Essay 3.1 | Broaden Your Perspective
When I joined Microsoft, one of the first surprises was how hard it was to answer a few simple questions: How much were we spending on events? Where were we showing up in person? What was the objective of each gathering?
No one was hiding the information. It was simply scattered. Product groups had event budgets. Regions had event budgets. Sales, HR, partners, and leadership teams each had their own rhythms. Everyone had reasons. Many were doing good work. But few people could see the whole picture.
At CES, that fragmentation was visible. Different Microsoft teams appeared across Las Vegas in different rooms, booths, suites, messages, and experiences. A customer with a broad relationship to Microsoft could spend much of a day moving from one Microsoft to another, even though from the customer’s point of view the relationship was with one company. Inside the frame, each team’s choice made sense. Outside the frame, the pattern was confusing.
That is why perspective matters. Most organizations view events from the inside out: our product, our region, our quarter, our audience, our booth, our keynote. Participants experience them from the outside in. They stitch together everything: the conference, the email, the social post, the partner dinner, the competitor’s event, the sales meeting, the sponsorship, the hallway conversation, and the follow-up that did or did not happen.
A broader perspective asks leaders to stop treating events as isolated moments and start seeing them as a portfolio. What are we already doing? Why does each gathering exist? How do these touchpoints interact in the lives of the people we care about? What are we not doing that we should? What should we stop doing because it no longer serves the story?
This is not about centralizing every decision until the magic dies. It is about coherence. A portfolio view reveals duplication, gaps, brand confusion, wasted effort, and surprising pockets of genius. It also helps organizations choose where human presence truly matters and where another tool might do the job better.
The whole picture is already there. Your audience is already seeing it. Broaden your perspective far enough, and you can finally see it too.
Acts of Humanity: The Power of Purposeful Events — releasing August 11, 2026. Learn more or pre-order at actsofhumanitythebook.com. #ActsOfHumanityTheBook
