Thursday, March 02, 2017

When using your connections works a charm

This week one of our speakers cancelled just before an event.  What to do? What was our Plan B?

We had a good crowd coming, so cancelling was not an option.  Instead when we checked to see who was registered, we found that we had two marketing experts coming.  

While not like the marketing generalist we’d 
booked, each knew her stuff about her aspect of marketing – social media and video – so we asked them to quickly prepare a short presentation.

And they did.  Not only was it good to involve the women in the group but also to showcase the expertise we already had in the room.

Yes they were a bit nervous.  It’s hard to strut your stuff in front of your peers, fearing they will judge you, but you know what,  I bet they both went up a notch in people’s perception of them because they came to our rescue and because they knew what they were talking about.

All of this to say that sometimes plan B works out better than your original plan. 

I remember going to the theatre once and being disappointed that we had the understudy, but she was amazing and it proved to me that sometimes it is better to leave your expectations at the door. I could have so easily let that disappointment colour my view of the results, but I didn’t.  I decided to be open to what unfolded and it worked well.

Just like it did the other night. It is always good to have a Plan B in your back pocket and often when things don’t work out the way you wanted, it makes you more creative and you come up with a great solution.  In our case, we tapped into our connections.


Maybe Plan B stands for Better.

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