What does it take to stay ‘fit to compete’ in today’s globally competitive exhibitions marketplace? An examination of our industry and its organisations, as UFI gathers for its 81st annual congress, is very timely.
As we at JWC deliberated on what’s important in this debate, seeking to take out topics that can safely be put aside for now, we realised how multifaceted the question is. We decided to ask you, the readers of this publication, those working at UFI member companies, and others who we know have many years of experience in the business.
Our task was therefore somewhat simplified; we initially just had to establish and define what could be potential topics that may be on your top-of-mind list of things to focus on, now and in the next few years.
As we compete for pocket share with established and new marketing channels, these fit-to-compete focus areas could take on very different meanings, and their priorities might change.
As this article went to press, responses were still being collected. This means we cannot yet share results and reflect on key implications. We plan to do so in future articles. But one key area merits our attention regardless. This focus area really underpins and then reinforces the ability of every show organiser or venue owner: It is the focus on human resources which we must get right first, if we were to sustain the ability to compete successfully, especially in the long-term battle we need to endure with the established as well as the digital and virtual marketing channels.
You’ve probably heard it so many times before; ‘it is all about the people’. That may be something that’s been mulled over too many times. Some in key leadership positions are already in a mode of casually passing it over and focusing on doing ‘other important things’. But pause for a moment and try to think back how much time you’ve spent in the last 12 months working towards the goal of setting up your company (or division) to be systemically better at attracting and retaining talent, and while doing so working with key individuals (the great people already in your organisation) to ensure the highest possible number are doing the jobs that are best for them. These assignments are closely matching what your best people should be doing based on where they want to be currently, and where they want to develop to.
Why is this so important? Not only because it’s good for the people and makes them satisfied and productive. In the exhibitions business, an event is a moment in time created by people working for an organiser and a venue. Here more than in many other businesses, these people are the most essential and sustainable competitive edge your company can ever have. There is no chemical formula or patent to protect our offerings, there is no complex, capital-intensive manufacturing process, switching costs for our customers are low, and there are very few (comparatively speaking) regulations and trade barriers. What we have is the great people we employ and their relationships.
Great people: What exactly do we mean by that? We all know a few, and worked with some along the way. They have an important thing in common (and by the way, this might be the only thing they have in common) great creative people, when empowered to work in a well-defined environment of constraints, add an extraordinary amount of value, an order of magnitude more value than many others around them.
They are able to understand and react to the complexity and the big question marks in the markets your exhibitions cover, or they can quickly pick the right path from a seemingly endless number of options a major venue has in front of it.
They are able to bring clever ideas, or creative shortcuts thereby solving pertinent challenges at hand. And they can do this again and again for a meaningful period of time. Don’t mistake these people for just smart (IQ, academic credentials and so on), or someone with a lot of experience, or for a ‘star’ who’s done something very impressive at a previous role (or with another company).
These might be all important qualifications, but they are not sufficient. The great person sitting in the right seat in your organisation is not just motivated now to do what the organisation is requiring him or her to do, he or she is passionate about it to a level where success means a lot to them.
Here’s the bad news: in the exhibitions world of today, the strength and endurance of your competitive position will depend on your ability to find (don’t forget to look in your own ranks first) and bring on board these kinds of great people. All of this is hard enough, but it gets harder. These invaluable individuals tend to follow a less predictable career. It is no longer about the straightforward path up the organisational hierarchies as it used to be.
For the great talent you really want sitting in the right seats within your organisation, you will have to be more flexible to accommodate their passions, their pursuit of sometimes seemingly unrelated professional experiences, assignments in diverse cultures, etc.
One of the biggest challenges in being able to retain great people is to ensure that your organisational structures (sometimes the right word here would be bureaucracy) and your managers are able to handle all of this in a timely manner. Great people are not just sought after by the competition, they tend to be impatient types too. All of this is exacerbated in our industry with its (relatively speaking) small to medium-sized organisations, which are not able to provide an abundance of potential career paths to their high potentials.
When talking to exhibition managers about this topic, two things become clear. It is not for lack of understanding of the importance that they shy away from it. Much more, some seem to have resigned into a mode of ‘what can I really do about this other than agree that it is important?’
Finally, let us emphasise two things that would be good for our industry as a whole, helping to put us ahead of other marketing channels competing for the same budgets. One should not just rely on a plan of hiring from the competition. While sourcing from within does not help our industry as a whole, there is also a real risk that it is not the right competitive move for the individual show-organising company or venue operator. Finding experienced talent outside of the exhibitions industry has a higher chance of bringing on board those with truly fresh and extraordinary ideas to your company.
When probing what can be done to uncover and retain the great people we already have in our organisations, consider a successful initiative we have seen in a well-known professional services (global accounting) firm. Simply put, great lengths are taken by the organisation to give those with promise more responsibility earlier.
Tracked by the firm’s top management, large and important projects the company is working on were split into a few smaller ones, thereby allowing young and impatient talent to take on real accountability. Translating into our world; for a major show, why not put that great person you’ve hired (or identified internally) in full responsibility for the success of a co-located event, or for the digital content and 365 days a year exhibitor/visitor community. A venue operator could split off service offerings that today don’t bring much of a revenue stream, and entrust a bright young mind with the future offerings the venue needs to be able to deliver and turn a profit on (or at least break even).
It boils down to this: The great people we have in our organisations are looking for meaningful problems to solve. If we let them, extraordinary value can be created. In the process, simple ideas come to life that can put you in a very strong competitive position.
At any level of the organisation you work in today, unleashing the value of the great people around you is essential for your company’s ability to compete. We all need to do more to brand and position the exhibitions industry as a highly attractive and rewarding workplace.
Eyal Knoll (pictured) is a partner at JWC, a consultancy in Cologne, Germany focused on the global trade fairs industry. Eyal previously spent 11 years in Cisco Systems managing the emerging markets services organisation having responsibility for both sales and operations.
This article was first published in issue 4/4 of EW. Any comments? Email Antony Reeve-Crook
