As an event professional, the risk of upgrading your personal skill set, processes, and tools is that your contribution to achieving organizational goals needs to be noticed, ultimately negatively impacting your career.
So how can you, as an event and meeting professional, demonstrate value to your organization and stay relevant in an evolving business setting? By maintaining a focus on innovation to overcome the challenges that define our current and future environment, including:
A CHANGING WORKPLACE
In Why the Problem with Learning Is Unlearning, Mark Bonchek writes, “In every aspect of business, we are operating with mental models that have grown outdated or obsolete.” Few statements more accurately describe the spreadsheet/binder/to-do list-driven models under which many events are organized. However, these inefficient tools are not the problem. They’re a symptom of a “we’ve always done it this way” mentality that drives how we plan. Early adopters in the event community recognize that modernizing is the way to improve efficiency and work more strategically.
A DATA-DRIVEN APPROACH TO VALUING EVENTS & EVENT PROFESSIONALS
There is no shortage of articles telling us that data plays a role in assessing event performance and that there is an expectation for attendees to quantify the business value of events. In the Event Technology Engagement Study, the Event Marketing Institute found that “best-in-class event producers” prioritize data capture to “better understand their attendees, members, exhibitors, and sponsors.” Bottom line: if you don’t adopt tools to help quantitatively prove ROI, plan better and improve the attendee experience, you may lose support for your events.
NEW COMPETITION
In his State Of The Industry letter, Howard Givner, Executive Director of the Event Leadership Institute, issued a call-to-action to all event professionals when he said, “The next generation of event pros has a head start on you…Lifelong learning is required to stay relevant and get ahead.”
So nobody can work through a to-do list like you, but what other skills will you need to add value over the long term? Integrating new technology into your planning process may create some uneasiness, but given the market conditions noted, you cannot afford not to modernize. Recognize the urgency, but don’t feel compelled to change everything at once. View innovation as a complement to your existing skill set, not a threat to your job.
Written by Justin Panzer, CEO, Eventuosity.
To see how Eventuosity is enabling event producers and meeting planners to realize their innovation objectives, please visit eventuosity.com or follow them on Twitter @eventuosity