Return on investment from big meetings is a big issue, and I’d like to help you improve yours. Over the years, I’ve worked with many client organisations putting together their crucial meetings: 

• the “routine” annual conference,
• marketing kick-offs,
• special events for challenging and contentious strategic pivots,
• cultural change initiatives,
• leadership team pep-talks,
• staff wellbeing-programs,

The true cost of meetings

These are big meetings. Very expensive, but amazingly, organisations often ignore their biggest contributing cost: the very real opportunity cost of the time of every single delegate and their ongoing overheads. Think about it: these hidden (or conveniently ignored) costs usually exceed the direct costs of the conference venue and accommodation, production, meals, travel and (often) entertainment. Every organisation needs to get real return on these significant investments. And sadly, most organisations fail to identify the value-generating capacity of these meetings.

You really must get productivity improvements from every meeting, to justify pulling people away from their other work.

The importance of a good agenda

Often, I’ve been engaged to facilitate big meetings after the agenda has been developed. Which rings alarm bells straight away, because the agenda design pre-determines the meeting’s success to a very large degree. I’ve seen a lot of very bad agendas in my time.

So what should go into the agenda, and what should stay out? I’ll cut to the chase, with the most common mistake, and then get straight to the one question you must ask before you write the word “Agenda” at the top of your page.

The bad agenda that produces no return on investment, or worse

Some — sadly, not most — organisations have figured out that the last thing anyone wants at a conference is to be talked at for two days solid… (not even if they’re being told how clever the commercial strategy is!). But it still happens. [Very sad face.] What’s the most common poor agenda? Every function head is given a speaking slot. Bah-bowh. It’s so passive! And it usually becomes a contest in which the various departments try to impress everyone else about their own workload. Worse, it’s a snorefest. And, finally, it tends to create competition among the various presenters. It actually encourages internal rivalries and jealousies by pitting members of the leadership team “against” each other. (“Who did the best or worst presentation?”).

But it still happens, regularly. There is so much wrong with this approach. Not least of which is the fact that human beings can’t remember stuff, unless it’s repeated over and again, and then some. Give them a thousand snippets of semi-connected info over two days and they’ll remember (i) that there was too much information, and (ii) not much else. That’s often what a strategic plan sounds and looks like to anyone who didn’t write it. Seriously. Strategic Plan = Too much information! What was your last conference about? Who said what on which day? What were the calls-to-action? I bet you can’t remember most of it.

So… how do you develop a killer agenda that zones right in on generation of business outcomes i.e. return-on-investment? And messages that people don’t just remember, but act on? In truth, there are plenty of ways. But my two decades of experience has led me to a favourite, go-to approach that always delivers a useful agenda, with real commercial value, straight away.

Impress your boss with an agenda that delivers

First, identify the Number 1 Stakeholder for the conference. It may be the CEO, may be the department head, often the department head’s boss: whichever person is most accountable for the work of the entire assembled team. Second, get in their diary for ten minutes and ask them this single, simple question:

“When you think about the people who are going to be in that room for [two days], what’s the change you’d most like to see in their thinking, attitudes, feelings, actions or understanding as a result of being there?”

Let them riff on it for a little bit while you listen closely. (You’re learning not just what your boss thinks, but why they think it.) Write down their answer/s as accurately as you can. Then, third: stick the word “Agenda” above their answer!

Of course, there are lots of useful follow-up questions you can ask, and lots of other people you can ask similar questions to, but if you ask that one question to that one person, you’ll have a terrific core agenda. Anything and everything that supports the answer given to you, goes into the agenda. Anything else is out.

Yes, there’s much more to putting together a maximum-value meeting than that. But in my opinion and my experience, that question offers more value — as a starting point — than anything else. Not just to your conference and its organising committee, but to the whole organisation that’s paying for it. There is one more thing… I often add at the end of the question, before I hear the answer: “Please: Aim high!”