“Give me six hours to cut down a tree, and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
Wise words that result in, arguably, one of the sharpest axes in the world and one heck of a cut-down tree.
The metaphor is clear … proper preparation results in an easier process and, by extension, more successful outcomes.
When it comes to creating attendee value for corporate meetings … this is sage advice. But in my experience, meeting content owners often miss an important source of input …
… they forget to ask the tree how it would like to be cut down.
Allow me to explain.
We can safely assume that at the conclusion of most large meetings, attendees are given a post-meeting survey the majority of the time; what worked, what didn’t, etc.
Near the conclusion of these surveys, the framers MAY include be a question that asks what the attendees would like to see next year, or, specifically, which components of THIS year’s meeting they would like to see repeated next year. This is all valuable information, to be sure, and offers a great deal of wisdom when planning for the future.
However … things change. Personnel changes; the market changes; company goals change, etc. So what worked last year may be woefully inadequate–or completely off-point–this year. Relying on LAST year’s survey data may be leading you down the wrong road.
Plus, the questions created for the previous year’s survey will, by definition, be narrow in scope and not allow for a great deal of extrapolation.
So what usually happens is this; when the next large meeting rolls around, the meeting content owners put their heads together, Google new approaches to deliver information, or if they’re smart, they bring in a specialist partner agency to help kick the meeting up several notches. But rarely do they perform one essential thing; they do not go to their target audience and ask THEM what they want, need, or would like to see.
I was reminded of this when planning New Year’s Day with my family. My children are now young adults with lives and minds of their own. And here I was, sitting with my wife, wracking our brains about what to do that would be fun, interesting, etc. This is SOP. Ever since our children were born, we’ve done ALL of the planning … which means we failed to recognize the most VALUABLE source of information … OUR ACTUAL CHILDREN.
So, we asked them … “What would YOU like to do?” I won’t detail their answer, but I will say that it was NOWHERE NEAR what we had been originally planning. Their answers surprised us, and showed us that no matter how much we THINK we know what they want, we are much better off going straight to the source.
The same is true of your meeting attendees. You may THINK you know what they want to see or do at their upcoming meeting … and their answers to previous surveys may help a little (or, frankly, they may have been painfully polite) … but I guarantee you that if you ask them DIRECTLY what they WANT and NEED, you will receive a real education.
Of course, it is useful to know how they felt about last year’s meeting, but as I said earlier, things change, and what was popular 12 months ago (a lifetime in marketing terms), may be irrelevant right now.
An added benefit is that the attendees (just as my children did) will feel a greater ownership of the experience, and may, perhaps, more deeply invest themselves in the proceedings … after all, THEY were the primary drivers of it.
This will ease the burden of your meeting content owners; they’ll be able to shift their focus from “What do we think they would like to know or do,” to “How can we make what they WANT and NEED even BETTER?”
This is a more constructive way to work, and results in a more meaningful experience.
So remember, if you’re a meeting content owner, and want to ensure that your attendees feel that they’re receiving maximum value from the meeting, go to the source … THEM.
Ask the tree what it needs; you may be surprised when it talks back to you.