Abandon Fear

Keith Johnston, Critic

What would I kick to the curb and flush down the toilet? I have to be honest, there are so many things I would change it took me the better part of a week to come up with an answer, but I looked into the abyss and came up with one thing that we all suffer from in the meetings industry. The one thing that holds us back as a community. The one thing we must change. Fear. As an industry, we need to abandon our fear of anything and everything.

Fear is paralyzing. Fear is overwhelming and fear has brought down civilizations and I fear (pun intended) that fear is slowly eating away at our industry and making our skills and services nothing more than a commodity that can be done by a trained monkey or an online “meeting planning program.”

Our services used to be special; our services used to be  desired and considered essential. However, through our fear of losing that position, we have painted ourselves into a corner. Our fear takes many shapes. We are afraid of budgets. We are afraid of what the boss thinks. We are afraid of the attendee reaction. Because of this, we are producing meetings that are the same year after year because we will only do what has worked in the past. We will only do what is the tried and true. We will no longer take risks and make stakeholders and attendees understand why our talents are necessary.

There is no desire to shake things up because we might make a mistake, choose something that one person does not like or have a session that is a bomb. The heavens will tumble if we have one attendee who is unhappy; we fail to realize that is actually what we need to be doing.

Instead of recognizing that it is fear holding us back as an industry, we make excuses. We cannot try Pecha Kucha for our session because our speakers are not prepared for that. We cannot engage through social media—our attendees are not ready for that. We cannot have sponsored lanyards; it would upset the other sponsors. We cannot go from four days to three because it has always been four and it would confuse the attendees. These are all excuses that I hear from the meetings and events community everyday. The true reason is fear; fear of change.

Meeting and event planners need to abandon fear and let go. We, as an industry, need to take the time to learn and grow and not make excuses. Yes, you can have a hybrid event and stream your sessions; technology like WordPress and Livestream has made it affordable and doable so the only reason not too is fear. You are afraid of failing.

You can take the time to learn social media because your attendees are on all of those platforms. The excuse that “our attendees do not do that kind of thing” is a fear reaction.

If we abandon fear, we open ourselves to trying new session styles, trying new venues, new programs and new platforms. We open ourselves to running hybrid events and online campaigns. We can be the driving force in face-to-face interaction instead of backseat drivers letting fear rule the road.

> Return to “The Challenge of Change”

Keith Johnston is one of the most outspoken voices in the meetings industry. His PlannerWire blog doesn’t shy away from the often-caustic commentary as part of its stated purpose: “new thinking for meetings and events.”

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