Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Why they pay us so much

…or why they don’t pay us enough!

I had a sponsor meeting today to prepare an event to support the merger of two divisions of a major bank. As always, my first priority in such sponsor sessions is to align expectations around event objectives and outcomes. Once these are agreed and documented, we discuss the inputs necessary (among which, the participants) to achieve the agreed outputs. Thus, a good sponsor session is about formulating the right questions that our event serves to answer.

Ten minutes before the sponsor session was to begin, the principal sponsor (and newly-appointed capo of the merged unit) told me that he really only wanted four out of the 12 participants and that couldn’t I dis-invite the rest (at that moment eating our sandwiches) and facilitate a small discussion among the five protagonists to simply iron out the entire merger strategy. “You’re a facilitator, that’s your job!”

So, after pleading that we ought to make good use of the people who had come from so far away, etc., I asked for everyone’s attention and, as diplomatically as I could, I invited all but the five chosen participants to bugger off.

As anticipated, the dis-invited immediately pounced: “What a shambles!” to which my sponsor immediately reacted by cowering: “Dan, perhaps we need a quick huddle.” So, back to plan A, though now with a room full of very hostile sponsors.

“Perhaps you should explain to us the rationale for this merger,” growled one particularly peeved participant. All eyes on our key sponsor.

Silence

Pleading look at me to get him off the hook. I look the other way.

“To make us a world class bank…” mumbled our hero

Slouching, crossed arms, rolling eyes, all the behaviors that signal that enough is enough.

My job is to design the next 3½ hours on-the-fly and extract at least some useful work from the mutineers to satisfy my sponsor and build the groundwork for an event.