It was one of the most painful professional mistakes Jennifer Collins, CMP, ever made in her 15 years as a meeting planner. The gaffe serves as a constant reminder to Collins, the president and owner of Event Planning Group, a Washington, DC-based event management company. Here’s what happened: A few years ago, Collins planned a medical symposium for about 300 people at a Washington, DC, hotel. All of the presentations took place in the hotel ballroom except a major speech by a medical specialist, which was booked at a venue several miles away. More than 150 of the symposium attendees indicated when registering that they would attend the offsite speech.

Four hours before the speech was scheduled to start, Collins discovered there was no information about it in the symposium’s official program. At the last minute, Collins and her staff created a flyer with the information to distribute to attendees, but it was too late. Only about 30 people boarded the bus to attend the speech.

As the speaker prepared for his presentation, Collins felt embarrassed. The speaker was angry. “He didn’t say anything but you could see he was seething. He kept saying, ‘Is there no one coming?’ It was painful for me because it was such an awkward situation for him,” said Collins.

Collins’ mistake: “It was not looking closer at the materials and how the speech was promoted,” Collins said.

What she learned: “I didn’t put the promotional content together but that doesn’t make a difference. I should have looked closely at their materials to ensure there was proper language to state what was going to happen. There has to be closer communication and coordination between the planning company and the organization you’re working with about the details they are handling, no matter how small,” said Collins.

All meeting planners — beginners, veterans, young and old — make mistakes. Some errors have little impact on meetings, while others can be catastrophic. Some mistakes are never known to attendees, while other blunders become painfully obvious.

Planners tackle each mistake with this strategy: Fix it as quickly as possible. Don’t let the attendees know about it. Learn from it. Don’t repeat it.

The following lessons emerged from meeting planners’ stories about their mistakes: Double checking meeting details is often not enough. It pays to triple check. When other people say they are going to do something, even if the meeting planner isn’t directly responsible for the task, don’t assume that it’s going to be completed. Don’t believe that mistakes are more likely to occur during large meetings. Small and medium-sized meetings are just as likely to trip up meeting planners.

Meeting planners say they often share stories about their slip ups. They figuratively cry on each other’s shoulders after the mistakes occur and are able to laugh about them after enough time has passed. Most of the meeting planners interviewed for this story sprinkled laughter throughout their tales.

Collins believes that laughter helps planners cope with the impact of professional missteps, which is why she launched “Meet n’ Chuckle: The Lighter Side of Meetings. A Blog Poking Fun at Meeting Planning ‘War Stories,’?” which is on the company’s Web site meetnchuckle.blogspot.com.

Reasons for meeting planning mistakes vary widely. Some involve forgetting and trusting but not verifying. Others stem from overestimating or underestimating the amount of time and work involved in completing a task.

When Nagging Rumors Persist

One of Robert Lowe’s biggest mistakes involved a rumor. Ignoring or delaying response to certain kinds of gossip can potentially undermine meetings, said Lowe, a Houston-based vice president of Nth Degree Events, an event management company with headquarters in Duluth, GA.

A few years ago, Lowe planned a technology industry trade show in Northern California that attracted more than 5,000 people. The keynote speaker was a high-profile CEO of one of the then top-10 Fortune 500 companies. The day before the CEO’s speech, Lowe began to hear vague rumors that the executive was ill and might cancel his appearance. Later that day, Lowe called the CEO’s representative. “He assured me that everything was fine,” said Lowe, a 20-year meeting planning veteran.

The next morning, the rumors persisted. “I called more people at the company, saying that ‘I’ve heard he is sick and I need to get to the bottom of it.’ They said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’?”

Finally, Lowe walked up to the manager of the exhibit booth set up by the CEO’s company and said, “I’m not leaving your space until you get people on the phone who can confirm or deny what I’m hearing.”

The exhibit booth manager made several calls and confirmed that the CEO was ill. Lowe learned the bad news only three hours before the CEO was scheduled to deliver the keynote address. Lowe hurriedly organized a meeting with members of the technology industry organization and industry executives running the event.

“We asked ourselves, ‘If we were doing a discussion panel on the topic instead of a keynote speech, who is the next person we would choose to participate from among the attendees?” The answer was another high-ranking executive with the same company who agreed to deliver the keynote address.

Many attendees were disappointed. “No matter what we did, we were going to have upset people. I had to get rid of that mindset quickly and focus on how to replace the person in the best possible way,” said Lowe.

Lowe’s mistake: “I should have jumped on the rumor more aggressively the day before, instead of waiting until the next day,” he said. That approach would have provided more valuable time to address the problem, perhaps get another speaker and prepare attendees for the change, he added.

What he learned: Don’t ignore a rumor, whether it’s negative or positive, that can impact a meeting. “I’ll never do that again,” vowed Lowe.

A Separate Set Of Eyes

Simple forgetfulness sometimes strikes overwhelmed meeting planners. That happened once to Mary Coch, a partner with Boston-based Corinthian Events, a special events and destination management company.

About two years ago, Coch planned a beach-themed event for 500 guests of a corporation at a hotel in Boston. “We wanted to transform the ballroom into a tropical paradise. We ordered tropical linens, flowers and hula dancers, and 40 palm trees,” said Coch.

Three hours before the event was scheduled to start, Coch asked herself, “Where are my palm trees?”

They hadn’t arrived. “The trees were promised to the client and they were important to the look of the room,” said Coch. She called the vendor, a plant nursery in a suburb of Boston. “It turns out that I didn’t order the palm trees. I thought I had,” said Coch, a 15-year meeting-planning veteran.

