Report

Requirements (quantitative :)

• Report: Team 40%
  • {     /4} (i) Cover-title page (1page)
  • {     /4} (ii) Executive summary (1 page)
  • {     /4} (iii) Table of contents (1 page)
  • {     /4} (iv) Introduction (1 page)
  • {     /4} (v) Overall content Body (4 pages)
  • {     /4} (vi) Overall format Body embedded within body (0  pages)
  • {     /4} (vii) Conclusions (0.5 page)
  • {     /4} (viii) Recommendations (0.5 page)
  • {     /4} (ix) Referencing (1 page)
  • {     /4} (x) Appendices-Glossary (max 4)

Palaveri 25.10

Sovittiin seuraava:

-Tuure kirjoittelee näkemyksiään mahdollisista puhelin softista mitä voisi käyttää eventin aikana.

-Katja päivittää executive summarya.

-Annika lisää omia ideoitaan työhön.

Ylläolevat kolme kohtaa pitää olla valmiina keskiviikko iltana jotta Vellu voi aloittaa oman työnsä, joka on muokata kirjoitettu teksti yhtenäiseen muotoon.

Raportti-ryhmä tapaa vielä torstaina ja palaverin lopputuloksena on meidän raportin finaaliversion. ETA about 18.00.

INTRODUCTION

Business networking is the process of establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with other business people and potential clients and/or customers. The purpose of business networking is to increase business revenue - one way or another. The thickening of the bottom line can be immediately apparent, as in developing a relationship with a new client, or develop over time, as in learning a new business skill (Ward, S. 2010).

In a business life, It's not always what you know but who you know that makes difference to get most benefits out on the field. The right social network can have a huge impact on business organization's success. But many of us have misguided ideas about what how a strong network is formed: The key isn't having a large circle filled with high-powered contacts. It's best to have select but diverse network, made up of high-quality relationships with people who come from varying spheres and from up and down the corporate ladder. That's why all kind of people are needed also in the Socializing Friday events. (Cross, Thomas, JulyAugust 2011 Harvard Business Review 149)

The best business networking groups operate as exchanges of business information, ideas, and support. The most important skill for effective business networking is listening; focusing on how you can help the person you are listening to rather than on how he or she can help you is the first step to establishing a mutally beneficial relationship (Ward, S. 2010).

PROCESS OF ORGANIZING THE NETWORKING EVENT

• Before the event - Planning

Before the Event - Organizers

1. Advertisement - Social media prime way of advertising.

People can start to network before the event has taken place! Social media is good and cost effective (free) way to take first steps of networking before coming to actual event. Comments on the Facebook pages give easy and good starting point for discussions face-to-face. It's usually easier also for introvert people to start creating connections when the first touch is made virtually beyond a safety barrier granted by social media. And finding these first contacts through an easy way may have a great effect on how many of these introverts can be seen on the event itself.

Allows people to put faces for the names. Through Facebook people can see how others look like before meeting them. This will most likely lower the threshold even more for people to start conversations. Highly important for participants who come to the event to make contact with someone who they dont know beforehand as this will make pinpointing right person easier.

SocFri people should actively keeping up discussions about upcoming event and hype it. By doing this right way, SocFri can enhance the wanted mysterious reputation of the event. It also helps tailoring the event as people can comment on what kind of topics they might want to have and gives easy way to give feedback.

2. Registration - Way beforehand the actual event.

Allows collecting comprehensive database of people coming to event(s).

Database, with above mentioned social media, allows people to search people based on their needs. This is crucial for the people who are not just coming to hang around and have clear goal in their head. Also a visible participant list may work as an incentive to other people to come around. If one spots an interesting person among the participants the odds rise that also he or she will attend to the event in hope of really finding some practical benefits during the afternoon.

It is important that to keep registration information optimal. Not all people want everyone see what they are after in the event (employee looking for new job opportunities). Yes, people can always lie why they are participating, but building trust as an effective media for networking and reliable source of connections requires high confidentiality from the company.

