How to reinforce the message of your recent conference to help change those mindsets and actions within your teams, and enable on-going learning.
The problem: Your investment into your conferences or leadership away days are not producing a return.
You take your team away to a conference. You spend many months planning the event, from choosing an appealing venue to organising fun activities, from crafting a programme that gets the job done to choosing speakers who inform and inspire. A few of your team focus on this event full-time for a few weeks beforehand, and the whole thing takes a lot of effort, energy and resources. And your team love it. It’s a success. The food is good. The weather is kind to you. A job well done. It cost a lot, it was hard work, but it went well. Or did it?
The problem is that your team go back to work. They’ve been out of the office for a few days and need to catch up on their work. Within a week, the conference is nearly forgotten. And old habits and mindsets die slowly, if at all. Three months later it’s as if your event never took place for all the impact you can see it had on your business.
This is a problem. Your investment has not produced a return.
The solution:
If the goal of your conference is to change mindsets and actions in your team, you must support your people by reinforcing the messages of the conference over a few weeks and months after the event. You need to enable on-going learning.
At TomorrowToday, each of our presentations and workshops is supported by a series of content that we can dripfeed to participants in our sessions. This is in multiple formats, including videos, short articles, thought-provoking questions, provocative conversation starters, personal development programmes and others. We work with our clients to select the appropriate mix of these resources, choose a timetable for delivering to the team (normally once per week) and then take responsibility for ensuring they receive the resources (email is fairly typical, but other options are available).
We call this our Magellan Project. Watch this 5 minute video of Graeme Codrington explaining the concept, how it works and why we call it that.
To do:
Of course, you can do this too. Whether you use our team or not, make sure that for your next conference you think beyond the event itself, and find mechanisms to ensure the learnings are embedded back in the workplace and that change actually happens. Put as much effort into this as you put into making the few days of your event a success. The value of your events will increase dramatically if you do.
If you need any help, just contact us. And also share any experiences you might have with us. Like you, we’re learning how to this better.