The conference call

 

A colleague forwarded to me a hilarious video, linked below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ#t=27

Briefly, it shows how the use of conference-call technology may not be working as well as we believe. Indeed, it may not be working at all.

As a communication tool it has one clear, demonstrable benefit: its ability to assemble widespread participants around a virtual table to discuss an idea or business strategy, without the cost of physically gathering them all together in one location.

What it doesn’t guarantee, as this clip humorously identifies, is engagement. What is it about the human psyche that makes us sit up and pay more attention at face-to-face meetings? Don’t get me wrong. These meetings can be dull too, but they will certainly possess a gravitas that makes us take them more seriously. They exude importance; they are interactive, can intrigue, excite and often entertain. We enjoy them, we get something out of them, they feel like real-life, human experiences.

Contrastingly a virtual meeting such as a conference call rarely cuts the emotional mustard. More often it has the ability to makes us feel disconnected and commodity-like, as though we are just going through the motions at someone else’s behest. Our attention, only loosely captured at the outset, wanders off all too easily. Without the behavioural rules of engagement that bind us together at meetings, we end up looking at our watches thinking of the homeward traffic; we think longingly of a bottle of wine chilling in the fridge, of wives and husbands, dogs and children; anything but the subject in hand. You care deeply about the subject being discussed and you value your job at the company you work for. The trouble is it’s just so difficult to concentrate when you are listening to five or six disembodied associates, speaking, interrupting, feigning politeness and generally talking around a subject.

So what’s missing? Why is this format often so unappealing?

Pumphouse Productions often blogs about the importance of having an engagement strategy to accompany communications messaging; after all, if nobody’s actually listening, how important is the content anyway?

How can we make a shared business phone-call sexier? We can’t. The telephone was created for two people to have a private conversation; cleverly adapted to provide a conference-call solution it has lost its intimacy and with it communication clarity. Physically, the technology works (most of the time); emotionally, it will probably always fall a little bit short.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ#t=27

Beyonce shows us all the way forward

I don’t usually blog about pop-stars. Mine was the punk era and writing about anything more current than the Jam and the Clash makes me feel uneasy. But this is not a blog about pop-music per se.

Last night Beyonce unexpectedly released her fifth album directly onto iTunes. 14 new songs and 17 videos were made available for immediate download. Bored of releasing her music in the traditional format – via a recording label producing a physical disk – Beyonce was able to cut through the lengthy red tape and avoid the release being diluted with staged leaks.

“It’s all about the single and the hype. I felt, like, I don’t want anybody to get the message when my record is coming out. I just want this to come out when it’s ready and from me to my fans,” said Beyonce. You appreciate the sentiment.

People tweeted, liked and shared. The news trended on twitter and iTunes crashed, unable to keep pace with demand.

Two lessons can be learned from this PR coup by the Queen Bee:

• Challenge the way things are done; ‘we’ve always done it that way’ just doesn’t cut it.
• Speak as directly as you can to your intended audience.

Challenging the way things are always done is not new in the music world. New formats and platforms have always dynamised this industry. The slow moving monoliths do not survive and only the nimble, fast-thinking innovators will thrive in the iWorld.

By cutting out a moderating influence, Beyonce has given her fans what they want, the real unexpurgated Beyonce. Without the slow-burn production moderating and improving her performance, the content released has a raw, truthful edge to it.

What can business learn from this? That the most direct forms of communication are best? That by wearing our hearts on our sleeve and offering our raw thoughts and opinions into the uncompromising crucible of judgement does not weaken us. It strengthens us, makes us honest and galvanises support for crystallising ideas.

Life is full of smooth plastic compromise. This is earthy, rugged and natural and I love it!

Random act of kindness goes viral

The latest marketing campaign of WestJet has taken the idea of ‘random acts of kindness’ to another level. WestJet placed a virtual ‘Santa’ in a Canadian airport lounge. The jolly old man engaged with and talked to singles, couples and families about Christmas. Unknown to those passengers, a team of listeners recorded their special wish-lists. While they slept on the aircraft, WestJet staff procured gifts from stores local to the passengers’ destinations. Instead of their luggage greeting them on the carousel they received their Christmas wish.

