mission critical.

Through the alignment process, an Event Alignment Strategist successfully balances an organization’s entire composite. The rational concepts of business (processes and systems) fall into the execution area and the human aspects (people) make up the preparation.

An Event Alignment Strategist understands how an aligned enterprise-wide meeting and event portfolio unifies these two areas. Implemented correctly, an organization’s event portfolio alignment drives business goals by collecting and managing intellectual and talent capital, allowing the organization to innovate more easily, and in effect increasing productivity, profitability and collaboration for bottom-line results.

Are you capitalizing on your event portfolio investment to its fullest? Can you confidently say that every meeting and event your organization holds gets you closer to achieving your business goals?

If you have any questions or thoughts you’d like to share about our blog posts, please register or login to leave a comment, or contact Susan via your preferred method (Twitter: @SusanRadojevic).

Corner Office #1: Decision Making in Complex Environments – Mary Boone

Resources:
HBR Article

Mary Boone: MaryBoone.com

Event Portfolio Alignment 101

Have you felt the shift in the way meetings and events are perceived by senior level executives? This change has necessitated a new breed of professional planner, one who is instrumental in improving organizational performance and profitability through strategic events. But what exactly is Event Portfolio Alignment?

Bottom line: Event Portfolio Alignment allows an organization to transform their meetings and events from a cost into an investment. How? Well, try this definition on for size:

Event Portfolio Alignment is the strategic framework by which an organization aligns and leverages their enterprise-wide event investment (i.e. all external and internal meetings and events) to drive organizational goals and profit. It engages several essential, inter-dependent elements: effective leadership, a well-planned strategy, strong and comprehensive support, commitment, investment and the right technology.

This is a tall order but not much different from building a sound marketing or communication strategy (which should in fact include meetings and events in the mix). The goals for an Event Portfolio Alignment directly relate to the event portfolio’s outputs and inputs.

What are event portfolio outputs and inputs?

Event Effectiveness (outputs) – how events are integrated and fit in with an organization’s business strategies and goals.

Event Efficiency (inputs) – is a by-product of the framework and addresses travel and hospitality components like: planning best practices, vendor data centralization and cost consolidation.

**What Event Portfolio Alignment is NOT!**

Now I can hear you saying our definition of Event Portfolio Alignment reads an awful lot like the approach and buzz term, Strategic Meetings Management (SMM). It is not. And here’s why:

Core value proposition – beyond cost reduction

The only function of Strategic Meetings Management (and most meeting consolidation and management approaches) is to standardize and consolidate meetings and events within an organization. SMM answers the who, what, where, when and how questions. Its sole aim is cost reduction, and the primary focus is often heavily weighted to the consolidation of the travel and hospitality component (inputs).

Although the most visible in terms of spend and activity, and the one executives gravitate to when looking for cost efficiencies, inputs are only one of several key elements that must be taken into account. Moreover, cost reduction-based meeting management programmes result in cheaper events. And that’s all. (Source: Strategic Meetings Management by Dalia Fahmy.)

In the end, programmes like SMM miss the bigger picture: weaving enterprise-wide events, defined objectives (meeting & event design) and measurements into the overall business plan to deliver business goals.

Event Portfolio Alignment leads with the why for meetings and events in context to overall organizational goals, thereby providing meeting and event effectiveness (outputs).

What does Event Portfolio Alignment do?

It responds to the call by c-level executives to increase organizational effectiveness and efficiencies in the delivery of their corporate and marketing strategies. It provides a comprehensive framework to achieve results greater than mere cost reduction. Accomplishing and sustaining Event Portfolio Alignment positions businesses to meet the demands of the new Global Knowledge and Digital Economy.

Wanted: Strong Willed, Determined, Focused, Attentive Individual

This post is an introduction to our new series, “Wanted: New Breed of Professional Planners,” where we describe a new breed of professional planners who help business executives focus on people, performance and profitability through strategic corporate meetings and events.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Bernard Shaw

Throughout my career I’ve had the privilege and pleasure to wear a few career hats. From a teenage model (highlight experiencing Paris fashion week) to a management role (at 23) in financial services. While all the roles have been personally and professionally rewarding, none of them compare to the diversity of experiences I have had as a meeting and event professional planner.

Looking back to the mid-80s, when my professional planning career started, I never imagined that one day I would be referred to as a veteran planner. A badge of honour I have worn proudly!

If there is one thing I’ve learned during my career, it’s that change is constant. It’s necessary and, for the most part, it’s good! Change affects everyone in different ways. Though there is one change that has had the same impact on professional planners and the world in general: the Internet.

And just when we figured out how to charter the Internet waters, technology rapids once again engulf and challenge us to change our lives and the world!

The significance of this change on the role of a professional planner can be summarized as we went from (incoming tough love):

Leading with knowledge to following knowledge.
Being subject matter experts on travel & hospitality logistics to order-takers.
Being a valuable asset to our organization to being made redundant.

Today, a typical recruitment ad for a professional planner might read:

Wanted

"Strong willed, determined, focused, attentive individual with in-depth understanding of company culture and structure. Comfortable advising c-level management is a plus. Must have proficiency in change management, communication and finance. Must understand corporate and marketing strategy. Excellent project management and presentation skills are essential."

What’s missing from the ad is any reference to knowledge and skills in travel and hospitality logistics. That’s because this skill is not relevant to meetings and events core value proposition.

The bottom line is the new breed of professional planners is not the same with different stripes. The new breed of planner is someone focused on aligning meetings and events with business goals and positioning them beyond the traditional travel & hospitality logistics and audience engagement. We refer to this new breed as Event Alignment Strategists .

An Event Alignment Strategist is someone who provides advice to senior management regarding an organization’s event portfolio investment. They counsel business leaders on how to achieve top/bottom line growth, deliver excellent customer service and help their organization innovate to stay competitive through leveraging the organization’s internal and external meetings and events.

Finally, an Event Alignment Strategist is a leader not a follower. She is a person with wisdom and integrity always ready to listen and empower. This is important because, and, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw…all progress depends on the unreasonable woman!

Over the coming weeks we will expand on our hypothetical recruitment ad and drill down on the role, responsibilities and business acumen required to be an Event Alignment Strategist. We hope you join the conversation.

Enhance Events with NMN Mobi

In our last blog post we announced our new, upcoming feature to Corner Office – Thingamajiggers, where we will familiarize you with champions among the many tools, resources and technology offered to augment meetings and events. On top of this, we also promised to help you suss out how these thingamajiggers fit into your overall event portfolio and business strategy.

Today we’d like to introduce you to our first Thingamajigger that we’ll be featuring in Corner Office on February 16th:

NMN Mobi: Technology Changing the Face of Events

There’s digital event guides and then there’s NMN Mobi. But first, let’s meet its makers…

AV-CANADA are experts in presentation technologies. Through their News Minute Network (NMN), they allow organizations to share their message with today’s tech-savvy, time-constrained customers in one-minute video newscasts via web and mobile channels.

Recently, they’ve partnered up with EventMobi, an interactive mobile app which transforms events, tradeshows and conferences into a digital playground enhancing the experience for all those involved: participants, speakers, organizers and sponsors.

