By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady
Business meetings and business travel have been getting a lot of bad press the last few months, led by the poster child for bad PR, the much-maligned, beaten-and-battered insurance giant, AIG. But BLR’s CEO Bob Brady finds value in getting off-site.
Faced with tough economic times, BLR has joined most companies and ratcheted back travel budgets, even though we’ve never been particularly lavish. But we’re still making some trips. Let’s face it, we travel not because we enjoy it but because we get economic benefit from seeing customers, getting training, and doing research.
Over the last few years, I’ve written several times about the pleasures of a good meeting. Meetings are so much fun, especially if they take place in some hard-to-reach locale that means sitting in a packed airplane (there’s no BLR Gulfstream at the local airport), sleeping in a strange hotel, and otherwise giving up comfortable routines.
Some executives may get to party at exotic locales, but most of the business meetings I go to—even when they are in perfectly nice places—are work. We start early and end late. Dinners and other events—though stimulating—are more often than not more work than pleasure. Sound familiar?
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Why Do It?
So, why do we do it? There is one big reason: Meetings are stimulating and productive. Meetings with customers help us understand their needs in a way that phone calls, e-mails, Web meetings, etc., can never quite equal. Technology is very useful, but it doesn’t replace face-to-face contact.
Over the years, most of the new and novel ideas that have helped BLR in a major way have had their “aha” moment during the course of an event outside of the office. At an industry association meeting. An education seminar. A meeting with a client. (BLR staffers hate it when I get back to the office with a new brainstorm.)
Yet, you wouldn’t get those brainstorms from reading or watching the news, or listening to your favorite member of Congress. Listen to them and you hear that business travel is bad, marked by excess, evil. (And there has to be some irony in this as President Obama uses Air Force One to make the Jay Leno show in California. He knows the importance of travel and he’s not scrimping.)
In Support of Business Travel
Faced with this condemnation, the New York Times Business Section of March 22, 2009, had several articles on the other side, supporting business travel. The most provocative was by Ben Stein, the actor/lawyer/writer/economist polymath, whose column was titled “Don’t Blame the Business Trip.”
Stein starts off by noting that he, too, hates to “… see my tax dollars going to entertain employees of bailed-out companies lavishly.” He then goes on, “The truth is that business meetings are usually not a waste of time, even if they are held in Las Vegas or at a resort with a golf course…. At the meetings I attend, men and women fly coach, stay in immense, boxy hotels, start their meeting days at breakfast at 7 a.m. and work through the day until far later than seems reasonable to me.” If that sounds familiar, join the club.
Stein asks, rhetorically, “Could Congress really do its work if it held its sessions by teleconferencing?” And he goes on to condemn the “puritanical excess” sweeping the country, saying that its most likely effect will be to cause unemployment among the waiters, cooks, and maids in the hospitality industry.
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Brutal Times
This is probably the toughest business climate I’ve ever faced, and at BLR we are being forced to take measures that we don’t like. We’re taking them because we need to preserve energy and capital to be ready to take advantage of the opportunities that will be there when the economy recovers (and it will!).
Now is the time to prepare for innovation, and reaching out beyond the confines of the office is very, very important. We’re saying “no” to a lot of travel, and we’re trying to get the biggest bang for the buck by making the most of local opportunities, using technology where it’s appropriate, and pinching pennies. We’re doing this so we can have funds for the most important travel.
HR’s Role
I’m curious how the rest of you in HR see this. Do you see travel as a waste of time and money? For your own department? Sales? Others? Are we being penny-wise and pound-foolish to cut travel? How does your company see it?
E-mail me your opinions at Rbrady@blr.com.
There would be no need to plea for not blaming the business trip if there had not been both excesses and a general affliction of tone-deafness by the top of the business food chain to this issue.
Once the excesses are publicized, it makes it that much harder to defend the useful offsite meetings. It may be the time to question every expenditure – both based on real need, and on what message it sends to the public and rank-and-file employees who are losing their jobs at an ever increasing pace. To not do that denies the reality of our current situation. And that is never good for either business or people.
I see nothing wrong with trips that have a legitimate business purpose. The problems that I have are employees who have suites or stay at the nicest/most expensive hotels or have to eat at the priciest restaurants. Is this really necessary? There are plenty of affordable hotels and moderately priced restaurants to choose from. It is these types of actions that make those of us who are thrifty with company money look bad.