Taking meetings to the next level...

For over a decade we now have heard about the ‘seat at the table’, ‘strategic meeting management’, ROI etc.  All very interesting topics, but the vast majority in the meetings industry have not walked far with these things.
 

I believe that the explanation is simple: Meeting planning is an operational world and the hearts and minds of the people are not into C-level stuff.
 

“Strategic” is the corporate wide plan or the organisation’s global plan. In the corporate component of meetings this is about consolidating, managing and controlling spent in meetings. Not very operational and certainly not the stuff most meeting planners are made of. Meeting planning is an operational world where you manage projects, hands on. Of course one negotiates, contracts etc., for the project at hand, not making policies, creating rules and regulations for procurement let alone controlling them.
 

The seat at the table is a fable. Only in pyramid marketing organisations will you have a CMO, a Chief Meeting Officer. Very few places are vacant and most of our people are not dreaming of ever becoming part of the boring boardroom. This is not what they like! Meeting planners like projects, planning and organising events, designing exceptional experiences, not designing corporate strategies!  
 

ROI is great, it’s methodology essential to know. But how many meeting planners like numbers so much they like spendinding a day doing the math?  This is not them! They are social, creative, and structured planners, not number crunchers.
 

This being said, some meeting planners have the talent and and the ambition to grow into leadership, taking on the responsibility of leading the conference team. This takes them away from the operational side but still not provides them with strategic responsibilities. In many corporations, the meeting planner works for a team manager, reports to a marketing manager that reports to a director that reports to a VP or an EVP who is close to strategy.
 

Not many have the will or the ambition to become an executive; most even fear talking to the CEO, in many case the distance is too big. And by the way, they do this job because they liked it in the first place!

When we look at the ROI methodology, it actually is all there. Understanding the five levels is essential, but working on the lower levels could prove effective.

As a reminder, these are the five ROI levels for meetings:

5 ROI
4 impact
3 action
2 learning
1 satisfaction

C-level is interested in ROI
The CFO may create a strategy around it
The Procurement team or financial managers my do the work

The meeting owner is interested in the Impact (Level 4) which he should communicate upwards so the finance people can use it to calculate ROI.

The meeting owner could understand that this Impact is the consequence of Action (level3) which he should communicate downwards to the person designing the meeting so the learning (level 2) is designed for that desired Action that will lead to Impact...

And with level 2, we are getting close the territory of the meeting planner. This professional has mainly been focusing on designing for satisfaction (level 1); creating a great experience is what they mostly do.
This is very operational work, as is designing the content, its form and delivery - to improve the Learning. Helping the meeting owner with a better design sits close to the day to day work of the meeting planner and therefore is something most planners will like. Especially the senior meeting planners that don’t want to become managers of teams or buyers. Most planners like their jobs and maybe we can keep them doing their jobs (longer than the usual 10 to 15 years) by adding an intellectual challenge: a new realm of smart but operational work. They will flourish and remain valuable members of this industry, not leaving our associations dissatisfied as they become senior planners.

My apeal to the leaders of the industry is to study their membership and if 80% are operational and like their job; don’t try to change them into strategists! Let’s make them happy again, and proud of their work, by expanding their operational work and increasing their impact on their projects’ effectiveness. Let’s get in charge of content, content, content…
 

If our industry is an operational one, let’s embrace that fact, let’s not hide it and try to be more than what we are. We are the essential operational component of meetings, a fundamental profession that makes it possible for other people to meet and really change the world.

 

Maarten Vanneste, CMM

Sunday September 20^th 2009