Show Management for the Year 2000

Reengineering means rediscovering an entrepreneurial management style

By Brenda Ordonez

"Reengineering" is the hot management concept of the '90s, joining the litany of buzz words such as "downsizing" and "rightsizing." Skeptics say these are merely euphemisms for laying people off. Whatever the term, ultimately it does mean doing more with less -- not only less time but fewer people.

Corporations as diverse as Hallmark Cards, Taco Bell and IBM Credit have reengineered themselves to achieve improvements in cost, quality, service and speed. Former MIT professor Michael Hammer, who coined the word "reengineering" and co-authored a best-selling book on the subject, says large corporations are reengineering to behave more like small companies. By basing their organizational structure on collections of tasks that create value, they can eliminate or prevent the barriers that distance employees from the people they should be serving. And small companies, according to Hammer, have to guard against growing up to look like today's bloated big companies. The time to get serious about reorganizing, he advises, is the minute you can't fit everybody in your company around a conference table.

Paul Mackler, Senior Vice President at Reed Exhibition Cos. (REC), Norwalk, CT, believes the decision to change organizational structure should not be triggered by economic pressures. "Your customer should drive your organization's structure," he says. "As the largest company in the industry, and as a rapidly growing company, REC has to move faster, be closer to the markets we serve, and deliver timely educational forums -- and our exhibitors must have the largest selection of products for attendees. Our organizational structure is driven by how we can best serve our customer, how we can be more effective."

When should smaller show producers think about restructuring? Mackler advises: "Ask yourself if you are serving your customers in a way that is acceptable to them -- are you meeting and exceeding their expectations?"

Eliminating redundancy
Show producers of 20 years ago and those of today are very different people, says Robert Birkfeld, CEM, President of The Prescott Group, a Port St. Lucie, FL-based consulting firm specializing in the exposition industry. The main difference, he explains, is the depth of knowledge of the industries their shows serve. "Compared to today's show manager," he says, "managers in the past had quite superficial knowledge."

Furthermore, Birkfeld notes, in the past show companies were structured as entire business units, with redundancies in staffing for each unit. The show manager was chief cook and bottle washer. "Today that's highly fragmented," he says. "In a matrix organization, a show manager may not have, say, an operations manager on staff but instead relies on the services of a peer who runs a cost management service center of the company and provides operation support for many events."

How does a matrix organization function in producing shows? Mackler describes how it works at REC:

• Senior vice presidents oversee groups of shows.
• Each group of shows, headed by a vice president, has an industry-knowledgeable group responsible for marketing and sales.
• A centralized support staff, knowledgeable on all aspects of show production, provides operations services to the groups.

Absorbing talent
Acquisitions of other shows and show companies sometimes call for a degree of reengineering to incorporate existing staffs into the purchaser's management structure. "We try not to lose the value the organization had before in their relationship to their customers, their markets and attendee base," says Thomas Kemp, President and COO of San Francisco-based Miller Freeman Inc., which recently purchased Walter Fletcher Inc. and InterBike.

Miller Freeman, Kemp explains, is organized by market focus rather than by types of products and does not have a show division. Managers are responsible for all products -- magazines, newsletters, conferences and expositions -- within each market.

"The InterBike group was integrated into our Sports Group in Southern California. We didn't do any significant downsizing, but we've worked with the staff a lot in reorganizing functions and processes," Kemp says. "Walter Fletcher Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary, with Walter staying on as President. We're also working with that staff on reorganizing and on utilizing technology much more than they had before."

Kemp says Miller Freeman is in the midst of developing a new computer system, which is one of the ways the company is reengineering its shows. The integrated system will feature CAD capability so the sales staff can book space in real time on show floor layouts.

Becoming entrepreneurs
Karyl Innis, Owner of the Innis Co., a human resources consulting firm headquartered in Dallas, says one of the positive things the exposition industry has going for it is its ability always to think in creative and ad hoc ways to get a project done. "Show producers," she says, "may have been the precursors to the virtual company."

