In 1995, Stephen Spaulding got educated. It was his first year as a planner for Bear Stearns, and he was entrusted with coordinating a financial-education conference for 1,400 clients. But it wasn't the particular tasks involved in creating the event that provided him the big lesson. Rather, his epiphany came from the simple fact that he did it all himself.
"For months, I was at the office early in the morning and didn't leave until midnight," he remembers. "That was a little scary. When it was over, I realized that if I wanted to have a life -- or just keep my sanity -- I needed to delegate some elements of the meeting to others."
Spaulding learned that lesson, but many other folks in this business have not. Unfortunately, this means that some planners risk scuttling their chances of being promoted. Of course, you don't have to be one of them. Read on to see why delegation is an essential tool, and how to use it to your benefit.
Why Johnny Can't Delegate
It's perfectly understandable why planners are reluctant to give up control of any aspect of their events; doing so is neither in their nature nor their nurture. "From a psychological standpoint," says Spaulding, "one reason people wind up in the meeting planning business is their organizational skills, and their perfectionism." Ed Simeone, CMP, executive producer of Fusion Productions in Webster, NY, and the 1999-2000 chairman of Meeting Professionals International, agrees. "The fact is that this job has so many details to be addressed, and if just one of them is improperly handled -- a CEO misses a transfer, a room setup is wrong -- an event can be ruined," he says. "So planners think that the only way to keep that from happening is to do things themselves."
What's more, "People who wind up in planning usually come from areas where they didn't have the opportunity to take executive training seminars that address issues such as delegation," Simeone adds. "Lots of our colleagues come from administrative backgrounds, where they had nobody to delegate to -- they were the detail people who understood it was their responsibility, placed on them by their bosses, to sweat the little things. It's hard to change such ingrained notions."
Problem is, no event is going to stay static year after year. "If it doesn't get larger, then it needs more creativity to make it different each time," says Spaulding. Besides creating better educational sessions, "You have to add to or alter your social events, meals, new product demos, et cetera, and these are things that require more thought and attention from the planner." By 2002, Spaulding's financial services event had gone from 1,400 to 2,500 attendees; small hosted dinners replaced one group dinner each night; and one-on-one sessions became almost as commonplace as classroom-style lectures. "Expectations were definitely much higher than six years before," he says. In other words, even if he tried, Spaulding simply couldn't do it alone.
Perhaps your events are not so complex or overwhelming as to require you to delegate tasks. But think about this: Just as your events will not simply remain the same over time, neither will your standing in your organization. So if you insist on keeping all the responsibilities for your meetings within your clutches, you're hurting yourself more than you may know.
Besides creating a work-life imbalance that will eventually burn you out, hoarding control a) diminishes the quality of your events; b) gives management the impression that meetings are easy to coordinate; and c) paints you as someone who lacks the ability to be a leader of people. It's this simple, says Spaulding: "The meeting planner is usually a perfectionist, but you are not going to get perfection if you spread yourself too thin." In that case, nobody will notice how hard you are working -- they'll only notice that quality is suffering on your watch.
Aside from the disadvantages of taking everything on yourself, there are other critical reasons to delegate. With the smaller details off your plate, you can focus on those aspects of the meeting you deem most important, which not only allows you to stamp your creativity onto the event, but enables you to work with the meeting's stakeholders on the effective delivery of their message, thus proving your value and getting notice from the executive ranks.
"If you want to grow into a more strategic role and become a more valuable person for your company," Simeone says, "you'd better learn to delegate so you can have a hand in bigger projects." Spaulding adds that "It's in planners' interest to focus on the most personally enjoyable or the most prominent part of the event, make sure they do it perfectly, and delegate the rest to people they trust and can manage."
The Blueprint
Begin by writing down every last task that must be completed for the event, so you can group similar duties and then prioritize them. Decide what to do yourself (the event's "make or break" items) and give the other tasks to your staff, based on their individual strengths. "Try to pool responsibilities, expanding the scope of authority for people who in the past have demonstrated skills similar to the tasks you need done," says Simeone. "This expands their horizons, maximizes their usefulness, makes them a more valuable team member to you, and boost their morale." So the employee responsible for advance and on-site registration, for instance, may also be able to coordinate attendees' transportation needs. But remember: "Give out new duties in small measures, to determine what your staffers' skill sets are," Simeone adds. "And if something becomes too much for them, you either do it yourself or go to your supply chain and find the expertise you need."
If you delegate a task that you feel would be a stretch for a particular staffer at this point in his career, you'll probably defeat the purpose. "Trust is such a huge factor in delegating," says Katherine Paauw, a professional coach and organizational consultant based in Redmond, WA. "Don't fool yourself up front about who you feel you can trust with certain tasks. Because if the trust isn't there, it's very hard for an employer to not micromanage."
