29 May 09 Adaptation: Staying on Top as the World Changes Around You

Darwin’s theory of evolution can be summed up to today’s professional in three words: adapt or die. Although the world continue to argue about those theories, they constantly change their methods of transmitting messages. In other words, they have adapted and they continue to communicate.

Such it is with meeting planners. Although meetings will always be necessary, technology will cause changes in how these are planned, executed, and results measured. The planner who stays on top of these changes is the planner who will stay employed. However, those who want to get–and stay–at the top of their employment food chain will need to do better than stay on top. They will need to be inventive.

Meeting planners can do this first of all by realizing that they are part of the marketing team. Even if they are arranging a team-building session for XYZ Corporation’s sales staff–an in-house, exclusive event–the meeting planners are providing services that will eventually show up in the company’s bottom line through increased sales productivity.

It becomes important, then, for the meeting planner to be more visible in the company. She must be well-versed in the company’s mission and goals, and understand fully what her role is in the marketing department. This will often be dictated by a supervisor or human resources department, but it still falls to the planner to make each event reach objectives–if the planner doesn’t know those objectives, she cannot very well reach them.

The aftermath of an event is also crucial to a meeting planner’s importance and reputation–tracking the results of an event can be tricky, but is one of the best things he can do to achieve his own goals. For instance, if the goal of the meeting is to increase sales, he should collect an arsenal of before-and-after data so that he can create a report for his manager. The best way to present this data is to show how it affects the company’s bottom line, and how it changes the company’s position in the marketplace. Lots of work, but as mentioned above, you won’t get anywhere by doing only what is expected of you–you must go beyond.

As a meeting planner, make “adapt or die” your new mantra. Start collecting data that indicates your benefit to the company–you can also use this to increase your clout with hotels and facilities. In this way you will create meetings that are not just costs to the accounting department or income to an event center, but an asset for both.

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