Content Design and The Humane Way of Conducting Business

This genuine talk between Eric de Groot and Mike Van der Vijver from Mindmeeting, Chema Gomez and David Benitez from CoCoA, and Eventex founder Ovanes Ovanessian will make you think how to conduct a more successful business while keeping the focus beyond pure marketing....

Mike and Eric, you said that you, as a meeting designer, could help create the right atmosphere at a meeting to promote optimal outcomes. But to what degree is it really possible to predict and influence human behavior?Yes, that’s a tough question. It’s hard to imagine that you can have a real impact on that. Certainly, all human interactions are to a large extent determined by people’s characters and emotions, their moods and random incidents like a bad hair day, a traffic jam or unexpected good news. These are things you cannot influence. But what you càn do, is steer the dynamics of a meeting. I compare myself to a skipper on board of a ship on the ocean: I can’t do anything about the direction and force of the wind, the currents and the waves. Yet I control the ship’s course, the trimming of the sails, the way points and position.

If I asked you to design my next meeting, how would you start working?The first step is to get clarity on the objectives for the meeting. It may sound strange, but often the meeting objectives are quite vague and formulated in terms that do not relate to the experiences of the participants. We talked about participant experiences last week, too, remember?

Then we do some qualitative participant interviews to obtain their views on the content. Next is an in-depth analysis of the content and how to make it “hot”, as we call it: gripping the participants. We end up with a script, a description of what content providers and participants need to be doing, including the order and the duration of each single programme item. It is important that we make this sketch with your goal in mind. Each activity should be planned in such a way that it has the desired impact on your participants – an impact that supports your goals.

But how can I predict the impact of certain activity?This is an almost philosophical question. I believe that the answer lies in the theoretical approach of receptivity – the ability or willingness of people to change their state in response to a stimulus. Every change in state creates a new situation with new receptivity conditions. As events unfold, this process of stimulus, response and change repeats itself countless times and many of these stimulus – response reactions are predictable. This is the domain of the meeting designer: to notice and predict changes in receptivity and steer them. And then design a programme that guides participants through the process in such a way that the objectives are achieved.

Why humane Businesses CoCoAs?The key “why and how” questions CoCoA asks organisations are:

WHY they do what they do? HOW do they contribute positively to society?If the answer is “to just to make lots of money”, there is a problem…Making money does not contribute to society and society is FED UP of just being a “market” a “human resource” a number… How do you engage in this new society that we are entering in? Our answer is by unconditional trust, and by real “win-win” relationships at any level! CoCoA teaches and consults organisations that by putting the people first, weather you are staff, clients, collaborators, etc…, the financial results will be greater in this new society that we are living in! We are convinced that unconditional trust and real “win-win” relationships at any level is the way forward for any organisation’s way of existing and growing in the future! That is proven a fact!

CoCoA asks Ovanes (and get into dialogue)Tell me Ovanes, How did we become such close partners? Can you explain?David was helping me expand my message internationally and now I want to help spread CoCoA’s message in the industry!

Cool, how much did it cost us, this mutual investment?Little money, but this was built on trust and by mutual caring!

Point proven here! Now look at us! Because of this relationship built through unconditional trust and real “win-win”, We are both GREATLY benefited! This wouldn't have happened if we were just mere “collaborators”.That is what CoCoAs message is about! We are building a network of professionals from all industries and all types of organisations that want to carry this message across to their influence zones…