Meetings, Retreats and Conferences

Good meetings are experience-based and goal-directed.  They remain faithful to the organization’s culture and strategic intent.

Furthermore, they don’t happen by accident.

Unfortunately, the business world is full of bad meetings, perhaps more than anything else, and certainly more than any other type of meeting. That’s because planning a good meeting is deceptively challenging, as any experienced manager can attest.

At Kipp & Associates, we seek to  ignite conferences and corporate retreats with high-involvement sessions and engaging topical briefings.

Regardless of number of attendees, we internalize the central theme or core challenge and design an experience that allows attendees to find their voice in generating fresh insights, collective understanding and appropriate action.  In keynotes, breakouts or small café groups, all work is uniquely designed to tap into the highest level of commitment, allowing participants to confer on their own questions from the basis of their legitimate experience.

We believe that every design element of a meeting should contribute to accomplishing the group’s goal and objective. Prior planning allows for a well-crafted design that is as inclusive as need be and as exclusive as prudence dictates. Designs are sophisticated, creating momentum for the intended purpose.

 

Sample Events

  • Engaged participants in exploring The Hero’s Journey as the defining archetype in large group interventions at the International Association of Facilitators (2005), the Creative Education Foundation (2009) and the Institute for International Research (2008)
  • Keynoted conference symposia hosted by Center for Creative Leadership and Oxford University Symposium on Social Values in Management with The Accidental Leader.
  • Directed Working Remotely, Virtual Teams and Beyond, desktop program for functionality of teams in virtual environments. Program now required for the Silicon Valley Executive Business Program and US Navy leadership program
  • Led discussion forum on Five Ways Leaders Sabotage Their Careers as a featured speaker at the 1998 American Management Association’s Peter Drucker Forum
  • Facilitated conference session on Technology and Community at the Association for Quality Preservation and the Association for Manufacturing Excellence
  • Showcased and demonstrated Mediatation…Multi-Media as an adjunct in large group Facilitation Projects based on a multi-year engagement with Nortel Networks.  OD Network International Conference, Scottsdale, Arizona.  1997
  • Designed and managed conference on solving the Innovator’s Dilemma hosted by Fuqua School and featuring Harvard’s Clayton Christenson, September, 2001.
  • Led discussion on the Nortel Experience in Whole Systems Change at both the Association for Quality Preservation and Association for Manufacturing Excellence, 2003

 

I especially appreciated that you were keenly interested in our reality, listening to our needs and then speaking to us from the heart.

Kathryn Young, PhD, Department of Veterans Affairs