Possible items in database: picture, name, expertise, what is looking for, contact information. Person who signs up should be able to tag information as "classified" and hide it from others.

3. Practical arrangements - Quality over quantity

Practical arrangements in the event we participated were not that high standard. The event lacked so called "womans touch". All tableware were disposal ones, salad didnt have tools to take it, event run out snacks rather quick, drinks were more or less just thrown on the table Many of these could be improved with small effort that would increase professional feel of the event and would increase the probability of people coming again.

Organizers were difficult to spot. Only way to know who were the organizers were orange badge leashes. Easiest way to improve this would be common uniform for all organizers. This could be something easy as unified blouse with SocFri logo on front or back (they guy making Michael Jackson moves). This was more or less true with the sponsor representatives. This could be done with blouse also, but it should have different color than the organizer one and should have logos of both, SocFri and sponsoring company.

The place could have few monitors hung up on ceiling showing small advertisements from sponsors. These could also be used to improve atmosphere (SocFri logo guy dancing), share information etc. Also a bit of decoration considering the current theme would be a great way to great a warm and comfortable atmosphere. That would require a little effort from the organizers as in most cases these items can't be bought but should be acquired other ways such as lending, borrowing or from sponsors.

4. Sponsors - More money, more publicity

Though event is planned to be non-profit the organizing still requires money. For this reason sponsorship should have different levels. Each level could give more publicity:

• level 1 - Company gets her name to social media, can give introduction speech at the beginning of event, identifiable blouse.
• level 2 - Same as level 1, but also has spot for banner(s) at the event.
• level 3 - Same as level 1 & 2, but has advertisement on monitors.

It's worth noticing that sponsorship in these kind of events gives a huge advantage compared for such a little effort and money. Comparing to for example sponsorship in football games (organizations pay big money) in SozFri the sponsorships means advertising but also way to achieve bigger goals. It can benefit from getting new customers, recruits or network links because just that audience and those people have gathered in that event. Same doesn't happen in most sponsorship cases.

SMART Goals

In the planning phase of the event it is important to think about: why, who, where, when ja how. Also the SMART goals can be used i.e. goals and planning need to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-specific.

Goals need to specific so that it is easy to judge whether those are reached or not. Specificity is related to measurements. Goals need to be measureable. They also need to be achievable and realistic, e.g. necessary resources are available. The goals have to be bound into the time so that there is enough but not too much time.

Objective for a networking event can be e.g. to achieve attendance of at least 30 new guests at Socializing Friday event on the 13th of January 2010 by SocFri people actively promoting the event in the social media during 2.1. - 13.1.2012.

• During the event - Controlling and monitoring

The event consists of three phases: arriving to the event, introduction of the invited guests and networking game. Participants may choose how much to participate in each of these.

Arriving to the Event

Start here (we can still name it something else as well...)

There are two important reasons for having this starting lane. One is to lower the barrier to interaction to those who do not feel it's a natural skill, such as the more introvert people. The other is to bring some structure into the event which is also appreciated by certain people. These reasons will both lower the barrier to enter the event and to  participate and interact during the event. In order to build more effective teams, we need different types of personalities, all of which do not appreciate just hanging around or may see social settings and unknown people somewhat difficult. Also different themes may be used to address certain type of people. 

Starting point is not mandatory to complete, but everyone should go there and get their name tags. There are options in implementing this: tags could be there ready to be picked up, or people could print them out there. Those who are familiar with the starting point could then head out to the crowd or grab some food or drinks. We considered that while we know who are attending the event, this is the kind of information that also benefits the participants themselves. The cost of producing such slips or stickers is considerably low and reguires a little effort, as all of the information to be put into the tag can be gathered while people make their registrations to the event. We would like to put forward the idea of giving name tags to people based on multiple reasons. Firstly, it helps to identify the sponsors and hosts of the event and therefore contacting them is easier. Secondly, if a person is looking for someone he/she is especially interested to contact after glancing the participant list, it is possible to find those people with somewhat less effort than without the name tags. Thridly, name tagging people help participants to remember the names of the interesting people. As there is a lot of (more or less) sophisticared babbling going over at the event, it is not always that easy to hear names correctly. Further we put forward an idea of including some personal information on the tags addingly to participants name, position and employer.

