Fork In The Road Blog

Events: Technology. Design. Strategy.

When Millennials Take Over: Preparing for the Ridiculously Optimistic Future of Business

millennial at workThe below is a guest post from Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant as they launch their latest book on organizational culture.

A lot has been written about the Millennial generation in the last ten years or so, and to be frank, a lot of it is really not helpful, especially in a business context. So, why is the focus of our new book squarely on the Millennials and the way they might be changing just about every aspect of how we learn, lead and grow in organizations? They just happen to be at the right place at the right time. The Millennials are entering young adulthood at a unique point in our history, where society is poised for a tectonic shift, particularly around business, leadership, and management. There is a “perfect storm” of trends converging in a way that will generate an actual revolution in business – affecting organizations of all shapes and sizes.

Yes, a revolution. Our approach to management has been stuck in a rut—not just for the last few years, but also for the last several decades. We have been running our organizations like machines, and today’s lack of engagement and lack of agility to meet the shifting needs of customers, members and employees are indications of how our machine approach to management is crumbling. Add to this the shake-up that the social Internet has brought to business and society (that we wrote about in Humanize), and you’d think the revolution would have happened by now.

But it hasn’t. We needed another element, a catalyst that could connect the dots in a way that would bring a much needed management revolution to fruition. That catalyst is the third front in our perfect storm: the Millennial generation.

As the Millennials ascend into management positions over the next several years, they will simultaneously become the largest generation in the workforce. While the Millennials won’t formally “take over” (no single generation ever runs things on its own), they will serve as a kind of “secret decoder ring” for all of us, helping clarify what the future of business will look like, post revolution. Change is coming, and smart organizations will start making the necessary adjustments today to stay ahead.

Our newest book, When Millennials Take Over: Preparing for the Ridiculously Optimistic Future of Business, provides exactly that kind of guidance. We studied organizations with remarkably strong cultures and conducted interviews of Millennials who had been in the workforce for some time. What emerged from our research and feedback from our clients were four organizational capacities that we think will prepare organizations to be successful, both today and into the future: Digital, Clear, Fluid, and Fast.

The companies we found with ridiculously strong cultures had built these capacities into the heart of their operations and philosophies, and the Millennials we spoke to could not understand why these capacities were not woven into every organization to begin with.

Digital

Digital is about perpetual and exponential improvement of all facets of organizational life using both the tools and the mindsets of the digital world. Digital in the Millennial era has an unrelenting and disciplined focus on the customer or end user—including the employee. Millennials are the first generation to have only known a digital workplace, and they are used to being able to leverage that power on an individual basis. Digital organizations break through the assumed constraints of the previous approach to managing organizations, unlocking new value continuously in areas like internal collaboration and even human resource management.

Clear

Clear is about an increased and more intelligent flow of information and knowledge that supports innovation and problem solving inside organizations. Millennials have always had access to more information than they could possibly handle, and they are confused by organizations that control it tightly. Clear organizations make smarter decisions that generate better results. They will successfully build a transparency architecture that makes more information visible to more people to enable better decisions.

Fluid

Fluid is about expanding and distributing power in a dynamic and flexible way. Fluid in the Millennial era is about systems that enable an integrated process of thinking, acting, and learning at all levels of the organization. Since the social internet started distributing power across traditional lines, the Millennial generation now does not expect organizations to task the higher levels with the thinking and deciding, and the lower levels with the implementation. Fluid organizations serve customers more effectively and are more nimble in both strategy and execution. They may still have hierarchies, but they are created and maintained in a different way.

Fast

Fast is about taking action at the precise moment when action is needed. Fast in the Millennial era is about systems that can learn and adapt while still maintaining the efficiency and productivity of the previous era. Beta testing has become normal and expanded outside of the realm of software. We may call the Millennials “entitled” for wanting things right away or expecting more authority, but remember: That’s all they’ve ever known. Fast organizations leap ahead of the competition by releasing control in a way that does not increase risk. They go beyond efficiency and productivity to find the key variables that unlock true speed.

