Leaders are leaders only when they're being followed. Otherwise they might be considered eccentrics. People will follow practically anything--either when they're convinced, when there's a moving target (such as a drum major who leads a parade), or when they're coerced. But the drum major needn't deliver a message that can be followed beyond the drumbeat, and companies can't coerce their employees with any assurance of long-term success, especially with ideas and assignments that might not move anyone.
And therein lies the difference.
In these days of fiscal melt-downs, more companies will be choosing to deal with smaller groups of managers, rather than with costly central meetings for all targeted employees, which could create a travel contingent of hundred or thousands. But such variations in targeting will also demand changes in approaches.
The inescapable problem that accompanies the difference is that if the meeting or training session doesn't deliver a message that can be acted upon by the individual convention participant (involving understanding and/or skill), then neither the participant nor the manager as "leader" will actually be followed once the central meeting participant is back in the office or cubicle. Ergo, no leadership. And that's a great way to create problems for HR.
Business meetings and various conventions have different natures and purposes; but the insecure meeting-callers treat them as being substantially the same, with fun as the supposed guarantor: that's what the meetings/conventions press and industry want you to believe. If you believe it, your meeting, its participants, and the company all suffer. Given a few foolish failures, so might your job.
The late training guru Malcolm Knowles wrote that entertainment provides present-moment satisfaction; but training demands present-moment dissatisfaction, in order to promote new learning and change. No one has since proved him wrong--critics only talk about fun--they don't (can't) prove their point. Medical students don't have fun memorizing the body's structure and foibles. Fun is fun. . .it's not itself learning. No, teaching/learning techniques and material shouldn't be boring!
The 1960s were the watershed years as far as (non-industry) research and experimentation are concerned. But that time is rapidly being forgotten. A few months ago, a "Training" magazine feature quoted a whole lot of "new" tips from outstanding trainers, who mouthed and rephrased retreads from earlier decades, as if their original discoveries. Those retreads, in turn, displace any real new studies and keep the field and industry in statis. That's good for the industry, only.
Background:
Immediately after World War II, conventions were essentially good-time ventures, in which people got together for the sake of getting together. . .because that hadn't been possible during the Depression and then World War II. So it was ebulliance, more than need, that drove the early conventions.
That reality had been acceptable in the distant past because of the fact that a convention was a legal necessity that culminated in the annual elections. Then it bacame a merchandising tool. But business meetings in general are intended as means of communication with the attendees. So the viewpoints, attitudes, and needs of business are totally different from the faulty association model.
Unfortunately, the early fun-focus tended to push out the later needs-focus of business, which should be paramount in any business meeting. That sad displacement has lasted far longer than is justified. In turn, that undue influence has fattened the coffers of the commercial meetings/ conventions industry's freebie publications: group communications for business purposes has been trivialized when that press ignores the principles of good instruction/education/training.
If getting-together and good times were the measure, then fun and food and travel and fabulous destinations could be advertised to great advantage in the (controlled-circulation) magazines that grew up around the meetings/ conventions' enjoyment crowds. The purpose became merchandising! That's the unvarnished version of events, not that it's pretty, even with varnish.
Controlled-circulation in the meetings/conventions magazine trade doesn't mean that you or your company--any reader/users--have arrived, but, rather, that you've been targeted for marketing! The convention industry magazine (controlled circulation) editors felt/feel that they owe more to their advertisers than to their freebie readers. So they deliver more-of-the-same pap. . .except glitzier and geared toward increasingly-costly and -irrelevant considerations. Forthright discussion of issues and industry-wide problems were/are usually ignored. You lost!
Challenge to the conventional wisdom:
In his 10th Anniversary convention address to Meeting Planners International (MPI--now Meeting Professionals International), a group communications consultant who spoke said in part, "We're dealing with people's jobs and families and, therefore, their lives; but we're talking about hor d'oeuvres and the color of the draperies."
For that jolt, he won the Tony Award for the best address of the 10th Anniversary Convention. But nothing changed--purveyors dominate the organization. Now, let's bring that down to the present. Business organizations no longer are thrilled to be paying for good times for participants with no significant results for anyone at home base, following any central meeting.
The salvation of any long-term plan or other change that's announced at any meeting probably depends on the portability of the idea itself. Because most people don't retain much of what they hear during a long day's meeting, the key ideas will probably be lost or diluted in most people, at least to some, unpredictable degree.
So remember the old four-tell trick: Four or more persons are chosen to be the hearer/tellers of a joke told to only one member of that demo group in front of the entire assembly. The others wait outside. Then, in quick succession, Person A tells Person B, who tells Person C, who tells Person D. Then Person D tells the joke back to the assembly, who have heard the original. The point: it's a chore for the assembly participants who heard both versions to try to reconcile the first and last versions, whether or not the in-between versions were also heard.
That same problem of depreciation, embroidery, grand invention, and wild misinterpretation will also apply to any idea/assignment that's made to central meetings participants as a whole. Yet, all of wthem must transmit ideas/assignments to folks back at the local offices and cubicles.
Great solution:
Take-home fulfillment packages for everyone who's expected to lead, once back home. A semi-final outlined or scripted text (your choice) of a summary/lectern package should be given/sent to every district (manager) with how-to instructions for the targeted personnel.
Directive and cautionary comments (with blank spaces for local statistics and local circumstances or variations) will make that package work equally well anywhere. This is not to say that the presentations won't vary somewhat with the skills of those district managers. Yet, those variations will be relatively minor and will not damage the factual and interpretive bases.
