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Sunday, May 27, 2007

Finding Employees

The way for companies to distinguish themselves from their competitors is through their employees. The skills, knowledge, commitment and abilities of the people who work for the company are the greatest assets they have. For great workplaces, there is no shortage of talent. Smart companies are involved in constant hiring. They have talent scouts within the company who are always looking for possible new hires.

For example, Walt Disney World has a program known as Casting Scouts. Throughout the year, cast members (employees) are given small cards with the casting scout logo and information on the card. There are lines on the card where the cast member fills in her name and work location. If she experiences great guest service at a restaurant, hotel, convention center, the airport, etc., she can give one of these cards to that person and tells him that he should consider working at Walt Disney World. The card has the number of the Casting Department (Human Resources) that the person can call. This card tells Casting that this person has exemplified the type of guest service that Disney is looking for. They pass step one of the hiring process.

In The Gifted Boss by Dale Danten, he states that the exceptional employees are rarely the ones who are looking for jobs, which I would agree with. He relates a story of how Lou Holtz would keep a hiring wish list with prospects to fill each coaching position. Holtz said, "You can't wait till there's an opening and say, 'Who can we hire?' That's how you end up with a group of second-stringers." He'd get to know the prospects well enough to know if he wanted to work with them in the future and how to win them over (what their goals were). Being on his wish list was halfway to being hired. Most importantly, when he did have the opportunity to hire them, he wouldn't ask them to come help him, but rather, tell them how he could help them get what they wanted out of their careers.

After I read Danten's book in 1999, I vowed that I would be that type leader in my hiring when I got into a position of authority to be able to make hiring decisions. When I worked various events with great people, I would ask them about their goals while we were making small talk and get to know them better. While at NYRR, I had a list of five people I'd worked with before that were on my hiring wish list to bring to NYRR. I got two of the five in the two years I was there. I don't know if that's a good percentage or a bad percentage. The work that those two exceptional people did was extraordinary. The great thing about hiring exceptional people is that their standards and work ethic are already higher than most other people's. They've both made huge contributions to an organization accustomed to mediocrity. Because I had gained the confidence of my boss by bringing in great talent, the other three people had open-ended job offers. My boss and I had an agreement that if any of those three people changed their minds and called for a job, we would find a place for them in the organization whether we had positions open or not.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Event Planning Tools - Timelines

Timelines

This is probably one of the most important documents you'll learn to use. The best program to use for timelines is Excel (in my opinion). Other people use Microsoft Project for their overall project plan, but I'm not a huge fan of Project. Excel is a very important program to learn to use. It is capable of doing many, many things. Also, most people have Excel on their computers. The same is not true for Project. When creating a timeline, I start out by looking at the various functional areas and what the respective deliverables are. Work with your contacts in those functional areas to establish realistic deliverable dates.

For the format, moving left to right on the page, I usually have the following columns:

Days Out - meaning how many days before the event is the task due
Date Due - the date that this equals
Task - what needs to be done, in detail
Responsibility - either the person's name or the department's name
Notes - any special information
Sometimes I will add a Date Completed column. I will do this in a situation where it's a new event that will be a repeat event, and I don't know how long it will take to complete a lot of the tasks.

I also put an auto filter on the entire document to allow sorting to be much easier, especially for very detailed and long timelines.

If you're working on repeat events, you can set up a template timeline. Put in the number of days out that the an action needs to take place (e.g., signage ordered 30 days before the event). With Excel you can create a formula that allows you to simply enter the date of the event in a cell (I put this cell at the top of my timeline), and the due dates will fill in the second column based on the number of days out previously entered in the first column.

Timelines keep everyone on task and keep the project moving forward on a common schedule.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Event Planning Tools - Fast Facts and Checklists

There are some major tools that event managers use everyday. Three of the main ones are: fast fact sheets, checklists, and timelines. They're all very important for keeping the planning and management of events on track. Different people use different formats, and some may even have different names for some of these documents. This blog will cover fast facts and checklists. A later blog will cover timelines.


Event Fast Facts


This is usually 1-2 pages. It is a very high level summary of all the general information. This should be short, to the point, and unambiguous about the information it covers. This document is very helpful for people in the organization who answer the phones and/or email. They often get a lot of general, high level questions, and rather than calling you for the answer to every one of them, they should have the information at their fingertips.

Here are some of the standard types of information I include in my fast fact sheets:
- start and end times and loctions (both for internal setup and for participants)
- maps and diagrams
- transportation options and directions
- broadcast information
- registration times and locations
- website addresses
- travel booking contact numbers
- awards
- volunteer information
- contact numbers and email for event staff, both on race day and before


Checklists

Checklists can be used in pre-planning and for the day-of the event, but I primarily use them for the day-of. My timeline often acts as my pre-event checklist. For each area on event day (e.g., for a road race - start, course, finish, post-race, etc.), prepare a checklist of what needs to happen in each area by what time. Also, prepare an equipment checklist for the logistics team for packing and setup. For example, drop-off of specific equipment, volunteer arrival, participant arrival, etc. This helps the person managing that area help you by making sure nothing is missed.

These two tools will prove invaluable in your preparation for your events.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Know Your Environment

A lot of companies will schedule happy hours throughout the year. Although I definitely recommend going to these to get to know the people you work with, it's also important to be aware of your environment. Understand the difference between drinking with your friends and drinking with colleagues, even if the people you work with are both. I've seen people do some pretty stupid things, like slamming boilermakers in front of company executives while they looked on with mouths gaping. Although this person and some others thought it was funny, his professional image never recovered. The work he did was fabulous, but he was never assigned any projects that were high profile or that involved sponsors. Upper management were afraid of what he might do or say when in meetings, via email, etc. Right or wrong, perception is often reality, and it carries over to other areas. Don't let stupid decisions you make in your early career impact where your career may go in the future.