By creating a video, which has received 13 Million hits in a few days, the Canadian low-cost airline has produced a viral PR campaign, par excellence! The film below shows a somewhat emotional journey; passengers’ reactions to the company’s random acts of extraordinary kindness are clear. Why would they ever want to fly with anyone else?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIEIvi2MuEk

Curiously, the video has received 91,000 likes and 2,000 dislikes. I think the people who disliked this are the sort of people whose hands I would like to staple to their cheeks. What’s not to like, and why doesn’t Ryanair do something similar?

This idea of WestJet truly embraces the Christmas spirit and better than anything I have seen, shows the staggering power of this form of marketing, when it’s done right. I am reminded of my one and only delightful airport experience. Once, at Manchester Airport, I arrived early and the airline opened the desk especially for me. Later, while I was having lunch with my wife and daughter, a lady from Boots tracked us down. Earlier, we had bought some perfume from her. She exchanged our purchase for a recently delivered gift pack containing the same perfume and an extra eau de toilette. She didn’t have to go out of her way to find us . But she did and it made us feel great.

There is no riskier strategy than to stick to what we always do

audience with personal devices

In his blog of 10 event trends for 2014, Julius Solaris, concludes with the above title. Perhaps this is a practical mantra for most businesses. The business machine giant, Hewlett Packard, has a well-known design strategy. It strives to make its latest products obsolete as soon as possible. If it doesn’t, Hewlett Packard argues, a competitor will.

Live events, which fuse together talented communications professionals and the latest available technology, produce compelling environments that create the perfect platform for message delivery. Technology use is advancing at an astonishing pace; more people have personal devices than have access to safe drinking water. Smart device connectivity challenges the way we look at and do everything. ‘Same old, same old’ just doesn’t cut the mustard any more. Perhaps it never did.

Today’s event delegate is a time-poor, information-rich, tech-savvy, motivated and connected professional. She is capable of multi-tasking at events, able to sift and use the relevant information being disseminated by the speaker without losing contact with her day job. She has to remain ultra-available to her colleagues, answering emails, delegating roles and devising strategy. Once upon a time, being at an event would place her on the dark side of the moon, unavailable, uncontactable, out of the picture. Not these days.

To accommodate the ‘iGeneration’, today’s events harness the latest technology. In particular, social media has a huge part to play. In addition to adding to the buzz or shared chatter, live slide-sharing apps allow delegates to view presentations directly on their personal devices. This opens up a possibility for screen-less presentations. Split screen technology allows us to view presentation slides, listen to a presentation and perform myriad tasks all at the same time. This is not just a desirable ‘like-to-have’; for some busy delegates it’s utterly essential.

For a creative agency like Pumphouse, the opportunities to engage delegates with bespoke environments will always be there, but today we also have to take into account the fact that ‘distraction’ is part-and-parcel of everyday life.

Opinion is certainly divided on the desirability of mobile technology at events. Many organisers believe that phones are a nuisance and their badly-timed usage at events undermines engagement. (Answer the survey to add your vote)

Others believe the opposite, convinced that they help to ‘connect’ a disparate audience, better than a single presenter ever could, and drive a more purposeful conversation.

Has the day of presenters telling the audience what management wants the audience to hear, gone? Have we moved into a different era, pioneered by the likes of Google, where employees collaborate to set a more relevant agenda? The argument will rage on, rather like the usefulness of social media to business. Those who have found a way to leverage the technology to their benefit are staunch advocates; others, who cannot see its relevance, aren’t.

In the pro-social/mobile camp, a peer to peer event, with no hierarchy at all, could be the future. Morning collaboration could determine the nature of the business conversation to be had in the afternoon. The presenter becomes a facilitator, simply adding a little structure and guidance here and there. If the essence of engagement is contribution and participation, then devices could be looked at as the necessary conduits of that engagement.

Event Production Success; Agency insight for your next Awards Ceremony and Dinner

(Published in Event Industry News)

Do your awards ceremonies work as a driver for meaningful business change? Do they genuinely recognise a good job, well done and do they stimulate renewed endeavour and returns on investment by creating a culture of ‘above and beyond?’

Away from the corporate arena, inspirational awards ceremonies are numerous and provide valuable insight for the commercial world.

Picture Jessica Ennis. An Olympic gold medal hangs around her neck. She looks up at the Union Flag while 80,000 passionate spectators sing in unison. All of this is in her honour. The tears streaming down her cheeks, and countless others in a worldwide audience, demonstrate how much this award ceremony means. No one doubts the effort and sacrifice involved in reaching the podium and, in that one short moment of global recognition, no one doubts that it has been absolutely worth it.

