Executive Corporate Meeting Re-Engineering Guide

Executive Summary: Based on the way in which many companies continue to design corporate meetings and sales rallies, you'd never know that there is a growing volume of research about the best strategies to engage business audience. The order of the day continues to be a dreary and tedious pattern of passive disengagement with a series of long, boring presentations delivered by "talking heads". There is a better way. From strategic meetings management to virtual worlds technology, executives can eliminate meetings that are not required, streamline meeting content and deliver it with more impact.

Repairing A Broken Business Meeting Model

by Anne Thornley-Brown M.B.A. President

Executive Oasis International

Anne founded and manages the International Business Team Building Alliance for Executives on Linkedin. All executives from medium to large companies are welcome to join the more than 140 executive members from over 30 countries.

Troubleshooting Corporate Meetings Before They Start

When a meeting is poorly designed, participants have a hard enough time staying awake yet alone deriving benefit from the content that is presented. So, how can we fix a corporate meeting model that is badly in need of repair? My advice is that it's time to re-engineer meetings and sales rallies. Before we tackle strategies for doing that, let's get to the root of the problem.

7 Signs That Your Corporate Meeting Design is in Need of Renovation

Every time you get your team together, as the planning cycle continues, you have more and more content to cover.
You end up with a jam packed agenda that's bursting at the seams with content.
The set-up for your meetings resembles the opening photo.
Your meetings are composed of wall to wall presentations that require participants to sit passively and listen.
Your breakout sessions are also exercises in passive disengagement.
You're always running behind schedule.
The group is rowdy and difficult to engage during entertainment or recreational activities.

It's a symptom of a deeper problem.

A Corporate Meeting Model That Works

I have previously blogged about:

This model is based on a start time just after an early lunch (12:30) on Day 1. I recommended a minimum of 2 days plus a 3 hour orientation session to include:

facilitated team building
recreational team challenges
debriefing
business application exercises
a half day business meeting with your own agenda items

It's a scaleable design that works for on-site meetings and off-site retreats. For off-sites, companies that require more meeting time to cover their own agenda items can easily add half a day without having to extend their hotel stay by another night.

The State of Corporate Meetings

Our team building firm regularly gets inquiries from companies that initially request a full day of interactive team building. This is doable with a very short simulation and very specific outcomes but it's a very tight timeframe. Often, the requested time slot is reduced to 1/2 a day and, ultimately, it shrinks to a 1 to 2 hour strictly recreational activity or after dinner entertainment. This business is, invariably, awarded to the lowest cost provider. By the time the participants get to dinner, they are exhausted and in bad humor. We have seen instances in which the participant attention span has been stretched to the limited and they have short attention spands even during the entertainment.

The actual meeting ends up consisting of a series of dry presentations (i.e. back to back information dumps). I just had a chance to skim The Presenters' Jiffy Guide to Effective Knowledge Transfer. Dave Meier of the Centre for Accelerated Learning was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book. He captured it perfectly when he said that many companies still design meetings based on the following paradigm:

Incorrect Assumption: The more information we can stuff into people in the shortest time, the more knowledge they will have.

This pattern has been emerging in Toronto for some time now. We notice that it is also starting to happen with prospective clients in other parts of the world. Colleagues in the USA have confirmed that they are seeing a similar pattern. Why is this happening? Companies have indicated that they have WAY too much content to cover. The result? Team building gets the axe and they resort to information dumps.

Reality Check: A cocktail reception and after dinner entertainment will not fix a bad meeting design.

Pinpointing Root Causes of Problem Meetings

Here are some possible causes of the swelling meeting agenda:

There are serious communication stopgaps and bottlenecks preventing team members from getting the information they need.
An information dump once or twice a year is not going to fix that. You need a cross-functional team to diagnose what is blocking the information flow and propose solutions. Tools like flow charts can be of great assistance
You're meeting too infrequently and content is piling up.
You need to meet more frequently or arrange for virtual meetings in between your face-to-face sessions so that each agenda is not packed with content.
Your processes are just too complex.
Torturing employees and forcing them to sit passively through long presentations isn't going to fix that. It's time to troubleshoot and streamline your processes.
You're using the wrong medium.
All information does not have to be delivered face-to-face. Virtual meetings, blogs, independent study modules, intranets, interactive content, and pre-recorded material accessible in Second Life may be more appropriate than a face to face meeting. If there is a need to deliver content that requires interaction between meeting participants, why bring them together?

