We’re all busy. Our lives are saturated with events, information, and things to do, so many that it’s more common to feel that things are slipping through your fingers like a buttery sponge than that you have nothing to do (side note: If you don’t have anything to do, I can find something for you to do). Your message, whether it’s an event, a vote, a lesson, or an idea, has to penetrate the cloud of tasks and commitments a human carries around with them. Automation does not do that, it just adds to the cloud. It piles one more thing into it, more often an unwelcome intrusion than anything else. If you want to make sure you reach someone, you have to focus on them as a person. One way to do that is to think of it as a birthday party.
Every event you have should be treated like a birthday party. Not just any birthday party, your birthday party. You want people to come to your birthday party because they’re awesome and you want to be around them. You value them as individuals, not for what they can do for you or out of some desire to improve them as people. And if you do value the people who come to your birthday party only for the presents they bring, you’re being a dick. Hate to say it, but it’s true. Rule #1 of throwing a birthday party is don’t be a dick.
Now, there are lots of ways to get people to come to your birthday party. You can put up flyers, set up Facebook events, tweet about it, send out emails, sneak it into people’s calendars, or kidnap them and throw them in a van. But the easiest way, tried and tested, to make sure that the people you really want to be at your birthday party show up, is to invite them personally. You come to them and say, “I’m having a birthday party, and I want you to come. Can you make it?” I want you. Not “My organization,” not “It would be a valuable experience”. I want you to be there. And there will be cake.
This immediately makes them more likely to show up. You’re busy. You wander around in the same cloud that they do, and they know that. But you took the time to contact them personally and ask them to come. You can increase the likelihood of them showing up by following up with them, making sure it’s in their calendar, and sharing interesting things that’ll be happening there, like a live performance by zombie Freddie Mercury, or letting them know that the girl they really like is totally going to be there.
Inviting someone to a party is a complex social interaction, though. You have to have a relationship with them, and it has to be on good terms (or the cake has to be totally boss). You have to know about the things that they like, in order to be able to tell them why it’ll be cool (beyond being your birthday party). There’s a lot of context that you have to have if you really want them to come. You can invite anyone. Hell, you can invite everyone, like this girl accidentally did, so thousands of people showed up to her party. But to make sure the people you really want to be there are there, you need to reach out to them.
But what do birthday parties have to do with anything/ Everything. What if you planned a workshop like a birthday party? You did all the normal things you do, social media, posters, email, but also approached some people you knew would be interested, or even who you suspected might be interested, and said “I’d like you to come, I think you’d really bring something valuable to it.” Some of them won’t make it, but more of them will come than otherwise would, because you invited them. You can do this with a board or staff meeting, inviting colleagues and telling them about the issues that pertain to them that’ll be coming up.
If you take away two things from this, it’s that meetings and workshops are like birthday parties, in that they should always have a personal component, and also cake. Social media provides a quick and easy way to get personal messages to people, if we bother to use it like that. For all our complaints that the internet has robbed us valuable personal relationships, the truth is somewhat more disconcerting. We have sacrificed those relationships on the black altar of our laziness, content to automate and letting the rest fall to ruin. Don’t let this happen to your meetings. Or your birthday party.