Show and meetings consultant Francis J. Friedman, COO of New York City-based Time & Place Strategies Inc., says in many small companies, show managers reengineer as they go, particularly as it gets close to show time.

David Cheifetz, former Chairman of Conference Management Corp. (CMC), says that at CMC the company functioned in an entrepreneurial way even though it employed more than 100 people. "We were staffed pretty lean. We put ourselves in a position to never have to downsize."

Now President of the DSC Group in Westport, CT, Cheifetz says he formed his new company primarily as a show management consulting firm, but he also produces shows. Cheifetz employs four salespeople and three marketing managers. In essence, the latter also function as show managers and are the experts on the industries their shows serve. "I am outsourcing just about everything I can," he says, "except sales and marketing."

Nancy Needel, President of Newton, MA-based Trade Show and Event Management: The Outsource Connection, reinvented her own career when she became the victim of downsizing at The Interface Group in 1992. Now Needel uses freelancers and independent contractors to assemble show management teams for hire. Is the trend toward outsourcing continuing? "My business has increased," she says. "The more I talk with people, I think it's a matter of economics. If show managers can produce a part of a show and get the same quality for less than a full-time salary, why not?"

North East Promotions Inc. in Wethersfield, CT, is a family-run operation producing nine consumer shows annually. President George Gonsalves did everything himself when he first started, hiring people as needed. Then 10 years ago his son joined the business, followed by his daughter. Now they divide the shows, with each of them handling all aspects of their own events. Some functions, such as advertising, ticket promotions and public relations, are centralized. George's wife is the secretary and handles bookkeeping. They hire temporary staff to meet each show's needs.

"My answer to downsizing is to be more aggressive in getting more customers," says Gonsalves. "Shows that produce buyers will remain strong. Though we have seen some downsizing in show attendance, we've added a new show."

When exhibitors downsize
Downsizing of show attendees is a real problem facing many show producers. Another is eroding customer base. Sam Lippman, Vice President of Graphic Arts Show Co. in Reston, VA, explains: "Exhibiting companies -- our customers -- are being downsized. In many cases, the show advocates at these companies, who have been there for years and know the value of trade shows, are losing their jobs and being replaced by vice presidents of marketing with MBAs who see shows as an expense and don't know whether they're justified. The biggest way downsizing is affecting show managers of the mid '90s is that we have to resell not only our own shows but shows in general to the exeutives."

Consultant Friedman agrees, saying, "If we don't tell our story more dramatically to markting directors and CEOs, we leave ourselves vulnerable to being downsized in absentia." Downsizing, Friedman adds, is forcing the industry to look more carefully at what it's offering. Shows have to offer more value. Show producers face the continuing question from exhibitors and attendees: What am I getting for my money?

Lippman, whose company is owned by three associations and produces all their trade shows, says the old paradigm of an association show management company having a few generalists managing the shows is being changed into a much more aggressive, market-driven staff that specializes in sales, communication and marketing. "We are adding sales staff to become more aggressive and adding a new show to our international event. My projection for association show managers in 2000 is that they will have become more aggressive in adding allied markets to existing shows."

Does downsizing work?
The thinking behind reengineering, says Friedman, is that if we break down the process we use to run our business into small steps and understand how it's being done now, we can streamline it. He suggests show producers today need to do more benchmarking, that is, to study the things they do well and study the things other companies do well. "Benchmark against those who are experts in specific areas, registration for instance, and then model your own activities after them," he says.

Human resources consultant Innis cautions, "I've found about 60 percent of all corporations that undertake downsizing fail to realize the planned benefit -- they don't get the results they thought they would. The major reason is they did not manage the human side. That was left to the intuition of managers or to chance. Many executives don't understand the depth of the anxiety downsizing creates in employees. Decisions get put on hold, productivity plummets -- the organization comes to a grinding halt."

Before you downsize, figure out what the problems are, consider retraining wherever possible and deploy people more efficiently, Birkfeld recommends, because "people are a precious asset."