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I’ve been making a bit more of an effort of late to get out of my home office and interact with other human beings at events. All of these have been interesting in their own way, but fundamentally as a punter you are completely dependent on the organisers finding some great speakers to say interesting things – and not either blandishments, blatant sales pitches, or both. But the other crushing limitation of the standard format is that you are in a space with several hundred other very interesting people, but the only people you hear from are the anointed few on stage, the ‘this is more of a comment than a question’ guy during the Q&A, or the two or three people you might strike up a conversation with in the coffee breaks.

Many, many moons ago, I was asked to facilitate roundtables at the Low Carbon Best Practice Programme series of events. I found that this Powerpoint-free atmosphere of sharing produced an intensive interaction where punters could really learn from each other – giving and taking proper advice, not small talk in the coffee queue. I loved it, even though the promised ‘exposure’ never led to any business – I perhaps naively believe that a sales pitch would be a betrayal of the participants.

About that time, one of my clients complained that he found standard events frustrating, so we hatched a plan which lead to what we called the Corporate Sustainability Mastermind Group, recently rebranded the Sustainability Leadership Roundtable. No Powerpoint, no ‘experts’, no BS. Just intense structured discussions loosely around a theme of the members’ choice, with me facilitating and recording the outcomes. We’ve recently had some new blood join us and the format just doesn’t get tired.

I’ve also been facilitating similar formats for the automotive supply chain and the UK’s organ transplant community recently and did a whole series for small businesses on the post-Covid Small Business Leadership Programme. I use this format because it works ten times better than me standing on a stage pontificating.

When you see, or feel, how different an event can be if you structure it imaginatively, it’s quite frustrating to go back to the one-to-many format. Just saying…