Jodie McLean 0:04
Hey, I'm Jodie Event Manager, business owner, educator and podcast host. I'm an introverted homebody want to be wine master. And I truly believe in the power of events to inspire delight and ignite human potential. Every week, I take you backstage into the wonderful world of business events, and give you the insider scoop on how to take your events to the next level. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the lands where we live, learn and listen. Let's get into it.
Jodie McLean 0:39
Well, hello, and welcome to episode 27 of the events Insider PodCast. So today, we are diving straight in because I want to talk to you about your event run sheet. Firstly, because I mean, I think it's super critical to your event success, regardless of how big or small the event is. But secondly, because I think there are a lot of small tweaks and tips that I can share from my experience to help you optimise your run shape. And when I say optimise your Ranchi, I mean to make it more accurate to how things will actually happen on the day. Because I think sometimes when we're, you know, writing down timings or the flow and the structure of the event, we're kind of winging it, and kind of guessing how long we think things will take, and sort of hoping that it will just work out on the day. And there's a lot of things that I've learned over the years that now inform how I put together my run sheets. And that's what I want to share with you today.
Jodie McLean 1:42
So what is a run sheet, and when do you need one. So essentially, your event run sheet is a document that outlines the schedule or the sequence of activities for your event. So it'll include information, like the timing of each like segment or activity at your event, what that session is, who is responsible for that session. And then kind of any important notes or instructions that maybe your venue or your AV team or your other staff need to know. So like I said, event run sheets are really essential for ensuring that your event runs smoothly. And according to the plan that I'm sure you've spent a long time working on developing. It's essentially like one source of truth that ensures everyone involved in the event is following the same plan and knows what they need to do and when. And it really doesn't matter if your event is you know, a small 20 person board meeting or client dinner, or it's a large company wide Christmas party for hundreds of people. Your event run sheet might look different for each of those. But it's still super important to have one, you might find that your venue will create a simple one. Or you might find that your suppliers will request one from you ask if you have one. So I think it's always worth creating one yourself and sharing it with all of your stakeholders and your venue. Even if you think your event is just you know, a small simple thing.
Jodie McLean 3:15
So where do we start? How do we put together a run sheet. Now, since you're listening to this podcast, I'm assuming that you've planned a few events before. So you may already have a few versions of previous run sheets, or you might even have like a standard template your go to that you use each time. Now if you don't have a go to template, or you think you might want a new one, or there could be a better one, then I'll link to ours in the show notes for you. And you can grab that. The one we use is look it's fairly straightforward. But it has just the right amount of detail without making it like really complex and overwhelming and bigger than it needs to be because I think sometimes we can fall into that trap as well. If you've got a great template that works for you and the kinds of events that you look after, then that's great.
Jodie McLean 4:05
So now let's talk about what goes into it and how we can optimise it. So the first thing that I recommend is that your run sheet should be an evolving document from the moment you start planning the event until one week prior to your event. And then it basically shouldn't be touched. And I'll explain what I mean. So if we leave our run sheet until closer to the event date, what happens if all of the things we've actually planned, don't really fit within the start and end time for our event. Or vice versa. What if we discovered that actually, the event should have been shorter and should have been three hours instead of four. But we've already invited people and told them the time. So I'm a big advocate of the guest experience and if you've listened to this podcast, you will know that and I think guest experience 101 is making sure that your events outs and ends on time, and that you're not wasting people's time. So we want to make sure that as soon as we start planning our event, that we open up our run sheet template, and put in some initial timings and content that we think the event is going to look like. Then as we continue to plan the event, we may need to tweak the timings or add or remove content as we go. The only rule I have is that one week prior to your event, the run sheet must be final, and communicated to all stakeholders.
Jodie McLean 5:33
Now often, I'll actually send the run sheet to stakeholders early. So you know, depending on the event may be between two and four weeks prior, longer if it's a more complex event shorter if it's a more simple event. And I basically say this is the run sheet, let me know if you have any changes or additions. Or if there's anything you think might be an issue, then you can make those changes. And then one week prior, the final version is sent to everyone. And that's it. That's the run sheet that you're all working from on the day.
Jodie McLean 6:05
Now, the second thing I recommend is keeping your run sheet brief. And I know that sounds counterintuitive, because you know, it's meant to be this one source of truth and ensure everyone knows what they're doing. And wouldn't you want it to be thorough and include as much detail as possible. But no, I actually think having lots of information on a run sheet causes like confusion and overwhelm. And people might miss information. And we don't want to blur the lines between a run sheet and a supplier brief. If you've got an MC or lots of AV requirements or lots of entertainers, the run sheet is not the place to tell them everything they need to do. I think that should be a separate briefing document. So I'll use the MC as an example, your run sheet needs to say more than just MC introduce speaker. But it doesn't need to say MC to introduce such and such as the keynote speaker. And here's a whole paragraph about them that you need to read out. That information can be in a separate document that you just give to the emcee, the run sheet is a document for everyone. And while it can be handy to have everything in one place, that information is not important to your venue staff or your AV crew. They need to know what's happening at what time and who's involved. But they don't need to have all of that detail.
