Last Thursday alongside more than 100 of the senior management of my firm we left our hotel where we had spent three days on our bi-annual conference. These management get-togethers incite various opinions, mostly strong. Key information exchanges, necessary evils and jamborees are all representative descriptions that come to mind from the various ones I have attended over the years.
While conferences are a chance for the board of directors to present and receive feedback on their latest thinking on the strategic direction of the business to its senior management, it is in creating a fertile field of engagement for attendees that the most value is reaped.
Removing key employees from their usual corporate environment allows these people to focus on a pre-determined theme in a controlled setting that facilitates their fullest attention. At our conference, fines were levied on those who had not turned off their mobiles during sessions. The nominated charity was grateful as were attendees not subjected to often disturbing personalised ring tones.
Traditionally, conferences have often been dark, hot and uncomfortable. They suffered from poor sound, layout and timetabling. Pre-night over exuberance, poor presentation and lack of structure add to the misery. Intellectually treated like kindergarten children and bullied into military bruising challenges in locations only recently added to Google Earth, one could be forgiven for showing amazement at the high levels of attendance.
Our conference utilised well-oiled internal functions in hand with a conference facilitator over many weeks before the gathering. We didn't suffer from the issues above and neither should your organisation.
The conference facilitator's role is important. That person is there as a guide, will almost certainly not be a specialist in your business sector, instead strives to create engagement with the conference purpose. To achieve success it is incumbent on the part of the delegates to demonstrate a willingness to be open and maintain discreet integrity with regards to the debates and conversations that occur.
Short games or exercises made up of up to five people are often used to warm up audiences, introduce people, garner attention and lead into or ultimately towards a core conference theme. Our facilitator used a mix of these and video vignettes to inject activity and humour into our days while staying on message.
The last, largest and most extensive exercise we were tasked with was to create a presentation that brought together learnings from the three days and how these could be harnessed to best serve the organisation, its
clients and suppliers. Broken into teams of 10 we were given 15 minutes to prepare and one minute to present. We were not asked to chameleon into McKinsey consultants, but show groups of people who in many cases had never met or communicated before the conference, could don a collective company hat and present a cogent answer to our peers.
What resulted has relevance for the va-va-voom organisation. In a fast-growing business it can be difficult to gauge the effectiveness not only of your contribution but more importantly where you should pitch your suggestions when structures and personnel are rapidly changing around you.
If you look at the chart above, the circles represent the interplay between the organisation, its clients and suppliers within which an individual interacts.
The blue triangle represents the individual's knowledge reach at the beginning of the conference, the broad bounds to which that person is institutionally aware and could potentially affect the organisation while being likely unaware of all the positive or negative ramifications of any actions outcome. The size of the triangle recognises that the individual is a member of senior management and whose footprint encompasses vast tracts of the business.
The letter U is the target position for an individual at the end of the conference. This reflects a clear understanding of group strategy, awareness of the key people in each division with the early fomenting of friendly and effective personal relationships. Lastly, there is the critical element: a sense of boundary, the point at which the greatest value accrues to group goals.
Additionally, this acts as a measure of individual fit. Do your skills best benefit the organisation in the position you are in? Are you happy with the position you occupy? Are you more likely to add greater value elsewhere?
Ideas need to be tested and the team turned to me to present ours. There are a few elements to remember when preparing a presentation of this type. Firstly, make sure you answer the question that was asked. Secondly, ensure that your answer is relevant, competitive and interesting. Finally, target your answer to the audience. Presenting is about informing the recipients, about convincing them that your idea has validity and influencing their behaviour in the future.
The verbal element was initially and quickly put to paper, each member then separately bringing their interpretation to the content. Combining this led to decisions on what level of volume should be projected, delivered at what tempo while not losing clarity. Modulation of delivery was practised and focus on phrasing introduced to emphasis each message.
A presentation is a marriage of your idea to the audience, so consider the old adage and bring something new, something borrowed and something blue. Our presentation contained a new insight utilising elements of models in existence, our U was our blue contribution.
As I stood by my flipchart, presentation ready, graphics ready and confident that our message adhered to the three elements mentioned above, my morale dipped as the four people before me used bleeding edge humour to win over tired delegates. Please add to the third element above: take into account the mood of the audience.
Conferences can often seem an unnecessary distraction, delivering familiar material while delegates often form into established cliques. The conference I attended contained that, but it also contained the benefits that you have just read. Be prepared to be surprised at what you didn't realise you were learning and would be bringing back to your office.
- The writer is a senior financial consultant based in Dubai