Briefings

Setting Effective Outcomes

We have worked with organisations on hundreds of different events over the last ten years and found time and again that the single most important indicator of whether an event is successful or not is clarity about the outcomes from the perspective of the organisers and participants.

This briefing helps you make sure your events both face to face and virtual are successful but before we do that....

Why do meetings fail?

Think for a moment about an event you have been to that was unsuccessful - probably boring, frustrating, and a waste of your time. Perhaps even controversial and tense. Now think about why it was like that. Almost always in such circumstances there is an issue about the purpose of the event and its intended outcomes. There are times when the purpose of the event isn’t at all clear - why was it called in the first place? Or you signed up to the meeting for one purpose and it turned out that the people organising the meeting had a completely different purpose. If you were the organiser, you may have been expecting people to address particular issues but they focused on a completely different set. Perhaps time was spent on issues that had nothing to do with the outcomes you were expecting from the event. Or occasionally the meeting was purposeful and the outcome was clear but the way it was run left you feeling you might as well have not been there.

All of these problems can be avoided if people organising events and meetings know a bit more about how to set effective outcomes for successful meetings. One of the most important components in the success of any event is to be clear about the outcomes you want from the event. These should drive the planning for the event, what happens during the event and what happens next.

This is true whether your event is a two hour internal meeting, a day long event with an external facilitator or a longer series of facilitated events.

Tangible and intangible outcomes

It’s a good discipline to make sure you always ask yourself two key questions:

Why are we planning to hold this meeting or event?
What are the outcomes we want to achieve?

Generally in organisations, people have got much better at this. To make it even better there are a couple of other questions that will really help.

First, it helps to differentiate between the tangible and intangible outcomes. Tangible outcomes are very concrete, things you can touch. This is the bit that most people are familiar with already. So for instance, by the end of the day, we will have a clear action plan listing the actions we need to take to set up and start the project, each action to have a named lead and a completion date is a great tangible outcome. These outcomes will drive what you do in terms of activities.

You also need to think about the less tangible outcomes that are normally to do with relationships between people. What do you want people to feel as a result of the event? For some events, you’ll want people to feel enthusiastic, committed to taking action. Or it might be you want people to feel they have been heard and their views taken seriously. These outcomes will drive the style of the event and how things are done.

What outcomes do other people want?

Once you have your own outcomes clear, you want to make sure that you understand the outcomes for the other people involved in the event:

Why are they coming along?
What do they want to get out of it?

This is a very important stage. One of the greatest causes of unsuccessful meetings is that the organisers set the agenda without any thought about why people are attending. Sometimes you will know what these outcomes are and sometimes you or the facilitator will need to find out.

So now you can develop a clear statement of the outcomes for the event. We always suggest you include these on the invitations and agenda for the event. It helps keep people focused and on track.

How will you judge success?

The next thing that will help you is to know how you will judge the success of the event. We find it helpful to think of this in terms of:

During the event how will you know you are on track?
At the end how will you know you have achieved your outcome?

So if it is a one day event, at lunchtime what will you see, what will you hear and what will you feel that will let you know that the event is achieving its outcomes?

Similarly, at the end of the event as people are gathering their things to leave what will you see, what will you hear and what will you feel that will let you know this has been a really good event that has achieved its outcomes?

What will change?

So far all these questions are about the success of the event as it is planned and happens - your outcomes, participants’ outcomes and how you will judge the success of the event. One last question will help you make sure that the event makes a lasting impact:

What will change as a result of the event?

The change might be quite small - you will know more about different views on a particular policy; or more significant - the project team will have the full service up and running by the end of the year. The question alerts you to things you need to be thinking about and doing after the event and substantially increases the likelihood of decisions you take having lasting impact.

Effective outcomes in a nutshell

So there you have it in a nutshell - how to set effective outcomes for successful meetings:

be clear about your outcomes, both the tangible and intangible ones
think about the outcomes for the people who will attend the event
Ask yourself how you will judge the success of the event - what will you see, hear and feel at the midpoint and at the end?
what will change as a result of the event?

We use this framework all the time and my favourite moment is when a client says: ‘I know what you are going to ask - what are my outcomes?’ That’s a sure sign of success.