Just unpacked my suitcase from yet another boring meeting. Perhaps, you did too?
The late C.K. Prahalad encouraged us all to take five percent of our day and devote it to innovation. Successful companies like Google and 3M do it. Why aren’t you?
The most innovative meetings come from meeting professionals who make the time to innovate.
I remember my first ever meeting like it was yesterday. I was as excited as I was nervous. Marsha, my boss at the time, was encouraging me to attend the Western Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus annual convention in Long Beach California. My excitement was palpable; buy an airline ticket, register for the conference, and book a hotel room.
As a meeting professional, you look to exceed the needs of your attendees — often from dawn till dusk.
You have multiple bosses to report to: the one that signs your paycheck as well as the one that attends your event. There are also weekly checklists of hotel and venue contracts to be signed, RFP’s to go out, and responses to come back in. Then as suddenly as all the tasks arrived, the event is over.
An early mentor once said to me, “Holly, they cannot repossess your brain.”
It’s advice that literally changed my life.