Through this partnership, their latest product (the one we’ll be featuring in Corner Office #3), is NMN Mobi. This web-based mobile application is a digital event guide and interactive tool combining the communication style of NMN with the power of EventMobi to make events more effective, measurable and green.

How NMN Mobi creates greener, more cost-effective events

With an ever-increasing focus on saving the planet, organizations have placed an emphasis on their CSR initiatives. NMN Mobi provides organizations with a double whammy in this area by offering a cost- effective digital event guide and content management system with real-time update capabilities!

With NMN Mobi’s content manager, event information can be added collaboratively and instantly, saving both time and money. When last minute changes are made, they are in real-time and because of the digital format, reprinting costs are an unnecessary expense of the past.

How NMN Mobi creates happier, more connected participants

Participants need only to bring their smart phones with them to the event. From the event brochures and takeaways to the event map and speaker bios, it’s all on NMN Mobi. With an interactive agenda, participants can create and edit their schedule on the go. They can even search for speakers and sessions through NMN Mobi.

Also helping create a greener and more stress-free world, participants can leave their business cards at home. They can create detailed profiles and search the entire listings to find exactly the right people they need to meet. With direct links to social networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, all the contact information they need is in the palm of their hand!

How NMN Mobi is seamless, versatile event technology

As a mobile web-application that doesn’t require a download, NMN Mobi detects which phone you are using and runs beautifully on the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia Symbian and Android Google phones. NMN Mobi is designed so that regardless of a poor wireless connection, every page loads quickly using wifi or 3G data connection.

How does NMN Mobi fit into your overall event portfolio strategy and help drive business goals?

For the answer, stay tuned for the February 16th episode of Corner Office where we find out more about this technology from Andy Stinton, NMN’s self-proclaimed Communications Futurist.

Corner Office: Thingamajiggers – Real-Time Mobile Event Experience

Resources:

MNM Mobi Official Website
Blog post on NMN Mobi on Corner Office
Real-Time Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott

Introducing Corner Office’s New Feature: Thingamajiggers

Between running a business 24/7, managing an abundant source of information and with the insane frequency of innovation these days, I find it hard to keep it all straight in my head. In fact, often my memory cells leave me with no forwarding address and I forget the names of the latest and greatest tools, resources and gadgets (even the most helpful ones!) and simply refer to them `thingamajiggers’.

If you’re like me, not only do you have trouble keeping up with the names but you also lack the time to investigate them. It’s exceedingly difficult to figure out what they do, how they do it, why they do the things they do AND how they fit into the big picture before the next fabulous ‘thingamajigger’ comes along and we have to do it all over again!

This is where our new feature of Corner Office: Thingamajiggers, comes to the rescue. We will present for you gold in the form of tools, resources and doodads designed to optimize the results of softer strategies (people-focused strategies that provide a bottom-line return) like enterprise-wide meetings and events.

Our goal for Corner Office is to cut through all the clutter and compile all the goodies for you in one place. We do the grunt work on your behalf so you’re left with only the best to sort through. And we explain how it fits into the bigger picture: your business vision.

How does business vision relate to `thingamajiggers’?

The most forward-thinking leaders consider their organization as an ecosystem with interrelated parts: people, structures and processes. Alter one of these parts and it affects the other parts as well as the whole. We discussed this concept in our Corner Office pilot episode, “Decision-Making in Complex Environments”, where we introduced David Snowden’s Cynefin framework and emergent practices.

This is also referred to as a Whole-Systems Thinking approach:

Systems Thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. In nature, systems thinking examples include ecosystems in which various elements such as air, water, movement, plants, and animals work together to survive or perish. In organizations, systems consist of people, structures, and processes that work together to make an organization healthy or unhealthy.

Systems Thinking has been defined as an approach to problem solving, by viewing "problems" as parts of an overall system, rather than reacting to a specific part, outcomes or events.

An example of this is an event portfolio. Meetings and events are a system onto their own (within the greater organizational system). Each meeting and event consists of parts: setting objectives (to support overall business goals), design, ROI, planning logistics (knowledge transfer methods, technologies and travel & hospitality) and delivery. If we consider each part influencing one another within the whole, we create more effective and efficient outcomes.

When an event portfolio is aligned with overall organizational goals, meetings and events become fluid. They shift in response to internal and external changes, contracting and expanding depending on the circumstances. Sound familiar? A successful business plan is just as responsive to shifts in the market and an organization.

At our Agency, we believe valuable meeting and event tools, resources and technology are enablers and play a part in the overall event portfolio alignment solution which can drive business goals. Hence, our new Corner Office feature and intention is to help you understand where strategy and these tools, resources and technology (a.k.a. `thingamajiggers’) fit in the big picture.

Stay tuned for Corner Office #3 where we introduce this new feature with a piece of event technology that is more effective, measurable and green.

Corner Office Episode #2: Work+Life Flexibility

Resources

Cali Williams Yost The Conference Board 2010 CEO Challenge Survey

Towers Watson Global Workforce Study Alex Edmans of Wharton Business School

Corner Office: Episode #2 Work+Life Flexibility - Employee Perk or Organizational Growth!

Cali Williams Yost, a work-life flexibility expert and author delves into why organizations need to embrace greater flexibility in how, when and where work is done and teach their people to partner with them to leverage the potential of the new reality so they don't leave money and growth opportunities on the table.

Demystifying Meetings & Events: Myth #3

An event portfolio investment is not relevant to the C-Level Executive

At first glance, this myth may seem a bit odd as it is generally accepted that all functional aspects of an organization should be important to leadership. On a large scale this is somewhat true however there is another aspect of an organization that continues to take precedence over many other important areas.

We all know that the goal of an organization is to maximize revenue and minimize costs. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that an abundance of attention and power is placed on the containment of organizational costs. This in and of itself is not a problem; the problem occurs when vital initiatives are misclassified as cost centres instead of as investment opportunities.

When I face challenges I turn to music and its lyrics to help my thinking, one of these being: “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.” In an organizational sense, this phrase is definitely true as recent history has demonstrated that when costs need to be contained one of the first areas to take a hit is often in travel and hospitality. This area includes – surprise, surprise – the event portfolio and all of its related travel. It is very unfortunate that the event portfolio continues to be positioned and therefore perceived as an operational and logistical cost. Being chronically contained in this classification continues to hinder the growth potential meetings and events can unleash on an organization, as they are the first to be placed on the chopping block when economic downturns occur.

If we could turn back the clock and alter the way C-Level Executives view the functionality of their organizational event portfolio, I would counsel leaders to take a more holistic approach in deciding which strategic tools to use in order to achieve their goals and carry their organization forward in the 21st century. The truth is meetings and events can achieve so much more than their current position and perception as an outgrowth of travel and hospitality reporting up to procurement. An event portfolio is a C-Level Executive’s critical platform which can be utilised to communicate valuable messages and foster collaboration with key stakeholders both inside and outside the organization.

Hmm…here’s a thought. If meetings and events have the potential to be used in a multitude of positive ways, they must be relevant to C-Level Executives. In other words, it is not that meetings and events are irrelevant to leaders; it is that their current perception as a cost centre continues to position an organization’s event portfolio within the realm of irrelevance. Meetings and events can be a C-Level Executive’s strongest ally. The only thing standing in the way is shifting their current perception and taking the steps to actualize the event portfolio’s true potential.

