My Favorite Take-Away's from the Global Leadership Summit 2010

I recently attended the Global Leadership Summit – the best leadership development conference I’ve ever been to.  It was my fourth year, and not only was I surrounded by interesting and proactive individuals, but the speakers who graced us with their insights were both remarkable and brilliant.  I only hope I absorbed enough wisdom to actually do something with all the quality information I hastily scribbled notes over.  Many of the insights/best practices can be translated into sponsorship application, so I thought I’d share my experience with you!  Without further adieu, here are my favorite points/take-aways:

1. Don’t mistake hours for productivity.  Tony Dungy made this comment, which I found to be a great reminder.  As it relates to sponsorship, I think there are never ending tasks we could participate in to “better” our efforts and some are more effective than others.  Just because you worked a 12 hour day doesn’t mean you implemented efforts that moved the needle on your business.   Make your hours effective by prioritizing your tasking and weighing which tasks accomplish more towards your overall goal and make sure to spend your time there!  Also, keep in a mind that a well rounded person maintains their passion – be sure to invest in other areas of your life that you value as well.  There are enough nights that truly call for your attention around the clock, don’t create more of them by being unproductive. 
2. “Denial of Risk and Peril” is one of 5 researched behaviors in the decline of a busisness – Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, and How the Mighty Fall, established a list of 5 common practices/behaviors of business that fail.  When it comes to sponsorship, I think this particular point is of interest.  The economy is rough, sponsorship IS still happening, but if your property is facing dire circumstances, you need to respond in a timely manner or else you’ll kill it completely.  I’ve spoken with numerous fantastic properties that simply weren’t going to perform at the level they needed to stay alive and they postponed the event until they could, or took off a year in order to gear up for a better effort.  Rather than ignorantly destroying your audience’s trust in your property, do what it takes to evaluate status of your efforts and react with enough time to set the pace instead of turn in your keys.  It only takes a moment to lose your target audience’s loyalty if you blow it bad enough.  This is not meant to sound harsh or apathetic, it’s an encouragement to do what it takes to stay alive when the chips are stacked against you.
3. Waterline Concept – Terri Kelly (President and CEO of W.L. Gore and Associates) gave an interesting insight about one of their foundational guides.  The waterline concept says their employees can take educated risks with new ideas as long as they don’t compromise the established core values of the brand.  When you consider a ship example, if you drill a hole below the waterline, the ship sinks, but if you want to experiment above the waterline… drill as you please and new solutions could emerge without threatening the life of the ship!  In sponsorship, it’s wise to encourage your team and the team of your partners to “think outside the box,” to do things they’ve never done before, get creative and customize with the sky being the limit – as long as it doesn’t compromise the integrity of the brand or the foundational goals of the partner.  Opening up the door to creativity allows a freedom that invites spectacular results and noteworthy activation.  Daniel Pink underscored this concept by noting in his speech about motivation that measured autonomy and the practice of giving freedom is actually where some companies see their most valuable initiatives take off.  Ex: Google developed g-mail and Google news from giving their associates freedom to do whatever they want with 20% of their time.  What kind of freedom could you offer your team to enhance creativity in your sponsorships? 
4. Integrate giving into your business model and your consumer will do your marketing for you – Blake Mycoskie, the founder of Tom’s Shoes, made the statement that integrating giving into your business/program is one of the best growth strategies you can implement.  Whether you are for profit or not for profit, consumers and partners like affiliating with a cause.  In fact, these efforts end up viral many times, and build the story behind your efforts. Let your consumer market for you by giving them a reason to get excited about what you’re doing.  Inspiring a positive reaction with your target audience and giving the ability for your sponsors to affiliate with that story is tremendously valuable.  Ex: Microsoft partnered with Tom’s Shoes and the mutually beneficial partnership was explosive in their first campaign for “One day without Shoes.”  Microsoft has since become a long term partner of theirs. 
5. Celebrate victories – Jack Welsh, the former CEO of GE knows a thing or two about seeing a company make it through ups and downs.  We all know very well that there are seasons, quite possibly now for many, where things are tough.  If you want to motivate those in your circle of influence, whether your target audience or your activation team, your partners or any of your key influencers; you need to find milestones to celebrate.  People on your team thrive on periodic celebrations revolved around results.  Studies show that driving results is the biggest motivator to an individual, so it’s a good idea to point those out and motivate to keep the excitement flowing and the vision for success crystal clear.   Bill Hybels noted as well, that it’s in the middle of your route from point A to point B that discouragement hits hardest.  How might you consider that in your sponsorship efforts?  Perhaps middle of the year you celebrate with your team how far you’ve come, or you send a random summary of your successes to your partners and celebrate with them too. 
6. Passion promotes productivity: One last theme I heard consistently throughout the conference was related to passion.  Are you passionate about your property?  About your brand?  Are you passionate about the story that you represent and do you require the same out of your staff?  You are responsible for the staff that represents you, and If you don’t feel passionate you can’t expect your team to demonstrate passion either.  Why are you passionate about sponsorship?  Define and know these things so that you can pull from these reasons when you have those days where you feel like you’re running on fumes. 

Honestly, I could write pages upon pages of great snippets from this conference, but we’ll stop here!  If anyone else attended and has insights to add – please feel free to post!