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How to win at constantly staging bigger and better events?

The month of September always marks the anniversary for Eventeamwork. This year we are celebrating 8 years and I have taken a moment to stop and reflect on the journey.

I am extremely proud of my amazing team that I got to work with over these years. I am grateful to our clients for trusting us and the process. I am inspired by the amazing outcomes our clients achieved. I am grateful for the incredible experiences and learnings along the way.

Being in business has its own various challenges but the most challenging part for me has been to keep standing for a different approach to leading people in our fast paced and process-oriented industry.

As Event Managers these days, we are not taught people management and leadership except for basic HR principles. The focus is on learning about operations, which is important but not enough. Once we enter the industry, we quickly see that people form a large part of the industry and even entry level roles often need to supervise teams of casual staff or volunteers.

It is no wonder then that the operational focus that requires short term thinking and efficiencies often dictates how people are managed in events.

The downside of efficiency

The operational phase of events tends to be tactical and task focused, including a constant search for immediate solutions – hiring structures and stages, using systems, automating tasks – and in amongst all of this we will see the search for immediate solutions to cover tasks to be done and this is where the search for help often comes in and with it the well-known “Call for volunteers”.

This approach stands in direct opposite to the principles of effective engagement, which focusses on long-term benefits through creating stronger bonds, not only with staff and volunteers but also with customers, participants, suppliers, sponsors and other stakeholders – in short with the event’s market, with everyone the event touches.

Yet the operational approach prevails because that’s all we get exposed to through education and through the people we work with in the industry. It tends to treat the people who willingly give their time for an event as a commodity, basically treating them the same as the marquee we are hiring. But it’s just what we have been taught to do.

However, this approach doesn’t just negate the value people who volunteer for your event bring to you, it also does a huge disservice to the event.

The result is that people who volunteer are not engaged, meaning they don’t turn up or they don’t return, which then cements the idea that volunteers are unreliably – closing the circle. A common request then is to find other or new volunteers.

But the same approach will always just lead to the same outcomes.

We need a new leadership approach

Event volunteers make up 60+% of any event workforce and they are predominantly engaged in customer facing roles. They talk about your event not only to your customers and participants, but also to their friends and the wider community – basically creating the event brand. If they feel engaged, they will happily share that but if they don’t feel engaged, heard and supported they will also share and create a potentially unfavourable image of your event in the community.

Events are always looking to be bigger and better, typically with the vision behind to create a bigger impact, the very reason why they were created in the first place.

This immense drive and the hard work people put in to create events is what attracted me to the industry in the first place.

What I learned is that to achieve a greater impact we need to engage our people. We can’t do it alone. The 60+% of our workforce can be so much more than bodies implementing tasks – if we allow them to and support them to – essentially leading them effectively.

Effective leadership creates higher engagement and retention, which reduces costs, but it also elevates the event community building, allows for a greater reach, attracts more of the right people and it impacts people and their communities.

Leadership is taking responsibility and involving people strategically rather than as a short-term fix. If leaders are able to look inward and recognise their role in this, they can significantly change the culture of an organisation and accelerate the impact they make. It always starts at the top.

So, yes it can be sometimes challenging to challenge the status quo, but what I love is seeing leaders succeed and achieve the big impact they want to make. Here is to many more years of transforming event leadership.

5 Easy Steps to create a ‘Lived Vision’ to Effectively Engage Stakeholders

Bringing a large-scale event to life that truly reflects your vision will always require buy-in from the various stakeholders involved. It can be very time intensive to manage competing stakeholders when running large-scale events and it can feel like you are being pulled in several different directions.

In this post you I’ll show you five easy steps to create a “lived vision” that will help pull everyone together and ensure that you get the best outcome for your event without always having to communicate separately with each stakeholder group.

Related content: Do you really know your event stakeholders?

Now, having a vision for your event is surely nothing new to you; however, having a lived vision is a step further. As the name implies, a lived vision is known and lived by all stakeholders. It also helps to easily attract more of the right people to your event – those who truly connect to your vision, and hence saves you valuable time while creating a bigger impact.

Managing competing stakeholder interests

Mitigating the great challenge of competing stakeholder interests means getting stakeholders to all work together towards your event’s success. Yes, they are all very different but the one thing that unites them is your vision for your event or organisation.

It is also much easier to manage these competing interests when you have your own cheer squad – or “A-team” of stakeholder ambassadors who share the vision for your event and can hence carry it through to their respective stakeholder groups. 

Creating an “A team” with vision

The easiest way to create your own A-team is to share openly and honestly the vision you have for your event. For example, if you are running an event benefitting health, you will want to use language that is attractive to stakeholders who share a common interest in healthy communities.

This way you will pull together a small group of people across all stakeholder groups, who are most enthusiastic about your event. They will see their involvement as more than a transaction and they will help you engage all stakeholders. See them as your advisory panel and your cheer squad.

Regardless of the type of event or its purpose, your entire team will function more cohesively when united by common goals, and the same goes for all stakeholder groups. This calls for a clearly spelled-out vision at the centre of all your event planning, around which your A-team will rally and take everyone else along for the ride. Do this early!