We believe this myth is officially busted! What do you think?

Demystifying Meetings & Events: Myth #2

Organizational efficiency is more important than organizational effectiveness

My, oh my, this is a scary one!

Our goal here is not to bust this myth by claiming that the reverse is true – that effectiveness is more important than efficiency – rather, we believe that the secret to a successful organization lies in the blending of efficiency and effectiveness when planning and executing internal and client facing meetings and events. In other words, we believe that both of these components are vital to an organization’s success and that they are best used in tandem. What exactly do we mean? Don’t organizations inevitably have to choose one focus over the other? Let me first explain what happens when an organization places disproportionate importance on a solely numerical metric known as efficiency.

When efficiency is an organization’s number one priority, the main focus is immediately placed on the what and the how of planning an event instead of first addressing the integral why an event is being held. The central functionality gets bypassed altogether, as the event portfolio is immediately labelled as a cost and not as the investment it is. Once an event portfolio is framed within this context, those in charge of planning the meetings and events get bogged down with the responsibility of planning all of the tactics involved (in the most cost-efficient manner, of course!) – tactics which are not necessarily preceded by a strategy. The problem here is that a strategy must always be in place before any tactics can be addressed; similar to how an electrician would not wire a house before the builder spent the time necessary to physically build it. Hmm…this analogy seems to make perfect sense yet this chronic imbalance seems to outweigh this logic.

Let us be clear here we are not trying to say that cost-efficiency isn’t positive for an organization. I'm a firm believer in shopping around for the best deal and I commend organizations that do so. Our goal is to bust this myth open and expose the fact that focusing solely on efficiency is no longer sufficient to remain competitive in today’s business world. Corporate executives need to ask if their event portfolio has simply evolved into a routine part of business, thus resulting in a shift in focus towards logistics and cost-containment. If this is the case, executives must ask themselves if seeking out the cheapest supplier can unleash people potential at a meeting or event. The answer is No. What you do get is cheaper travel and hospitality costs to get to the meeting or event; NOT what happens at the meeting or event!

The beauty of using meetings and events as a business and leadership tool is that they provide a platform for c-level executives to disseminate, collaborate and gather information with and from their valuable stakeholders. This focus on content-effectiveness facilitates the continued development of an organization and its most valuable resource: its people.

Meetings and events are all about effectively unleashing people potential and building intellectual capital. This, in turn, leads to increased levels of innovation, participation and collaboration, as well as improved organizational performance, productivity and profitability. Aha! Living proof that it is possible to blend effectiveness and efficiency into an organization!

Demystifying Meetings & Events: Myth #1

Anyone within an organization can plan a meeting or event.

Let’s face it. Many of us are guilty of believing or (even worse) acting upon this myth in an organization.

The time has come for this myth to be busted once and for all! As long as organizations operate in accordance with this mythology, they will continue to bypass vital opportunities to foster an event portfolio alignment strategy.

It is mission critical C-level executives don’t lose sight of the fact that every meeting and event should ultimately support the CEO’s vision, strategy and goals. If this is not currently the case, leadership should consider initiating a review of their enterprise-wide meeting and event investment. From here, event portfolio alignment can enable an organization’s meeting and event strategy into a sustainable competitive advantage.

Before going further, let’s return to the myth for a moment. If meetings and events solely involved a logistical component, I would agree that this feat could be achieved by anyone in an organization planning a basic event. In reality, however, the true beauty of an event portfolio alignment lies in its rich informational component, which facilitates dissemination and collaboration within an organization and its stakeholders (both internal and external). Therefore, simply assigning the planning of a meeting or event as another to-do list task is a major leadership oversight that will continue to result in sub-optimal effectiveness and efficiency levels.

Then there is this one other thing. If organizations are to move forward, c-level executives must also alter their current perception of meetings and events from a simple outgrowth of travel and hospitality reporting up to procurement, in order to actualize the tremendous potential event portfolio alignment can unleash within an organization. When approached strategically, event portfolio alignment has the potential to provide not only event effectiveness (as stated above) but also event efficiency in the form of long-term cost savings through the consolidation of travel and hospitality costs, stronger negotiations and streamlined data and resources.

The challenge of taking the first steps necessary to initiate event portfolio alignment, lies with the fact that change is typically not embraced with open arms and even more so in an organization operating in a classic environment. That being said, in order to overcome this challenge, it is imperative that a sound change management process accompany event portfolio alignment, to convert disbelievers into advocates. C-level executives must remember to not only foster a corporate culture that embraces positive change; they must actively seek out opportunities to instil change.

Call To Action: Take a few moments to reflect on why your organization currently has an event portfolio investment. Does your organization have room for improvement when it comes to event portfolio alignment with business goals? Does leadership perceive enterprise-wide meetings and events as a cost centre as opposed to a strategic investment?

If your answer is yes to the above questions, there’s one final question to ask: What’s the cost of doing nothing?

Chilean Miners: What We Learned

The world watched in panic as the 33 Chilean Miners stood trapped 625 metres below the earth’s surface. A feeling of hope was never lost, however the miners’ chances for survival lay solely in the hands of the strategists behind the rescue plan. The Chilean Government was quick to respond and devise a plan that was both strategic and revolutionary. Government officials understood the extent of their core competencies and did not hesitate to approach other organizations (such as NASA) to acquire additional competencies vital to the creation of a successful plan. The resulting recipe for success consisted of equal parts: collaboration, innovation, dedication and transparency. As a result of this revolutionary approach, the heroic rescue capsule now famously known as “The Fenix” was created and the legacy was born.

Although not a matter of life and death, meetings and events also have the potential to achieve great levels of success as long as the strategy behind the initiative involves vital ingredients. The strategy must be aligned with the organization’s overall goals, it must be effectively designed to achieve these goals, it must be executed flawlessly and the strategy must have measurement capabilities in place to quantify success. It is important for leaders to view these strategic initiatives as an investment in the overall success of the organization, as opposed to a traditional cost centre. In addition, costs incurred must be balanced against their benefit counterparts, in order for leaders to establish a corporate culture which fosters collaboration and innovation.

Despite all of the evidence in support of the benefits of investing in meetings and events, in reality, many leaders have yet to undertake the necessary steps to properly manage their meeting and event portfolio. As a result, the world continues to misunderstand the business value of meetings and events, as demonstrated by the "AIG Effect." In addition, many leaders continue to use broadcast communication tactics, which are essentially one-way communication methods which involve simply talking at participants from a stage. The time has come for leaders to realize that the corporate playing field has evolved to a point where they no longer have a choice in how they choose to effectively communicate with their audience. Today’s business world and the ubiquitous advent of social media now means that organizations must incorporate collaboration into their communications in order to remain competitive; two-way communication is the new industry standard.

As shared above, one of the strongest indicators of a successful strategy can be found in one common ingredient: collaboration. Collaboration is imperative to the success of both organizational and rescue teams, as it enables the formation of cross-functional teams in order to overcome strategic barriers. If the Chilean Government had assembled their team from strictly domestic and internal resources and hence did not reach out, The Fenix might not have been created and the Chilean Miners’ story might have resulted in an entirely different outcome. This event has taught us it is important to learn from these experiences and adopt a collaborative approach into our everyday business practices. In today’s business world, notable business leaders such as David Snowden (Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge) stand firmly behind collaboration and its positive organizational effects. Snowden strongly advises both current and future organizational leaders to “surround yourself with people who complement your deficiencies.” In other words, collaborate, collaborate, collaborate.

