Why do we organize these big, complicated, time-consuming meetings and events? There might be a lot of reasons: maybe we want to bring our colleagues together or to align on some new initiative. Or maybe we just want to put our brains together to solve a big, hairy problem. But no matter why we come together, every meeting of every kind has one thing in common: we want the time to be well spent and to take us towards What’s Next. And to do that, we need to walk out of these events with a clear plan, a clear record of what was discussed, and some actionable next steps.
But the event is over! and…I’m so tired…
The fun parts of planning events are obvious. Figuring out the perfect, engaging activity that will light up the room; booking a brilliant speaker to inspire the team; ordering lunch that no one will complain about; the list goes on and on. It’s a ton of work! You can get lost and overwhelmed just preparing for the fun parts of an event. And when it’s over, you might naturally want to…stop thinking about that event for a while.
But as we touched upon during last month’s newsletter, there’s an art to “post-event” best practices that’s aren’t always appreciated. You need a clear of record of your time spent meeting together, of course, but you also need a synthesis of the insights gathered. You need a sense of what it felt like to be in that room. And most importantly, you need a clear sense of the work that’s ahead of you.
At Collective Next, we think about this critical aspect of event planning as the “deliverable,” the summary and synthesis of the collaboration that we “deliver” to our partners after everything has wrapped up. But why is this often-overlooked effort so important? And how does CN think about doing it well? Check out our blog to find out more.