chchchchanges.

This time of year, bags are packed, hugs are given, planes, buses and taxis are full of smiling happy folks enroute to week long adventures. For those under the age of 18, this ritual is known as summer camp.

There is nothing better than summer camp. You get out of town, you have camp friends, which are sometimes so much better than the school friends you’ve had all year. Why? Because you choose to go to camp, you find your kindreds. You are out of your comfort zones. Amazing things can happen.

For those in our adult years, in certain occupations, the same can be said, only it isn’t called summer camp, it is called conference.

Conference, for the majority of organisations, well more so for the people who work there, this time of year is just like summer camp, but with cocktails.

There are set wake up times of course, roll calls, breakfast buffets, your standard activities, of golfing, team building, and in some circles drinking until it is last man standing.

At one particular conference (theirs not mine) on an otherwise standard Tuesday night, the events also included group FaceTime chat with Bubba Lee and Beau. It was like they were stowaways under the covers on their bunks with flashlights trying not to get their comic books (or maybe more like their dirty magazines), and rye confiscated by the camp leaders.

Me, currently in limbo, in the throws of my big chchchchanges,  which  included glamorous activities like packing, doing paperwork, spending way too much time on hold, and getting ready for the much anticipated cross country move, this group FaceTime was much needed comical relief, and of course, those of us who have conferenced before know that there is always at least one good story to come out of the week long events.

Especially when Bubba Lee and Beau are involved, at this particular conference having a reputation for being absolute annual debocordy, I had to wonder why group FaceTime was now apparently on the agenda?

Bubba Lee was first to explain, well more like vent, WTF is up this year? 5 years ago the bar would be packed, now you’re lucky a light is on,  everyone has gotten old and dull.

Ah yes, the top heavy organisation. In someways a great thing, can speak to the culture of the organisation, people want to stay, they feel committed (or maybe should actually be committed).

Because there can be some not so good that happens when it is top heavy. Let alone the bar staff twiddling their thumbs on a night when it would normally be chaos. If things are truely top heavy, then this is really a prelude of things to come, the thing being a mass exodus, retirement, death.

Then, at this point, unless their is a stringent succession strategy, you are really hooped. Yes you will have the bright eyed and bushy tailed keeners coming in to take the reigns, but when the success of an organisation is really sales, and lets be real, we all know sales succeed and sustain based on relationships. Relationships, need to be nourished, take time to grow, to foster trust,  and these things that don’t happen over night.

Anyway, not to get deep, I mean we are talking camp, so, to  parallel summer camps and conferences, a week long immersion seeing the same people day after day for a week, especially when the location is not your standard, this is breakthrough. This is where relationships forge wth your work family and things truely begins to flourish. And of course, the better the conference, the more incentive to stay with the organisation, hence the top heavy. Knowing that annually, or biannually you are going to be reunited with your besties, likeminded souls. And unlike some standard family reunions which can be fuelled with hostility, grudges and all sorts of drama, work conferences (normally) tend to be focused more on the good, the achievements, celebrating that everyone is getting away from the standard to be with their people for a week.

So my advice to Bubba Lee and Beau? Conference is what you make of it. Give it a year or two, the top heavy will be gone (retirement, termination or death) and the two of them can initiate a whole new breed of newbies into the camp.

Hmm, maybe not the best advice to two troublemakers, but at least I’ll know I’ll get a good blog or few out of it 😉