from SUCCESSFUL MEETINGS magazine
October 1996
A TOUCH OF SPICE
While not easy to pull off, creative approaches to corporate
meetings can yield dramatic results
by Robert Carey
The job of corporate planner can be described in many ways, but routine isn’t
one of them. Between strategic planning sessions, leadership training, teambuilding
seminars, product launches, and other get-togethers requiring significant preparation,
corporate planners are constantly juggling concerns about logistics and content
that vary greatly among meetings.
"I don’t know what the word ‘typical’ is when applied to
a corporate meeting," says Dean Hungate, administrator of marketing information
for John Deere & Company’s agricultural division of product information.
The product launches Hungate plans surely wouldn’t seem typical to others:
They require upwards of 3,000 acres of land near any convention center the firm
uses, to let dealers test-drive new Deere tractors. "Each planner has the
idiosyncrasies of the company, and of the particular meeting, to deal with,"
he says. "Some of those are related to corporate culture, while others
are related to logistics or other factors. You rarely take the same path as
you did when planning your last meeting."
But regardless of the type of meeting, results are always at the root of a planner’s
concerns. So on occasion, corporate planners find it necessary to stretch the
boundaries of their meetings by trying new approaches – approaches that,
to participants, may seem offbeat, wacky, even downright weird. But if the result
is a session that meets or exceeds management’s expectations, a planner
establishes a foundation of creative leeway upon which he or she can build in
future meetings. Here are some examples of unusual, and successful, approaches
to meetings that produce results through new experiences for participants.
Corporate Culture and Beyond
There’s little doubt that corporate culture is a strong determinant of
how a firm’s meetings are produced. "Companies very much dictate,
based on their tolerance, what their meetings are going to look like,"
says Bob Levasseur, senior partner at Manchester, Massachusetts-based FOX Consulting
Group, and author of Breakthrough Business Meetings. "Top-down, hierarchical
firms will naturally have the structured meetings that don’t vary much
in style, whereas the startups and smaller firms have the freedom to do different
things, because the culture is less established, or the culture is a backlash
against traditional corporate beliefs."
The key to pushing the envelope is to generate trust from management by creating
small successes in meetings, which can be built on in the future. "It’s
the trust in a planner that makes it easier to implement new ideas," says
Rick Hanson, president of Hartford, Connecticut-based HanZon Productions, and
president of the Society of Corporate Meeting Professionals (SCMP). "Incremental
victories open doors for you to go in different directions. You start by doing
things that aren’t very threatening to people or the culture, and management
will see how the audience reacts. If it works, the next new idea you have will
be easier to sell and implement."
"First, you need management behind you," Levasseur adds. "You
have to feel confident to try a new direction, so management has to create for
you some psychological safety. But you have to sell them a bit too. If you or
others have seen your idea in action in another forum and will vouch for its
validity, you’ll get some room to work."
Once you have some leeway, though, it may be best not
to reveal too much about an offbeat concept you’re planning for a future
session. Joe Millington, human resource process owner in the computer systems
division of Hewlett Packard, in Cupertino, California, brought an improvisational
troupe, Seattle-based TransFormance Theatre, into a teambuilding meeting for
top performers responsible for a long-range project.
"I knew it would be a tough sell, so I didn’t really talk much about
the troupe’s approach because I knew I’d get resistance," he
says. "It’s best not to try to get people to conceptualize it, but
just let them experience it. So all I said was that this group comes highly
recommended by people we respect, and I feel we need to do something creative
because this project is important. And I was nervous that day because I thought,
‘If this fails, I’m cooked.’ But I have a supportive boss, and
I have had a few successes prior to this with creative approaches, so I had
a little stock to build on."
Millington brought the 250 team members from their offices around the world,
and after a half-day session with the president and vice president of the organization,
attendees spent a full day with TransFormance Theatre Director Jonathan Rosen
and his cast.
Hewlett Packard’s mission for this meeting: To develop a high degree of
integration and collaboration. So in the weeks prior to the event, Rosen conducted
interviews with strategic managers and hosted a focus group with several team
members to understand the project and the event’s goals.
TransFormance’s process is built around storytelling: attendees relay past
experiences, or present concerns, and as the players hear each situation, they
act it out with props – even using singing and drumming as additional attention-grabbers.
The performance group has worked sessions dealing with conflict resolution,
strategic planning, leadership issues, work-life balance, diversity, and gender
issues. In short, says Rosen, "we can handle any issue where a firm is
trying to quickly create a sense of shared understanding of a subject’s
complexities and people’s perspectives."
He adds that the use of a theatrical format is appropriate because "it
engages people on many levels – emotionally, cognitively, and even physically.
And even if it’s just for a few minutes, it’s a very efficient means
of getting people connected, much faster than talking can do."
Millington found the audience response to be mostly positive. "People were
shocked and moved, not just by the cleverness of the troupe, but also by how
accurately they portrayed situations," he says. "The result was that
it helped get everyone on the same page in understanding why we’re doing
the project, and how important they themselves were to the company. It also
got people to know one another – these people have worked together on projects
via audio conferencing, yet they had never met before. This definitely brought
them closer."