Category: Uncategorized

It’s how I see event management. It’s how I see leadership.

As I pursue a career in large scale event management I keep thinking back to a week I spent with my family in Bath, England last summer. We were staying at a friend’s holiday home for a week and on the first morning discovered a 1000 piece puzzle in the living room drawer. My sister and I made it our goal to finish the puzzle by the end of the week so we poured the pieces out on the window box and began sorting. At the beginning of the week it was just a pile of random pieces, each piece in itself rather insignificant. We couldn’t tell what they were or where they were suppose to go. But by the end of the week we had this beautiful picture of horses and all of a sudden we couldn’t see the small pieces anymore. We had achieved something awesome by making sure each little piece is where it needed to be. We knew though, that if one piece had been missing it just wouldn’t have been the same; when anyone looked at it their eyes would have instantly been attracted to the one tiny missing piece and not the rest of the picture.

In many of the of the event manager roles I have taken on I have been required to take on substantial leadership positions. As I have grown up in age and experience I have tried many different leadership styles but recently, again, I keep thinking back to that puzzle last summer. My dad was very sick with cancer and so every day we had family and friends from all over the country come and visit us at this house in Bath. We had a busy schedule and my sister and I soon realized that we were never going to finish this 1000 piece puzzle on our own. We left the box top right next to the puzzle and as we all sat in the living room visitor after visitor leaned over, scanned their eyes over the pieces and added a few to the puzzle. Because the box top was on clear view they could see what they were working towards; they could see the end goal and they wanted to be a part of it. No one asked them, persuaded them or told them they had to. Everyone was motivated by a clear vision of the end goal and the opportunity to contribute a vital piece to a larger project.

A jigsaw is used as a metaphor for a lot of things and as I pursue my career in large scale event management and the leadership roles that will come with that, I will always try to think back to my week in Bath.

When people here of the charities and projects around the world whose goal is to give computers to children in developing countries, the response is often negative: surely food and water are far more necessary than a computer.

So we provide a family with food this month… but what about next month? What about next year? What about in 20 years time when the children have grown up and have a family of their own? The only long-term way to break the poverty cycle is through education. Educate one child who can grow up, find a job and afford education for his/her family and we have broken the poverty cycle for the generations to follow.

Computers can do that. With the right model in place computers can provide more information and learning resources than any school teacher in a classroom ever could. Aleph Molinari has figured it out with his Ria centres:

I had an inspiring lunch meeting today with a friend to talk about marketing, social entrepreneurship, and life. I left the conversation so motivated and really just wondering why there are so many business people and entrepreneurs wanting to make a difference in social causes, yet so very few social enterprises.  Most of them feel that you just can’t make a living working for social causes so will instead work a regular 9-5 job with charity work on the side.

But that is the beauty of starting your own social enterprise…you include your salary into the budget and making a difference in peoples’ lives can become your full time job! You create a business where the goal is making money to make a change…a change wherever you see a need, for whatever you are passionate about, and you can earn a fair salary, own your own business and do a lot of good in society.

With so many causes competing for the same limited resources, it is harder now than ever for a traditional charity to be successful. Social entrepreneurship is the new way…creating a business that provides a product or service that people need, a business that generates profit, can sustain itself (including paying the salaries of all the workers), and achieves huge social impact.

What does RedBull and youth leading have in common? Anyone who has ever worked with teenagers knows you keep that drink as far away from them as possible. But the 2 work on a very similar concept: “If you discover something for yourself, it is far more meaningful than if it is forced upon you”.

Last night was the first night of the Youth Alpha program at my church’s youth group and as a leader, I was pumped to see the work God had planned. In training for this program, the above concept really stood out to me because both as a youth leader and a marketer it’s easy to get caught up in becoming a teacher; lecturing so-called wise words of wisdom and desperately praying that they sink in to the students’ hearts, or trying to fit a ton of information in an ad to tell consumers why your product is right for them.

But last night at youth alpha, sitting around the table I put duct tape over my mouth, sat back, and listened to the wise words of wisdom coming out of the students’ mouths…words that they were discovering for themselves…words that were truly sinking in to their hearts.

And when it comes to marketing, Red Bull has figured this concept out as well with their successful strategy: give out as much free RedBull as possible! RedBull sponsored a ski trip I was on last weekend and gave out as many cans as we could physically consume. They know not to pour millions of dollars into ad campaigns telling us how well their product works…they put it in our hands and let us discover it out for ourselves!

Today Three Avocados started following me on twitter. With a name as cool as that I knew I had to find out who they were. Turns out they are a not for profit organization that sells bags of coffee and uses 100% of the net profits to provide clean water to villages in Uganda.

Now this got me thinking… a bag of coffee is on my usual shopping list; it is something I spend money on anyway. At $12 a bag, Three Avocado’s coffee is not much different in price than my normal bag of coffee. I can spend the same amount of money, on the same product I already buy, and instead of contributing to the pockets of large corporations, I can contribute to clean water projects in Uganda!

www.threeavocados.org

A cool name, for a cool concept!

As a student finishing up second year, the pressure to choose a specialization option is closing in. In first year I was very stressed and worried about this…after all I was under the impression that my entire life and career choices would be determined by one decision.

Then I received some very good advice…”relax, sit back and open your eyes”

As second year rolled around I calmed down and just started paying attention to my accounting, finance, HR and Marketing classes. Which classes did I dread going to? Which did I enjoy? During which classes did I constantly look at the clock, wishing the time went by faster and which flew by? Which assignments did I enjoy working on? Which textbooks were enjoyable to read?

Was I excited to learn the material and content of any of those classes? Yes…Marketing.

I sit here right now, a week before my marketing final, textbook open, so excited to read it. I want to learn this stuff. I want to know how to plan and execute an ad campaign. I want to learn how to identify people’s needs and figure out how to fulfill them. I want to learn how to best communicate the value of ideas, products and services.

I definitely did not feel this excited about finance, accounting and HR exams.

And now my mind is wondering how marketing fits in with everything else that interests me. I love event planning and that is totally marketing. Understanding a need, creating an event to fulfill the need, communicating the value of the event to get people to come, and then most importantly executing the event well to deliver the value.

I have no idea what career I want in 5 years time but I know that right now I enjoy marketing. It interests me and excites me. If I keep living in the moment and making decisions that make me immediately happy, I am bound to end up doing something I love in 5 years time! Best feeling ever!