We lost a comedic genius Monday. Robin Williams left a legacy of impressions, laughter, tears, and memories that resonates with all of us.
Webster’s definition of legacy is simply “something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.” What this definition doesn’t seem to address is the effect of a legacy. So many of us have been profoundly affected by the loss of a man that we didn’t meet, but his legacy had an impact on our lives. One merely hears the name ‘Robin Williams,’ and instantly a vast body of his work is recalled. Who can hear ‘Robin Williams’ and not smile?
This got us thinking. Thinking about upping our game, digging in and working even harder – teaching more, creating more – legacy.
What’s your legacy? Are you working to create a lasting impression for your staff as an event manager?
Instead, are you exhausted? Are you overwhelmed with responsibility? Do you know where to start? Don’t stress it. We’ll help you take this head on. Let’s get fired up!
"Crying never helped anybody do anything, okay? You have a problem, you face it like a man.” – Robin Williams, Jumanji
If you do these four things during your career as an event manager, well, you’ll have fulfilled your destiny and left a legacy – trust us.
Documentation, analytics, communication, and awareness are what event managers with purpose are made of. They’re the four aspects of efficient, effective, safe, and secure events allowing you to leave your legacy with peace of mind.
Words Can Change the World & Accurate Documentation Can Change Liability Defense for Event Managers
"No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world." – Robin Williams, Dead Poets Society
You don’t have to be Professor John Keating to know the power of words AND that accurate documentation is the only thing that’ll provide your risk management team with liability defense. You never know when you’ll need it and so you must document every incident, every time with all of the details.
Implement your incident management infrastructure now. By doing this you’ll have created a basis for your team to grow upon when you retire. Your incident management system will let you eliminate illegible handwritten notes and replace them with secure historical digital records.
If notes need to be accessed in the future, no need to find the employee that wrote them to decipher them, because now your info is reliable. Digital records are generally accepted in liability defense, unlike handwritten notes which may not be.
With digital records changes are tracked so you know who wrote what and when changes to the record were made. Give staff the ability to attach and quickly reference documents (pictures, videos, statements, etc.) with each incident.
The key to gaining accurate documentation as an event manager is to create a system that allows your staff to record information at the same time they’re performing their job. These protocols ensure their job performance is never compromised by their need to document what they’re doing.
Develop your incident management system to capture all the events that surround the incident. It’s a management system NOT a reporting system. (Check out our blog “How to Build Your Incident Management Infrastructure for Useful Analytics” to assist you with this).
Accurate, legible and historical records provide substantial benefits to reducing your risk and enhancing your staff’s efficiency during events.
But first, you need to know what your team is up against. You need to take the first step towards the inefficiencies in your operation.
Gain the Power of Wisdom with Reporting & Analytics
To be wise like Dr. Sean Maguire…this is where analytics come in. Of course you can’t analyze what you don’t know. Own the documentation so you can measure your risk, and then communicate what you know to your team. Fixing the flaws now is the way to plan for what’s coming 10 miles down the road.
Having and using analytics are crucial for the efficiency of your operation, teaching your team how to create memorable experiences each event AND leave a legacy. Use them to improve your processes and strengthen – really strengthen – your protocols. Work harder, dig deeper. Tweak and tweak again.
Analytics gives you the insight into your operation so you can improve every event. Are you curious about the effectiveness of analytics? Then, you MUST check out our blog on solving the biggest problems with analytics.
It only takes two words to express how important analytics are for event managers: response times. Response times influence every area of your operation, positively and negatively. Faster response minimizes short term and long term impact of incidents occurring during your events.
When you see a pattern such as your patrons slipping and falling all over the place, analytics will put you in a good place to do your good deeds and do them correctly.
"If it's being done correctly, here or abroad, it's probably not being done by the Army." – Robin Williams, Good Morning, Vietnam
Once you have useful data you can communicate it to your team. The ability to effectively communicate important incident details and protocols is what sets you up to leave a lasting legacy as an event manager.
Don’t Cope with Poor Communication, Enhance It
When you close the communication gap during your events, you bring all your documentation and data you've gained into practice.
Arm your front-line staff with incident management mobile apps to easily and effectively report incidents. Equally, this will let you give them real-time data, via real-time communication, on new trends you’re finding from your…analytics.
Creating an easy-to-learn set of communication procedures that include your incident management mobile apps, automatic alerts and notifications gives you a painless and manageable way to quickly train staff too. Automate information to empower your staff and watch communication among team members excel.
When you enhance your communication your team is in the know. This leads to increased awareness of incidents occurring during your events. This is how you can touch people’s lives and exceed expectations.
"You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome." – Robin Williams, Patch Adams
Increased Awareness Gives You Freedom
"But oh, to be free. To be my own master. Such a thing would be greater than all the magic and all the treasures in all the world." – Robin Williams, Aladdin
Increased awareness affords you and your staff the ability to respond to one more incident in a little less time. It’s not magic, but it gives you the freedom to take care of your other responsibilities as an event manager.
Provide text communication as a channel for patrons to instantly report issues, and for staff that may not have radios. Incidents might go unnoticed or escalate quickly. Not anymore!
Text communication lets you be the Genie, because you’re adding thousands of eyes to assist in reporting issues as they occur. We like to mitigate. Valuable time can be saved for staff by eliminating the need to first find a supervisor with a radio in order to report an incident.
Give your team the power to log into a web-based system [incident management system] from any location. Team members can then simultaneously enter and update incidents for all your staff to see in real time.
Make sure that data is never lost due to bad Wi-Fi connection. Have a system that allows your staff to enter data in an offline environment for future upload. Get important information synced as soon as Wi-Fi is available – no problem.
Now your team knows what’s happening and when it’s happening. It’s how you ensure all issues are being handled in a timely manner, keeping your patrons and staff safe – all the time – for every event you run as an event manager AND for your successors.
Fulfill Your Destiny & Leave Your Legacy
"I try to make sense of things. Which is why, I guess, I believe in destiny. There must be a reason that I am as I am. There must be." – Robin Williams, Bicentennial Man
It might be your purpose as an event manager. The systems you put in place impact the lives of the people you work with. When a venue is operating effectively, the staff performs with greater efficiency, are better employees, and happier people. We think it’s very cool to help a whole bunch of people like their job and for them to be really ridiculously good at it too!
The systems you put in place impact the lives of your guests. We call them memories.
Now that’s a legacy. We’re proud to know you.
In this day and age, your incident management software should work for you instead of you working for the software. Check out our Incident Management System and start building the basis for the legacy you leave behind.