Here are some examples of virtual platforms that can be used to deliver content before or during meetings and sales rallies. Interfaces can be animated, true to life or a combination.

Virtual Meeting

Virtual Trade Show

Cisco Systems Pioneers Virtual Sales Meeting

The Bottom Line Work on improving communication and processes. Use another platform to deliver some content ahead of time and trim your meeting agenda. Carve out more time for interactive content, team building, think tanks, brainstorming, and networking.

Strategic Meetings Management

Sometimes the root of the problem is that companies are investing too much time and money in meetings that are not really necessary. The result is that there is not enough time or budget for meetings that are pivotal.

Consider a Strategic Meetings Management Programme
This will help you get a handle on what your company is investing in meetings, set a meeting management policy, eliminate meetings that are not necessary, and allocate more time and budget to key face-to-face meetings.

Strategic Meetings Management Videos

Planning

Sourcing

Measuring Value and R.O.I.

Putting Your Corporate Meeting Budget on a Diet

Is budget is still a concern? Here are some strategies to trim your budget to free up resources to invest in an extra day at the hotel, professional facilitators, or consulting by a professional meeting planner to help you improve your meeting.

Free up more budget by opting for double occupancy rooms.
Let's face it, people won't be spending a lot of time in their rooms.
Arrange for local participants to stay at the hotel for only 1 night, the night of your social or gala.
Book suites with living rooms so that each employee has a private bedroom at a fraction of the cost of single occupancy rooms.
Plan your meeting with more lead time so that you can take advantage of cheaper airfare.
Book your meeting for a time that is slightly off-season.
If you stay in Niagara-on-the-Lake in July, it will be expensive. Opt for early November or April and the weather will still be comfortable and you'll save a lot of money. The same applies to mountain locations in Japan or Malaysia or Jamaica in May or September
Stay near where you intent to play to cut down on travel costs.
If you have to fly your team in from around the globe, select a more affordable location.
Downtown Toronto will be expensive but move just north of Toronto to York Region and you'll be able to stretch your budget and still access everything that toronto has to offer. Malaysia (try Langkawi, Tioman Island, Cameron Highlands, Berjaya Hills), Thaliand, Canada (Halifax, Cape Breton Island), and, believe it or not, Las Vegas have been identified as some of the most cost effective destinations in the world. Make your plans early and you can save a lot of money on airfare and still provide your team with a truly unique experience. If your team is small, there are even properties at which you can have exclusive use if you book far enough in advance.
Have an alcohol free meeting.
Yes there'll be complaints but It won't kill employees if they do without alcohol for one meeting and it will make a significant differenct to your budget.
Alternatively, serve wine with dinner for only 1 meal, the one you designate as your gala.
Eliminate or shorten the cocktail reception. You can either have a cash bar or provide 1 drink ticket per person for the cocktail reception.

Also, if you are flying employees in from various locations, why not extend the meeting by half a day or a day. Arrange for early arrivals and late departures. Bring participants who are flying from very far in a night earlier so that they can start the day refreshed. Get a meeting package for your first day. Start your meeting early in the morning on Day 1 and finishing when the rooms are available. Instead of cutting out early, finish later on the last day or earmark that slot for city tours and excursions. If your content is interactive and engaging, the time will go by quickly and employees will leave the meeting energized instead of exhausted. Alternatively, arrange for employees from out of town to stay in town for an extra night. It's relatively cheap to add an extra night if you've already paid travel costs. You can off-set the costs by having local employees reduce the number of nights they stay at the hotel.

Streamlining Your Content

Even if you plan to deliver everything using internal resources, it may be of benefit to engage one of the following resources for half a day to assist you with your planning and meeting design:

an internal or external accelerated learning specialist to review your content and suggest interactive delivery strategies
a team building specialist to suggest delivery options that can cover content and, at the same time provide opportunities for teamwork
a professional meeting planner to review, logistics and flow and ensure that key messaging is incorporated at every opportunity
a professional event planner to help you select cost effective and interesting venues and hotels

I would be remiss if I didn't take the opportunity to toot my own horn and point out that our firm provides all of those services. Select appropriate methods for delivering content that does not require face-to-face delivery. Determine alternatives to Powerpoint presentations for the remaining content. An internal or external learning and development specialist would be the best person to assist you in selecting delivery methods that are appropriate for the content. Here are some ideas to hand-off to your internal facilitators if they don't have this expertise:

Accelerated Learning Techniques
Turn down your sound there is music.
We've done your brainstorming for you.

