A conversation with industry experts reveals state of affairs.

Meeting Professionals International (MPI) is sponsoring a unique program called, "No Turning Back: A Revolution in the Meetings Industry," a three-part educational series that explains the four key elements of strategic value for meetings and events: Portfolio Management, Meeting Design, Measurement, and Advanced Logistics.

Led by industry experts Mary Boone of Boone Associates, Jack Phillips of The ROI Institute, and Susan Radojevic of The Peregrine Agency, the program began with a webinar on April 21, which will be followed by a half-day workshop at the MPI World Education Congress, to be held July 11-14 in Salt Lake City, UT, and conclude with a webinar on August 26.

Successful Meetings' editor-in-chief, Vincent Alonzo, chatted with Boone, Phillips, and Radojevic on the topic of showing strategic value. In part one of this two-part series, Boone and Radojevic discuss the current situation that has placed proving strategic value on the top of most planners' to-do lists.

Q. Vincent Alonzo

Since October 2008 the meetings industry has experienced a perfect storm of the economy going bad, negative press after the AIG scandal, proposed legislation to curtail meetings, and President Obama making anti-meetings statements. It led to tons of meetings cancellations. But if there is a silver lining, it also focused upper management's attention on meetings and has created an opportunity for planners to make the case for how important meetings are.

A. Mary Boone

That's exactly it, Vince. It was a tipping point, because what we are starting to see emerge is that all these things Susan, Jack, and I have been talking about have come together. People in upper management at organizations are coming to a deeper understanding of the strategic value of meetings and what they bring to an organization. These conditions have created an opportunity to have that message get to the right people and to actually move the industry forward rather than backward.

A. Susan Radojevic

The need for developing a way to prove the strategic value of meetings didn't come about because the economy collapsed and we need a recovery. It's been something the industry has had to address for quite some time. Mary and I met last summer and discovered that I have been doing alignment and talking about it for 20 years now, and practicing it for 10, and Mary has been focusing on meeting design for the past 10 years.

I don't think the industry should be focusing on a recovery; I think we should be focusing on creating a plan to prove the worth of meetings and events.

A. Mary Boone

Leaders are just learning how to deal with a world that is much more complex, much more interconnected. That's why it's necessary to prove the value that all activities bring to an organization—not just meetings. People have to connect in different ways in order to make sense of what's going on. Leaders have to tap into the knowledge, the experience, and the intellectual capital of the people that they are working with in order to lead. And that is precisely what face-to-face meetings do so well. And that's why it has to be quantified.

Now we've got an opportunity to help showcase how face-to-face meetings, virtual meetings, and combinations of both enhance executives' ability to lead. So it's not just about doing sales meetings, it's about helping them lead their organizations, which puts us in a very strategic position.

Think about how the assembly line created the Industrial Age. It transformed the way people did work. I believe that in a knowledge environment, meetings are the new assembly lines.

We retool meetings and get them out of "broadcast mode," where we have presenters with a bunch of slides broadcasting information out to people, and make them environments where people are learning, interacting, and actually accomplishing work at the meeting rather than just talking about it.

Next month: Boone, Radojevic and Phillips discuss the four elements of strategic value for meetings.

Originally published June 1, 2009

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