Global trend-watcher Vikram Mansharamani advises planners to consult experts when necessary, but take responsibility for the big decisions.

At a time of such unpredictability, disruption and risk, it is hard for even the most experienced meeting planner to feel confident when making major decisions about when or whether to hold their next event, or what form it should take. To help explore how planners can make these choices, Vikram Mansharamani, a lecturer at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and author of the just-released Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence, as well as Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst, offers his insights.

He spoke previously at Northstar Meetings Group’s SMU International at the end of February, just as the threat of the coronavirus was beginning to be understood. At that time, he told the audience of meeting planners and supplier, “This is a turbulent time, but there's always been turbulence. That’s not the issue. The issue is how you think about it."

While things have changed significantly since then, that statement still seems to holds true. “We need to keep experts on tap but not on top,” he explains. “We should be using expert input to decide a path forward for ourselves, but we are responsible for understanding the big-picture story, we are responsible for understanding the context of our decisions.” 

Here, Mansharamani walks listeners through decision-making strategies and describes why at this time when nobody has all the answers, planners ultimately must make big decisions themselves.