What This Means For You

This is not speculative, theoretical content—this is happening in the world today. One of the case studies in the book is the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, an association in Chicago that has embraced the digital mindset fully, not only investing more in technology than some for-profit companies its size but also redesigning its workspace around the needs of the employees. ASSH and the other companies that we profile are all tremendously successful by traditional measures, and their cultures are so strong that nearly all of the employees we spoke with could not even imagine working somewhere else. These are the positive deviants. They are role models that are showing us that the management revolution is indeed possible.

It is up to you now to continue leading this revolution in business. If you want to become more digital, clear, fluid, and/or fast, then take a hard look at your organization, particularly your culture. You’ll need to make a solid connection between what drives the success of your organization and what is truly valued internally—not the fluffy values statements, but what gets the attention, what gets the resources, what gets people rewards. When you can align what’s valued at that level to what drives your success, you have a better chance of creating a culture that makes sense in this new, Millennial era.

The above is a guest post from Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant as they launch their latest book on organizational culture.

How One Meetings Organization Interpreted Digital Disruption

betaThe time we live in can only be described as bordering on the unfathomable: infants use iPads, celebrities show up at music festivals post mortem and human beings serve as wireless hotspots. We have gone from analog to digital overnight. The change is even reflected in our workplace terminology. We connect (meet), download (inform our colleagues about a project) and kvetch about bandwidth (time required to accomplish tasks). How can any industry keep up?

I left last week’s PCMA Convening Leaders conference in Orlando thinking about a number of statements, but one in particular has stayed with me. Thomas Friedman’s keynote, which alternatively addressed the failures and mandates we have as a country to avoid becoming a mid-day snack for China, mentioned the mantra of Silicon Valley start-ups, “Always be in beta.” It seemed to be the perfect solution for an industry of analogs trying to cope with digital disruption.

Even as the gauntlet of digital disruption—social media, mobile, virtual events, new content channels—was thrown down, PCMA looked it square in the eye and said, “Bring it on.” They attempted to scratch the surface of the issues surrounding digital technologies and meetings in a panel discussion, which I moderated, including industry luminaries from both sides of the aisle. We succeeded in laying out the issues and even discussing the “elephant in the room”: live events are not immune to the disruption.

In fact, PCMA not only exposed the obvious, they embraced it with their continued collaboration with the Virtual Edge Institute and their support of BOBtv. Virtual Edge education is now seamlessly blended into the Convening Leaders programming including an opportunity to sit for the Digital Event Strategist certification exam. An undercurrent of anticipation of the rollout this year of BOBtv was ever present during the meeting. The live streaming of the keynotes and several popular sessions from the conference was another hat tip to digital.

PCMA took mobile a step further this year by deploying a game on the existing mobile platform provided by Active Network. Participants were encouraged to complete evaluations, scan QR codes, add sessions to their agendas and perform other tasks in order to earn points and a coveted position at the top of the leaderboard. Then in typical PCMA style, staffers invited participants to a discussion of what went well, what could be done better and how the game layer performed overall.

The signs of social media were alive and well this year again. PCMA sponsored an official Tweetup. The mobile platform offered plenty of opportunities to tweet, post and upload content—and according to PCMA staff, they did. The three year-old Learning Lounge introduced attendees to a new platform called Tout (scheduled to be a part of the event next year), which developers describe as “Twitter for video.” Tout allows users to create 15-second video updates and add them directly to their Twitter and Facebook streams while enabling other users to reply with their own videos.

