Dec. 6, 2024
Sir David Brailsford achieved historic performance gains in elite cycling as the performance director of British Cycling. His philosophy was to make small incremental changes to all factors affecting performance, thereby creating a competitive advantage through marginal gains. He focussed on all aspects of the carbon composite bike, but additionally, the pillows that athletes used when sleeping. His was an obsessive attention to all details, and the gold medals rained down on the team.
Felix Rundel’s truly inspiring presentation – ‘Purpose, Presence, Psychology: Event design for unique congress experiences’ followed the Brailsford logic of granulating a conference experience and improving individual micro-segments. The marginal gains made by the conference organisers would feed back into the overall quality of the conference. When broken down into multiple segments, the opportunities for a conference organiser to make meaningful, marginal gains are immense.
Customer surveys are nothing new in our industry. ‘Let us know how we can improve’ emails follow every industry event, and they are a goldmine for conference and event organisers. However, the goldmine only becomes a competitive advantage if the data is utilised.
Felix and his team divide conferences into granular parts and examine each component individually. Then, the creative forces of the conference organisers are applied to those parts of the conference where the participant experience is rated negative or neutral. Innovative solutions are used to address all aspects of the conference that fell short, whether they be coach transfer, audio systems, catering queues or the keynote speaker.
Using the Brailsford analogy, keynote speakers would be the aerodynamic setup of the bike, while the coffee stand could be the pillows cyclists use on tour. It is crucial that the conference organisers analyse and improve all aspects of the experience.
We have completed our incentive events for 2024 and are now ready to welcome clients to the snowy peaks of the Alps. Some years ago, we looked at the best and worst components of a corporate ski trip. In every single case, the airport transfer was the least enriching moment of the trip. It wasn’t bad, in most cases the timings were to the minute and the there were no issues with the driver or coach. The transfer was a necessary evil, though – something that didn’t bring pleasure but was fundamentally necessary to make the event work. A cloakroom could be the analogous conference experience.
Whilst we seek the shortest transfers, they are an inevitable component of a corporate ski trip. So, we redoubled our efforts to make the transfer as pleasant as possible – airport staff to meet the clients, coach sanitation checks, water and snacks on board, entertainment, and WhatsApp snow reports from the resort event manager who was waiting for their arrival. The clients still get off the bus as quick as is humanly possible, but that isn’t the point, it is about making all things better, or more likely in terms of the coach transfer, less neutral.
I had a thought. The lunch queue had formed and was several hundred deep. The catering staff managed the line well as it snaked around the hosted buyer’s lounge. Super pleasant and happy to answer questions, the staff were, however, standing and waiting as well. A thought crossed my mind. What if those staff had taken a tray of canapes and each walked small sections of the queue and offered the clients a bite to eat? It would have distracted those in the queue, resulting in less frustrated body language. The queue would still be there (the caterers have a colossal job serving so many in such a short time) but it would have been marginally improved. The delegates would have thought ‘nice touch’, and that conference component might have gone from negative to neutral, or positive. Marginal gains.