Three Pitfalls In Event Planning and How To Avoid Them

Smart, experienced event planners know how to make their clients happy and how to make their own lives easier. The more events you plan, the more it feels like riding a bike – it’s a lot like autopilot. But, the autopilot has a small problem – blindness. While experience it can make you a more efficient planner, it can also lull people into disastrous pitfalls. Three invisible decision traps are especially vexing, even for the expert planner.

The Tyranny of the Budget. No matter how often you client may harp on it, budget is not be the driver of the strategy – why your client is hosting an event in the first place. If your main criteria is that the event fits in the budget, you are doomed to fail. There aren’t enough crab puff appetizers to make up for a meeting without a clear purpose and direction. Your planning should begin by asking:

What are the objectives for the event? What does your client need and want to be different because the event occurred?

Discussion of budget, too early, tells your client that you are thinking tactically. Event planners who start with objectives first, and ignore the siren call of “money, money, money”, are treasured by their clients as true partners.

Tradition. If your, or your client’s answer to any question is “we have always done it”, then you are leaving money on the table and allowing your client to receive less than sterling service. You are doing it wrong!  Your annual formal gala with a plated dinner might be what your CEO loves, but that may have little to do with meeting the objectives for the event. A dinner held out solely for reasons of tradition has become an expense, and you, dear planner, are also an expense. Perhaps the tradition is for a formal gala. While these may be fun, we must ask ourselves if “fun” is how we should measure success. Perhaps the purpose of an event is celebration or remembrance, and tradition is important to achieving that. No need to throw out what is effective but planning an event without asking, “what is the most effective way to meet the objectives?” is to step squarely into a decision trap.

Once your client has articulated the objectives …meaning outcomes…you can ask: How will you know if the objective is achieved?

Be ready with some suggestions of your own, but also questions to guide your client. It’s likely that no one has ever engaged them in such a discussion because they have fallen into the tradition trap and assumed both the objective and metrics.

Deadly Details. Once you have clear objectives, the logistics and planning become the focus and amidst the massive number of details, it is easy to forget the WHY behind it all.  It’s not just an inexperienced planner who may fall prey to this, but a smart and experienced professional can also step into this trap. Ironically, the person most likely to forget the goals and strategy is … you guessed it, your client. Here’s the good news, you can help them!

Inevitably, seating arrangements, presentations schedules, or appetizer decisions become the focus, the most important (and exciting) decisions. These details take up a lot of time and a group working on an event can, quite unwittingly, collude to keep their eyes focused too narrowly. We have all had that one client/coworker/supervisor who wants to be brought in to make sure we are “maintaining the standards” expected. (remember those crab puffs from before?) It is easy to forget the goal – your event objective.  What to do?

Set time to periodically check in to assess how well the plans line up with your end goal.

Create a visual to represent the entire process and show, graphically, how the decisions support the objective(s).

These decision traps are as frustrating as they are predictable, but there is good news!  You can correct your planning practices to steer clear of these pitfalls.  Avoid these decision traps by asking the right questions at the beginning of planning and continue to check in throughout the process. You can completely transform your own mindset to look at events as a true driver of value, not just an expense.