Your event’s vision statement

Write up a single vision statement for your event. Leverage this vision statement to engage potential stakeholders around the common interest. Use this vision statement as the basis for a “pull strategy” designed to attract stakeholders who share your vision.

Often, event leaders create different visions for each stakeholder group, such as sponsors, staff, suppliers, volunteers. This segmentation limits the stakeholders. However, a well-articulated vision attracts people across all stakeholder groups to your event and you never know how people may want to get involved. For example, a ticket holder can also be donating and volunteering; they may also own a company and may be interested in sponsoring the event.

So, it’s important to not limit yourself; create a single vision of how you want your event to be perceived and what you want it to achieve – this alone will attract the right people once you share it.

Five simple steps to creating a lived vision statement

The best way to instil a sense of purpose in your stakeholders is to write a vision statement for your event and then help them to own it and share it. To do this, follow these five steps:

  1. Answer three questions to determine the value proposition of your event:
    1. What is the main purpose of the event?
    2. What type of person is this event for?
    3. What is their incentive for attending this event?
  2. Write a rough draft of your vision statement.
  3. Share the vision statement with your A-team of stakeholders for input.
  4. Write the final draft of your vision statement.
  5. Share your vision statement in all appropriate channels (website, local media, social media).

A vision statement is emotional; it’s about positive change. This is what people will connect to and that’s when it becomes a lived vision.

Health triathlon

Darryl (not his real name) belonged to a triathlon club and was tasked with organising a public triathlon.

Particular challenges

While Darryl had organised triathlons before, this was especially challenging as it was ‘tri-purpose’, which he delighted in telling people was appropriate for a triathlon club. Its purpose was:

  • Increase the number of club members
  • Raise funds for the local hospital’s oncology ward
  • Raise fitness levels of the citizens of the half dozen or so suburbs that were his target

Finding his A-team

It was obvious that this was going to be a big, complex task and that planning would take the best part of a year and involve many volunteers. Fortunately, Darryl quickly recognised a small number of community members from various stakeholder groups who were as enthusiastic as he was – so these five people became his A-team.

Writing the vision

Darryl had written vision statements before, but it was crucial this time to formulate a single vision that would be relevant to all stakeholder groups: contestants, individual clubs (swimming, running, cycling), hospital auxiliary, sponsors, volunteers, race directors, coaches, team leaders, vendors, retail outlets, council staff, police, ambulance … the list seemed endless.

He liked the idea of a lived vision that would pull everyone together to ensure that he would get the best outcome for his event without always having to communicate separately with each stakeholder group.

He drafted and redrafted many versions of a vision statement that he felt would appeal to all of these groups, then finally felt ready to share it with his A-team.

Sharing it with his A-team and beyond

After some minor revisions by the A-team, the vision statement was finalised – less than a page of their why. This became the basis of some very effective advertising, including social media, television, newspapers, leaflets and posters.

(And yes, it was hugely successful. Darryl and his A-team were immediately booked for a repeat performance the following year.)

A vision for your A-team

Feeling stuck? Writing your own vision doesn’t sound as easy as it was for Darryl? You can always schedule a consultation with the team at Eventeamwork who can assist you in developing a lived vision for your event.

If you’d like to up-level your stakeholder engagement, download our free checklist “How to manage competing stakeholder interests when running large scale events”.

Why we need people centric leadership in events

We see varying levels of system approaches and people centric approaches in volunteer management. One approach is relying on a volunteer management system (software) to solve the recruitment problem, the other is reluctance to use a system out of fear to lose the connection with volunteers. I believe the solution is a combination of a system approach AND people centric leaders to run a volunteer program effectively.

We often get asked one of the following two questions “Why do I need a system, I am just fine doing the rostering in my head?” and “How much is it to use your database?” Then the other day I listened to a podcast where an accountant spoke about their service and the impact of accounting software on the service they provide. Now everyone can basically do their own accounting but it doesn’t replace the service that is provided by professional accountants. I could see so many parallels to volunteer management in event and community organisations.

Seven years ago when we started Eventeamwork there were very few volunteer management systems on the market. Back then volunteer management typically involved many manual tasks around rostering and communication, particularly for volunteer programs involving hundreds of people over multiple days. These days there are literally hundreds of software solution to assist with database management and rostering on the market and there are more appearing every other week.

The search for efficiency and automation is changing the volunteer management field just like in the accounting profession. The system is really important to assist with the manual tasks, avoid errors and provide a better and faster registration experience for people. Coordinators save time and do their jobs more efficiently. They can now concentrate on planning and improving the volunteer program, focussing on communication and engagement, all of which will make the program more effective.

However the thread of having a system, particularly if it includes automation such as automatic confirmations and reminder messages, self-scheduling, self check-in etc, it can also be easy to lose touch with your volunteers. Where previously there would have been many emails and phone calls to determine availability and confirming rosters, we now need to find other ways to stay connected and have real communications.

