Event teams live in the future: always imagining how to turn event visions into reality. But the future is unpredictable, constantly threatening event organizers' aims to deliver a flawless experience.

Your events team simply can't control or prevent all the variables that have the potential to affect an event. To avoid chaos, teams must be fully equipped and fully empowered to address new challenges and uncertainties—as they arise.

Nearly all (97%) B2B marketers say they believe that in-person events have a major impact on achieving business outcomes. As demand for in-person events returns, B2B event teams need actionable, proven strategies to execute their events, regardless of the obstacles.

Rapidly changing situations, such as travel disruptions or a viral outbreak near an event space, or shifting circumstances such as rising costs, labor shortages, and supply chain issues require agile teams that can adjust mid-stream while remaining strategically aligned.

And though 86% of event-organizing teams say they consider their risk management processes "emerging" or "mature," only 16.6% describe their teams as "mission-ready" to respond to event challenges. To close that gap, teams should incorporate event contingency planning into every event they execute.

Event contingency planning empowers event experience leaders to assess various scenarios and predict potential outcomes. The approach increases your event's resiliency by adding another layer to event strategy planning.

Five Steps for Incorporating Contingency Planning Into Your Team's Process

1. Establish an event contingency planning team

Create an event contingency planning team before you need it. Consider which specific job titles (e.g., event experience leader, event technician, event marketer) and skills, rather than individual employees, map well to each responsibility within your contingency-planning team.

Establish a decision-making hierarchy so your team understands the group's structure should it need to enact a contingency plan. That hierarchy will provide clarity and help avoid chaos and stress when unexpected challenges arise.

Specify the person (or people) in charge of making game-time decisions. During this phase, choose the team's preferred communication channels to ensure everyone can update and access information either quickly or in real-time.

2. Execute scenario-thinking exercises to take advantage of multiple perspectives

Scenario-thinking exercises drive teams to imagine the unexpected circumstances that could pose obstacles to their event goals. By tapping into their knowledge, creativity, and experience, event organizers can maximize the value of scenario-thinking to prepare for future uncertainties.

Your teams should prioritize regular scenario-thinking exercises to fuel their contingency planning. During such exercises, prepare your team for the unknown by generating as many scenarios as possible. Aim to come away with at least 20 scenarios, each with varying event impact.

To gain additional insights, consider inviting a mixed group of team members, vendors, and partners to conduct a "contingency hackathon." Using different perspectives enables teams to identify more potential problems, document them in order of priority, and develop mitigation strategies for the most critical possibilities. Cross-team collaboration facilitates closer working relationships, transparency, and trust throughout your organization—and with other stakeholders involved with the event.

3. Conduct run-of-show exercises to identify needs

After the event strategy is in place, conducting run-of-show exercises will help your team get granular as it reviews the event, identifying individual event elements that have a high probability of not going according to plan.

Consider this example. One of your keynote speakers is facing delays when flying to the US from Italy. Because a speaker's missing your in-person event is a high-probability occurrence, spend some time breaking down the impact of the problem and the changes needed:

• Can the original speaker present the keynote virtually?
• When—at which point—will your team decide whether to move to a backup speaker?
• Have you chosen a backup speaker? Will you use someone who's already on-site?
• Who will tell staff members about the changes? Will the same person inform volunteers and executive leadership?
• Have you drafted messaging for this scenario, or do you still need to compose it?

Pay particular attention to parts of the event most likely to encounter obstacles, and prioritize those scenarios to ensure backup plans are in place.

Incorporate a rating scale to prioritize your team's time and resources, focusing on issues most likely to have an impact. Backup plans for the most significant changes enable your event to continue even if something goes awry or a challenge arises.

4. Hold mock rehearsals for the most unpredictable parts of an event