How to Plan a Senior Leadership Conference

When the senior leadership or executive staff of an organization chooses to have a leadership conference there are several planning aspects to consider. Key factors such as location, subject matter, audience and guest speakers should be considered to help ensure the conference meets the intended goals and is worthwhile for the attendees. This article will explain some aspects to consider in order to plan a successful leadership conference.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Determine goals of the conference. Prior to beginning the major planning efforts for the conference, the senior leadership staff within the organization should consider the goals of the conference. The goals may reflect current issues within the organization and should hopefully be developed with the intention of improving the company in some way. Leaders can discuss the desired goals as a team, and can also obtain guidance from the most senior member of the staff.

2. Determine the audience, including participants and guest speakers or presenters. An important aspect of planning a senior leadership conference is determining who should attend, and their level of participation. Many times in organizations that have multiple divisions, it may be helpful to have divisional leadership, such as presidents or directors attend to represent their particular divisions. On a smaller scale or in a smaller organization, department supervisors may represent their departments. If the leadership conference intends to share information across divisions or departments it may be beneficial for each division or department leader to prepare and present a brief covering key issues within the division or department. It may also help if these presentations are standardized so each division or department provides the same type of information to the attendees.

3. Build a planning team to help plan and run the conference. After the goals are established and the audience and level of participation are determined, senior leadership staff may consider building a planning team to cover all aspects of the conference. Conference planning may be an additional duty in many organizations that do not have a staff for this type of endeavor. Consequently, the conference planners will have to spend more time at work, in addition to performing their regular work functions. Alternatively, if the conference is made a priority, their normal work functions may be neglected due to the time required for conference planning. By building a team of professionals to plan the conference, it helps to spread the tasks across the team, allowing individuals to spend their time on a few key aspects of conference planning, and allowing them time to still perform their regular work functions.

4. Determine budget, venue and location. Many of the decisions regarding conference planning will be constrained by fiscal limitations. The lead conference planner should determine the budget for the conference. It may be helpful to conduct some initial planning to obtain a rough order of magnitude for budgetary estimates. Once the initial budget is approved, planning should be refined and updated funding requirements may be resubmitted for approval. Once the final numbers are approved, conference planners may have to stay within this budget. It is helpful to select an appropriate location and venue for hosting the conference. Location and venue may be partially determined by budgetary constraints, but some of the things to consider are travel costs, lodging costs, conference room fees, available caterers and restaurants, and information technology and communication support. If organizational leadership has to travel to the conference location it may be helpful to choose a location that is easily accessible by the majority of attendees. Additionally some hotels may provide conference hosting and catering. Conference planners should determine seating capacity, audio-visual support and communication assets (including Internet access).

5. Determine schedule and format for presentations. Conference planners should work with the senior leadership staff to determine the schedule of presentations, and the standardized format for presentations. It may be helpful for speakers to convey the required information if a standardized briefing format is provided prior to the conference. Speakers can put their briefs together in an electronic format, and provide the presentations to the conference planners to be loaded onto a computer prior to the conference. This may help to facilitate a more efficient conference. If any guest speakers are going to be invited to speak at the conference it may be helpful for the senior leadership of the organization and the conference planner to discuss the content of his or her speech or presentation. This may help the speaker to refine his or her presentation to fit the needs of the audience.

6. Determine transportation and logistics factors, including catering. One of the challenging tasks is to coordinate any required transportation, such as shuttles to and from the airport to the hotel where the attendees will be staying. It may be possible to ask the hotel staff if they can use their shuttle service to pick up conference attendees. Another issue which may help to make a conference more successful is to hire caterers. Caterers can provide meals and beverages to conference attendees, allowing them to focus on the conference. It may be helpful for the lead conference planner to place conference planning team members in charge of these logistical issues.

7. Obtain feedback from participants to improve the next conference. After the conference is complete the conference planners can obtain feedback from attendees on what they liked about the conference and how future conferences may be improved. The feedback can be based on the venue and location, presentation format, schedules and proposed topics for future conferences. The lead conference planner can either compile the recommendations or delegate this task to a conference planning team member. Additionally, once the conference is complete, conference planners may consider updating their budget numbers and compare actual costs to planned costs. This may help them to determine if costs changed and why the costs were different than planned. This may also help with planning future conferences.