It’s been a couple of years since I checked in with author, keynote speaker and consultant Peter Shankman, and I was delighted when he said he would be glad to speak with me. I was curious how his business was going, how he was working with clients on how to move into 2021, and of course I was curious to learn how New York City was doing. An eye-opening and salty interview:
When you set up a team to complete a task or do a job, or work together indefinitely, one major assumption is that everyone’s work is equal. Everyone pulls their weight. The workload should be distributed equitably. Isn’t that what you would naturally think?
It depends.
I got to thinking about this after listening to an interview with Brian Eno, the producer, writer, musician and longtime collaborator of David Bowie and others. He’s well known in the ambient music world for decades of work, and has produced albums by Talking Heads, U2, Devo, Ultravox and has contributed to recordings by Genesis, David Bowie, Massive Attack and on and on.
In other words, the 72-year-old has been around awhile.
Teamwork is not democratic, and it shouldn’t necessarily be. (I’m paraphrasing). Sometimes you need more of one person and less of another person’s contribution. The dynamics of teams, especially long-term teams like bands, fluctuate and the work requirements of each person will come and go depending on the situation.
I think that’s a valid observation. Depending on the task or challenge in front of a team, whether it’s four people in a band, or three or six or fifteen people working to execute a tradeshow exhibiting appearance at an upcoming show, each person will have a different role, and their overall contribution may differ in terms of time and energy they put into it.
In Eno’s case, he gave an example that because he’s an outsider, and not a member of the band, he can give feedback on items that might otherwise be a touchy subject if given by one of the band members.
That would seem to be the case in a marketing team as well. You have a lead person, who is by definition not only a part of the team, but apart from the team as a leader, and has a different role to play in addressing issues as they come up; different than one of the team members may have.
I think the key here is that everyone feels they’ve contributed to the best of their ability, are aware of other’s contributions and were a valued part of the overall goal of the team, whether it’s a short term project or an ongoing team.
A little of everything in this week’s quick vlog: a chance for you to vote on the three finalists for a musical theme; a glance at John Lennon and Roy Orbison; another glance at the Pearl Harbor attack. Jump in:
Exhibitor Magazine has been doing a superb job of keeping their fingers on the pulse of the tradeshow industry. Since the pandemic essentially closed down the industry in March, they’ve done numerous surveys of exhibitors and exhibit industry suppliers. They recently had another webinar where Editor Travis Stanton went over the results of their latest survey, taken of over 1000 respondents. This is the fourth such survey they’ve done, and it took place in mid-November. If you’re an exhibitor or in the exhibit industry and haven’t reviewed the results, it’s worth a look. Both the webinar and the resultant White Paper have been posted on their website. Check for links below.
A few top-line results from their executive summary shows the deep and wide impact the pandemic has had on the industry as a whole:
When asked how long it would take to get back business full bore if the restrictions were lifted today, a majority of the survey respondents said it would take about three months.
An image from the full White Paper (c) Exhibitor Media Group.
Many exhibitors are waiting longer to commit to appearing at shows; roughly a third are waiting until the final four months before a show to make a commitment.
Over two-thirds of exhibitors say that their exhibiting budgets have been cut; more than half of those are at least 50-percent budget reductions.
Virtual event participation is up: Over two-thirds over those surveyed say they have participated in virtual events.
Finally, the Exhibitor editorial staff is making a prediction that live tradeshows and events will slowly come back to life during the first half of next year, but that it will be at least until the first or second quarter of 2022 before we’ll see anything we can call “normal.”
I’ve used the same 30″ theme as the opening ditty for this podcast/vlog since January 2018. It’s time for a change! I have several to play for you and have narrowed them down to a Final Four. Take a look/listen and leave a comment below or drop me a note.
Here’s the line-up if you need to go back and bounce through them again:
This week’s ONE GOOD THING is, of course, creating music. Or really creating anything. Just keep doing it. It’s good for ya. And please let me know which potential musical theme you like best! Leave a comment below.
Sure, we’d all like to make big changes. Swoop in, push all the old stuff aside, and institute something NEW and DASHING and DAZZLING and TERRIFIC, something that impresses the hell out of customers, the media, and especially your boss. Because if your boss is impressed, he’ll remember you and you might be in line for a promotion, which means a raise and so on and so forth.
Sounds great! Except that making big changes, making that one BIG CHANGE that gets all of that attention, isn’t easy. You have to start from scratch, tear everything down and do something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. And if you change everything, you’d better have a damn good reason. First off, it’ll cost more. Probably a lot more. It has to be a big bold idea. How many of those have you had lately? And you have to get buy-in from the right people, and especially the people who control the purse strings.
There’s a better way, and it doesn’t cost as much. It doesn’t require big bold ideas. It doesn’t change everyone’s job that’s involved in the initiative.
Make improvements at the edges. Opportunity lies in the margins. Find a way to bring ten percent more visitors to your booth. Generate another five or ten percent leads by adding a small interactive element to your booth. Move your booth space closer to the main entrance of a big show once you’ve accumulated enough points and time in the show to warrant it. Take a survey of half of your visitors to uncover what they really think of your new products or services, adding just a little new information to your product development.
There are a lot of little things you can do on the margins to make a notable improvement that doesn’t cost a lot, take much time, or strain the system (and your brain). Yet little changes can still have a strong positive impact on the bottom line.
It’s Thanksgiving Week here in the USA. It’s also Black Friday Week, which is of course, the natural progression of Black Friday into a whole week long thing, but that’s another story. Given that it’s Thanksgiving Week, I thought I’d do a short podcast/vlog on a handful of things I’m very thankful for.
Our online exhibit-finder, Exhibit Design Search, would be hard-pressed to get much better. It’s chock-full of 1000s of exhibits, rental furniture, accessories, helpful article, photos and much more.
Yet it keeps improving. Over the last few months a few new things have made their way onto the site at TradeshowBuy.com, including virtual exhibits, interactive exhibits, protective shields and more. Take a look:
