Being Chicken Licken?
As a child I had a story book where a chicken runs around telling everyone the sky is falling in because he is hit on the head by an acorn. Reading this story I always felt panicked by the urgency that ‘Chicken Licken’ displayed as he ran around telling everyone with the goal of saving them all.
(For those of you who don’t know the story here is a summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny)
In the last few weeks I have found myself wondering ‘Am I being Chicken Licken’. In other words am I trying to tell everyone something that will ‘save’ them in the future and am I spending too much time on this?
Together with my amazing work team I have recently launched a campaign which allows event professionals to take action in a way that aligns with their client needs and global government approach. To be more specific it allows them to take action on carbon emissions in a way that the UN, governments and businesses will understand. While there has been fantastic support for the campaign and the number of commitments we have gathered in the first month rivals other sectors experience after a year I have still found myself slightly panicked that not everyone might know about this opportunity.
Unfortunately that panic has been turning to frustration and I see resignation on the horizon as the communication channels I have always been taught to use to reach event professionals (associations, trade media, trade exhibitions) consistently place their carbon creating business models ahead of the future for the event sector. This week a major industry exhibition told me ‘Our exhibitors and attendees are getting too many emails about our event logistics right now for us to tell them about an initiative where they can make a carbon commitment but we could do something in March’. Meanwhile the two umbrella associations are competing on white papers and education initiatives neither of which will raise the sectors profile at government level because they will be competing initiatives. It’s when I find myself thinking about how to solve this challenge I realise I’m being Chicken Licken and spending my time on panicked messaging.
The reality is not everyone will change their business models and that is natural. I can either be Chicken Licken about it or spend my time collaborating with the (majority corporate) event professionals who are taking action- its an easy choice when I write it like that!