Can this kind of emotion and sense of achievement be generated in the corporate world? Imagine the effort and inspiration that could be harnessed by organisations if they could capture the essence of an Olympic Games medal ceremony.

The Academy Awards, Oscars, is another good example. A few mavericks aside, actors and actresses know that winning one of these statuettes elevates them into the stratosphere of their profession. Like golfers and tennis players that have won the major tournaments, they seem to exude a different aura from their colleagues; they have received the highest honour; they have been recognised by their respected peers as the best of the very best.

So, what can we learn from this and how can we use it in the corporate world? Exhaustive studies continually show that people rarely work solely for money. They go to work for it, but once their salary has been agreed, their main stimulus is appreciation. This fact, coupled with a constant need for businesses to adapt, creates a valuable communications possibility.

The awards ceremony is often chosen to exploit this possibility.

By engineering change, using recognition as the main driver, an organisation can tap into the emotional psyche of its people. By creating an event which focuses on people, rather than process and profit, it wins hearts and minds.

With hearts and minds aligned for the common good, businesses flourish.

Measuring the success of an awards ceremony is not always easy; having an ambition – a clearly stated target – is crucial. The look of success is different for us all; getting a strong consensus from stakeholders is a good place to start.

The next thing to consider is the awards categories. What makes a good choice?

• Skilfully chosen awards categories, well publicised within an organisation, can create healthy competition within businesses that can increase measurable performance in key areas.
• Awards titles should be fresh, designed to inspire different winners from across the organisation. The same winners collecting awards, year after year, is dull and discourages endeavour. Enlarge the gene pool of winners!
• Care has to be taken to make the awards accessible to all, and the criteria for winning them, transparent, otherwise a sense of injustice could ferment and have a negative impact.
• Awards should be for ‘above and beyond,’ remarkable performance. Rewarding behaviour that should be expected within the scope of the job engenders a sense of entitlement, diluting the value of the award.

Also consider the number of people and teams being recognised.

• The challenge to organisers of an event is to make it engaging, which means – keep it short, keep it relevant! An endless line of people, all being rewarded, is dull to watch, devalues the awards and will have little impact on driving a business forward.

Once award categories have been chosen and communicated throughout the organisation, the next choice is how to judge the winners. This must be executed as transparently as possible, with a clear eye on objectivity. Shoe-horning in a winner for political reasons will serve no long-term objective.

The award itself, like the gold medal or the Oscar, will contribute to the success of the ceremony. Ideally the award should have some intrinsic value; but more importantly it should generate pride.

The ceremony, for it to drive endeavour, has to be an event that people are desperate to attend with competitive hard-fought awards they are desperate to win.

At their best, awards ceremonies are a crucial part of the communications programme, imaginatively conceived and tightly executed; at their worst they are flaccid, processional and de-motivating. The role of the creative event agency is to make sure that your next event falls firmly into the former category by avoiding common pitfalls, generating anticipation and elevating status.

Creating the right environment is crucial.

• The venue and the way it is dressed must capture the imagination of the delegates. They must experience the wow-factor and be left in no doubt of the importance that the company attaches to the awards. Communicate this and half the battle for those hearts and minds is won.
• Having good production values is an absolute must; lose attention and lose impact.
• A well-known host adds kudos to receiving an award.

Awards ceremonies can seem expensive, hard work to organise and therefore easy to scrap during a recession; they can be viewed as frivolous and a waste of resources, but a good awards ceremony will:

• Recognise the application of talent required to innovate, sell, succeed, develop and grow.
• Allow people with common goals to celebrate their achievements together, in an environment that understands the importance of those achievements.
• Recognise how far people have come, whether as individuals or as an organisation.

Designing an event that is sustainable in business terms must do more than this. It should, of course, recognise people and their achievements but also measurably drive future growth.

The cost of an awards ceremony can be considerable, but negligible compared to the ROI it can generate from having a motivated, energised, excited and engaged workforce. Used well, the awards ceremony is a key alignment and communications tool for any organisation. Used badly, thrown together hastily, thoughtlessly or cheaply it could do more harm than good.

At its best it can inspire and engage an entire nation.

