Working Conference

It is not always easy to choose the right way to tackle a particular subject. How do you make sure that the message sticks? How do you make sure that participants don't fall asleep halfway through or make surreptitious cellphone calls, but actually join in? How do you make sure that you generate good ideas and solutions? And that by the end, we have commitment to the process, and concrete results that can be taken further?

The answer is to select a form which does complete justice to the content, and this is Troje's particular expertise. We have developed a number of different forms of working conference, which we generally employ in combination to bring about a high 'no-escape' coefficient and make the event a success.

An example of a Troje working conference

Zaanstad City Council's management conference on “Managing Cultural Change”

Zaanstad City Council was working on a corporate cultural development programme  whose core values were 'Reliable, Solution-directed and Responsible' (RSR). Within this programme Troje had already given employees a performance and managers a lunch meeting. The next step was a management conference for Zaandam City Council's 60 managers. In the belief that the successful development and implementation of a new corporate culture could only succeed if management were involved, this conference was to concentrate on individual managers' leadership styles and on developing a concrete action plan for influencing behaviour and corporate culture from within each manager's own department.

Design

The two-day programme kicked off with a 'Zaandam City Council Tour'. Conference participants were shown round the offices of the members of the Council Management Team, who gave a theatrical presentation of RSR and their own leadership styles. A number of working methods were then employed to actively tackle subjects such as: discussing the programme with management teams, managing RSR, the skills needed to manage corporate culture change, and departmental action plans. At the end of the conference, each department presented its action plan in a lighthearted and entertaining way.

 Logbook: our regular graphic designer prepared a logbook especially for this conference which included background information together with a number of questions aimed at encouraging participants to reflect, at various moments throughout the conference, on their own expectations, roles and motivations, on 'living myths', and so on. The document had space for participants to make notes of their own comments and discoveries, so participants were able to take a record of the conference home with them which was both attractive and comprehensive.

Result

The conference evaluation report concluded that the success of the conference was principally due to its use of non-traditional working methods. Participants had been actively, enjoyably and closely involved in the event, in an atmosphere of openness. At the end of the conference the managers all possessed concrete tools with which to further the process. A positive side-effect of the techniques employed was that a number of working methods were found to considerably enhance teamwork.