Plan like a Leader, Lead like a Planner

In this month, the ninth course in my master’s program, the journey was one of reflection, as well as learning.

Event Planning is not foreign to me. I have been heavily involved in event planning since my early military career. As an officer cadet at the Royal Military College (RMC), one of my several tasks in developing leadership skills was to plan a Halloween dance, including live musical entertainment. We called these jobs “secondary duties” and could not escape them, as much as we tried, in addition to our primary academic, military and athletic requirements. I don’t remember the work that went into coordinating and executing the event, but I do recall many late nights sitting in my dorm with by buds making posters and prepping decorations. The dance turned out to be a tremendous success and my classmates and I had a great deal of fun. At least the pictures tell that story.

Planning an executing an event successfully, like this RMC Halloween dance in 1990, works using the military acronym S.M.E.A.C. and leading a good team, not holding a gun to their heads! (That’s a younger version of me on the right.)

Understand, being in the military, you learn early on there’s no such thing as failure. The fail-proof plan to lead and operate any tasking was to follow S.M.E.A.C. – Situation, Mission, Execution, Admin and Logistics, and Command and Control (or, Coordination). It is a tried, tested and true process that can lead soldiers into battle, build a bridge, dismantle a bomb, or plan a party!

Since then, I have planned and executed many functions using the same formula whether for a golf tournament, a centennial celebration, a milestone birthday party, or an airshow. But never would I have considered the process to be a science worth writing a how-to book. For me, to know how to plan correctly is to know how to survive. So admittedly, I was perplexed to understand why Event Planning was a required course for the master’s program.

But, here’s the reality. Communicators are the guardians of an organization’s brand.  Brand management involves creating a level of stakeholder engagement needed to meet strategic goals. Events that bring stakeholders together be it internal staff or the external publics invite engagement, which can further enhance the brand.  It makes sense then, when studying the intricacies of event planning through the lens of a P.R. practitioner, to appreciate the gains that can be made in building stakeholder relationships.

This period of nostalgia was also filled with many discoveries. I approached this course with a willingness to take my experience further and to step outside my comfort level. Creating a webinar certainly helped move the yardstick and, if anything, proved to be far more rewarding. Exploring the gamut of tools and resources available to execute an online event has enhanced my skills bringing me to yet another level of appreciation of what P.R. practitioners can accomplish today.

Gone are the days (or all-nighters) of poster boards, markers, glue sticks, ribbon, and sparkles. Now we have programs like Canva and Smore to reach out the audience to encourage participation. But there is one element critical to the success of any event that will never disappear and is perhaps the most undervalued component. It certainly wasn’t broached in this course, and, yet fortunately for me, was evident and highly emphasized in S.M.E.A.C – your people! Committees are the essential ingredient to any events as there are so many components to execute. It takes a team to pull off a successful mission and a great leader to not only lead everyone through it but to acknowledge, appreciate and recognize the effort.