Next step or steps in the starting point would be activities to lower the barrier to start a conversation with unknown people. There shouldn't be too many tasks or tasks that take a long time to complete, and also they may vary between events so that the starting point is not the same every time.

Possible activities could be:

• Goal setting: the participant plans who to talk to during the event. A participant list helps.
• Participant gets a small ABC of how to socialize: tips on how to start conversations and a reminder to keep in touch afterwards.
• A short intro into pitching oneself (for instance a basic one sentence structure).

The doors to the event should open about 1h earlier than the invited guests are introduced. This gives everyone the chance to enter the starting point before the event actually kicks off. 

• After the event - Reflecting

Several companies have founded out, that customer satisfaction is related to companys profitability. In addition the positive customer satisfaction has an affect on free word-of-mouth advertising and companys own human capital as well. (Luo & Homburg 2007: 133). Indeed customers are crucial source of information, which can be useful when developing the companies processes, customer satisfaction and gaining positive word-of-mouth marketing especially in a country size of Finland.

Based on this it is suggested that after the meeting it is important to understand how the participants experienced the event. In order to collect feedback a customer satisfaction survey could be used. The link to the survey could be shared to the participants after the meeting via e-mail and in the social media like Facebook. The purpose of the customer satisfaction of the event is to understand the expectations and requirements of the participants and whether those expectations and requirements were filled (Dutka, 1993: vii). According to Wangenheim & Bayón (2007:247)  newly acquired customers are specially eager to give word-of-mouth, so they should be encouraged to share these precious feedback also with the company in written form.

In this kind of case the semi-structured questionnaire could be used to collect the feedback. Semi-structured questionnaire includes both predefined answers and open questions. These kinds of questionnaires are commonly used in business-to-business situations. (Hague, 1993: 21-26) The predefined questions are easy and quick to answer. In order to receive more detailed feedback and development proposals few open questions could be used. In addition Net Promoter Scope related question should be used. It is calculated from only one question:How likely are you to recommend the event us to your friends/colleagues? (Hayes, 2008: 103)

The received feedback needs to be analyzed. It can be used as a contribution for strategic decision making and for day-to-day practices (Morgan et. al, 2005: 148). Based on the analysis the company needs to create actions how to improve the event. Strong commitment is needed from the company to make changes based on the collected feedback (Dutka, 1993, 10). Within the terms of the customer satisfaction the collected feedback is a mean to improve service for the customer; it is not an end (Stewart, 2002: 60-61). The results need to be shared with the participants also. However, it needs to be thought how it is done in practice; maybe in the format of coming improvements to the event based on the feedback.

References:

Dutka A. (1993) AMA Handbook for Customer Satisfaction: A Complete Guide to Research, Planning & Implementation. USA, NTC Business Books.

Hague P (1993) Questionnaire Design. England, Kogan Page Limited.

Hayes BE (2008) Measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty: Survey design, use, and statistical analysis methods. USA, American Society for Quality, Quality Press.

Luo X & Homburg C (2007) Neglected Outcomes of Customer Satisfaction. Journal of Marketing 71(2): 133-149.

Morgan NA, Anderson EW & Mittal V (2005) Understanding Firms Customer Satisfaction Information Usage. Journal of Marketing: 131-151

Stewart, B (2002) Viewpoint: Why customer satisfaction research doesnt get results. Measuring Business Excellence. 6 (4): 59-61

Wangenheim F & Bayón Tomas (2007) The Chain from Customer Satisfaction via Word-of-Mouth Referrals to New Customer Acquisition. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. 35(2): 233-249.

TEAM BUILDING MODEL

• Before the event

Organizations increasingly rely on teams in order to be successful in their business. Team composition is seen as one of the most important factors in team performance because it influences the range of available task-relevant resources as well as how well team members communicate and cooperate with one another. (Kearney et al. 2009: 581).

