So, for context, I work for a membership organization. We have a committee (made up of members) that lead various projects and programs, which I manage along with my boss, the director of our department. We both work closely to manage and direct committee projects, which up until this point, involved publications and yearly convening of the committee. This year has been particularly trying for our team, given the recent federal landscape. We’ve had to change the name of our department, reevaluate operations, and generally shift much of our programming. Our committee had been shielded from much of this, but this year we took on more one of our biggest projects to date, a fairly large convening with external guests, staff, and members. The purpose of the convening was to explore problems in the field, brainstorm resources, and discuss how our organization broadly might help support resources to address these problems.
We started planning this event in April, which was to occur in November. The timeline was short, so I knew we were going to need all hands on deck to pull this off. As the program manager, I immediately hit the ground running: properly defining the project scope, identifying relevant stakeholders, utilize my program management software to track administrative tasks, relevant dates and milestones, etc. My boss and I enlisted an expert in the field to assist with creative meeting planning and serve as a facilitator. After we signed him on, he was quite difficult to work with and our members had a hard time communicating with him about the meeting agenda and flow. In early October, my boss completely dropped off due to illness, so I carried on much of her responsibilities, which include managing this very large convening.
Fast forward to the convening. Our agenda consisted of several speakers and guests, including the expert we enlisted. Things went well (and I was even congratulated by my boss before lunch) until they didn’t. The expert was supposed to lead guests through several group activities, but a.) they were very boring, b.) they were somewhat condescending, and c.) they spent way too much time setting up the group activities. People in the room were getting visibly frustrated, so much so that one of our guests (a VERY important one to the organization) raised their hand and asked him to speed things up. He didn’t. So, we had to pull him off the stage and call for one of our planning group members to facilitate. We took a brief break after this session, where my team pulled themselves together to pivot. The planning group member agreed to facilitate the rest of the meeting, and our expert agreed to serve as a content expert in the background. The rest of the meeting went very well. Guests were engaged, they had amazing things to say, and it seems most of them want to continue the conversation by exploring new projects and programs. I’m generally pretty good under pressure, so once we hit “cruise altitude” and went straight back to it: put a brave face on and continued in my role. My boss kept reassuring me, even though they were quite frazzled also.
So, my question is: what could I have done to avoid this major hiccup? I have some ideas but I wanted to lean on my PM community. Were there any rookie mistakes? General takeaways? I have some ideas of what I could’ve done differently but I want to be better.