“The vendor had to get to his nursery, load the plants and get to the hotel loading dock. The trees arrived 15 minutes before the event started. We got all hands on deck with my people and the hotel and got it done,” said Coch.

The banquet room was closed to attendees until the trees were in place. In addition, the palm trees were brought into the room through an entrance that prevented guests from seeing the last-minute rush.

Coch’s mistake: She falsely assumed she had performed a key task. She didn’t confirm and re-confirm all of her vendor orders.

What she learned: “I learned to reconfirm all your vendors every single time no matter how small the event and no matter if you are sure you did. I also learned to make sure a co-worker or somebody else checks your work, because you look at it so many times that you say, ‘Sure, I did it.’ But if somebody else picks up the folder they can bring a separate set of eyes. That’s a big lesson,” said Coch.

She also learned the importance of maintaining good relationships with vendors. The nursery vendor hustled to pick up the trees and deliver them in a rush partly because he had worked successfully with Coch for several years, she added.

Timing Is Everything

Planners sometimes miscalculate the amount of time it takes to perform certain tasks.

For example, several years ago Coch planned a banquet in a Boston hotel for 4,000 members of an association. The theme and décor of the event were derived from the “Polar Express,” the movie based on the children’s book by the same name. In the movie and book, Santa gives a child a silver bell — a key part of the story.

Coch decided to distribute 4,000 small silver bells attached to blue ribbons at the event. After ordering the items, Coch and her staff threaded the ribbons through the holes atop each of the bells. They worked on the project off and on for several weeks. The entire project took much longer than Coch had anticipated.

On the day of the event, Coch and her staff gently placed the ribbon-adorned bells into boxes and transported them to the hotel. When Coch opened the box, she discovered that the ribbons had become twisted, entangled and knotted during transportation. There was no time to disentangle and straighten the ribbons, so Coch and her crew cut them off and placed the bells at the banquet tables.

Coch’s mistake: “Trying to do it ourselves instead of outsourcing. Not thinking through the logistics of putting together the pieces and figuring out how it would work from start to finish,”

What she learned: Don’t underestimate the amount of time and effort it takes to do even the smallest tasks. Outsource some things that you think you can do yourself.

Don’t Forget Security

Meeting planners who organize large functions with VIPs often have security challenges and must control access to the events. Sometimes, requiring attendees to show registration badges is enough to control access, and sometimes it’s not, as Lowe learned.

He organized a software industry conference in California for about 4,000 people. A former vice president was invited to address the attendees, and a crowd of demonstrators showed up outside the hotel to protest his appearance.

But as it turned out, the protest wasn’t limited to the outside of the hotel. “During the presentation, demonstrators that had gotten in started screaming things about this person’s political views. We had all the security in the room we needed, and the people were quickly taken out and the former vice president kept going,” said Lowe.

Later, Lowe discovered that some attendees had given their conference registration badges and materials to the protestors.

Lowe’s mistake: “Not anticipating that some protestors might try to get inside,” said Lowe.

What he learned: For some VIP appearances, check individual photo identifications along with the conference registration badges.

Big Mistakes At Small Meetings

Is it easier to make mistakes with small or large meetings? Planners say they can make similar errors at small and large events with equally bad consequences. “A small meeting is a large meeting but only smaller. If I’m moving thousands of people around instead of a few hundred, there are more logistics involved. But in terms of the nuances of making sure that everything runs smoothly and what can go wrong, it’s not very different,” said Joey Roberts, CEO of Roberts Event Group, an event management and planning company located in Jenkintown, PA.

Big mistakes at small meetings can have a big impact. “If the only speaker or the main speaker at a small event doesn’t show up, that’s a catastrophe. But if one of 12 doesn’t show at a big event, as bad as it is, it’s not the whole show,” said Lowe.

Small mistakes at small meetings can also have a big impact. Case in point: Earlier this year, Collins planned a meeting at a hotel in Washington, DC, for 40 professionals of an organization. As the meeting was about to start, one of the participants noticed that the minutes of the last meeting weren’t in their folders. Collins printed out the minutes from her laptop and distributed them.

The minutes were a crucial detail because the group’s discussion of them was the sole purpose of the meeting. Without the minutes, the participants would have felt that something important was missing, said Collins.

“There are fewer details at small meetings but they are more concentrated and focused details that you really need. With smaller meetings, you are working with less, but what you are working with becomes more important if you don’t have it,” said Collins.

Even veteran planners admit that they still sometimes make mistakes. “You never stop. Never think you have learned it all because there is always something that can happen at the next event,” said Lowe.

Solid Advice From A Veteran

Lowe offers the following advice to meeting planners who want to learn from each faux pas: Write them down.

“If there is a challenge that we overcome, I write it down in a notebook that I keep. It’s ragged. One of my mentors that I worked with long ago suggested that I write it down. When you are onsite, there is so much going on that, by the time the day is done, you might forget,” said Lowe.

Meeting planning routinely presents so many unpredictable challenges that some planners see them as just that — challenges.

“We sometimes end up creating emergency plans for challenges — I don’t call them mistakes — and how to respond to them,” said Roberts. “There are always things beyond our control that we didn’t anticipate that we try to mitigate with our level of experience,” said Roberts, who has been a meeting planner for more than 20 years.

Call them self-imposed challenges or mistakes, but they will continue to pop up occasionally.

“It will always be that way because meeting planners aren’t perfect,” said Collins.

Coch added, “Mistakes make you better and sometimes make you laugh.”    C&IT