Jodie McLean 7:25
Now, if you're using Excel or Google Sheets, then you can put this additional information on a separate tab. And that way, you're still keeping it in one document. But it's not clogging up the main run sheet. Okay, so we've got our run sheet template. It's an evolving document, we're tweaking it as we're planning. And we'll share it with everyone wants two weeks prior, we're keeping it brief and punchy with the key information and putting additional information on separate tabs. So now let's talk about ways that we can optimise the flow and the schedule of our event, not just the document itself, but the actual running and timings of the event to make sure that it's a good experience for guests, and they were able to execute what we've planned.
Jodie McLean 8:11
So my tip number one is to always leave buffer time. So think about the areas in your event schedule, where if you were running over time, where can you make that up if you need to. So it might be that you're serving a main meal. And the venue have said they need 45 minutes for means for them to serve for people to eat and forget to be cleared from the table, you might decide to put one hour for means on the run sheet rather than 45 minutes. And know that if your formalities were running over time, then you can probably still 15 minutes back from the main course timings on the day and get back on track with your run sheet. So that's what I mean by having buffer time. You don't want to have everything on the run sheet to the exact time that you think it will take. Because the last thing we want to do is for the event to run over time, and people get annoyed or they need to leave or the venue they need to charge you more or anything like that. So if your event has a lot of content than we need to build in buffer time, because everything always takes longer than you think it will.
Jodie McLean 9:19
Now tip number two is related. And that is to always leave at least 30 minutes at the end with no formalities. So not only does it give you that buffer time if you need it, but it also creates what I think is a Karma event experience. Because we want to remember that people are busy, right? So they're often going to be booked up back to back and we don't want people rushing off as soon as we finished as soon as someone stepped off stage or sitting there, you know, wondering when are formalities going to end because they need to go soon and sort of looking at their watch and feeling a bit anxious to having at least 30 minutes where there's nothing official happening. Just creates that nice environment. Everyone to sort of casually wrap up and depart on time. You know, even if your event is more of a social event, rather than lots of content or formalities, I still wouldn't have any like entertainment, or more food being brought out in the last 30 minutes. We want it to be that nice organic wrap up of the event, and not still having stuff going on right up until the last minute. Now, the two exceptions to this would be music and drinks, they absolutely need to continue until the end. But everything else should be finished at least 30 minutes beforehand.
Jodie McLean 10:35
Now, tip number three is to have the start time, the end time and the duration for each line on your answer sheet. Now, it might seem like that's doubling up. Obviously, if you start something at seven, and end at 730. Everyone knows that's 30 minutes, but I like to have a column that says 30 next to it. And if you're using Excel or Google Sheets, it can easily do this for you. But the reason that it helps people stick to timings better is because they can easily see the allocated amount of time that they have. You know, it's much easier for entertainers or presenters or even venue staff to know that, okay, it starts at seven, they've got 30 minutes for that thing. Now, I don't know why it must be something to do with the way that our brain works. But by having the allocated duration on the run sheet, rather than just the start and end time, it actually does help people stick to their timings better.
Jodie McLean 11:30
Tip number four. And my final tip for today is to use document formatting to your advantage. So if there are key elements in your event, then maybe they go in bolt, or maybe you highlight them in a different colour. Or if you've got a lot of AV components, like lots of slides and video happening, then you could create a separate column in your run sheet specifically for AV and detail exactly what needs to happen on the screen at each moment of the run sheet. If you've got you know lots of different staff with different roles at the event, then maybe you could use different colours for each person to highlight who is responsible for what, so that each person can simply just focus in on the elements that they need to look after. We want to remember that essentially, the purpose of our run sheet is to provide direction to people to ensure a smooth flowing event and to make sure that everything happens, as it's meant to at the time that it's meant to. So we need to make sure that our run sheet is formatted in a way that's easy to read and follow.
Jodie McLean 12:37
Now if you want to make sure that you are starting off on the right foot, then remember you can grab our run sheet template at the link in the Episode Notes. It's an editable Excel document and it comes with a short training video as well. So I'll walk you through it. So remember, we want our run sheet to be an evolving document that we set up at the start of planning. But we want to keep it brief and not clog it up with information. Remember to always have buffer time. Finish formalities at least 30 minutes before the end include the start time, end time and duration for each element. And we want to format it in a way that is easy to follow. So that's it for today.
Jodie McLean 13:17
If you found this episode helpful at all, I would love you to leave a rating or review of the podcast so that we can help more people plan events with confidence. I will chat to you next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the events Insider PodCast. If you loved it, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, share with your friends and I'll chat to you next week. Bye