Pumphouse Productions, the creative live event production agency, has staged recent awards ceremonies for BT, Bank of Scotland, EDF Energy, Peugeot, TUI and United Biscuits.

A fortnight of discovery for GB

What a fortnight that was! We have been treated to an incredible festival of sport that surpassed everyone’s expectations both on and off the field of play.

There were 29 utterly magical gold-medal moments; 29 times we heard ‘God save the queen;’ 29 times we felt the passion of the tearful athletes as they watched the Union Flag raised in their honour. We have so many heroes and so many heroines. We saw new faces combine with old to win against the best the world has and win again and again.

Who will ever forget the night of Gold as Jessica Ennis, the face of The Games, held her nerve to win heptathlon gold in style, winning the final 800m race – a race she could have lost and still won gold? Greg Rutherford long jumped to glory and was followed up by Mo Farah’s first of two golds. Perhaps his medals were the most remarkable feat of any Briton at these games won, as they were, in an event where the podium has only seen East African athletes for generations.

But it wasn’t just these impressive athletes; it was the sheer length and breadth of our successes, across such a wide range of events. Athletics, Boxing, Canoeing, Cycling, Diving, Equestrian, Gymnastics, Hockey, Judo, Modern Pentathlon, Rowing, Sailing, Shooting, Swimming, Tennis, Taekwondo and Triathlon all yielded medals for Team GB. That’s 19 sports. USA won medals in only two more categories.

If we are to challenge the USA for global sporting dominance we only have to improve our swimming! Our tally of 65 medals includes just 3 from the pool. Contrast this with 31 for the USA. By finishing third to the superpowers, China and USA, with daylight behind us to the chasing pack, Team GB has cemented its position as young pretender and who knows what we can achieve in the next four years? Our target, surely, is to challenge for second position and bring back 40 golds from Rio. If we do this and take gold from the US, we may even come back as the number one sporting nation in the world – an accolade befitting the country which has given so many games to the sporting world.

The Opening ceremony demonstrated that London can put on a show to rival the very best. The Games after Beijing was a graveyard slot; nothing could surpass or compete. But, typically, London was creative. Instead of competing with Beijing it produced a show that was so different it could not be compared. It had humour; it was gritty; it was historic and contemporary. It was an intelligent and sincere outpouring. It was neither mawkish nor jingoistic. It made us feel proud to be British.

The Games broke attendance records – over 7m people saw live events – and were watched by a record global TV audience. Guests paid tribute to the transport and the food. A final tribute, a lengthy standing ovation at the closing ceremony, was given to the 70,000 volunteers who made The Games possible.

These were Games of community, of humanity, where a nation rediscovered its unity and pride.

www.pumphouse.co.uk

 

Southwold pier

If you have never been to Southwold and experienced the delight that is Southwold Pier, stop what you are doing right now, get in your car and drive eastwards.

I don’t suppose for a minute that I am the only person distressed by the nanny state that we live in, dismayed at the cotton-wool padding that surrounds us, insulating us all from making decisions and taking responsibility for our actions. This same interference dilutes our experiences; instead of gritty ‘real-life’ minestrone we are served up a homogenous blend of green soup that is ‘good for us.’ Says who?

So, Southwold comes as a refreshing surprise, coming as it does without cotton wool.

Tim Hunkin’s ‘Under the Pier Show’ is as fine an example of undiluted humour that hasn’t been tainted by political correctness. His collection of irreverent home-made arcade games will make you laugh your socks off. I promise that it will both offend and ridicule in equal measure. Fantastic!

When I visited last weekend, ten adults (sober) were in stitches as my fiancee ‘rented a dog.’ We have a cat, but she wants a dog. We watched as the travelator started, the lead stretched and screens showed us the walk both through the eyes of the walker and the eyes of the dog. Imagine cat-chases, yanking hands forward, being dragged through hedges and the pooch falling for and sniffing other pooches and you will get the picture.

Because I am older than my fiancée, I had to venture my zimmer-frame across the motorway in the ‘Mobility Masterclass.’ I got splatted several times as I tried to work the cumbersome device across four lanes of speeding traffic and over a central reservation. Accompanying each collision, adding to the drama and my humiliation was ambulance and police car attention. The game culminated with a very pointed ‘game-over’ sequence.

‘Whack a banker‘, provides more slapstick and ‘Micro-break’ offers a change of holiday style, promising a new scene every three seconds and without the fear of DVT!

