One of the most common missteps I see when people design an event is to focus on the agenda too early in the process.
A retreat that deliberately did the opposite only highlighted the depth of this fallacy. The organizers eschewed any sort of schedule because of the exact same confusion that leads most people to cling to one. They conflated the schedule with structure. The host of this retreat wanted to create a sense of freedom and agency. Believing that structure was limiting and the schedule was the structure, he removed any semblance of a schedule. I had never quite seen this before and my interest was piqued. How would this go? It resulted in people feeling aimless and frustrated, vented through a persistent hum of hallway gripes among attendees. Removing the schedule didn’t seem to create the sense of freedom and agency that the host intended.
Many people designing events do the opposite. They think that if they organize time well, all else will follow. This is so rarely the case. Just as removing the schedule did not inherently create freedom, adhering to a schedule does not inherently create momentum and potential.
The Familiar Default
What I see much more often is an extreme focus on setting the schedule and the agenda from the get-go. It is the only functional working document used to design the event, be it a multi-day spiritual retreat, a half-day company off-site, or an inter-organization planning session.
The schedule obsession can look like:
- Anchoring on activities used elsewhere to good effect because the organizers want something similar to happen at their own event. The activity rarely has the impact it did in the original.
- Quickly zooming in to focus on content-rich agenda blocks deemed to be of great importance. The resulting experience is often overbearingly dense, resulting in hours of dead air as the attendees are submerged in material they have no meaningful way to engage with.
- Tactically oriented facilitators doggedly keeping time to stay on schedule regardless of what is or isn’t happening in the room. Attendees often feel pushed around with no real payoff, losing faith that the experience will benefit them in ways they care about. (Don’t get me wrong, I love good timekeeping at a well-designed gathering, but the timekeeping serves a larger purpose, reinforcing trust rather than breaking it.)
The Red Herring
Excessive focus on a schedule or agenda as a design tool is a red herring. Organizing time is not the same thing as organizing attention, energy, and potential. As modern professionals seasoned in schedule use, most of us look at calendars and agendas all day. We know what it means to organize time, so the schedule is an obvious tool to gravitate towards. There is a whole middle layer of design work that is less familiar though. Events designed with only schedules often fall flat. How frustrating! There was a perfect map, the pristine agenda, but no interesting territory was actually traversed. While an agenda can be a key tool for running the event, it is the wrong tool for designing it.
What Real Structure Produces
All experiences have a structure of some sort. The structure provides a way to navigate the unique space of potential created by certain people gathering under certain circumstances to do certain things. When I researched the design of transformed social experiences by comparing well done sex parties, funerals, and wilderness trips, I identified three core types of structure. Only one of them involves a clearly linear schedule.
A good structure creates clarity about options of what to do and roles to play. It creates trust that needs will be met: physical needs for activity, rest, and sustenance; social needs for connection and camaraderie; and intellectual needs for discovery and expression. A poor structure leaves people disoriented, overwhelmed, and untrusting of the organizers, which scatters the energy of the group and undermines the purpose of the gathering.
A client I worked with was gathering a network of organizations together for the first time. I helped them identify the purpose and ambitions for the gathering, and we designed a series of activities from there. One person on the client team looked at the schedule a few days before the event and said to me with hesitancy in her voice that it looked so sparse on paper. There were only a couple of activities each day. She was worried that we hadn’t planned enough, hadn’t put enough on the schedule. When she came back from the gathering though, which she expertly facilitated herself, she was brimming with delight about how energetic and busy everything was. The page of the agenda looked sparse, but the activities made space for connection and sharing that more than filled the days, serving the purpose of binding the group together. In truth, the schedule could not contain anything more.
I can struggle to support clients who need an event agenda throughout the design process to feel secure. I’ve played with different formats to see what would give them the same sense of reassurance and focus while promoting better outcomes. I’ll keep evolving my process since simply removing what gives some clients most assurance and comfort does not automatically produce clarity and courage, just like the retreat host with the schedule-less gathering did not produce freedom and agency.
What to Do Instead
So, what should you do instead of focusing on organizing time, seduced by the idea that the schedule is the structure? Clarifying the purpose and aspirations for the event can go a long way. Doing this first, collaboratively with everyone who has a real stake in the event’s outcomes, can make putting together the schedule substantially more informed. Everything on the schedule should pass the test of serving the purpose and aspirations. If it doesn’t, its place should be interrogated.
What should you do if you fall prey to common schedule-obsession pitfalls?
- When you find yourself inspired by moments and activities from other events, shift your focus to the larger context. Ask, “What were the conditions that made that activity potent?”
- When you notice you’re getting obsessed with the details of content rich agenda items, shift your focus to the attendees. Ask, “What do I think the attendees don’t know or understand yet, and why will this content solve that?”
- When you find yourself prioritizing timekeeping and sticking to the details of a preset schedule, shift your focus to the energy in the room. Ask, “How is the group feeling right now and how can I tell?”
And if you are that unique type who wants to promote a sense of freedom and agency in the attendees by ditching a schedule altogether, shift your focus to knowledge and power. Ask, “How can the attendees be informed about what’s possible and how to act on those possibilities?”