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Insider’s Guide to Engaging Meeting Resources
ActionLearning or Traditional Speaker: Which Meeting Resource to Choose When
 About ActionLearning
ActionLearning is almost certainly different from any kind of learning you may have experienced (or, perhaps more aptly, failed to experience) before.
You see, ActionLearning is experiential learning — based on the growing understanding that the human mind is not a blank slate to be written on, but a muscle to be exercised. ActionLearning is especially powerful because...
- ActionLearning is participative. You can’t drop out or tune out even if you try. Because ActionLearning involves participants in every aspect of the learning experience.
- ActionLearning is personal. Lets you bring your unique life experience to the learning process. And take away what you need to do your job better.
- ActionLearning is permanent. Benefiting from new instructional technology discoveries that learning is best recalled when it is deposited into the brain together with a powerful emotional hook. So when the same emotions are triggered—even years later—the learning is immediately there.
When to Choose ActionLearning
Choose ActionLearning:
- when you want to exercise the mind, stimulate creative thinking, and get people to buy into changing behaviors and trying new approaches by experiencing the results of these new learnings first hand;
- when you want people to move beyond information acquisition to content mastery. To get them to exclaim “aha” rather than just nod “ok”;
- when you want to grow team play and enthusiasm during the course of the learning experience;
- when a limited meeting time frame doesn’t give you the luxury of fielding separate events to motivate, educate, and entertain your meeting audience;
- when a “spur-of-the-moment” meeting occasion leaves you no time for elaborate program development;
- when your meeting site provides limited amenities for recreation and break time;
- when budget limitations or a lack of availability preclude you from signing up a superior speaker;
- when you need to kick off your meeting with a bang;
- when you simply must schedule an activity after lunch, and you want to guarantee not one member of your audience will fall asleep!
When to Choose a Traditional Speaker
If experience is the best teacher and ActionLearning simulates experience better than other meeting content options, why choose a traditional speaker ever?
Because there are certain circumstances where speakers and other traditional content sources (movies, videos, notebook exercises) are perfectly well suited.
- For instance, associated with launching a new biomedical drug, you may want your sales organization to be exposed to the latest thinking about cell chemistry. To provide this sort of esoteric background information, you engage a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist as a speaker. Good choice! Because your goal is awareness and information sharing as opposed to deep understanding and action. And you don’t want to go to the time and trouble to equip meeting attendees to be laboratory scientists.
- Can you mandate a full house at your meeting simply by sending out an announcement? Or must you woo your audience in order to get the desired turnout? The latter may be an issue if you’re trying to attract dealers and distributors and other non-captive sales agents. Or if you’re hoping to include customers and members of the trade press in meeting activities. If such is the case, a big-name speaker is an excellent draw and definitely a good way to go.
When to Combine Platform Speakers and ActionLearning
Let’s face it. Most sales meetings call for a combination of sharing information and spurring behavior change. And while a big-name speaker may help to draw a crowd, the fact is that you’re not going to gauge the success of the meeting simply by how many people pass by the registration desk. So consider a combination of ActionLearning and more traditional meeting content sources.
For instance, before your pharmaceutical salespeople have forgotten the esoteric speech about cell chemistry, put them through an ActionLearning experience like Planet X where they can exercise their new expertise as a value-added differentiator to help gain the ear of hospital purchasing authorities.
Or, after you have leveraged a big-name speaker to draw a diverse crowd, use an ActionLearning experience like Gold of the Desert Kings to weld them into a closely knit team and unite them behind your business goals.
More Reasons to Choose ActionLearning
In Unit I we explained that ActionLearning was the way to go to help participants master crucial job skills, buy into making necessary behavior changes, improve team play, and identify with your organization’s mission and goals.
We also advocated ActionLearning when time and budget monies are in short supply and for meeting kick-offs and post-lunchtime occasions when almost any other sort of meeting activity is likely to fall flat.
But that’s just the beginning.
Consider ActionLearning if you’re planning a sales incentive or recognition event. Why? Because you want to deliver a learning experience that’s in keeping with your goal of rewarding people. And traditional three-ring binder exercises and half-day “talking head” videos can seem more like punishment. In contrast, an ActionLearning module like Gold of the Desert Kings can make learning how to better plan, organize, and prioritize selling efforts outright fun.
And, if you’re getting your sales organization together for the potentially painful process of realigning territories, determining budgets, or distributing resources, don’t just plunge in! Begin your session with an ActionLearning experience like Promises, Promises! to reduce defensiveness and get people cheerfully cooperating rather than making war on each other.
And if you’re showing one of those videos, say, on win/win negotiation, account development, or relationship selling, don’t assume you’ve accomplished anything when the house lights come up. Help your people immediately apply the learning and make it part of their own behavior pattern with a highly participative learning experience like Excelleron.
Finally, consider substituting an ActionLearning experience in lieu of the typical meeting kick-off cocktail reception.
An ActionLearning experience like Gold of the Desert Kings or Planet X lets new arrivals get acquainted in a roll-up-the-sleeves way. Understand what makes a peer from a far-off geography click. Appreciate and begin to benefit from the unique contributions of representatives from different functions and departments.
The passion of the experiential learning process quickly cures shyness, pre-meeting nerves, and travel fatigue. The power of the business simulation moves participants subliminally into your business agenda.
And, last but not least, unlike the typical obligatory meeting kick-off reception, a good time will almost certainly be had by all!
Who should you include in an ActionLearning experience?
With ActionLearning, participants contribute to as well as benefit from the learning experience. So a variety of perspectives and levels of expertise enriches rather than detracts from the learning experience. What’s more, the dynamics associated with mixed populations also contribute to improved cross-functional working relationships.
So if your field salespeople and headquarters marketing staff are “stovepiped” into opposing camps, run them through an ActionLearning experience together! For instance, use Planet X to focus their combined energies on courting customers and leveraging your firm’s field and headquarters assets to winning business and inflicting pain on the real adversary — your competition.
Or if your financial people and your salespeople don’t see eye to eye on how to win business while protecting margin, invite them both to experience Apples & Oranges. Here’s a great opportunity to tap the technical expertise of your analysts and the customer and competition savvy of your account managers in a forum where they will both feel valued. The result is a shrewder sales organization better able to deliver value from the customer’s perspective without having to resort to unnecessary price concessions.
Or, if you sell through multiple channels and are looking to minimize channel conflict, invite your dealer and distributor personnel to join your direct sales force in Values. Here are two great ways to get groups to set aside differences and turf issues and to arrive at win/win ways of working together in the process.
Should you invite senior management to join the troops in an ActionLearning event? Absolutely! Because ActionLearning lets senior people contribute the benefit of their experience to the group learning process in a way that is not intimidating or off-putting to more junior employees. While providing a “safe haven” that encourages contributions from employees at all levels.
What’s more, even senior level participants will benefit from an ActionLearning experience—attesting to Harry Truman’s famous quip, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
To experience the power of mixing sales management with front-line sales professionals, we suggest you try Symphony, a next-generation ActionLearning experience in leadership. Symphony is about leadership from the grass roots on up. And about making sure even remote, seemingly unimportant decisions and initiatives are closely coupled to your organization’s strategic purpose and vision.
Salespeople will appreciate Symphony because they’ll discover how they can have a say in the way they’re goaled, supported, and managed. Sales Managers will appreciate Symphony because they’ll discover how to exercise their big-picture prerogatives without losing grip on day-to-day priorities. And how to create a closed-loop system where their salespeople have the tools and temperament to self-correct performance shortcomings and stay on course.
Customizing ActionLearning to Your Unique Situation
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