More than any specific program feature or technological innovation, it was PCMA’s attitude toward digital disruption that was so obvious at the event. They must have trepidation about keeping pace with technology and the future of meetings—their members surely do—but they didn’t let that paranoia stop them. If the level of experimentation at the meeting (lunch four different ways and the trade show reimagined) was any indication, PCMA is always in beta, trying new form factors and delivery systems. It almost seemed as if, despite some of the glitches that come with the territory, they embrace digital and disruption in general as a matter of policy. What a difference (non) denial makes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EIBTM’s Technology Watch Award Winners One Year Later

EIBTM Tech Watch winners one year laterAs EIBTM, the Global Meetings & Events Exhibition, celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary two weeks ago in Barcelona, it honored the winners—an overall winner and several finalists—of the EIBTM Technology Watch Competition. As a judge for the past two years, I have been a fly on the wall during the judging, listening in and commenting on the “new and innovative technology solutions that can make a significant difference to the industry.” I thought I might take a peek at the 2011 winners to see whether the companies survived and how their solutions have evolved in a highly competitive and fast-moving environment.

ITN International continues to ride the NFC wave

The top honor in 2011 was awarded to ITN International for its Citywide Credentialing System utilizing NFC (Near Field Communication) technology. The system allowed users in Amsterdam to use their badges from the trade show to access mass transit and area tourist attractions throughout the city. The badge also enabled attendee tracking, access control and exhibitor lead retrieval.

In 2012, ITN is on the cusp of a transformation in the events industry with the arrival of NFC-enabled Smartphones to the U.S. and ITN’s development of an NFC ecosystem around the event. In the past year, ITN has launched three new products:

  • BCARD Reader Browser—a “universal” Android browser that supports lead capture with any Web-based lead management system at any event.
  • NFC Paper—the event industry’s first paper NFC attendee badge.
  • MobileAccess—an access control app that lets attendees change the sessions they have registered for “on the fly.”

Active Network powers forward in the event management space 

Active Network was a finalist in 2011 for its ActiveEvents Insight platform, a suite of mobile applications that provides event organizers with a real-time “bird’s eye view” of the event including registration data, leads, social networking, exhibitors, sessions schedules, mobile app usage, room block activity, financial statements, speaker resources and event content on a tablet or Smartphone.

In 2012, Active Network continued its focus on event management solutions with a major acquisition and some key product launches. Early in the year, the firm announced the purchase of StarCite, a Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) and event registration platform. The company launched a mobile suite complete with personal event scheduling, local-attraction search, surveys, attendee-to-attendee messaging, gamification and QR-code contact exchange. It also rolled out ACTIVE Event’s Conference solution covering the corporate event lifecycle including logistics, engagement, metrics and business intelligence.

GenieMobile moves from DIY to Data

GenieMobile was recognized as one of four finalists in 2011 for its high-quality, easy-to-use, “do-it-yourself” (DIY) mobile app development tool delivering native apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, WindowsPhone and content to the Mobile Web. The DIY model enabled event organizers to obtain an app at a lower price point than similar offerings while maintaining control of the app content through a built-in content management system.

In the past 24 months, however, GenieMobile has changed its value proposition. Rather than focus on the DIY usability, the company has concentrated its efforts on “world-beating analytics,” says Michael Douglas, marketing director. In the current iteration of the GenieMobile platform, Douglas explains, “everything can be queried, analyzed and reported on—not just the usage stats, but all the event data. This brings to life the ‘LinkedIn for events’ analogy where you are learning everything about your audience, not through questionnaires, but through their natural behavior.”

Triqle Event Intelligence morphs into How Can I Be Social (HCIBS)

Triqle Event Intelligence was a finalist last year for its “What’s On?” application that displays the current and “next up” educational sessions on large monitors throughout an event. While the application is still alive and well, Triqle’s founder, Gerrit Heijkoop, launched a new venture in 2012 with partner Donald Roos called HCIBS (How Can I Be Social) to bring “What’s On?” and social media to the trade show floor. The objective of the new company is “to bridge the gap between the offline activity on the show floor and the online buzz on Twitter and other social media,” Heijkoop says. His social media “team” roams the floor reporting on event activities (via social media) and answering questions on social media while the “What’s On?” app displays program information and a Twitter feed.

