I just had a chance to read the details of last month’s London Business Forum event featuring Tom Peters and Richard Scase in a boxing ring:
The room was cavernous, its high ceiling vaulted with oak beams. In the centre was a boxing ring, shining under floodlights, and on all sides were hundreds of seats, arranged as if for a prize fight, their legs wreathed in tendrils of dry ice. The delegates filed in via a mezzanine, some open-mouthed with confusion, wondering for a split-second if they had the right place, as a familiar tune thundered over the giant sound system: “Eye of the Tiger.”
Thus began the London Business Forum 2005.
…Newcomers to the London Business Forum were told they should expect the unusual and the speakers duly arrived in a burst of disco lights and dance music, wearing brightly coloured silk capes.
Too funny! I definitely want to attend more conferences like that. In fact, I want to do more business like that in general: more fun, more creative, more engaging. I’m often in the position of trying to get passive members of a team to become active participants, and having some unusual “fun” components is a great way to engage people, although I can’t see myself in a boxing ring wearing a silk cape any time soon.
Don’t miss the great quote from Prof. Scase on leadership: “We currently have too many 21st-century managers and not enough 21st-century leaders. We have a flood of 300,000 MBAs and I think they should be treated like garden manure: spread thinly.”