We ventured back onto the pier, thirty minutes and five pounds later, stomachs aching and eyes streaming from excessive laughter.

http://www.southwoldpier.co.uk/page/under-the-pier-show

Next up was the clock.

Fashioned in metal, again the brainchild of Tim Hunkin, the clock works with the circulation of water and ‘performs’ every half hour. As the bath fills it sets into motion a train of events every bit as funny as the arcade games and every bit as irreverent. I wont spoil this for you – just go!

Everyone enjoyed the experience. Without doctoring. Without advice. Or cotton wool. Or green soup!

The cost of engagement

Over a half of all employees hate their jobs! Surprised? I was when I heard the latest report from the, albeit American, century old NY Conference Board. This organisation began studying employee satisfaction 25 years ago and has witnessed a steady decline in worker happiness over this time.

The last four years has taken an alarming toll on contentment. Prior to the recession, people were already dissatisfied with the way they were treated, especially by their direct line managers. Four years ago they could just change jobs and see if the grass really was greener. Global recession and with it the lack of job opportunities available, means that half of the workforce is now stuck in a job they don’t want.

Add to the melting pot the general lack of resources in business and the resultant fact that most people are working longer and harder to accommodate this and what was an irritation has now turned into a potential time-bomb.

So, what can we do to reverse the worrying trend?

Looking inside the minds of employees and the questions some must be asking themselves seems a good place to start.

Do I work for a company whose mission and values I respect?

Does my boss understand, support and value my efforts?

Is the work I do meaningful and varied?

A harsh look at the answers to these should tell us all we need to know. Successful management understands this.

Undoubtedly, the recession has also been hard on management. Continually demanding increasing results from depleted resources must worry even the hardest of taskmasters.

It is no surprise, given the conditions therefore, that matters such as appreciation, support, recognition and respect, the lifeblood of employee satisfaction, have suffered.

Our brains are excellent at developing strategy, managing investments and analysing data. For humanity to thrive within the workplace, we must look to our hearts, not our heads to show us the way. Humans connect on that level and perhaps leadership today has forgotten this.

Of bushtucker trials and other employee tribulations

A recent survey taking into account the perceptions of over 1000 participants revealed some worrying statistics about the usefulness of team-building events. More than half of those questioned believed that their experience would not help them to work better with their colleagues.

This statistic, when considered without supporting information, seemed rather disappointing. Pumphouse’s engagement programmes work exhaustively on teamwork; how to empower teams, generate mutual respect and make the whole worth so much more than the sum of the parts. So was this form of employee comms. shortly to be a thing of the past, consigned to the dustbin of corporation history along with many other misplaced initiatives before it?

Delving further into the supporting information, the smile began to return to my face. A list of the team-building activities that had to be endured by the accountants and administrators from Aldwych and their colleagues made interesting reading. Far from being designed to engender mutual respect and empower teams it seems that some events companies may have been guilty of losing sight of the long-term objectives and placed too much emphasis on short-term shock-and-surprise tactics.

I cannot think what place ‘bushtucker trials’ have in corporate communications. Right on the periphery of my thinking, there may be some kudos gained by those who endure the trials, that they may be somehow elevated in the perception of their peers.

Frankly, I doubt it. In the fabled Ant and Dec nightly broadcasts, semi-starving people are counting on their unlucky ‘put-upon’, team-mate to feed them that evening. This is about real sacrifice for real rewards for a real team under duress-and of course it is entertainment-of a sort. Contrast the hot and humid Queensland rainforest glamour with eating freshly-caught slugs in a field in Wiltshire, in January, and I can now picture the bemused faces of those asked for their input to the survey. Are they likely to look back with a warm and fuzzy glow or are they going to seriously struggle to put any kind of positive gloss on their harrowing experience? My guess is the latter.

Perhaps in testosterone-fuelled offices this would be a good way to inject some humility and create some semblance of team from a collection of egos. (I could supply a list.) Again, I think it will further polarise the egos making the strong, stronger and the weak even more marginalised. A team surely is about equivalence and mutual respect.

Add to the above ‘engagement’, which sounds to me more like an infringement on human rights rather than something which sits well in a contract of employment, the following two activities which have been served up, dreamed and devised, no doubt, after reading a badly-written brief on how the event has to deliver ‘wow-factor’.

