I consider myself a fairly curious person. I once described myself as an aspiring polymath only to learn through life’s experiences that most polymaths are born with that ability! 

I have navigated the meetings, events, travel, and hospitality industry for the better part of the last 15 years, yet I remain puzzled by so many aspects of it. As a commercial leader that has owned a P&L for meetings and events programs most of my career, I understand the expectations that come from all sides. Time and again when I needed ready access to data I found it lacking. And with the data I did have, I found it too lacking…making it incredibly difficult to demonstrate impact. I’ve been lucky to work for companies that had the means to build or acquire to solve for that issue, but unfortunately that is not always the norm.

Most recently as a Cventer, I gained new perspectives as a part of the industry’s biggest technology provider. I worked with dozens of Fortune 100 corporations during my seven years, witnessing what’s possible when leadership embraces meetings and events as strategic business drivers. Unfortunately I’ve also witnessed what happens when that’s not the case. While no two organizations are exactly alike, all must demonstrate value to justify budget and keep resources. I’ve seen leaders be wildly successful and have a real seat at the table, and I’ve seen leaders fail and what happens when they do. 

That dichotomy made my time at Cvent simultaneously rewarding and incredibly frustrating. It was clear that my team was adding value to the clients that engaged us, but it was also clear that the industry suffers from a number of longstanding challenges that seem to remain unsolved …fragmentation …inconsistency …ineffectiveness …impotency. More specifically: 

• Overall Industry fragmentation – There are multiple ways to view and interpret the market.
• Supplier fragmentation – There are multiple, overlapping suppliers with a perplexing overlap of products and services.
• Program fragmentation – Internally, programs are found in every different function and department with no clear organization.
• Team fragmentation – Core team roles are often unintentionally spread across functions and departments.
• Role fragmentation – Core job roles are inconsistently designed, assigned, supported, measured, etc.
• Technology fragmentation – There are multiple, overlapping, disconnected systems, applications, and tools…leading to process fragmentation.
• There are multiple, overlapping, disconnected workflows…leading to data fragmentation and resulting in multiple, overlapping, disconnected silos of data, and an incomplete view of the program.
• Leadership fragmentation – There’s weak collaboration across functional team leads (Exec, Sales, Marketing, Ops, Product, HR, etc.) with respect to Program objectives, resulting in generally weak overall stakeholder communications and management, further resulting in prevalent Stakeholder mentality of “What’s so hard about event planning?” or “Why can’t we ‘rinse and repeat’ this ___________?” 
• Prevalence of weak/no alignment with IT – Resulting in no standards for support, adoption, and cohesion…impacting low overall general technology adoption (not just event tech) by users in core job roles. Our people lag other industries in this area.
• Generally weak/low “business context” across teams. (“Why this event? Why this audience?” “Why now?” “How does this create the right impact on corporate objectives?” “How will we judge outcomes?”)
• Generally weak/Inconsistent overall Program strategy – Resulting in competing priorities, “shadow” event teams, and weak alignment to objectives.
• Generally weak/Inconsistent overall Program design – Resulting in arbitrary assignment of resources and a weakened Brand.
• Generally weak/Inconsistent overall Program objectives – Resulting in low-impact or ineffective meetings and events and poor attendee experience.
• Consistently weak balance of overall Program objectives (Cost, Risk, Productivity, Revenue, Employee Experience, Customer Experience).
• General orientation of Program objectives toward “Spend & Risk” vs. “Revenue & Experience.”
• Procurement-owned vendor relationships vs. procurement-supported relationships – Resulting in weak alignment of user needs.
• Procurement-gated Programs (based on procurement owning certain relationships) – Resulting in distorted Program objectives that fail to show impact.
• General lack of corporate mandates governing Program policy – Resulting in fragmentation…and where policy is in place – generally weak/no policy enforcement…resulting in lack of overall Program visibility and control…resulting in lack of overall spend visibility and control…resulting in lack of budget adherence…resulting in weakened credibility.
• Generally weak data literacy across teams supporting Programs – Resulting in Program KPIs not being well defined…resulting in inward-oriented (team interests) measurement vs. outward-oriented (stakeholder interests)…created by generally weak metric and KPI definitions…resulting in ineffective reporting…and,
• Weak/inconsistent reporting on essential metrics and KPIs tied to business and stakeholder objectives – Resulting in loss of credibility…also impacted by siloed and disconnected data (yes, another reference to siloed data)…and relating to prevalent weak/poorly designed process and workflow – resulting in prevalent weak/low process automation…often impacted by talent and skills gaps in “operational” ownership…leading to inconsistent use of SOPs – resulting in,
• Inconsistent Program/event execution…and related to inconsistent understanding of job role competency requirements…and inconsistent understanding of job role capacity needs – resulting in prevalence of agencies and contractors in “core” job roles…and inconsistent use of and dependency on agencies and contractors…
• …and prevalence of “occasional planners”…
• ..and prevalence of “lifers” in middle-management roles…resulting in…
• “low trajectory” career progression – resulting in lots of problems…notably wage stagnation and burnout.

This may feel blunt, but I want to look at it for what it is. It’s an industry in need of change. And we need to be honest with ourselves if we are to move forward. There’s no shortage of information from our industry, but what’s lacking in my view is complete and connected information. With better data that can be available more consistently, we begin to move toward upleveling operations. Together, with the right models, frameworks, and tools, data becomes the oxygen that enables transformation. This is what we aim to explore in The METHOD Project – to answer the question “Would a modern approach to Research & Advisory services for the industry add value?” by providing objective, complete, and connected information and data; and by supporting industry leaders and teams with fresh insights and new tools to address key challenges and pursue the right opportunities.

If you have questions, ideas, or interest, please be in touch.

—  Brad