Case Study 1: National Summit Re-Design
Client Profile
- Ninety-year old international organization serves 500 colleges and universities and thousands of students
- Annual budget exceeds $50 million dollars
- Hundreds of employees
- Global headquarters provides support to franchised units across the world
Business Challenge
After decades of running two annual conferences that served hundreds of students and faculty, cost and culture were demanding a change. The conferences were the cornerstones of the organization’s strategic and relational work across the network. The organization was seeking to reduce conference costs and improve conference impact simultaneously. How could it use an annual national gathering to propagate a pan-organizational strategy while encouraging franchise individuality?
Solution
CLI was engaged to design and implement much of the revamped conference structure. Working with multiple stakeholders from field units and headquarters, CLI led the client through a creative process that responded to the centralized needs of the international headquarters while leveraging the field’s unique assets. The track-based conference focused on the client’s dual goals of programmatic depth and breadth. Because of the size of the conference (700 participants), CLI offered specialized facilitator training around facilitation modalities to systematize approaches and language. Curriculum design allowed facilitators to add personal color and perspective into each component within an aligned set of deliverables and outcomes.
Business Benefits/Impact
- Financial savings
- Increased participant satisfaction rate relative to previous years’ conference evaluations
- Deeper alignment between global headquarters’ and individual franchise strategies