Wifarer refines its ability to monetize digital space

Wifarer, an indoor positioning system, intrigued the judging committee in 2011 with technology to pinpoint a smartphone’s location to an accuracy of 1.3 meters within a venue. The system provides very precise wayfinding for attendees though a meeting venue or exhibit hall, while providing location-aware content delivery and aggregated attendee movement analytics. In 2012, the company “expanded its solution to the following verticals: shopping centers, museums, airports, hospitals, and universities. [Wifarer] continues to provide indoor “GPS” and high accuracy, location-based content to users on their smartphones and we now provide venues with the ability to completely control the content and monetization of their digital space.” says Lise Murphy, vice-president marketing.

The Takeaway: It’s a scramble to stay ahead of the technology curve even in an industry (meetings) that tends to be slightly behind the curve at times. EIBTM’s Technology Watch appears to be doing a good job targeting the companies and technologies that will move the face-to-face business forward and have some degree of “staying” power.

 

 

20 Tips in (Less Than) 20 Minutes: The Meeting Professional’s List for Promoting Yourself or Your Company on Social Media Channels

Last week, our local MPI Chapter produced its own version of the Learning Lounge developed for PCMA by our friends at Velvet Chainsaw. We called the program “Thinking Outside the Room: New Technologies for a Changing Industry.” It was orchestrated by the magical people at CornerstoneAV and I was invited to speak in one of the theaters about social media in the meetings industry. The audience consisted of both meeting planners and suppliers–mostly hoteliers. I don’t profess to be a social media expert myself. Like most everyone else, my knowledge on the subject is the culmination of many many hours of reading, listening and experimenting with social platforms. I do know about the mechanics of the meetings and trade show industry and how to apply social media principles to the marketing and promotion of event industry brands. Here are the “20 Tips in (Less Than) 20 Minutes” that I offered to session attendees last week.

  1. Develop a social media strategy. Even if all you do is scratch out a few bullet points onto a cocktail napkin, you need to decide ahead of time what your message is, what your goals are, who your audience is, and where your audience is.
  2. Follow your clients and prospects on social media channels. Create a list of the top 25 or 50 accounts (people) you want to have or keep as customers and follow them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or their blogs. The content they create will give you an idea about their needs and preferences so that you can be the person or company to come to the rescue when the time is right.
  3. Follow your competitors online. If they are doing nothing—you already have an immediate advantage. If they are doing something mediocre—you can do better. If they are doing a great job—you can do something equally brilliant or at least not anything like what they are doing.
  4. Look for someone needing help online and help them. It creates an impression among your followers that you are resourceful and builds “social capital.”
  5. Make sure your online profile is complete. Make it easy for your clients and prospects to reach you (include your telephone number and real email) and avoid being too clever or cryptic. I’d rather know that you can help me solve a problem than the fact that you love Maltese puppies and Good and Plenty candy.
  6. Select the best channels for your audience. Your customers may only be on Facebook or LinkedIn. Wherever they go, you should go.
  7. Spend two hours a day on social media tasks. Read your Alerts. Connect with 5 (valuable) people on LinkedIn. Read/send tweets. Jot down some bullet points for your blog. Post on your Facebook wall. Answer a question on Quora.
  8. Develop content continuously. Social media platforms don’t run themselves, your content powers them. Always be thinking about and/or working on your checklists, articles, blog posts, case studies, customer reviews/testimonials, and whatever else you can produce on a regular basis.
  9. Add social contact information for your clients and prospects to your sales and marketing database. Twitter handles, LinkedIn profile links, and Facebook company page URLs should be in the database alongside your customers’ names, addresses, and emails.
  10. Make yourself available to customers on social media channels. Let them know that they can tweet you, send you a message on Facebook, or mail you through LinkedIn.
  11. Put your social media contact information on your business cards. If you or your company are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or a blog site, let your clients know.
  12. Make sure your content is shareable. Put share buttons on your Website, emails, blog posts, and any content your produce to increase readership.
  13. Share. Don’t sell. This is the mantra of social media content. If you want friends, respect, followers, and clients don’t be the person always hawking your product. Instead, solve a problem, share a resource, or provide assistance.
  14. Place different content on each channel. Use Twitter for short quips and to share links. Use Facebook for contests. Use LinkedIn to demonstrate your thought leadership. Use your blog for informative how-to information.
  15. Create your own personal brand on social media channels (with a disclaimer..”these ideas are my own and not my employer’s…) if your company chooses not to pursue social media marketing.  Your brand is portable. Your following can land you another job some day.
  16. Find the new water coolers online and hang out there. The meetings industry has plenty: Engage365, Eventpeeps, #Eventprofs and #Meetingprofs on Twitter and tons of other groups on LinkedIn.
  17. Develop a personality online. I’m not saying find a gimmick. I’m just saying try to be memorable.
  18. Be deliberate about building your community. In addition to following your clients and prospects, try to be selective about the people you would like to have following you.
  19. Listen more than you “speak” online. This is solid Chris Brogan advice and it works.  Spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the implications of what you read and hear.
  20. Blend your social media efforts with traditional media if that works for you. The two channels–social and traditional–are not mutually exclusive.

