Increasing Committee Effectiveness

Challenge: A volunteer committee designs the annual Marketing Conference for the Life Insurance Marketing Research Association, which is held in conjunction with the annual Marketing Research Conference. Attendance was falling slightly but steadily each year, due to a lack of innovation and value.

Actions: As a member, and subsequently chairman, I instituted a series of innovations. Increased the size of the committee 50%, and added practitioners from other industries (financial services) and functions (public relations/communications). Rather than waiting for the limited (8-hour) conference planning meeting to begin brainstorming main stage and workshop topics, had a web board created where people could add and comment on ideas for three months before the meeting. This cut brainstorming at the meeting from four hours to less than an hour, and resulted in a more "themed" group of workshops. Also arranged to share workshop ideas with the marketing research conference, so that workshops could be shared or complement each other, instead of duplicating effort, which had happened in the past. Made presentation training available to workshop presenters so that they could see how to make their presentations more interesting and valuable, and began the custom of having committee members take groups of first-timers out to dinner the first night of the conference, to help them meet people and feel less like "outsiders."

Results: Attendance at the next year's conference increased by 25%, and the overall satisfaction rating reported on conference surveys rose 6%.