NeuGroup is working on new meeting locations and agenda formats to create a unique experience for in-person events, as we emerge from the pandemic.
NeuGroup’s in-person meetings foster personal connections and trusted relationships that are essential to effective sharing and learning with peers at a time when such knowledge exchange is most critical. To further encourage attendance alongside this core value, we are changing up our meeting location and agenda formats for in-person events. This new approach builds on our formula for successful NeuGroup meetings, which always begins with delivering great content.
Expanding the scope. With each peer group meeting, we are looking to expand the scope of topics and activities covered by the group in line with where we see the puck going in terms of future organization, roles and responsibilities and fostering greater people, process and systems collaboration across the Office of the CFO. This may mean asking members to invite colleagues with subject matter expertise on these topics or responsible for adjacent activities. We encourage our members, accordingly, to collaborate with each other and other parts of finance, as well as the lines of business, and in the process consider spinning-off additional groups.
- For example, our H2 meeting for the NeuGroup for Global Cash and Banking Group will move beyond treasury’s core cash management mandate, to include a view of the end-to-end customer-to-cash process (C2C) and procure-to-pay (P2P), which begins with invoice presentation and includes customer credit-analysis, AP, AR and collections.
- We also encourage members involved in treasury operations to consider the integration between cash activities and the business, e.g., customer and supplier experience plus internal stakeholders, and assume the critical role of leading the effort to optimize working-capital management by leveraging existing processes and systems.
Inviting more people. Our initiative to expand our reach within and beyond treasury is consistent with inviting more people. NeuGroup meetings continue to be about creating circles of trust and intimacy to allow people to exchange meaningfully and speak frankly. However, for this model to work, there needs to be a critical mass of in-person attendance, so we are building out more special events to draw in more cohorts until we get to the point where a high percentage of members from a single group join meetings in person.
- Another way we’ve experimented with more invites is by facilitating more joint meetings, or summits, to more than one group, as we have recently done with our two tech-sector treasurer groups and historically with the FX sister groups and those for Cash Investment.
Extra opportunities to interact, connect and exchange. What makes NeuGroup meetings most valuable are the opportunities to connect and exchange with peer practitioners (and supportive advisors), so we are scheduling more sessions that emphasize 1:1 and small group interaction—sometimes these are carefully curated and sometimes they happen organically. We have found that the individual and small group connections are more easily generated from in-person experiences, driving organic networking and sidebar conversations.
Go to places that lend themselves to quality experiences. All trends coming out of the pandemic point to people being eager to travel to destinations that provide an “experience.” Some people are still not going to their own offices so asking them to fly to someone else’s office may have less appeal than going to a destination. This enhanced meeting experience and value can offset the hassle of traveling. It also helps if the meeting location provides the opportunity have outdoor activities, which mitigate lingering COVID concerns. This may require that CFOs toss out legacy thinking regarding the optics of meeting location and instead promote the value of location and experience in encouraging connection and knowledge exchange.
Our new meeting formula: SUCCESSFUL IN PERSON MEETING = valuable, peer-validated and timely content +ample opportunity to connect and exchange in person + memorable experience(s).
