The Power of Working Together

We just finished a lovely program for The American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (AACD) which drew more than 4,400 people to San Diego. This program was a reminder of why I love this business. From my first meeting with Stacey Budd, the Director of Meetings and Ed Simeone, CMP, CMM, Executive Producer with Fusion Productions, I knew I wanted to work with these people.

The true rewards in a service industry are the smiles of guests and the camaraderie of a team that worked together for months to achieve the goals of the organization. Inherently, everyone wants to do a good job. But every once in a while, a group of people come together who “CLICK” . . . whose styles are complimentary and supportive; and then, you have to have a little bit of luck. Since the theme of this conference was “Pillars of Perfection”, a reflection of the heritage of the Academy’s President, Nick Davis – I think we had the benevolence of the Greek gods watching over us. And added to this talented team was a fantastic hotel partner, the San Diego Marriott, and my favorite CSM in the world, Tim Cloonan. It was truly a “dream team.”

Despite the chill of “May Gray Days,” the warmth and success of the conference was evident in every session and every activity. By Saturday evening, when the Leadership Gala celebrated the week’s events, everyone involved knew it had been a memory-making experience.

My point in writing this is simple. If everyone approached their programs with this spirit of shared professionalism and respect, the success ratio would increase significantly. So often, people are looking to blame one another instead of support one another. Stacey and Ed worked closely with us to develop the events and the logistics for this program – then they trusted us to implement the details successfully.

This forum also allows me to recognize our team who were integral to the development and fulfillment of this fabulous program – Debbie Osaki, CMP, DMCP, Senior Account Manager; Ann Johnston, Director of Operations; and Dawn Gilday, Operations Manager. This TMM Team worked with so many great vendor partners to produce a fantastic program. The program would not have been such a success without the talented and creative support of Dani Evangelista, Carissa Buettner and Jim Lennox at Pacific Event Productions who worked tirelessly to support us from concept to conclusion.

This program moves to Atlanta next year, and our Network partner, Atlanta Arrangements, is well poised to carry this program forward. We will share with them everything we learned and they too will enjoy the opportunities this program represents.

It is a reminder – what a standard of excellence we are able to achieve when we all work together.