That’s the Plan

Innovative Ideas for Successful Planners
How Government Events Sharpen Your Corporate Planning Skills
Author: Kathy Metts, CMM, APR
From ' The Meeting Professional ', May 2008

You are managing an event, but where you’re not privy to when or how VIP speakers and guests will arrive. The venue’s ease of access is a big negative. You can’t get critical information about your customer’s business or your own. You’re simply not allowed to.

You haven’t entered The Twilight Zone: Event Edition. Chances are, you’re probably planning a high-level government event.

Our firm’s strategic event unit regularly grapples with these kinds of challenges in designing and managing events for public sector clients such as the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the General Service Administration and the U.S. Army Environmental Command. The work is hard—but gratifying—and it has generated an unexpected, tangible side benefit; the attention to detail, the strict protocols to which we must adhere and the zero leeway we have on budgets have sharpened our work for private-sector clients.

Loose Lips and Laptops

If you’ve planned events for clients or trade groups in highly proprietary, research-centric industries such as pharmaceuticals or information technology, you probably have an understanding of the restrictions on how, when, where and to whom sensitive information can travel.

In dealing with conference topics such as unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—otherwise known as roadside bombs—we’ve gotten a crash-course in handling and safeguarding classified and otherwise highly sensitive information.

After a while, adopting a mission-critical, “loose lips sink ships” mindset becomes a way of daily operations, making communications for all projects more efficient and helping tamp down the sometimes-dangerous gossip fires that burn in all of us.

In government work, you learn to live and love redundancy—planning and re-planning, checking and re-checking, second- and third-guessing yourself and having others doing it for you. Our work with the head of the Joint IED Threat Defeat Task Force—a high-ranking official with a $3.6 billion budget—involved dozens of review, screening and approval processes to prepare for his remarks to the general audience and for his highly classified session at (literally) an undisclosed, offsite location. Those even qualifying to attend the classified presentation were screened no fewer than three times each.

We’ve also gained a healthy respect for information technology. If you’ve been drafted for jury duty lately, you may have surrendered your camera-equipped cell phone prior to entering the courtroom. At classified events, those precautions grow to steroidal proportions. Even the most high-ranking attendees must hand over any potential recording or communications tool, all of which are then stored in file cabinets or safes to strict guidelines and accessible by few authorized individuals.

This kind of vigilance has paid off in our corporate work, in clients who recognize the care we bring to their sensitive information. You start asking questions and implementing safeguards you may have never otherwise considered. And you get better at explaining to corporate guests why they may need to part with their beloved wireless e-mail lifelines for just a short time.

The Case of the Italian General

We’ve all dealt with gate-crashers who arrive at the last minute, unregistered, arguing their birthrights to attend events. Sometimes they argue their cases effectively enough to gain entry.

Not so much in government events—especially classified ones—where no means no. Period. End of story.

Try explaining that to a high-ranking foreign official. It’s not fun, but it sure does make the next “turnaway” at a private-sector event easier to handle.

A highly decorated, yet unregistered, Italian general arrived unexpectedly at an important conference we managed for the DoD. Although his English skills were limited, the more-fluent Italian officer traveling with him mightily argued the case for entry. He explained how they had flown a fighter jet from Italy expressly to attend. We still had to say no. It got sticky and heated, but requirements of our client—the U.S. government—simply had to prevail.

There are other kinds of government functions that require people-oriented hyper-vigilance—particularly those where private-sector sponsors and/or attendees are on site together. Some of our contracts strictly prohibit any individual with a financial interest in an event (such as sponsors) from having any contact whatsoever with a government official for fear of even a hint of impropriety. We guard against this by marking badges with discrete codes and knowing the badge combos that can never interact.

It’s a Catch-22 to be sure: the very sponsors you may well have drafted, verboten from so much as dining next to a government staffer. The carryover to private-sector work? You learn to over-disclose to sponsors and exhibitors what they can and cannot do on site, and set the right expectations for their presence and access. “Zero surprises and disappointments” is a great recipe for healthy, long-standing corporate relationships.

Location, Location, Location

Government event planning sometimes means throwing away the rule book for venue selection. Suddenly, easy, curbside access and multiple stage routes are negatives for an event location—“sealing off” trumps opening up. This is par for the course when dealing with highly decorated service people and information that can impact how war is waged.

Another tightrope: Those same security concerns effectively eliminate venues you know can offer the best pricing, even when you are in a zero-budget-overrun situation.

You learn great flexibility, born of orders to vacate premises for security sweeps (planned and impromptu) and of other similar directives. You balance your planner’s instinct to make guests feel as welcome and comfortable as possible with contractual mandates to curtail movement to even run-of-the-mill locations such as food service and restrooms; in light of such restrictions, you get creative and find other, permissible ways to provide a great experience.

Dollars, Sense, Challenges and Rewards

Budget: here’s where your real creativity needs to shine in government event work. We learned early on how a zero-overrun budget mandate mustn’t trigger a knee-jerk, cost-cutting reflex. People—be they guests of Google or of the government—want and need to be treated a certain way. The ultimate jury of a public-sector event, like almost any private-sector event, is the feedback your client gets from attendees.

Our private work has grown to new levels through our government-gained experience making a dollar do the work of two. We’ve become more effective marketers to sponsors, whose dollars can make the difference between a serviceable event and one that is memorable. Doing this within restrictions on things such as what a sponsor can and cannot say, and to whom forces you to dig in and create new kinds of opportunities for exposure and influence, and help supporters make the most of what is available to them.

We all know how make-or-break food can be, so you take extraordinary steps to do better. Try partnering with other event developers holding conferences at a venue at the same time as yours, and realizing better food pricing by contracting in bigger volumes.

Work with fail-safe vendors who have proven over time that they deliver on budget. Even if they come in a few dollars more than an unknown contractor, go with the people you trust, and who may be willing to bend on pricing in view of the bigger picture.

Public-sector work can pay dividends beyond sharpening your planning skills writ large. For one, it is available through “fair fight” bidding processes. Make the time investment to apply, do good work with integrity when you win and you will likely enjoy repeat business. Government events can bridge slow times between private-sector jobs—even more critical in tight economies. And the power of brand name public clients on your roster is tough to match when marketing your firm to prospects. We know through first-hand experience.

KATHY METTS, CMM, APR, is president of Impact Associates. She can be contacted at kgmetts@impactassociates.org.