Leadership summits

One of the most powerful things a community can do is bring its leaders together in a meeting to talk about and come to consensus on a major issue. Not a handful of leaders or a cross-section of leaders, but all the top leaders. A hundred or more people in a room for a day, thinking about a single problem or opportunity.

The benefit: In this event, you could decide the community's direction and build support for solutions. (Added benefit: As convener, your organization could place itself at the center of community decision making.)

Summits are powerful events, then, but they can be risky. The stakes are high—these are, after all, your community's leaders so you can't waste a minute of their time—and there's a potential for disaster. Every community has leaders who don't get along. What if they replay their disputes in the middle of your meeting?

It pays, then, to have an experienced consultant help design, manage and facilitate your community leadership summits. Civic Strategies can help by focusing the summit's agenda, preparing materials for the summit, brainstorming about the invitation list, setting up the day's activities, facilitating the meeting, managing the day's work product and producing the post-summit report.

We have long experience in managing summits and other large-scale events. In fact, we've written a paper about leadership summits called Introducing the Left Hand to the Right Hand.

Want to learn how we can work with your organization in creating an exciting and productive community summit? Contact us.