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Showcase Your Company: Hosting Events

There are a million and one brilliant ways to market your business online, and hopefully you’re already implementing these ideas into your marketing strategy. But your business is about more than just its online presence: there are people behind your digital space: you’re real people, doing real things, and there’s no reason to stay hidden in the shadows. Instead, you can put the human factor of your business right front and centre for people to see. There’s no better way to do that to host your own company event for customers or potential partners, which are brilliant for strengthening your customer relations, showing off what you’re all about, and sure – it’s also about having fun.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
Photo courtesy of Pexels

More Than Just a Party

Of course, it’s all good and well throwing a party with live music and drinks, but alas, there’s work to be done here. You’re hosting an event for a reason, not just because it’s a fun way to spend an evening. It’ll be up to you to determine what this reason is. Are you looking to bring more people on board, or get to more business from your existing customers? Perhaps you just want to get your name out there and promote your brand. Whatever it is, have at the forefront of your mind when it comes to the ideas stage.

The Space

Where you host the event will depend on your end objective, and also how good your headquarters are. If your offices are more functional than stylish, then it’s probably better to hire out a space specifically for the event. Where this is exactly will depend on your budget, but it should be generally be somewhere pretty swanky that’s close to your business and in the neighborhood of the businesses you’d like to be associated with.

Setting the Tone

Every inch of the event will be showcasing who you are, so make sure it’s all well thought out and done properly. Look at a café services company that goes beyond what’s expected from the catering at an event: your offerings should be creative, fresh, impressive. The same goes for the decor: you want a wow factor when people walk through the door. Have custom made decorations tastefully incorporated into the space so that there’s no doubt which company has brought this magnificent event to fruition.

The Exclusive Guest List

Your event should have a degree of exclusivity. You don’t want just anybody walking in off the street and attending, so make sure you have a well curated guest list. Who you will invite will depend on the goals of the evening: they may be big order customers, companies you’d like to partner with, or invitations to a corporate sector you want to make connections with.

The Aftermath

A toast to a great evening! And now the work really begins. For the night to be a success, you need to follow up on the momentum of the evening and make sure the goals you had for the evening are achieved. Don’t let your hard work all go to waste!

Can Your Company’s Operations Cause a Black Swan Event?

According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Black Swan events are rare, catastrophic events that many retrospectively assert could have been predicted and thus prevented. But can they? Could your company’s operational performance cause the next Black Swan tragedy?

Before we answer the question of whether or not your company’s operations could cause a Black Swan event, I need you to consider your organization’s risk tolerance as we’ll be defining the Black Swan event in those terms.

You see, Black Swan events reported by the media are defined by a much higher impact and scope than what most organization’s can tolerate. So with your organizations unique tolerance in mind, consider the following question sets regardless of how the event might be initiated:

Set 1

  • Does your company’s operations involve significant amounts of hazardous or potentially hazardous materials?
  • Does your company’s operations involve high energy systems or materials?
  • Does your company operate in an inhospitable environment such that inappropriate operations could result in harm to a large number of people or result in significant damage to assets or the environment?
  • Does your company provide a commodity without which a vital service would be impaired?
  • Does your company’s operations integrate with others such that a mishap could bring down a network supporting the provision of vital services?

Set 2

  • Could a relatively large number of people be impacted by an operational mishap at your company?
  • Could a significant asset loss be incurred by an operational mishap at your company?
  • Could a significant environmental impact result from an operational mishap at your company?

If you answered yes to any of the Set 1 and any of the Set 2 questions, your organization’s operations could cause what is for you a Black Swan event.

As a leader of a susceptible organization, your next questions become:

  • How can we recognize the rising risk of a Black Swan event?
  • How do we minimize our risk of causing a Black Swan event? and
  • How can we prepare for a Black Swan event now in an efficient, financially responsible way that balances cost and risk mitigation?

To help you answer these questions, we’ve prepared a FREE video training series: Preparing for the Black Swan. During this online training course, you’ll learn:

  • the warning flags of rising Black Swan risk
  • how to develop a healthy safety culture to minimize the risk of a Black Swan event
  • how to responsibly prepare for a Black Swan event through the implementation of protocols for responding to a Black Swan event should one occur, and
  • how to effectively monitor for rising Black Swan event risk

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Risk Management – Principles for Responding to Unexpected, Catastrophic Black Swan Events

StrategyDriven Risk Management ArticleBlack Swans events are rare (low probability), catastrophic (high impact) incidents that are seemingly unpredictable, go unrecognized, or are deemed so unlikely as to not reasonably warrant expensive preventive measures. There characteristics include:


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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

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