Do things different in 2017: Align your next meeting or incentive with your Corporate Strategy and see the results.

Happy New Year! January 2017 has approached and you are looking at your calendar of meetings and events for the year. You tell yourself it’s time to do it all over again. You start the planning process by contacting hotels, and the suppliers ask you that dreaded question: Why are you having this meeting? “Because we’ve done it every year.” Is that really a good reason to run a meeting? Is that what your boss wants to hear?

Now more than ever we need to get a greater return from our events. As event planners we have a responsibility to ensure the events we run align with organization strategy.

A Missed Opportunity?

Eric Rozenberg my business partner at Swantegy Miami was meeting with Mike, a successful commercial director in an international company and they were discussing his upcoming sales meeting.

This is a true story, a true dialogue, and only the name has been changed – to protect the innocent!

Eric: So, Mike, why are you organizing this sales meeting?

Mike: What do you mean “why”? I guess – because we do it every year!

Mike’s response illustrates a major recurring problem in the corporate world: corporations spend millions of dollars hiring bright management consultants and mobilizing senior executives’ time to develop strategy. However, when an opportunity arises to align, and engage employees on the objectives to be reached through a conference or some other type of event – these same intelligent consultants and executives never harness the power of the face-to-face meetings that they are planning. Yes, they spend a lot of time and money on the events, but when asked why they spent so much time and money – they don’t have a convincing response: because that’s what they have done every year...

The Responsibility of the Meeting Planner

In all fairness, senior executives have little or no experience in using face-to-face meetings to increase their organization’s business performance… and it’s our responsibility to engage with them on a larger scale by asking better initial questions than “how many rooms do you need?”. How about asking “what do you hope to accomplish by the end of this program?” or “what is the most critical take away from the attendees?”

How To Align Meetings and Events with Corporate Strategy

In the next seven days, I will share with you seven easy steps that will help you align your next business meeting with the corporate strategy. You’ll finally be able to measure the impact your meeting has on the company’s business performance...plus you’ll be thankful that you read this post. If you can't wait until tomorrow, then you can pick up a copy of "Meeting at C-Level" written by my business partner Eric Rozenberg, available on Amazon.com. In the book Eric illustrates the seven steps and much more. Otherwise, if your patient, stay tuned for tomorrow when I'll share with you the first step. Until then...keep it productive!