Before the Meeting

Preparation

Incorporate learning style surveys or HBDI Inventories into your planning
This will make it possible to tailor your approach to content delivery to the group.
Be sure to incorporate strategies that cater to a variety of learning styles in the design of your meeting. Currently, most designs cater to analytical and structured learners only.
Extend meeting beyond its 4 walls.
Use Second Life or similar platform to include virtual attendees who were not able to travel to attend the meeting.
Remember that the environment counts. Park people in a drab meeting room with no windows and seat them in rows and you're guaranteed to have a snooze fest. (See opening photo.)

Presentation

Re-engineer the design of your conference agenda to make provide more interactive content
Every 20 to 30 minutes, break presentations with a group exercises, an exercise in pairs or trios, a case study completed in small groups, or some type of mini-break.
Participants can't engage and absorb new material if they're dozing off
Instead of sticking with standard 1 hour time slots that force presenters to do an information dump at breakneck speed, provide a variety of time slots including 2 hours and half a day.
Cater to diverse learning styles through a variety of presentation formats.
Expand your breaks to 30 minutes to build in more opportunity for networking and give facilitators more time to do set-up for interactive sessions.
Provide quiet informal spaces for discussions, networking and impromptu meetings.

Performance

Move away from theory and give participants an opportunity to work in small groups, debrief what they have learned and develop a plan to determine how to use what they have learned when they return to work.
Provide USB drive with notes and worksheets that participants can use to apply once they get back to work.
Video tape the most important sessions
Use virtual worlds technology Provide Youtube style videos through a section of your intranet devoted to the meeting. This will make it easy for participants to review meeting content.

Re-Engineered Corporate Meeting Design:

Preparation:

Participant profiles sent out before meeting to assist with planning, crowdsourcing agenda
Learning styles inventories sent out before the meeting to assist with selection of delivery methods and formation of teams for team building if required.

Day 1

Start time is after an lunch.

CEO presentation to set the stage for the meeting & Identify Business Objectives
Table top exercises in which participants work in small group to identify related issues of concern to their team or department.
Re-group into cross-functional teams
Team Briefing by Team Building Facilitator (Optional)

Presentation:

Day 2 & 3

Facilitated Business Team Building Simulation (Optional)
1. Facilitated Business Exercises and Cases
2. Intermittent Recreational activities and team challenges (Highly Recommended but Optional)
3. Application: Debriefing of Team Building Simulation (Optional)

Interactive Presentations and Breakout Sessions with Focus on Key Business Issues
Short energizers interspersed throughout the session to keep the participants alert, engaged and, most of all, awake

Application:

Business Application Exercises in Original Teams
Business Meeting to Generate Solutions and Formulate an Implementation Plan
Implementation and Follow-up

Parting Shot

The corporate meeting model is in need of repair. It is essential to pinpoint what your company is investing in meetings and set a meeting management policy. The key is to:

identify which meetings are really essential
scrap those that aren't neccesary
replace content that doesn't require participant interaction with virtual alternatives.

Then, allocate enough time and budget to create interactive and upbeat experiences that engage participants during the face-to-face meetings that are essential. It's a lot better than investing time and money to put people to sleep.

Next Steps

The next time you are thinking about flying your team in from all over the world for a corporate meeting or sales rally...stop! If your company has fallen into a tedious business meeting model, spend some time reviewing the suggestions in this blog entry and consider a new approach. Identify content that doesn't require participant interaction. Work with internal or external specialist to generate alternative formats to present the content before or after your meeting. Re-engineer the content that remains.

I enourage you to post comments and questions. If you found this content to be of value please stumble upon it and share it on Twitter and with your Linkedin Groups.

Other Resources:

For hand-off to your meeting planning team and internal learning and development professionals to assist in selecting interactive approaches to meeting content delivery.

Spice of the Month Accelerated Learning Ezine
Accelerated Learning Smorgasbord
Turn down your sound there is music.
Brainstorming with various presentation methods has been done for you.

Anne Thornley-Brown is the President of Executive Oasis International, a Toronto based consulting firm that offers meeting & strategy session design and facilitation, team building and incentive travel in Canada, the Middle East, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Photo Credit: spotrick

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