Tech Summit Investments: Lessons and ROI

"One time, one meeting" in Japanese is「一期一会」(Ichigo ichie). Time together is valued and special. Separately, the Daruma Doll is a Japanese talisman of setting and achieving goals. In this week we weaved in the culture and country that hosted us.

Over the past 13 months, teams and stakeholders worked to organize a summit spanning 168 hours (Sunday to Saturday in September).

In weekdays, 40 hours were dedicated to sequenced sessions, with an additional 10 hours for networking. Factoring in travel, sleep, and morning and evening preparations, the remaining 48 hours allowed for self-directed interactions over meals, water coolers, leisures, walks, adventures, or moments of tea. I am fan of the later. This shaped an intense and productive week with less sleep. Adding to a challenge, the summit was preceded by a week of events in another city to support Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cyber, a micro-summit on emerging best practices in program and portfolio management, and several adjacent events that combined have resulted in nearly 800+ interactions in 336 hours. A lot of adroit humans. Adjacently there were a few other visits in another city. Typical week in Japan. The below is the pause and retrospective.

To prepare for this event the team hosted seven plus mini-summits over the last year. Fall seven times, get up eight" is Japanese「七転び八起き」(Nanakorobi yaoki). It is important to make space and celebrate practice and experimentation. Fail small and practice. We have learned a lot in the last year and the apex of this was a summit last week. Humbled by the many humans who have contributed to this work and brought their expertise to bear. This summit highlighted the teams learning and gently nudges many future actions.

Each day featured opening and closing remarks from extraordinary CIO and PDCIO leadership, along with breakout sessions in Cyber, Infrastructure, Management & Leadership, and Regional Deep Dives, blended with sessions were key topics below:

• Monday: Welcome, Women in Tech (WIT), C-Level Leadership, and Customer Experience.
• Tuesday: Industry CIO, Strategic Communication, Organizational Strategy, WiFi, Network Leadership, and Application Development.
• Wednesday: Psychological Safety, Leadership Failure and Recovery, Data-Driven Decision-Making, Organizational Change Lessons, Customer CIOs, and AI.
• Thursday: Federal CIO, Career Path, Crisis Management, Cost Model Modernization, and Tier 2 Regional Support.
• Friday: Leadership “Ask Me Anything” panels and closing remarks.

In total, there were around 90 sessions packed into 40+ hours of learning, collaboration, networking, relearning, disagreements, and knowledge-sharing. We made time to celebrate failure in respectful ritual. Nearly every presenter, expert, and leader brought passion and energy to topics, inspiring new ideas, driving meaningful discussions, and shaping new perspectives. Many rising leaders were spotlighted for their unique contributions.

Early in the premortem, we applied insights from Harvard Business Review's "Leadership Summits That Work," The Art of Hosting, World Café, and several past events to shape elements of the summit, ensuring that key topics spurred collaboration and reduced barriers to future goals. Were needed we created conflict - safely. We reduced risks and allowed attendees to consider aspirations in higher atmospheres across the many countries and expertise they attend from. Many fluidly and with candor shared their thoughts. The event has already proven to be a valuable investment of time and effort, giving many deeper empathy for the level of planning required—much like planning a wedding, but without the deeper expertise of a planner! The act of doing is an act of learning, retrospection, and growing.

In the postmortem, I’ve identified over 20 next actions, consultations, and areas for improvement (kaizens) that we’ll address in the coming months. I’m proud of the summit's results, grateful for a diversity of stakeholder dedication, humbled by the many speakers who brought their expertise to bear, and look forward to continuing our aspirational objectives and key results (OKRs). Our wrap up share is another's premortems research towards a learning organization (ref).

Special thanks for Assistant Secretary Joan Polaschik for being able to make the time and extraordinary trip to bring an important message to the sessions and Federal CIO Clare Martorana to bring a wider government policy perspective.?Much respect to Alaina Teplitz for your leadership, mind, and time.

Also, thank you to Bruce Begnell for your support and Matthew Graviss , Paula Osborn , Farakh Khan for brining your verve to AI topics the week before. Laura Williams , Ivan Watson, Gharun Lacy , @Ron Stuart, and Sheila Rose Campbell for bringing your usual verves, diverse candors, and passions!

David Foster - welcome to the region.

Luis Coronado Jr , Mary Bati , and Valerie Chittenden you know we got nothing but love for your mission in Japan! Consular one of the two hardest and oldest missions of diplomacy. And Naritomo Miura - thank you for bringing your leadership to this space too! He was an eloquent speaker and please tell him his message and method was adopted by a junior employee with respect using an old car image to explain why we are modernizing. It was lovely. Diplomacy benefited much from his time!

Now having completed hosting and evicted all travelers, back to my passions keeping diplomacy connected, service desk, and weaving in those next actions for our targeted milestones and OKR in Japan. Tranquility with a few more goals to tackle. Thanks for visiting my AOR and now be shy for a bit :)

Any others have key takeaways from their recently supported summits? Any others have valuable reads in the topic?