Once you choose the right people for particular jobs, explain to them why they were given those tasks and the importance each task plays in the success of the event. As you talk with each staffer, add her name, a description of her duties, dates for progress reports, and the task's due date to your "delegation log." (For an example of a real log, click on www.orgcoach.net/del egation_log.html)
"The idea with the log is to make sure it's perfectly clear who is responsible for initiating the contact for progress updates and which information will be presented," says Paauw. "You should formalize it in writing, because you'll have so many things going on that you won't remember who should call whom with updates. And if you let that go, you could forget to check on certain elements of the meeting until it's too late."
Paauw warns of a few other common mistakes. "Some people's style of delegation is to give a task to someone and forget about it," she says. "You are really painting yourself into a corner if you do that. Another pitfall is when you delegate to someone, but you don't truly give authority and ownership to that person. You must avoid micromanaging the process; rather, simply check in periodically to make sure you're getting the result, however that person chooses to arrive at it." Sure, you'd probably do the task differently, but if the end result is good, what's the difference? "You may even be best at doing something, but that doesn't mean it's best for you to do it," she adds. "In many areas, good enough is just fine."
And before problems arise -- as they inevitably do -- let each staffer know that your door is always open for guidance, even between check-in dates. But, "When people bring problems to you, listen to them but don't assume responsibility for coming up with solutions," Paauw says. "Instead, ask questions that will get them to brainstorm their own solutions. Keep the monkey on their backs and off yours." And if the problem was caused by the staffer, try to give positive and corrective feedback. Don't focus on what went wrong, but rather on what can be done to remedy the situation.
Outside the Box
At this point, we can hear you groaning, "This sure sounds nice, except for one problem: I have nobody to delegate to." That lament, however, is shortsighted. The reason: Thinking only of internal people as potential partners to handle meeting responsibilities neglects the fact that you're paying vendors such as hotels, DMCs, production companies, audiovisual firms, caterers, and others to deliver not only product, but service for your events. "Supply-chain management is a term that's unfamiliar to many planners, but it's a huge component of delegation, efficiency, and overall effectiveness," says Simeone. "The planners who understand the potential within their supply chain know they could probably run their departments with just one or two people if they had a great cadre of vendors they deal with."
One notable example is Liz Ely, CMP, who has put herself in a position many planners can only wish they had: She's become valued in her organization as a strategic consultant in meeting design. As manager of meetings and conventions for the International Association of Project Managers in Newtown Square, PA, Ely oversees 100 meetings annually with the help of just two administrative assistants. Over the years, Ely has persuaded management to expand her budget so she can outsource meeting/exhibit management, registration, housing, and event production.
With these tasks in other people's hands, Ely is able to focus her attention and creativity on the needs of the hosts and stakeholders of each meeting. "I ask the host questions about the meeting's purpose, and then I assist in how to best deliver content that will fulfill the objectives," she says. "I also address any red flags I see when it comes to the direction of the meeting. So I've become a consultant for anyone in the organization who needs to produce results through a meeting."
Ely stresses, though, that budget size has nothing to do with a planner's ability to get the most out of delegating tasks to a meeting's vendors. Rather, "The key is knowledge management," she says. "That means that you need to communicate the dynamics of your organization and the particular event to all vendors, so they understand the culture and context. And since you are buying their expertise, you also need to learn about their organization: what its people work on most often, and what their strengths are."
In fact, says Simeone, "I spend more time explaining my company's history, its personality, and its current challenges than addressing the task itself. I want vendors to feel as enfranchised as I am with this meeting, and not that it's just another job to finish and get paid for. You must consider your third parties as extensions of your organization." And while this process is time-consuming, it's the most critical part of developing a trusting, multi-event relationship with vendors whom you can hand responsibilities to with- out worry.
Once you've given the orientation, though, it's still essential to keep tabs on the work your vendors are doing; the oversight process should be the same as you have with your internal staffers. "Ask for as detailed a contract and banquet event order as you can get -- including who is responsible for which tasks -- and then keep up regular communication with them," such as weekly conference calls or frequent e-mails, says Spaulding. Most importantly, "Let them know they should not wait for check-in dates to approach you with questions or problems," he adds.
In the end, the work that goes into delegating meeting duties to both internal and external partners will pay off for any planner looking to advance. Says Ely: "It frees you up to be more involved with the big-picture stuff that gets you noticed by executives. Learning the art of delegation has definitely helped me move ahead to the strategic level in my organization."
Executive Editor Robert Carey can be reached at
[email protected]