I listened to an keynote speaker today online that was describing where the meeting & event planning industry was heading to as a whole. Sort of a futuristic approach. I must say that is was quite impressive. The speaker did a great job of explaining how the professional industry of meeting planning can become change agents. Essentially pointing to the fact that we need to elevate our conversation to approach organizations that are looking to change, and showing how we can help them accomplish that change from what we do best…bringing people together.

While I do agree with the totality of this message.  When you break this concept down, it can be a very large feat to accomplish.  There are many of us that are still in organizations that are not willing to look at our roles as consultative partner versus a task taker. It is eventually up to that planner or that organization to change the perception of themselves. However if both parties still see the planner role as the task taker, there is a lot of ground to make up.

Planners still have the internal battle of making their roles be of value. To accomplish this planners have to educate organizations on the role, and consult with the organization on decisions so that they can understand the premise behind the planners stance. Once the organization can see the value behind the planner. Then, planners can continue to make themselves be of more value to their organizations and become agents for change. What a great outlook on our industry, we can actually become an active part of change in our organizations. With just the slight change of perspective we can find ourselves more valuable than we ever thought we could be.

* Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti at FreeDigitalPhotos.net