Winston Churchill. Courage. Leadership.

As the host of Corner Office, I often think about who I would interview if the sky was the limit. Needless to say, there are a number of innovative thinkers whose legacies have left a lasting impression on me. One of those great heroes is Winston Churchill (Prime Minister of England). I believe we could all learn from Churchill’s wisdom, as he was a revolutionary strategist and communicator of his time.

In addition to Churchill’s inspirational leadership, I am also passionate about meetings and events. Corner Office was created to show how leaders can strategically leverage their enterprise-wide meetings and events to achieve their vision and goals. The modern day business world may be vastly different than that of Churchill’s day however strategic business tools, such as meetings and events, have yet to be maximized by today’s corporate leaders. It blows me away that corporate leaders believe in the alignment of strategy and tactics in an effective and efficient way, yet surprisingly enough the use of meetings and events as a strategic business tool is still vastly underutilised.

The truth is meetings and events can be used to achieve so much more than their current perception as an outgrowth of the travel and hospitality industry, reporting up to procurement. Forbes Insights recently published a Case Study focused on unveiling the concealed value of face-to-face meetings in the eyes of corporate leadership. When aligned with an organization’s strategy and goals, enterprise-wide meetings and events have the power to become an invaluable leadership tool which can achieve wonders. For example, meetings and events present a platform for deeper engagement with teams, customers, clients and vendors resulting in more accurate and efficient decisions. Moreover, meetings and events encourage vision and strategy buy-in and accountability which results in effective and measurable performance.

What this means is leaders must challenge themselves to shift their communication styles away from traditional broadcast communication, as this classic corporate leadership approach is no longer producing the best return. Today’s employees want to actively participate and contribute to an organization’s success instead of simply being talked at from a stage. I cannot think of another business tool (like a meeting or event whether it’s virtual, face-to-face or hybrid) that enables leaders to tap into the wisdom found both inside and outside of their organization. Operating in an interactive environment which fosters the continued development of an organization’s intellectual capital is essential in order to remain competitive in today’s complex and changing environment.

In the words of Winston Churchill, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

Corner Office #1: Decision Making in Complex Environments - David Snowden

Resources:
HBR Article
Cynefin framework

David Snowden: Cognitive-Edge.com

Attention Leaders and Executives!

Do you believe your organization should focus on continuously improving its business practices in order to promote organizational effectiveness? Are you ready to strategically align your meetings and events with your organization’s overall vision and goals? We, at The Peregrine Agency stand firmly behind turning these beliefs into action!

Tomorrow, we are introducing our first episode of Corner Office, our new and exciting monthly online business series (5-8 min). Corner Office is a virtual intersection where innovative thinkers unite to explore solutions on how to unleash people potential, improve organizational performance and increase profitability through the strategic use of meetings and events. The pilot episode features David Snowden (Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge) and Mary Boone (President of Boone Associates), co-authors of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) award-winning article A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making.

The foundation of the HBR article is The Cynefin Framework (pronounced ku-nev-in) as popularized by David Snowden. The Cynefin Framework operates by sorting organizational issues into five contexts based on the cause and effect nature of their relationship. Following this framework allows leaders to determine their prevailing operative context. This approach can help you better understand how to lead your organization in today’s unpredictable and unordered environment.

Please join us tomorrow afternoon for the international debut of Corner Office where we will continue to explore a new frontier in innovative thinking!

Why We Do It Is The Passion

Throughout my life I’ve been fortunate to meet and learn from some incredible individuals. One of them was Joel Beanstalk a lawyer and successful entrepreneur who gave me the best professional counsel, ‘always lead with passion and the rest will follow. And never give up!’

Over the months leading up to the Corner Office announcement last week, Joel’s words of wisdom occupied my mind on many occasions. Another person I found myself thinking about is Simon Sinek author of Start with Why. In his book Simon writes ‘people buy why you do it not what you do’. Simon calls this simple idea – The Golden Circle and it’s not based on his opinion, but on the Law of Diffusion of Innovations.

I believe ‘why we do it’ is the passion that stimulates ideas to create opportunities and address challenges. Enter Corner Office where the goal is to always lead with why and follow with what if?

If you would like to find out more about the ‘why’ behind Corner Office, check out our very good friend Jenise Fryatt of Sound n’ Sight interview with me here.

Connecting Leaders to Innovative Thinkers

From entrepreneur Susan Radojevic, comes Corner Office, a virtual intersection and resource helping executive communities to achieve organizational success through the strategic alignment of meetings and events.

Taking Content to the Audience

The Twitter post read – 'Location marketing, real case studies, free events Dallas, Little Rock & Indianapolis, tix available - http://ow.ly/1BHv2’.

I immediately clicked on the link and found Simon Salt. A few tweets between new followers and Simon accepted our invitation to be our Open Channel Guest Blogger. In his post below Simon shares his road show adventure and provides a provocative look at the intersection when content travels to meet up with the audience instead of the traditional content dissemination approach. Susan Radojevic

I am currently writing a book on Social Location Marketing. As part of both promotion of, and research into the information in the book, I decided to take to the road. I combined this idea with my attendance at SOBCon 2010 in Chicago. SOBCon is the conference where some of the brightest minds in Social Media come to trade ideas, best practices, and network and generally learn from each other.

I was sponsored by Chevrolet who loaned me a 2010 Chevy Camero. I set off from Austin to Chicago, with stops in Dallas, Little Rock, and finally Chicago.

The concept behind my trip was very basic. If I am going to talk about Social Location Marketing, then I should do it by changing locations. Rather than bringing the audience to me, I should go to the audience. Why? Because in doing so I was able to show them the information, make it relevant to their specific market and lower their cost of acquiring the information.

I am taking this concept a little further by bringing the SOBCon experience to my home town of Austin, Texas. Again the same principle applies, bring the relevant content to the people, don't try and get them to come to your content. With the budget constraints that everyone is facing, trying to host successful large scale events is becoming increasingly difficult. The SOBCon concept limits the number of participants; this too is a good way to create desire, of course along with the relevant content.

What I, as a presenter, got from doing this was much more relevant than I could have imagined. Certainly the feedback is much more immediate than doing one presentation to a larger group. By presenting to smaller groups the questions come thick and fast, they are from people who are listening and thinking ‘but how do I do this for me, for my company, here in this town’. What this teaches you is, you don't always have those answers, but by brainstorming with the room, everyone gets smarter.

By changing the concept of how people acquire information, you find that the audience is more receptive, and think more about how the information they are getting applies to them in their location. It also means that as a presenter you have to think differently and ensure that your content is relevant at that level.

About the Guest Blogger: Simon leads his own Marketing Communication Company - IncSlingers. A company that in less than two years of operation has gained four Fortune 500 clients as well as many smaller organizations. As a Social Media influencer, Simon has been sought out by both large brands and international PR companies. He is a sought after speaker on the topic of Social Media and has recently signed a book contract with Pearson Publishing for a book on the topic of Social Location Marketing. It will be released in late Fall 2010. Follow Simon on Twitter @incslinger.