The Takeaway: The platforms are changing constantly but the strategy is the same. Find your voice. Go where your clients and prospects are. Ask them to follow you. Dazzle them with your generosity and brilliance.

Pop Up Sessions and Unpanels Coming to a Conference Near You

Welcome to the world of the unexpected where restaurants, stores, and classrooms pop up overnight with the spontaneity of a pimple on prom night. While impromptu conference sessions have yet to appear in the traditional conference setting, there are signs that instant gatherings of like-minded people tipped off by the lightning fast transmission of messages over social media channels could be coming to a conference near you.

Here’s how a pop up session might look: Let’s say Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Seth Godin attend BlogWorld. Shortly before lunch they tweet to their followers that they will be in Room 2204 to talk to anyone who wants to listen about how they made millions of dollars blogging (or their biggest blogging blunders). The tweet (or Facebook post or text message) also informs readers that Ford Motor Company is providing lunch for everyone and a cherry red Ford Mustang car for the first person through the door (OK maybe just signed books from the speakers to the first 200 people). Who wouldn’t want to go?

Flash sessions, “unpanels,” and impromptu meetups are the logical next steps for conference producers looking for viral “sugar.” The fact that many conferences have tweetups (CES had over 1,000 people show up at their tweetup last January) demonstrates that attendees respond to informality. The flash mob phenomena, which gives the appearance that people just spontaneously start dancing together in the middle of a conference center foyer, garners YouTube love every time a new video appears. Pop up panels like the one with Jeremiah Owyang and friends on the future of content creation during SXSW was covered on a number of blogs. In fact, SXSW conference organizers presided over a number of instant initiatives: flash mobs, pop up stores, unpanels, and lots of user-generated publicity.

In addition to the yen to experiment, conference organizers would need to plan ahead of time to perfect the look and feel of spontaneity:

  • Non-programmed blocks of free time when attendees are available to attend
  • Speakers, topics, and incentives with broad appeal to attract followers
  • Forward-thinking and flexible sponsors to underwrite costs
  • Open spaces capable of accommodating large crowds

The Takeaway: With all the talk about unconferences, barcamps, and other self-organized gatherings, pop up conference sessions seem like a natural fit for organizers looking to breathe new life into an old format or attract the newly social hipsters who have outgrown the rave parties but still crave the excitement of the unexpected. They’re also a great way to get more followers using the conference’s social media platforms. Who knows, could pop up trade shows be next?

Be Notified of New Posts via Email