The other day I talked about shipping conference materials in my blog post at Nancy’s Story www.nancysstory.com, today I am going to talk more about conferences. Specifically every conference has a theme. The theme sets the tone for the conference and it was my responsibility and one of my co-workers to determine the theme.
Time was passing and we had not come up with at theme. Since all conference materials have the theme printed on them unless you have a theme you have no materials. No theme meant no promotional materials and an unsuccessful conference.
One afternoon I walked out of my office and my co-worker walked out of his office at the same time. Unfortunately for us the executive vice president we both reported to saw us. He comes out of his office and commands us to go into my office and not to come out until we had a conference theme. So off we went into my office as soon as the door was shut Marty my co-worker took off his watch.
Marty had a Timex watch he really liked because it had a lot of different functions. One of his favorite functions was a timer. Marty set the timer for 30 minutes and said “Nancy we are going to work on this until the timer goes off and if we have a theme we have a theme.”
Knowing we had 30 minutes turned out to be a really good thing as it focused us on the task. We came up with a number of themes until we settled on “New Horizons-New Strategies”. And we did it within the 30 minute timeframe.
Not only did the executive vice president like it but so did the Chairman. So not only did “New Horizons-New Strategies” become the conference theme but it also was used by the corporation as the theme for that year’s annual statement.
We used Marty’s watch to focus and that enabled us to concentrate our energies to complete the task and not waste time on others topics.
The Business of Me uses this concept during the Board of Directors meeting. Each participant is given approximately 2 minutes to state their question or concern and the other participants (the board) have approximately 5 minutes to provide advice and guidance. And yes we use a stop watch.
Thanks Marty!
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Nancy Salamone’s career and personal accomplishments are vast and varied. For more than three decades Nancy has shown extraordinary leadership during her business career and through her personal endeavors. Her accomplishments include 25 years as an executive for major Wall Street financial services companies, her devotion to “giving back” through her non-profit work, her teaching and her visionary creation of “The Business of Me”, a curriculum that teaches financial self-sufficiency to women survivors of domestic violence.
Write to me at nancy(@)thebusinessofme.com or for general information write to info(@)thebusinessofme.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