Using Meeting and Events to Manage Intellectual Capital

In 2009, Deloitte Consulting LLP by Forbes Insights conducted a year-long longitudinal series, called Managing Talent in a Turbulent Economy. Deloitte surveyed global executives across industries at large businesses worldwide in the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

In the first survey of the series titled, “Playing Both Offense and Defense”, it states that in order to effectively navigate and lead in today’s tough economy, executives report that the top three strategic issues occupying their attention are “defensive” actions, including cutting and managing costs (61%), acquiring/serving/retaining customers (56%), and managing human capital (27%).

With a strong emphasis on cutting and managing costs, c-suite executives are faced with the potential loss of critical intellectual capital that is key to acquiring and retaining customers and driving innovation. Without an effective means in place to tap into the collective mindset of an organization’s people, clients, customers and vendors, an organization may risk losing its competitive advantage if talent and intellectual capital is unmanaged. In order to build and sustain a competitive advantage, the knowledge and expertise of employees (at every level) needs to be seen as a critical strategic tool for organizations.

With the leakage of qualified staff because of cost reductions, organizations will need to find the means to realign both talent and intellectual capital to support strategic priorities. Identifying key leaders at all levels will ensure the realignment and transfer of knowledge capital is leveraged. In the article, “The Talent Innovation Imperative”, published by Booz & Company Inc., the authors state that “Any company that competes on the global stage must, in light of today’s changing workforce, rethink the way it manages people.” In the new economy, organizations will need to look at effective and efficient ways to manage talent and intellectual capital while at the same time ensuring that innovation is born.

Using meetings and events as a strategic business tool can foster an environment where current leaders can share knowledge with the new leaders of tomorrow in an innovative and collaborative approach. Used as a strategic training tool to revamp outdated talent management techniques, meetings and events can help direct the new demographic talent capital while at the same time decentralizing some of the traditional decision making processes.

It All Comes Down To Balance

Recently I had the privilege of sharing my thoughts on the importance of finding and addressing the balance between meeting and event effectiveness and efficiency with the folks over at MeetingNews.

The article is titled Rise of Strategic Meetings Management Practices Fuels Turf War and starts on page 1 and continued on page 18.

...the channel is open for you to share your thoughts...

Defining What Event Portfolio Management Is

The Peregrine Agency has partnered with Meeting Professionals International (MPI), Boone Associates, the ROI Institute and the Canadian Tourism Commission and its partners (Tourism Toronto, Tourism Vancouver, Vancouver Convention Centre, Travel Alberta, Centre des Congres de Quebec, Ottawa Tourism, Caesars Windsor and Calgary Telus Convention Centre) to go 'on the road' with the concepts of The Four Elements of Strategic Value, starting in March 2010.

For a complete list of the dates and cities, please visit the MPI website.

The First Element, Portfolio Management, is what I am presenting. Here's a sneak preview of what we are going to cover.

Some Tough Love and Straight Talk!

This blog post was written for the Meetings and Events Industry and posted to my Meeting Professionals International Blog.

I write this post as a professional planner who like you is very passionate about what I do. I write this post because I believe in our industry. I write this post to applaud all the industry professionals who came before us, the ones we've worked and still work with and the ones we have yet to meet. I write this post not with a judgmental mind or for a self serving purpose. I write this post because it's the eleventh hour and it's time for some tough love and straight talk.

I'm worried! I feel like we are letting our industry down and a GIGANTUOUS opportunity slip through our fingers. For many years now we have been talking about the strategic business value meetings and events offer organizations.

Now for some tough love and straight talk! We've been presented with an opportunity to carpe diem but we're acting like spectators at a hockey or soccer match. We gotta get in the game. But it's the strategic game we need to learn to play. We need to challenge ourselves to think about why we do things and why meetings and events are an important business tool for our organization. We already know the what and how part. It's the why part we need to work on.

Here's a small example of the thought provoking sessions being presented next month at MeetDifferent in Cancun, that will help us with the why question. This is a link to all the Knowledge Sessions. http://bit.ly/2JaECS

How to Use Thought Leadership to Increase Event Success
Proving the Value of Meetings and Events: ROI Competency Building
The Four Elements of Strategic Value: Delivering Performance through Meetings and Events
Creating Personal Presence: Thinking on Your Feet in the C-Suite

By sharing the learner outcomes from the conference session line up with your manager, boss or whoever holds the purse strings in your organization you are letting them know that investing in you is actually an investment in the organization.

Some more tough love and straight talk! I appeal to the professional planners especially; it's time we sucked it in marines and took control. It shouldn't be that difficult...we love being in control. It's time we stop being a cost centre which makes us vulnerable every time there is an economic disruption. It's time we let our senior executives know why we need to be at the strategy table when meetings and events are being discussed and the value we bring to the organization.

Because if we don't, right now, change our path someone else will change it for us. And I can guarantee that the path created for us will be nothing like the one we create for ourselves.

I write this post because I believe we can change our path. Do you believe?

Join The Conversation at MPI EMEC 2010

Happy New Year and Decade Blogosphere! May 2010 be the start of many adventures that are filled with fun and happiness.

My year is sure to be fun because the folks over at MPI have invited me to speak at their European Meetings & Events Conference, February 28^th to March 2^nd, 2010 in Malaga Spain. The session is titled, Four Elements of Strategic Value: Aligning Meetings and Events to Improve Organizational Performance will be held on Tuesday, March 2^nd, 2010. Learn more about the session format and content in this video.

http://bit.ly/7k3jlU

Hasta leugo!

Gen Y and Baby Boomers

Gen Y and Baby Boomers have more in common than we think and it’s these generations’ shared principles and preferences that will drive corporate agendas.

In September, I had the pleasure of attending the second annual Education and Industry Advancing Together Together (EIAT) conference. EIAT’s mission is to ‘create a platform of best young leaders in the tourism, hotel and meetings industry in the Balkan Region.’ The stand-alone student conference, hosted in my hometown of Belgrade, Serbia, attracted 180 students, academia and industry participants from Europe, South Africa, Russia and North America.

The event also provided a platform for IMEX and MPI to host its first Southeast Europe Future Leaders Forum (FLF). As part of the one-day FLF programme, students were challenged to present a conference bid. Working all night to meet their deadline, each team successfully created and delivered strategically designed bids. This was an amazing accomplishment, considering that prior to the conference; most of them were very new to the meetings and events industry. One team showed true ingenuity by using visuals, set to music, to pitch their ideas.

Participating in the EIAT conference made me realize that Gen Y and Baby Boomers are not as different as we sometimes believe. In fact, these two generations, whose birthdays span 1946 to 1994, account for the largest labour force in the workplace today. This is a meaningful statistic, because it is the shared professional and social principles and preferences of these two generations that will drive corporate agendas. So what, exactly, are these shared values?

Value #1 Both generations have a need to make positive social change and will select careers and jobs where they can do that. Research shows that recent university and college graduates are deferring full-time employment to perform community service or acquire new skills.

At the same time, organizations like UBS, an American financial services firm, are retooling their recruitment programmes. For pursuits UBS considers worthy, it offers to pay half the base salary associated with the accepted position, while holding the promised job open for their new hire.

