You may have innovative ideas for your events’ marketing, revenue model, or learning formats to achieve your organization’s goals. But to be known for strategy as well as execution, it’s critical to be able to communicate those ideas effectively.
So say Brenda Steinberg and Michael Watkins in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, 10 Ways to Prove You’re a Strategic Thinker. “You can’t just think strategically. You need to speak strategically, too,” they write.
In their short article, the authors pack in 10 practical ideas that can help people to be recognized as big-picture thinkers, specifically when they have an opportunity to speak with company leaders.
They recommend ways people can show they’re informed, forward looking, and thinking critically. They also suggest ways to translate jargon into everyday language, which not only shows that the speaker understands a topic but can communicate it in a relatable way. One of the 10 ideas is to use analogies and metaphors to communicate strategic ideas. A planner might, for example, cite how a regional distribution system helps a company to grow as she pitches the idea that creating regional meetings or birds-of-a-feather sessions could help attendance to grow.
The bottom line from Steinberg and Michael Watkins is that to move up the ladder, people can’t simply be strategic thinkers. For meeting professionals to grab and hold that proverbial “seat at the table,” they must be strong communicators who can share their ideas clearly and effectively. Read all 10 of their suggestions here.
