Navigate your way to a successful retreat In this article, Ed Bernacki and Simon Tupman offer innovative ideas to make your conference or partners' retreat more effective, rewarding and memorable Is your firm organising a conference or retreat this year? If so, why are you really having it? It is a question that not enough firms address before taking the time and making the effort to organise their conferences. We have noticed that many firms spend large sums of money on organising conferences that focus on entertainment, speakers, facilities and food. However, rarely is there an equal focus on the participants and their learning. We consider that conferences should be planned around clearly identified problems or issues with specific desired outcomes. They should be viewed as learning experiences designed to change the behaviour of delegates. Consider for a moment the last conference you attended. Did you: make notes and never look at them again? put your binder on a bookshelf and never pull it out again? attend a workshop that was not what you expected? find some great ideas and do nothing with them? spend time with people you already know? leave feeling excited by what you heard but it was 'business as usual' the following week? If you have more 'yes' than 'no' answers then read on. In our experience, only about a third of conference attendees act on the ideas they develop at conferences. From the perspective of learning and development, this is a disaster. Ironically, these events may have been fun, entertaining and informative. They may have rated highly on conference surveys. But, were they a success? Was the firm's investment effective? To enable your conference to be successful, we believe it depends on three things: logistics, learning and leverage. Logistics Logistics tend to take the majority of our energies. Logistics involves everything from selecting venues to registration to name tags. Effective logistics is best measured by how easily everything falls into place during the conference - knowing that hundreds of decisions and actions have already been taken and a small army of people are coordinated to make everything seem easy! Learning Conferences should be driven by objectives for information presentation, sharing and creation. The format and structure of the event should be conceived to maximise the opportunities for people to get new ideas and to act on them. This is much more involved than breaking a day into six slots that are filled by a speaker. It is carefully assessing what participants "need" to be successful and finding the best ways to get this information to them. This also means we need to revisit a lot of the basic assumptions we have used in the past. For example, do people have the skills to be effective participants? As conference speakers, our observation is that conferences organisers still give delegates a blank pad of paper to record their notes, similar to what we used in school. Is this good enough? We don't think so. Leverage This is the trickiest element. It is the X-factor. When it is present, the event stays with people. When it is missing, the event is forgotten. It can be the overall agenda, some innovations, or a location that is used in some new way. Once in a while a speaker makes it happen but you can't expect him or her to do this for you. Leverage is creating value for conference delegates in new ways. What are the things that you can do that break the rules of the conference industry? It is looking for innovation; finding new ways to do old things. It is also about doing new things in new ways. The answers will be found in finding what is unique about your event, its people and bringing something new, original or meaningful to life during the event. That's creativity. As the editor of Inc. Magazine in the USA once said, "conferences must help people bridge the crucial gap between inspiration and execution." Here are our 10 tips to help you to bridge that gap. Answer the question, 'why are we having this conference?'. Be clear about your objective. If its purpose is to encourage new work practices, innovative thinking, or consensus, then plan your conference around these issues. Give your conference a theme such as 'Raising the Bar'. This will add energy and focus to your conference and will help to ensure that all conference sessions are consistent with, and reinforce your theme. Decide on the appropriate mix of presentation and participation. In our experience, conference delegates are tired of just listening to 'glass-bowl' presentations. They want, and should have, more opportunities to participate. Conduct a pre and post conference survey. Distribute a short questionnaire to delegates before the conference asking questions such as 'what are the two biggest challenges that you face?' or 'what specific issues would you like covered at the conference?'. After the conference, send out a brief questionnaire that does more than ask for feedback about the venue, speakers or meals. Find out what participants really learn from the event and how they suggest it might be improved in future years. Organise a pre or post conference workshop. A frustration for many speakers (ourselves included) in presenting at conferences is that the traditional one-hour speech or workshop does not allow for any depth, discussion or reflection. A pre-or post conference workshop can offer a more in-depth opportunity for delegates to explore a topic that adds to their own success. Schedule a 'key ideas' workshop. Towards the end of the conference, divide your delegates into small groups and get them to define the three main ideas they have learnt at the conference and write them down on butcher's paper. All issues get collected, evaluated and addressed. This not only provides useful ideas; it can also be packaged in a summary that is distributed to everyone subsequently. This adds value to the conference. 7. Schedule an 'ask the experts' lunch - Instead of a keynote speaker, assign "leading thinkers" with specific expertise to host a table lunch discussion for 8 to 10 delegates; not just people from within your firm (fee earners, management and support staff) but significantly, some clients. Delegates would choose which table they wish to sit at. Each host would give a short briefing on his or her area of expertise and would then field questions from those seated at their tables while they eat. This takes some work but the results can be great. Make your venue conducive to learning. We have both presented at conferences which have been sabotaged by poor seating and lighting. Preferably use round tables to allow interaction rather than church-style pews. Additionally make sure there is good lighting. A common complaint is the lack of lighting provided for note taking. This is often a result of the technicians dimming the lights to allow for electronic presentations. If it is too dark to make notes, how effective is the presentation? Go easy on the alcohol. We have presented to hungover audiences and wondered whether their motive in attending the conference was to learn or simply to drink the venue dry! By all means, enjoy yourselves socially; just don't let it get in the way of the main objective of the conference. Focus on the participants. The participants will dictate the ultimate success of any conference. A good venue, quality meals, and informative and inspiring speakers can all contribute but only the individual participants decide to listen, learn and act of their ideas. There is no point in blaming a speaker for not being inspiring enough! Conference organisers can enhance the probability of participants acting on their ideas by shaping the content to be interesting, informative, engaging and useful. This will involve a range of keynotes to entertain or present new ideas, workshops to share ideas, and time for people to maximise their own results from an event. Following these guidelines will do much to enhance the effectiveness of your event so that next year, your delegates will look back on it and say, 'Wow! That Was A Great Conference'. Ed Bernacki: is the author of 'Wow! That's a Great Idea. Visit him at www.WowGreatIdea.Com. Join Simon's mailing list Do drop Simon a line. He'd like to hear from you. Back to Articles Index

Join Simon's mailing list Drop Simon a line Back to Articles Index