I was talking with a client yesterday about an annual event her organization held recently.  Sounds like it went really well, but she could only see the mistakes.

As she relayed the details to me, I could see that the mistakes were visible to her and maybe other staff, but the rest of the guests probably had no clue anything wasn’t perfect.  This is often the case – we see the warts and we’re so critical of ourselves.

Seems like no matter how well we plan, there are always little things that could have been done better.  My best advice is to do a complete “lessons learned” on each event you hold.  Make a list of everything that went really well and everything that needs to be fixed next time.  Be sure to solicit this same info from a few others too – volunteers, staff, others who attended or worked on the event.  Write these down!  Don’t hold them in your head.  I promise you by the time this event comes around next year, you won’t remember. 

My advice to my client – create a timeline for the event that just happened, knowing what you know now.  Do your “lessons learned” activity.  Both in writing.  Then next year, pull out these documents and use them to plan for the event.  It’ll make your life loads easier!

By the way, my client estimates that there were more people in attendance at her event this year, they raised a bit more money than last year, and people who had attended for several years said it as the best one ever.  I’m thinking it was a successful event!  What do you think?