Two points:
--First: that statement implies that the company will actually deliver a message that can be acted upon and then provide the needed instruction.
--Second: that the company needs to provide packaged take-home materials intended for the district managers or other local representatives who will actually do the work back in the office.
To this writer, it seems that this is precisely the point at which many meeting/training plans and take-home fulfillment packages fall short. If packages are inadequate, then the manager who participates centrally can't really be a consistent leader of change when back in the office, regardless of his/her title. And therefore, that session's potential often ends with the meeting. . .the subsequent fulfillment activities are likely to be perfunctory--and ignored. By how much costlier a method could more disappointment be obtained?
Two valuable gains with careful preparation of semi-final text:
First: The district managers really like the fact that the tough and time-consuming job of creating a worthwhile, valid agenda has been done for them. Second: Given the blanks for local fill-in, they understand that their own value plus any local variations are being recognized by the comapny.
Motorola's Communications & Electronics Division, back in the mid-1960s, pioneered this semi-final-agenda method (done in Roman outsline with blanks) and was rewarded with praise and comments of satisfaction from both the district managers and their charges--and also by the regional managers, who recognized and appreciated the consistency that was being created when discussing assigned subject matter across their several district offices.
Making the obvious more obvious:
If you're preparing fulfillment packages that can be supervised by the regional manager, then it becomes possible in many (not every) instance to work by video conferencing with the individual regions--without costly and unenjoyable travel. Each region can also have all of it's own district managers on board at each regional office, if it chooses.
Benefit: cost-savings, of course. Way back in 1973, "Sales & Marketing Management" Magazine published a special 'Survey of Selling Costs' that established that the multiple-regional meetings format is always more economical than the central--or even multiple-district meetings format. That's a finding that the meetings/ convention industry press was eager to overlook on behalf of its advertisers. But that information is even more valuable now than it was then--both in dollars and time/effort saved.
Conclusions:
Today's meetings must be different: effective! Too many meetings are falling short of expectations these days--either your own meetings or those you attend. Actually, everyone is sure that the go-nowhere meetings are usually planned by The Other Guy. We, ourselves, probably don't need an upgrade in creating meeting agendas and fulfillment packages. Or do we?
Wonder why? Well, were those disappointing meetings comprehensive in construction? If meetings are properly constructed, then they must fulfill the same dictates as do any learning/training programs--merely more briefly and not so stringently. And ISD is your best guide to training needs.
Unfortunately, too many meeting agendas are comprised of topics that are hastily thrown together because those topics are either needed or hot. . .or because a top executive wants to include something. But such throw-together agendas are usually neither complete nor comprehensive, in the learning/training sense. They can damage as much as improve situations.
Making it work:
Learning/training programs need to present clearly specified tasks that are do-able and measurable, with needed tools and practice provided, so as to prove achievement at 'graduation.' The Hawthorne studies demonstrated that employees want to cooperate with their understanding of what management wants.
If asking for change, meetings must provide a specific message or request that can logically be fulfilled, together with clear information and tools . . .provided now, or within the parameters for future investigation. Or why have the meeting?
Moreover, the instructions, requests, and demands are intended for delivery sometime in the future. . .how and when will they be measured and by whom, if the association can't control?
Slippage seem to be built into the system unless factored out by the agenda's own plans! But the company's overall effectiveness will more likely be determined by the success or failure of the take-home fulfillment packages than by the one-size-fits-all packages from off-the-shelf. All generic packages, no matter how good, need to be edited so as to maximize their relationship to actual circumstances--and then solve actual problems. That takes time and money. Everyone is always short of time. But remember the old adage: "Where is there never time to do it right but always time to do it over?"
So it's time to concentrate on communicating with all the targeted employees via the smaller group's central meeting's participants, not on the meeting participant alone. Reprise: selling through, not selling to.
Getting personal:
Then, relate all of that package construct to the participants' most coveted topic: themselves! In training, one of the most important concepts is WIIFMe--or "What's In It for Me?" That concept operates in all communications situations, like it or not. When you can show that both they and the company benefit from the new policy or other change, you are promoting a winner.
Quickie review:
Now look back at a few of those disappointing meetings. Do you see what was missing from a comprehensive format? If no discussion or assignment was needed either at the convention or at the office back home, what was the purpose of that meeting? How could the participants (much less the gang at home) know what was expected of them --if anything--as a result?
Confused convention participants will do nothing once outside the meeting room. And no convention participants will ever make recommendations or sales pitches during which he/she might look bad because of insufficient information and/or preparation.
There's more?
But package preparation is not the end of the "comprehensive meeting design" requirements. All learning is divided into three domains: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective; that is, to know, to perform physically, or to comply physically, if not mentally. Whereas training sessions can be attuned to any of the three, meetings tend to be limited to cognitive presentations.
Practice is usually not possible in the central meeting room--especially auditoriums; but break-out sessions can compensate for the needed practice with tools. During the central meeting's immediate duration, attitudes and resulting compliance usually are not measurable and not germaine to the meeting proper, Which type(s)of tasks are yours for this meeting?
Much more can be discussed about these communication needs for any central meeting and its aftermath. . .and without a favorable aftermath, the company is probably trading on goodwill alone. That usually doesn't last too long after a wasted meeting.
Now, if HR can get the company's Chief Learning Officer and/or Training Director on board with these ideas, the company can achieve more of its plans and hopes with less money and more confidence. A top officer should vet all agendas intended for meeting of more than (your choice) of employees. Isn't that "a consumation devotely to be wished?"
