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In Depth: Meetings, Conventions & Hotels
	From the August 24, 2001 print edition

Meetings turn creative to improve communication

In this information-driven society, we are bombarded with hundreds of television channels, a thousand advertisements, millions of Web sites and a constant stream of pundits vying for our precious attention.

Meeting planners are becoming more creatively sophisticated. They have to - not only to keep wandering minds at bay, but also because research shows that just getting up in front of a crowd and droning on about the topic at hand is an increasingly ineffective technique.

More and more, facilitators are turning to hands-on team-building exercises and unconventional speakers to get results.

Rebecca Webb, vice president of sales and marketing for Avid Events, a Redmond meeting-planning company, can count of dozens of exercises that her program managers use to get the creative - and collaborative - process flowing.

She recalled a conference of 240 Deloitte Consulting employees who were asked to break into two teams and build a bridge using only household materials such as paper-towel tubes, tinfoil and duct tape. The catch was the two teams had to build similar bridges, but they could not see each other's work, nor could they talk. Creative communication became essential.

"It's motivating when you have a lot of camaraderie between people," Webb said, "even if you don't like someone, you can recognize their strengths to get (the project) out the door."

Mark Funkhouser, manager of the health, fitness and recreation department for the Weyerhaeuser Co., said a big part of keeping meetings from being mundane is to incorporating ice-breakers and team-building exercises, what he calls SAGs, or "silly-ass games."

He cites an exercise in which two teams of six people stand on 8-foot-long 2-by-4 boards, like skis, with the front and back people holding rope loops on each end. In order to race across the room or field, the group must walk on the boards in perfect unison.

"It's an incredible exercise," he said. "The team that jumps right on and starts is never the ones that wins."

When strategic planning and cooperation come into effect - especially when corporate social cultures and radically different personalities mix - the team does much better.

"I think that the metrics that determine success are hard to measure," he said. "How do you measure morale and stress reduction? You can measure costs of health care and productivity."

Speakers and therapists use experimental exercises, games and creative ways to bring people a message through various senses, said Mac Macdonald, a Seattle-based motivational therapist who helps organizations become more efficient and positive.

Macdonald said exercises that break barriers to success affect not only the personnel, but also the company's return on investment.

"You give training to help people become better at these things, and hopefully people realize that came from the company, and they feel good about the company. ... It brings turnover down," Macdonald said.

Tom Jensen, the human resources manager at Birmingham Steel Corp., attended one of Macdonald's 1998 workshops with about 30 other managers. Besides entertaining participants, the most immediate benefit was building a common goal with other workers, he said.

"If a person follows through with their objective and works harder, eventually that makes the company more money," Jensen said.

Thinking outside the box saved an Eastside school thousands of dollars. Organizers wanted to show a video at the 10th anniversary fund-raising dinner, but instead of a highly polished and predictable five-minute piece that would cost about $20,000, William Geach of Proline Audio Visual in Seattle suggested they show the school experience from a kid's eye view by letting the students take the footage. The result was a fun, captivating film - and a $17,000 savings.

Meeting organizers agree that when they address the different learning styles - through seeing, hearing or doing - they make more of an impact.

Rebecca Partman, the director of meetings and incentives for Seattle-based corporate travel agency Metropolitan Travel, explained how one recent visual learning technique made all the difference in a meeting. A group of 250 Value Village managers convened in New Mexico for a summit about branding the store as a Halloween headquarters. As they watched a corporate video, the wall behind them disappeared to reveal a mockup of how the stores' new floor plan, signage and holiday display would look.

Becky Henchman, the marketing and communications manager for Savers, Value Village's parent company, said that the employees were encouraged to spend time truly experiencing the display by walking through it and touching the items.

"We set aside significant money to fly everybody in, knowing that if our floor managers felt completely confident in the plan, they would hit those sales goals," Henchman said.

Seeing is believing for Albert Mensah, originally from Ghana and now based in Seattle. He speaks to businesses and schools about removing barriers to success and foraging opportunities. Instead of just telling stories, he taps into his roots to free creative vibrations by warming up his audience with images and sounds of Africa. He appears in the traditional adinkra robes, then changes into a business suit to illustrate how he overcame language and cultural barriers. His goal is to help business people remember why they chose their respective fields, and then help them regain the sense of idealism and drive they had when they started. "Do not be afraid to ask what your quest is," he tells them. "It always comes back to one thing: how you create your own opportunity."

Whether it's motivational messages, grandiose displays or seemingly wacky exercises, one thing is clear: The way of the meeting is changing.

"We're getting very strategic about our meetings to make it interesting and fresh for our store managers," said Savers' Becky Henchman, "The same-old, same-old isn't working anymore, it's out the window."

Copyright 2001 American City Business Journals Inc. Click for permission to reprint (PRC# 1.1659.473766)

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