At the other career spectrum, Time Warner’s Digital Reverse Mentoring programme addresses the challenge senior executive Boomers may face embracing and using rapidly evolving social media tools. The programme engages savvy college students to mentor its senior executives on digital trends and technologies like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other Web 2.0 applications.

Value #2 Work/life balance is important to both groups. Flexible work options and being able to work remotely, are on the wish list of roughly two thirds of both generations. While having the freedom to choose when and where to work is high on their list, both groups value being on a team, part of a community and enjoying the social connections they build from collaborating.

Value #3 It’s not just about the money. In fact, Gen Y and Boomers will not join an organization solely on the basis of a high salary. Indeed, both generations rate interaction with excellent people, being challenged by their work, a variety of experiences and frequent and insightful performance feedback and recognition as important as financial compensation. Shared vision and values are key components in achieving business success and will ensure that corporate organizations and the meetings and events industry has a bright future.

Preparing for the Next Economic Upswing

Business experts believe that success in the new manic competitive marketplace will require executives to shift their mindset to long-term thinking and away from band-aid fixes and cost containment. A common practice applied during the recent recession. In addition, some repair work on the alignment gaps that exist between corporate strategy and operations is vital if organizations are to compete more effectively in the new marketplace.

According to a recent Forbes survey in association with SAP the biggest barrier in bridging the divide between strategy and operations is for all of the organization’s executives to come to an agreement on the priorities of the goals. For example, the survey states both strategy and operations executives cited, the changing market landscape and the impact on their organization’s ability to execute; and the pressure to maintain cost containment, as primary goals. But when they were asked to rank their goal priorities, strategy executives immediately listed their desire to meet the challenges of the marketplace while operations executives said their responsibility was to spend less.

It seems that it doesn’t matter where on the corporate ladder one sits, the mantra is the same – figuring out how to align strategy and tactics in an effective and efficient way.

But what caught my attention, even more, in the Forbes survey is the opportunity for corporate executives to use meetings and events as a tool to help achieve their goals. Bringing people together with different perceptions and getting them to agree on priorities and goals is best accomplished interacting face-to-face. So why not use face-to-face meetings and events, given that some of the proven and measurable outcomes are:

They build stronger more meaningful relationships making it easier to bust through barriers.
They help us to read the other person and that helps us negotiate more effectively on critical differences like setting goal priorities.
They present a platform for deeper engagement with teams, customers, clients and vendors resulting in more accurate and efficient corporate decisions being made.
They uncover leadership at all levels ensuring top talent capital is nurtured and kept.
They provide a safe environment for sharing intellectual capital allowing organizations to capture the raw material from which wealth is created.
And they encourage vision and strategy buy-in and accountability resulting in effective and measureable performance.

Based on these outcomes (and there are many more) meetings and events is a viable strategic tool for executives to use to align strategy and operations that can help position their organizations to compete in the next economic upswing.

The channel is open…

The Meeting And Event Strategy

I love shoes! So when I go shoe shopping I diligently try to focus my efforts on a specific style of shoe that meets my set budget. Let’s say for example a functional yet dressy ballet shoe that is great for travel with a price tag of $100. After hours of shopping I find myself at home admiring the $250 Stuart Weitzman black pumps that are in the box in front of me. So what happened? Why did I buy a different shoe that cost more?

What happened is after examining many ‘so called bargains’ I realized that a quality name-brand and higher priced shoe would be the smarter purchase. It would wear better, definitely make me feel better and stay in style longer than the shoe I originally intended to buy. In short, my purchase was a better investment.

So what does my shoe fetish have to do with advising corporate executives on why their organization should have a meeting and event strategy? The straight forward short answer is meetings and events are a strategic investment into increasing business effectiveness, competitiveness and profitability.

Meetings and events are marketing and communication-driven and every meeting and event, regardless of audience, includes all the essential marketing and communication ingredients: messaging, branding and visibility. They are most effective when they are designed to support the CEO’s vision, strategy and goals. This is why meetings and events are aligned with marketing or communications and not with procurement.

Procurement does have a part to play specific to contractual needs and issues. But its role is not to make decisions on corporate brand or the best way for leadership to unleash its people potential. These decisions should not be based on what’s the most cost efficient approach. But rather what is the most effective solution that will improve organizational results.

Today’s state of economic uncertainty has made cost cutting a reactionary band aid fix. But any c-suite will tell you long term growth is not feasible if an organization operates in a permanent state of cost containment. The bottom line is senior executives understand that vision and strategic goals cannot be achieved through belt-tightening but rather by making strategic and effective investments. Organizations develop strategic plans for marketing, communication and advertizing campaigns so why not for meetings and events?

Speech by Susan Radojevic - MPI July 13, 2009 Salt Lake City, Utah

Presenting the Four Elements of Strategic Value to the Leadership Team

Thank you Mary! I am thrilled to be here with you today and to have the opportunity to collaborate with Mary, Jack, Patti and Karen. And partner with MPI on a topic that is mission critical to our success as Professionals and our Industry. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Before we get started there is something I would like to share with you. When I was growing up, in Toronto Canada, David Cassidy, The Jackson 5 and The Osmonds were very popular. I am so excited about being in Utah because I was a huge fan of Donny Osmond and The Osmonds. I remember flipping through one of those teen magazines, Teen Beat I think it was and seeing a photo of Marie Osmond. She had rollers in her hair and was carrying a suit case as she was boarding a plane. I thought how cool is that because…

One of the things I love best about flying is having a window seat so I can get that amazing view from 35,000 feet. We spend so much of our time on the ground, looking at everything around us in a linear fashion, and then when we’re up there, and look down; it’s a whole new perspective. And that’s what we’re going to do this afternoon. Fasten your seat belts, put rollers in your hair, grab a suitcase and rev up your engines; we’re heading up to 35,000 feet – and we’re all getting a window seat….in first class too!

Portfolio Management is about achieving a bird’s eye view of how meetings and events contribute to what the organization is aiming to accomplish. Without a broader and longer perspective, we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done and we’ll keep getting the same results. The reality is today’s economic conditions mean, we, as professionals, and an industry must do better than that.

The key is not just about only thinking and talking differently about meetings and events to our senior executives. The key is to do different.

We must challenge ourselves to view effectiveness as a key measure, that when added to our standard efficiency measures, will give us a total picture of the worth of a given meeting or event.

Today, we will talk about 3 things.

First, why meetings and events are more often than not considered a cost and the risk of that
Next, effectiveness and how important it is to an organization’s success
Last, what you can do to help your senior executive understand the strategic business value of meetings and events

There is a primary reason why meetings and events are often considered a cost. Costs are easy to measure. And organizations found trying to measure effectiveness a daunting task because most organizations operate in silos. Therefore it has become acceptable for meetings and events to be dispersed among individuals of varying degrees of experience and ability. And because of that, effectiveness hasn’t been a consideration of most of the meetings and events that all of us produced.

But it doesn’t matter how efficiently we produce meetings and events if they aren’t the right ones.

If they aren’t:

held for the right reason
at the right place
with the right people in attendance
and executed in the right way,

they are not producing strategic value. They are NOT producing strategic value. And they will rightly be considered a cost.