Engagement is important and can get lost in the process of relying too much on the system. This unfortunately results in low attendance and low retention rates. The missing engagement and connection also contributes to volunteers at times being seen as a commodity rather than a valuable team member.

Interestingly the system approach is often experienced in event volunteer programs, whereas volunteer coordinators in community organisations tend to be fully aware of the importance of the engagement piece and the organisations often shy away from systems.

Just like in the accountant example, volunteer management systems cannot replace a volunteer coordinator. They cannot replace the building of relationships and connections between people and organisations. However systems can indeed add convenience and efficiency to the profession that allows volunteer coordinators to focus on planning and improvement rather than being bogged down by manual tasks.

As with everything, it’s about finding the right balance.

An effective volunteer program combines system and people centric leadership

While a good system helps volunteer coordinators be more efficient, to be able to really engage people and to retain people over time we need to go beyond systems. Engagement is key to achieving positive outcomes for organisations. Creating positive experiences for volunteers and engaging them in the outcomes will have a ripple effect on creating positive experiences for clients or attendees.

Volunteer management is more than allocating bodies to positions and the aspect of managing people, having conversations, ensuring well-being and satisfaction cannot be replaced by even the greatest systems.

Your engagement determines your culture, it is how you interact with staff, volunteers and people in general. Your culture will determine if your organisation can reach a competitive advantage. Anyone can replicate products and services. Anyone can get a volunteer management system but it’s what you do with it that will make all the difference. Nobody can replicate your unique culture.

So yes, systems are great in making our life easier and saving time on manual tasks but considering people and engagement will set you apart.

3 Steps to a Winning Strategy for your Event Volunteer Program

winning strategy

Constantly running against multiple deadlines? There are just so many hours in the day and just so much you can do? Yes this is the reality not just for event managers. This makes it all the harder to make any changes to how and why things are done in your organisation. But effective planning can save you time and money.

Our experience in working with hundreds of events demonstrated that investing time in the planning of your volunteer program will achieve better outcomes for your event and organisation. Creating a better volunteer experience does achieve a better customer experience. It will also increase volunteer retention rates, which will save you time and money in the long run due to less recruitment and training needed.

So why is it that so few event organisers embrace this? Why is the strategic approach beyond the next event missing in organisations? I believe the tendency to contract work in the event industry fuels this short-term vision and prevents people from looking beyond their contracts to ensure sustainable organisations.

However, in this world that gets more competitive every day and where more organisations are looking for the same funding or the same sponsorship dollars, can leaders really afford not to look at opportunities that can provide a higher return in the long run? Wouldn’t it be beneficial even to short-term staff to assist organisations stay sustainable to ensure future work opportunities?

But how do you ensure your investment in volunteer program planning is effective and achieves the expected return? Where do you start? We have put together three simple steps you can do to get started with incorporating more volunteer program planning that achieves a positive impact.

1. Vision and impact of our organisation

Every organisation has a vision but sometimes that is forgotten in the day-to-day routine. It is important to check in regularly that all the actions you are taking within the organisation point to your vision and the impact you want to have locally or even on the world.

Reconnecting to the bigger picture of what your organisation is here to achieve can be very empowering. This is especially true when things are tough or when you have fallen into a routine.

It is also great to share this with the rest of your event team. This will not only re-inspire everyone but it also creates a bigger picture in which you operate as an organisation. It will put all your tasks into context and you will make your decisions with view of the bigger picture, even when under time pressure.

Think about how this would influence your supplier choices for example.

2. Create roles strategically

The outcomes you would like to achieve with your event specifically and with your organisation in the long-term determine the tasks that will achieve those outcomes.

For example, if you would like to have visitors enjoying themselves at the event you can create tasks such as welcoming visitors, being available to provide information about the event site and locations readily, directing visitors around the site to achieve a smooth crowd flow, assisting visitors etc.

Often event organisers create tasks on event day based on what needs to be done in that moment. As these tasks were not planned, people were not recruited and trained specifically and often the connection to the vision or the organisation is missing. The results are poor turn up rates at the event, poor customer service and poor retention rates past the current event.

Volunteer roles that are connected to the outcomes are more meaningful for the volunteer and therefore serve the event by creating better customer experiences. The results are higher turn up and retention rates.

3. The plan

Finally the volunteer roles determine when you need to complete each of the tasks for recruitment, engagement, training and onsite management.

As you are planning each of the tasks you will be very focused on the volunteer roles you have created and the outcomes you want to achieve. Organising this in a timeline or planning document will help you stay on track.

Adopting this approach of planning saves time down the track. Focusing on the outcomes means all your actions will be more effective towards achieving those outcomes.

Why not give it a try? Maybe a few months prior to your next event, spend a day with your team reconnecting to the organisational vision and the outcomes you are trying to achieve. Then plan the volunteer roles and then set the tasks for implementing the volunteer program.

Do you notice a difference? I would be keen to hear your comments on how the planning of your volunteer program is working.

If you would like a simple template to follow this 3-step process download our free Volunteer Program Planning Template.

Program Planning Template