The Victory Loop process allows critical factors for success to be identified and assessed.  The Victory Loop process has three stages: (1) Plan Well, (2) Execute Well, and (3) Learn Well.   It allows an immediate review of the outcome versus the goals, creates best practices, and reinforces continuous learning.   Actually, I envision it more like a staircase than a loop, with each step leading to the next.  The Learn Well stage should be the first step in Planning Welling for the next event.

The time planning and executing can outweigh the time evaluating the outcome against the goals.  The lessons we learn are filed away in our memory banks and not captured in a structured after action review for use prior to the next event.  When the Victory Loop process is first introduced it highlights how often we “do it that way because we have always done it that way.”

The first stage is Planning Well.  In this stage, ask what the intent of the action being taken is and what is the desired goal?  Let’s apply the Victory Loop process to the planning of housing for an event.  For example, one of the goals in the planning stage is to improve usage of the room block from 85% to 87% for a client.  Our intent is to ensure we maximize the room blocks.  To accomplish this goal, we plan to target specific registrants in past years that have stayed outside the block.  Communication of the desired goals to the project team is critical as we move into the execution stage.  We have completed the first two stages….identified a goal, the intent of our actions and executed our plan.

To begin the Learning Well stage, we asked what have we learned from what we tried and what actually happened?  We learned that by proactively contacting our target list of registrants that stayed outside the block in previous years, we were successful in converting a percentage of them to in the block housing.

What do we know now that we did not know before we started?  We identified factors not previously considered on why a percentage stays outside the block.

If someone where to start down the same path, what advice would I give this person?  We would recommend a survey to those that stayed outside the block to identify key factors in their decision.

To summarize our example of the three steps:

Step 1: Plan Well, Our intent was to maximize our room blocks and the goal was to increase usage from 85% to 87%.

Step 2: Execute Well, We contacted a target list of registrants that stayed outside the block in previous years.

Step 3: Learn Well, Proactive targeted marketing converted some to stay within the block.  We identified factors not previously considered for why they stayed outside the block in the past and will use those factors when planning the next event.  We reached our goal and increased the percentage from 85% to 87%.

Susan Bennett

Ready to take your first step?

Seems hard to believe that is has been nearly 18 months since the events industry began a slippery slide and a precarious decline.  As our global economy began what ultimately proved to be a near-crippling spiral, meetings and events quickly became prime victims of aggressive cost-cutting measures.  Across both the corporate and association events sectors, attendance plummeted as “non-essential” travel was slashed and banned, and face-to-face meetings were crushed and scrutinized as irresponsible expenditures in the wake of falling corporate earnings and rising unemployment.  Organizations quickly flocked to a wide array of “virtual meeting” technology solutions to enable person-to-person engagement without the need or expense of travel.  People quickly substituted webinar logins for name badges to enable their “meetings” participation.

Rick Binford

The impact of these actions was quickly felt upstream as airlines, hotels, and restaurants saw their revenues plummet and were forced to right-size their staff teams, further affecting the economy by adding to the unemployment rolls.

Under the advocacy of leadership of the U.S. Travel Association, the industry quickly mobilized to speak to the true economic impact of attacking the travel industry.  Still, clearly articulating the business impact of face-to-face meetings and events was handicapped.

Even now, while industry-awareness campaign efforts, such as the new “Face Time Matters” of the Convention Industry Council, USTA’s “Meetings Mean Business”, and others, are beginning to create a better understanding of the value of face-to-face meetings and events, the true impact of our industry in terms of driving business is still largely unheard across the global community of executive and elected leaders.

Shame on us!

Enlightened event stakeholders hold firm to the premise that history will repeat itself and that our business is beginning to show positive signed of a rebound.  However, I am certain that our business will never be the same.  An American Express Business Travel survey conducted in January of this year revealed over 70 percent of respondents reported they plan audio- or Web-based conferencing as an alternative option to face-to-face meetings.

Many of us believe wholeheartedly that nothing can truly replace the face-to-face interaction and learning experiences that are core to most meetings.  These interactions truly are critical to economic growth, world peace, cultural understanding and corporate social responsibility.  Yet how well are we as an industry standing up to the charge of C-level stakeholders in measuring the unique return on investment associated with the very meetings we so strongly believe in and are fighting so dearly to protect for the future?

While there has been a substantial effort in recent years to build reasonable methodologies and a body of knowledge around the concepts of ROI, how are we really taking this to the street?  Much lip service has been paid to ROI as a must-have capability, but how deep is our commitment to accurately measure the return on our event expenditures?