‘Bikini-clad bed baths’ and ‘lingerie parties’ have also figured on the team-building activities roster. I am assuming, for I have no evidence, that these were female-only events and I haven’t opened up a can of fiercely-wriggling litigious worms, but even so, the word ‘demeaning’ springs, all too easily, to mind.

I like my colleagues, a lot! I enjoy their company at work and sometimes we go out for a beer on a Friday night. Now call me stuffy and old-fashioned but I really have no desire to see any of them in their pyjamas and quite where the bed-bath comes into play concerns me to the centre of my middle-class core and frankly makes me blush.

Interestingly, the survey identified the following: the best way to generate the team feel was to go out for a drink or a meal with your colleague. So, by getting to know your colleague well, by understanding his pains and her joys in their social life, by empathising with them as a human-beings, knowing they are someone just like us; with problematic, inconsiderate children, who like rugby and a beer, or fly-fishing, or reading, or knitting. We empathise, trust and like them better. “Surprise, surprise,” I hear you all say! “Tell me something I don’t know!”

And what for the future of team-building? Plenty. The skill going forward has to be to steer away from blindfolded bunjee-jumping and its like and use metaphors away from business that, whether subtle or clear, resonate with their intended audience.

And why take any chances? A good series of metrics, taken before, during and post-event will let you know whether the discipline has hit the target or sailed wide into the surrounding shrubbery.

Keeping it simple and leaving the team better equipped to perform its role, more efficient and smarter than before has always been at the heart of what we try to achieve with our partners. At Pumphouse we will leave the eating of slugs to the birds, the bed baths to the nurses and the lingerie parties for our imaginations.

The cost of creativity

In their relentless drive for efficiency, procurement departments nationwide have ‘consolidated’ their purchasing. This is ‘newspeak’ for the introduction of swathing cuts. A reduction in suppliers has made their jobs significantly easier. Keeping a close eye on three suppliers is clearly easier than seven and has given corporate events and company marketing a more consistent feel.

This change, however, has also had a negative impact. The factor that has been driven to the bottom of the pile, the sacrifice made for consistency and a lower price is regrettably, creativity.

Large companies, such as IBM, have recognised the importance of being instantly recognisable across the globe and the streamlining process has certainly worked positively to achieve this. When you only pay attention to finance and project management and neglect other factors such as innovation, creativity and spontaneity, you run a terrible risk of stagnating as a business. Surely this is a far worse prospect than spending a little too much?

The drive for reducing costs has been almost surgical in some companies with certain FTSE50 deriving all of their growth, in profits for the last four years, from cutting-strategies. Whilst we must all applaud the efficient stewardship of our national treasures there must come a point, soon, when we look outwards for growth. New markets and technologies must be the way forward for us all.

The opportunity still exists for events companies to tap into the emotions of the business and drive meaningful change through the well-conceived use of strategic engagement programmes. To deliver events which surprise with their creativity is surely still our goal.

Curiously, in these austerity-conscious days we have to strike a difficult balance. For a while now clients have demanded creativity and excellence on an ever-decreasing budget. Throw into the mix the climate of austerity and the balance is even more complicated. Not only do we need to produce more ‘bang for our buck’ but also the ‘bang’ must be perceived to have been achieved for great value and not excessive in anyway.

How do you make something inexpensive appear incredible, but not that incredible to appear expensive?

I think that question sums up what we must achieve to keep clients and stakeholders happy over the ensuing months. Like I said, not an easy task, but one which we are all getting used to. To my mind the key is in the measurables. Pumphouse looks to set clear metrics for events and discusses these regularly with customers. If an event creates a recognised return on investment then financial departments are considerably more likely to accept the outgoings.

We recently pitched for some business to a bank’s procurement department. We were creative, perhaps overly, perhaps we had too loud a ‘bang’ and were not mindful enough of the ‘buck.’ Who Knows? One thing I do know was that the event format of the Awards’ Ceremony we suggested was one that delegates would enjoy attending. More than that, they would aspire to win the awards being recognised. Surely that is the way to inspire and drive change, by engaging a widespread emotional buy-in.

The alternative, one which we must all resist at all costs, is a drab, functional day where the delegates are doing the company a favour by attending. Each award greeted with flagging enthusiasm. Plenty of looking at watches and restlessness. Yuk!