‘Bad meeting organization leads to a loss of over $399 billion every year.’
Key culprits:
No agenda
Bad set up, tech issues, poor sound
Boring-ness 😁
Upwards of 35% of mid-level employees’ time is spent in virtual events (that number gets higher the more senior your team is).
When all is said and done, the single most important thing that I look for in virtual gatherings is an entertainment quotient (duh! obvi).
We’re big on the surprise and delight part of virtual events. One of the things that we do well as a brand is to create fun in all our virtual events (internal or external). And a key part of that is that we tend to keep them small as opposed to large scale webinars.
All gatherings (including internal ones) can be smaller!
Can that 4 person meeting be 3? Or 2?
Can the big webinar plan become a smaller, more power-packed round table?
And once you have a meeting, and AGENDA. Don’t forget the experience.
That’s the ‘secret sauce’.
Here are 3 surefire ways to make your meetings more fun.
- A themed beverage – a signature cocktail if it’s a nicer/after hours event. Send your participants a recipe to do it themselves and save a lot of logistics planning and budget (consider a signature coffee/tea for daytime events).
- Get dressed up. If it’s an evening event, maybe gala-style? Bow-ties and bare shoulders? Daytime suits and ties? While you don’t HAVE to make anyone wear formal pants, the rest is workable, no?
- Bring behind the scenes/props. Bring your kids, pets, favourite things. Save some time in the agenda to discuss the scenario or prop.
We spend far too much time on virtual gatherings to forget the fun factor. Don’t.
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Ps: This weekly column started out as a testing ground for my book, “The Other EQ: How to kill boring marketing”. The manuscript is done and in production. If you’d like a free advance copy of the book sent to you (at the end of the year), drop us a note.