All of us professionals planners have lived with the reality of being considered a cost centre our whole career, and that practice has made us especially vulnerable every time there is an economic disruption. If we want it to change and get better we need to do things differently starting right now. You may think I’m painting a pretty bleak picture here. But that’s because we’re still on the ground – looking around at the world as we always have. Well, things are about to change. Remember that plane ride?

Improving event effectiveness starts with getting ourselves up to 35,000 feet so we can see the big picture. It’s only at this level that we can see how meetings and events tie into the critical strategic business goals. And if they don’t tie into what’s important to the organization, they will be seen as having no value. They remain a cost.

Today, we live in complex times and have moved to a Knowledge Economy. At the core of this new economy is intellectual capital – the raw material from which organizations create wealth. Consistently producing meetings and events that build intellectual capital and support the opportunities, issues and objectives of an organization, will help us gain respect as a group contributing to organizational success. So not only is Portfolio Management important to our organizations, but to us as professionals. It is a way for us to demonstrate our worth. We understand that, but our senior executives may not. The challenge is to get them on board with us.

So, what can we do to help your senior executive understand the benefits of meetings and events that add strategic value? You can start to increase your knowledge net worth. Where you become the one who has knowledge or knows where to get it on how Portfolio Management can generate returns from meetings and events for the organization. If you don’t let your senior executive know what you know, they are missing out on the strategic benefits to be gained – and the value you bring to the organization. Let’s not let that happen.

In a few minutes, you will begin the work of building a message to deliver to your senior executive. Above all they need to know what effective meetings can do for them. Let them know the benefits of Portfolio Management. Keep asking yourself – what’s in it for them? And, wherever you can, tie the benefit to a specific organizational need. Remember you are making a pitch. A pitch for improving the effectiveness of meetings and events for the good of your organization. And a pitch for your own future and position in your organization.

For the last few minutes we talked about why meetings and events are currently considered a cost - and how that reduces the value the organization could gain and makes us vulnerable in a rocky marketplace.

The key is to change the way we think about meetings and events.

We must address equally both effectiveness and efficiency measures of all the meetings and events in our portfolio.

Okay! Your instructions are in the envelope posted to the whiteboard. You are going to start with reading the General Instructions first. Please select one person in your group to read the instructions out loud. When you have finished reading the general instructions, move onto the Portfolio Management envelop and exercise and read it out loud.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have reached our cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, enjoy the view. I’ll be here to help you with any questions you may have.

Wallflower No Longer

Open Channel is getting social!

We’re now making our discussions interactive on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com – Add Susan Radojevic At Peregrine) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/susanradojevic). It blows me away how easy it is to connect for a cyber coffee with people thousands of miles away!

Everyone I’m meeting, from professional planners to senior executives is sharing some really cool and critical information. I just learned:

81% of the world lives in an emerging market
the world is bigger, more Eastern thinking and urban…yet we keep looking to the West for solutions
today we are living in a ‘peoplization era’ and our world should be defined by the people
even in an economic disruption there is growth opportunities but it’s different and needs redefining; and
CEOs are not prepared to lead their organizations out of the recession because they are waiting for it to go away

If you are a senior executive or know one who is waiting for the recession to go away, I encourage you to join me and my colleagues, Mary Boone, Jack Phillips and Karen Haas at the Meeting Professionals International World Education Congress in Salt Lake City. I will be co-leading a session on July 13^th / 1:45-5:30 p.m. CST titled, Presenting the Four Elements of Strategic Value. This session offers four strategic solutions to help your organization achieve effective and efficient results building on tools and resources you already have and use.

http://www.mpiweb.org/Events/WEC2009/Sessions/KnowledgeTracks/Detail.aspx?S=2052

The people I’m talking with are exactly who are leading the movement in making meetings and events a strategic investment for all organizations. Connect with us in real-time...and see you in Salt Lake!

The Good Revolution

The move is definitely on - and there's no turning back.

If the capacity attendance (500+) and generous feedback from the April 21 MPI Four Elements webinar (hosted by Mary Boone, Jack Phillips and I) is anything to go by, corporate execs, meeting and event planners, suppliers and media are - at last - embracing a new way to think about meetings. The session was a great success and I am very excited about what this means for the future of the industry and more important, the corporate world. In the meantime, my email box continues to be flooded with questions, comments and suggestions from those who attended the webinar.

'No Turning Back: A Revolution in the Meetings Industry' is a three part educational series tackling the four key elements of strategic value for meetings and events: Portfolio Management, Meeting Design, Measurement, and Advanced Logistics. The programme began with a recent in-depth webinar, based on Mary Boone's briefing paper The Case for Meetings: Four Elements of Strategic Value. The webinar will be followed by a half-day interactive workshop on July 13th, 2009 at the MPI World Education Congress in Salt Lake City. The session will DEFINITELY stimulate your thinking and elevate your planning knowledge net worth. Space is limited so try and get there early.

If you are planning on joining us, it is strongly encouraged you read the briefing paper on the Four Elements of Strategic Value or view the webinar.

http://www.mpiweb.org/Education/Online/NoTurningBack.aspx

http://resultsengine.blogspot.com/

I promise you it'll be an afternoon well spent!

A Revolution In The Meetings Industry

On April 21st, Mary Boone, Jack Phillips and I were presenters on a webinar on The Case for Meetings: The Four Elements of Strategic Value. The session was hosted by Vicki Hawarden from MPI and over 500+ participants tuned in.

If you missed it and have 75 minutes to spare have a listen.

http://www.mpiweb.org/CMS/mpiweb/mpicontent.aspx?id=25334

If you only have a few minutes to spare check out this link. Jay Smethurst of Illumination Galleries captured it BRILLIANTLY. http://resultsengine.blogspot.com/

Spread the word the Revolution in the Meetings Industry is in full swing. Stay tuned for the next stop on the Revolution Train.

The recipe for great meetings: Align & Design

Meetings are one of the most powerful communication tools available to the C-Suite. They are essential to helping leaders survive the current economic downturn and they can strategically position the organization to thrive once the upturn begins. However, in order to exploit their potential, it is important to fully understand how they really deliver strategic value by considering meetings and events at both the aggregate and the individual level. We need to ensure that individual meetings deliver value and we need to look across all of our events to understand how they add up to create value across a whole portfolio.

Meetings and Events in the Aggregate: The Alignment Process

Event alignment incorporates change management, technology analysis, policies and compliance, processes and measurement to achieve results. An important distinction between alignment and other approaches to Strategic Meetings Management Programs (SMMPs) is that alignment focuses on balancing both efficiency and effectiveness in the process of assessing a strategic events portfolio. A frequent mistake with SMMP is to focus almost exclusively on cost reduction – the efficiency side of the equation. Instead, we need to make certain that the effectiveness side of the equation is considered as well. That is, we need to know how events impact the company’s key goals, objectives and strategies.

The process of alignment begins with a series of interviews with a company’s executive team. The first goal is to determine what kinds of events the company holds throughout the year, who the key stakeholders are, and who manages or coordinates the events. Event profile details (location, cost, size) are filled in later. The resulting event matrix indicates how many conferences, training sessions, employee events, seminars, etc. are conducted annually, who initiates them, and why. Armed with this information, companies are able to trace the event back to the firm’s corporate goals.

