Preparing a business meeting with 50 executives

Imagine you want to prepare a two-day business meeting with 50 international Directors and Managing Directors including six country heads, in a picturesque offsite location with channels and timbered houses somewhere in Europe.

Of course you want to make these two days as useful as possible.

So to prepare the meeting, you create six topics around this years objectives, assign each topic to one of the country heads, and ask them and their direct reports to create ideas around these topics.

How would we have done this traditionally?

With lots and lots of emails, all with attachments of Excel sheets and Powerpoint slides, flying back and forth, with reply to all.

Everyone would get crazy about the amount of emails, and noone would have the full view about the status of the ideas.

How did we do it this time?

We created six different private groups on our collaboration platform, one for each topic.

We desiged the groups with an explanation what to do, a large "Create an idea" button in orange color, and the Top Ideas widget.

We created a presentation, and we did a few webinars at different times and days, so that everyone could attend.

Then we invited everyone into these groups.

What happened next?

50 Directors and Managing Directors got active, created ideas on the collaboration platform, upvoted and downvoted the ideas of others, commented and replied.

If you know how hard it usually is to get management engaged on the collaboration platform, this was overwhelming.

In just a few days these senior executives created 200 ideas, each with a score, which is a perfact base for a great and successful business meeting!