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a tool often used by business to achieve the goals of building work teams. That can be also one point of view when arguing why different personalities are needed in well performing teams. The MBTI identifies 16 personality types considering four dimensions of personality: extroversion (E) ? introversion (I), intuiting (N) ? sensing (S) , thinking (T)? feeling (F) and judging (J) ? perceiving (P). The four domains are the places where people prefer to operate from. These preferences determine how individuals perform. (MBTI Basics.)

There has to be a healthy component of E persons in a effective team to ensure intra-team communication. The E is a natural communicator. If there are too many Es in the team, the team will experience confusion with people talking at the same time and interrupting others. The work will not move forward quickly, if there are too many I types as they are not initiating enough to organizing or communicating with other team members. The I types pay attention to what is really said and to the process itself. (Berry et al. 2007: 17.)

In the domains of S and N, balance is also needed. The S types can easily perceive the facts and communicate to other team members. They are facilitators. The N types develop complex ideas that are more difficult to express. Conflicts can be expected between the S and the N. (Berry et al. 2007: 17.)

The T type is quick to make judgements and to verbalize them. The F type may not express their thought at all as they are afraid of hurt feelings. The Fs are best harmonizers in the team. They are the most capable of helping the team in creating trust. Group cohesion is most impacted by thinking and feeling types. The thinkers are so quick to voice directions that often frighten F. However, if all are F types, there is a risk of having no conflict. Without conflicts or differences, the team can not achieve synergy. (Berry et al. 2007: 17.)

In the domains of J and P, there is need for acknowledgement of strengths of each type. Also a plan on how to incorporate these strengths into the group process is needed. The J will keep the team on schedule, while the P will help the team consider other alternatives in the decision-making process. The P is not limited by space and time in their thinking, they present creativity that can enhance the end-product. (Berry et al. 2007: 17.)

 

•  

• During the event

• After the event

After the event the problem is how to keep the created teams working. The teams created within the event are informal and does not have strong ties to each other. According Gratton et al. (2007) study the new teams including high proportion of people who do not know each other is more difficult to collaborate. The teams collaboration can be improved by defining clear roles and goals for everyone. The goal should be left ambiguous. (Gratton et al., 2007: 10) If the team has defined a leader to the team, he/she needs to take a responsibility to start the collaboration and invite the team members to a first meeting.

It is not easy to legislate the interactive behaviors like high levels of participation, cooperation and collaboration among team members. In order to achieve the presented behavior mutual trust among members, a sense of group identity and a sense of group efficacy needs to be in place. (Druskat et al., 2001: 83) Trust, identity and the group efficacy can be strengthened via regular meetings; face-to-face and virtually. Also the information within the team should be shared somehow; for example by using Wiki-pages. It would be easier to follow what the other team members have created, share and storm ideas etc.

In order to improve the team work and team building the guided reflection method could be used. The groups are encouraged to reflect on what they have been doing and how they could improve in the future via a very general training procedure. This has effect on group processes and performance.  (Gurtner et al., 2007: 140) The training could be provided for example by the organizer in the format of eLearning for the teams. This would also strengthen the concept of Socializing Fridays.

References:

Druskat VU and Steven BW (2001) Building Emotional Intelligence of Groups. Harward Business Review.

Gratton L and Erickson TJ (2007) Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams. Harvard Business Review.

Gurtner A, Tschan A, Semmer NK and Nägele C (2007) Getting groups to develop good strategies: Effects on reflexivity interventions on team process, team performance and shared mental models. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 102: 127-142

CONCLUSION

The key to true business networking is the establishment of a mutally beneficial relationship, and that's an incredibly rare event at the standard shake-hands-and-exchange-your-business-card events that are touted as business networking "opportunities". The most useful network consists of many different type of people from different organization levels. Therefore it's essential to have as much variety as possible in the Socializing Friday events' visitors.