Now is the right time to make the types of investments- financial, intellectual and behavioral- to implement the discipline, responsibility and accountability to fully integrate return-on-investment measurement into event management.  Strategic meetings management approaches have elevated total event spend management effectiveness for many organizations.  Disciplined ROI accountability affords the opportunity for organizations to maximize the total return on their event investments.  If we want executive leaders to embrace our industry, we need to speak their language, and their language is all about quantifiable results.

Let’s step beyond the ROI dialogue and really track results.

This editorial first appeared in the May 10 issue of Meeting News magazine.

Our industry is affected by so many external factors, and these past few years really are a testament to that sensitivity.  From hurricanes in the southern United States, to volcanic ash over Europe, to unique state-sponsored immigration reform, all the way to record flooding in Tennessee.  There are a number of strategies that event planners can take to prepare for and/or respond to these events.  A common strategy to plan for the unexpected is to craft a comprehensive Force Majeure clause that protects your client’s interests.

Patricia Ekers

Force Majeure, literally translated, means “superior force.”  Traditionally Force Majeure clauses were included in contracts to remove liability for natural and unavoidable catastrophes that change the anticipated course of events and prevent contract parties from performing their responsibilities.  Over the years these clauses have become longer and longer to specifically include many more events.  After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, many organizations updated their clauses to include terrorist attacks and delays in transportation facilities. Many organizations also responded to SARS and Swine Flu to include pandemic/epidemic illnesses and outbreaks as an excuse for non or partial performance.

Our goal as event planners is to create a comprehensive clause while at the same time getting our hotel or other venue to accept the clause.  A strategy might be to closely consider your group’s members, exhibitors, event objectives and important logistics.  Pick your battles based on these certain classifications.  While you may not get all of your requests granted in negotiations, you may be successful in what is most important.  For example, if you have a group of international engineers coming to the United States, you may consider putting in protective language that allows you to cancel if 40% or more of the engineers are unable to obtain proper travel visas.  If you have a large group of attendees coming from a coastal area during hurricane season, it would be a good strategy to write in a clause that allows you to cancel if your attendees are prevented from attending due to hurricanes or flooding in their home state (even though the hurricane or flood does not affect your venue).  Likewise, if you have a large group of attendees made up of a certain nationality, you could write in language that says the group could cancel if state legislation where your hotel is located could adversely affect the group or its meeting objectives.  Again, these are departures from the standard Force Majeure clause so they may require some give/take to get them included.

What has your organization done to prepare for and/or respond to current events?  What would you have done differently with the knowledge you have gained the past few years?

There are always memorable elements to any event—a great teambuilding activity, a humorous keynote speaker, great networking opportunities, etc. Sometimes the individual pieces that stick are content and objective focused, but often times they’re not. For an event to be truly memorable as a whole—engaging the brains of the audience with the content at a deeper level–three elements need to be employed on a larger scale.

The Art of Theater: Nothing engages the human mind like emotion. It’s the connection to our fellow man, our jobs, our world. It’s the primary influence in many decisions. An event should be an emotional experience—and a little theater goes a long way in producing an emotional outcome that supports content retention.

Theatrical elements can include game play (game shows, team activities, etc.), powerful video clips, stories etc. Theater isn’t about being ridiculous or novel for the sake of novelty, it’s about engaging your audience on an emotional level.

The Science of Learning: 95% of what is delivered in a typical meeting environment is forgotten 24 hours later. That’s a scary statistic for any meeting professional. This is primarily because, in general, events are not designed with the science of learning in mind.

Brain-based learning techniques can include giving breaks in between presentations for reflection, paring down information—sorting the nice to know from the need to know, preframing, informing and reviewing for all key content points, and utilizing activities to practice and apply knowledge.

The Psychology of Persuasion: An event is all about buy-in. An audience needs to buy-in to the content, to their participation in the event, to interaction, key content points, etc. A truly persuasive event is framed properly; eliciting commitment from the audience to play full out during the event, getting attendees to write down their own personal goals for the event and—after content pieces or presentations—recording how the new information will be relevant to them.

Going into the specifics of a presentation, presenters tend to lead with what persuades them. Everyone will buy-in to AN argument—but that doesn’t mean they’ll buy-in to YOUR argument. Play to all persuasion styles: data evidence, social proof, personal guarantees of success and relevance to achieving their goals.

Dan Yaman

I’ll be discussing more specific examples of theater, learning and persuasion in my “Brain-Based Events” session at e4.