Nicole Armstrong DESIGN to CHANGE - Designer Conversation Series - ONSTAGE - MITRE

Welcome to the DESIGN to CHANGE podcast ONSTAGE A conversation with Nicole Armstrong, CMP, CMM, CED, DES - Strategic Event Designer at MITRE in Washington DC, USA and was previously with the Internet Society as a designer for groundbreaking award winning online and offline events across the globe. Ruud Janssen and Roel Frissen of the Event Design Collective will be having a conversation on her views and experiences as a CED - Certified Event Designer on designing to change and how Nicole has experienced that in her global career. To learn more about DESIGN to CHANGE check out https://www.designtochange.online ————— Read Nicole Armstrong’s answers after reflecting on our conversations below: How do you involve others in the change you design for? First, I pitch the vision. Along the lines of "imagine creating an event that did exactly what you wanted it to do. An event that changes people's behavior and left a lasting impact?" From there, I try to get others to think as strategically as possible by asking targeted questions and getting them to suspend disbelief - if even for a moment. How do the events you design become markers of change in your organisation? My favorite events are always the ones that upon reflection are clear delineators of before/after. I talk about these events and the transformation they offer when I'm working to get buy-in for Event Design. When I look back upon my career, always my favorite events were those that created lasting transformational change. What we are able to see before / after is clear! At the Internet Society, there were clear differences in staff engagement AFTER the all staff retreat in 2014. The Internet Society's InterCommunity 2015 event was a remarkable turning point in how the ISOC community engaged. While at MicroStrategy, the all employee cruises that took place from the mid-nineties to early 2000s were instrumental in creating and strengthening what become an indomitable corporate culture. At MITRE, the weekly CEO Update has transformed employee expectations about interacting with leadership. How do you have that conversation with your event owner? Getting buy-in from a skeptical event owner is always tricky. I start by sharing my experiences and my passion for transformational events. First-hand stories and passion create a powerful combination. It also doesn't hurt that the Event Design process while challenging is fundamentally fun to do. How do you enable them to express their vision? I start by asking about their outcome. I use questions like "what is the outcome you seek?" or "If your event did everything you wanted it to do, how would your attendees be different when they leave?" Or "What would your attendees do differently as a result of your event?" The interesting thing here is the transformation is ultimately a journey - starting with that event owner. How do you enable them to connect the vision to the event story? I think this can be one of the most fun aspects. There are so many different pathways to get from where we are today to the event owners vision. (And yes, some may be more effective than others.) But ultimately, having that event owner get creative about their vision - to build up in their own mind the fun/interesting/unique ideas that they want to realize can bring their passion to life. How do you articulate the value it creates ? Ah! This is where it can be fun to turn things around. I used formulations like: (using MITRE as an example) "What if I told you that your event would transform employee engagement and expectations of how to engage with leadership? Would you be interested?" It's funny, the organizations where I've seen events be truly transformational had leaders that were deeply in-tune with the power of events to serve their needs. They innately understood how to harness events and in many cases I did not need to "sell" the value. ———— Keen to answer these questions yourself? check out https://www.designtochange.online