The Art and Science of Meeting Design

Understanding meetings and events at the aggregate level is important, but we also need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of individual events – particularly those that are most closely aligned with organizational strategy. Even one event alone can deliver tremendous bottom line benefits if it is both well-designed and well-aligned with the direction of the organization. Many individual meetings may be expertly planned, but not expertly designed. There is a real and significant difference in these two concepts.

Meeting design is the purposeful shaping of the form and content of a meeting or event to achieve desired results. Meeting design incorporates methods and technologies that connect, inform, and engage a broad range of relevant stakeholders before, during, and after the meeting. Good design helps meeting owners establish clear objectives and desired outcomes, integrates the meeting with other communication activities, maximizes interactivity, and results in a significant return on investment.

Meeting planning, on the other hand, focuses primarily on the logistics of the meeting – venues, travel arrangements, lodging, registration, entertainment, staging, etc. All of these components must be expertly orchestrated for the meeting to be a success. Of course, meeting planning and meeting design overlap and have deep impacts on each other.

Meeting design is a cross-disciplinary activity. In order to do a good job of designing an event, it is necessary to have working knowledge of a number of disciplines and to be able to pull together the right team from those disciplines including (but not limited to) communication, marketing, IT, Organizational Development, and education/training. The theory underlying meeting design draws on a broad range of natural and social sciences.

While people have been planning meetings for centuries, it is only recently that a more scientific approach to design has emerged. Therefore, meeting design skills are not abundant. Planners and executives need to be smart buyers of meeting design services – hiring people who have proven track records in designing meetings and who have the range of skills necessary to do good design work.

Integrating Alignment and Design

Organizations who want to receive a high payback on their investment in meetings and events will necessarily attend to both alignment and design. An organizational alignment can lead to the identification of meetings that merit a significant design effort. By looking across a whole portfolio of meetings, determining where to cut or increase investments, and applying the principles of meeting design, companies can rest assured that they will be fully exploiting the power of meetings and events to enhance strategy execution and bottom line results.

Smart Power Leadership

Corporate leaders that steer their organizations through today’s business minefields successfully are the ones who have mastered the use of what Leadership Expert Joseph S. Nye, Jr., professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and author of Bound to Lead, calls ‘SMART POWER’.

Nye believes that today’s leaders know how to incorporate two types of tools, ‘hard power and soft power’. ‘Power’ is simply the ability to get people to do what you want them to do and it’s achieved using a set of tools. Intimidation or payment defines the use of hard power and a collaborative and engaging approach is soft power. The combination of hard and soft power produces ‘smart power’. By implementing ‘smart power’ leaders create rich environments and motivate people to support their forward thinking plans.

President Obama is a good example of smart power leadership. It was Mr. Obama’s ‘smart power’ inclusive style that got him from his first appearance on stage at the 2004 Democratic Convention to the White House only four years later.

I wish more corporate leaders today would heed Mr. Nye’s teachings and President Obama’s style. Instead of creating opportunities out of economic turmoil corporate leadership is reverting back to using hard power as the tool to help them survive.

Nowhere is the use of hard power more prevalent than in the meetings and events sector of the corporate marketing strategy.

In recent months companies like AIG and Wells Fargo who once were advocates of leveraging the use of meetings and events as a communication tool tightened their corporate belts and cancelled their enterprise-wide meetings portfolio. Cutting meetings without evaluating the strategic contribution they make to the success of the organization is like cancelling an entire investment portfolio because the funds invested have performed poorly. It’s a prudent and well known practice for organizations to look for ways to reduce operating costs. But the trick is not only to be cost efficient in the process but also to be cost effective. It’s paramount not to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater, the baby being the successful tools that under normal economic circumstances have proven to be worthy solutions.

John Baldoni, Leadership at Work, Harvard Business Publishing recently wrote, ‘cancelling such meetings, except when there are no other alternatives, sends the message that employees and even vendors and customers are expendable.’ Meetings are about bringing people together and engaging them in rich and interactive conversations that result in collective and different thinking. They provide an inclusive environment for organizations to generate innovative business solutions from simple to complex issues.

Solutions generated through meetings include:

Gaining a better understanding of how to leverage the power of non-traditional customers’ buying habits and how to tap into them to create a competitive edge.
Determining how to create alliances to help penetrate a new market.
Understanding what organizations can do to attract and retain passionate and caring employees.

Organizations that set up and manage their corporate meeting portfolio strategically have invested the time and resources to capture and align their meeting activity enterprise-wide and then have evaluated the design of each meeting to confirm their effectiveness. These organizations will survive and thrive once the economy rebounds. It’s a well documented financial fact that after every economic recession the rebound is higher than it was at the start of the downturn.

And that my friend is the power of effective meeting portfolio management and ‘smart power’ leadership at work.

...the channel is open...

Corporate Strategy a Moving Target

One of my favourite sci-fi shows is Star Trek. Yup folks, I am a Trekkie. The opening show intro – ‘space the final frontier…to boldly go where no one has gone before’…still resonates with me. What I love about the show is Gene Roddenberry’s knack for weaving together storylines where the two protagonists, technology and human capital (and the occasional Klingon) pull together to create innovative solutions without losing sight of the Prime Directive.

Today’s economic melodrama is a storyline in need of a Star Trek solution. To position organizations to weather the ‘perfect’ economic storm C-suite executives are seeking innovative and immediate results. And where there is turmoil there are opportunities for those willing to think and act different.

In early 2000 forward thinking organizations like AIG (presently MIA), Kraft Foods and Kimberly-Clarke created the role of a chief strategy officer, something like a ‘mini’ CEO. These organizations discovered that with the complexity of conducting business in multiple cultures and dealing with political and environmental changes occurring at warp speed, strategy development was no longer a periodic process. As a result of a fast moving competitive environment, re-aligning strategy to support globally changing business environments has become constant. According to Harvard Business Review’s article, The Chief Strategy Officer, the recruitment process to fill this role can be long because the qualifications are so unique. Being short on time and not to mention the severely depleted pool of qualified human capital certain business sectors are already experiencing, most organizations cannot afford to wait to find a candidate who fits the role.

A viable alternative to the chief strategy officer can be to strategically align event marketing initiatives to business goals. An enterprise-wide event alignment can help C-suite executives manage the complexity of leading a global company in a time of constant change and financial disarray. It can also address industry convergence and human capital changes and their impact on corporate strategy. The fact is, meetings and events held by most organizations operate in silos and are aligned with business strategy on a case by case bases. This practice is astonishing considering the recent research by George P. Johnson.

Up to 30% of corporate annual marketing budgets are spent on meetings and events
Up to 3% of corporate annual revenue (no small change) is spent on event marketing and advertising initiatives
Yet 80% of meetings and events are not aligned with corporate business and marketing goals AND are not measured

http://www.mpiweb.org/CMS/uploadedFiles/Research_and_Whitepapers/EventView2008.pdf

http://www.mpiweb.org/cms/mpiweb/mpicontent.aspx?id=15022

With a marketplace in transition it is inevitable that corporate leaders will increasingly seek non-traditional options to support their ever changing strategy and drive their corporate goals.

As Captain Picard might say, we may not be able to change the Prime Directive but it shouldn’t stop us from trying a different approach.

…the channel is open…