Anne Benisch, founder of event planning and design company Planned By Anne, has built her entire career upon the foundations of collaboration, smart decision-making, and interpersonal leadership. Fueled by her passion for organizing and event planning, and the way they allow her to build relationships and create shared memories with others, Benisch has found success in a number of companies before founding her own. In that time, she’s learned that many of the same skills that make her an effective event planner also make her an effective leader.
Through Planned By Anne, Benisch organizes and plans for events of all kinds, including but not limited to conferences, charity events, fundraisers, birthday celebrations, tournaments, staff retreats, and even the occasional wedding. This intersection of creativity and logistics organizing requires strong collaborative instincts, keen decision-making, and well-maintained relationships—all skills that are crucial for strong leadership and successful entrepreneurship. It’s no surprise that Anne Benisch has developed a clear framework for effective decision-making, nor is it surprising that she’s built a broad portfolio of successful events using it.
The Elements Of Effective Decision-Making
For event planners like Anne Benisch, making effective decisions is crucial for ensuring smooth and successful events. When constantly working with different clients, vendors, and venues, there are hundreds of decisions to make on any given event, and each one of them plays a critical role in creating the shared experiences Benisch prides herself on. Through study, trial, and error, Anne Bensich has solidified 10 key elements of effective decision making:
- Clear Objectives: Understand the goal and objectives of any project entirely before making any decisions. Having a firm grasp on the end point guides every subsequent step in the process.
- Thorough Planning: Develop a detailed plan that outlines timelines, budgets, resources, and roles for each team member.
- Prioritization: Identify the key components that dictate the project’s success, and focus on those first. By focusing on decisions that align with the key goals, a leader can ensure that critical elements are always done first.
- Data-Driven Insights: Leverage data and knowledge from past experiences, feedback, and data analytics to inform decisions. Understanding trends, preferences, and pitfalls will help a leader make better decisions.
- Flexibility: Very few plans reach completion without some complication or necessary change due to unexpected circumstances. Being adaptable and able to pivot is vital for a leader making decisions in response to unexpected situations.
- Collaboration: There is strength in numbers. Engaging with the team, clients, and other involved parties will open the door to diverse perspectives that may inform wiser or more effective decisions down the line.
- Risk Management: Identify potential risks early and create contingency plans for them early in the planning process. It’s easier to make decisions during a crisis if you’ve planned for the crises in advance.
- Communication: Clear communication is a universal good. Keeping all stakeholders informed throughout the decision-making process not only ensures that everyone is in alignment and properly executing the plan, but it also builds personal and professional integrity.
- Empathy/Intuition: Anyone involved with a project, be they client, vendor, employee, or other third party, has needs and feelings that can impact the decision-making process during a project. Be aware of these and regularly touch base with the people involved with the project.
- Post-Event/Project Analysis: After the project is complete, review what was and wasn’t effective with the team and relevant stakeholders (if appropriate). Reflecting on the course of a project after it’s complete builds more functional knowledge that can be used in future projects.
Anne Benisch demonstrated the value of this process while planning an outdoor event in early 2024. The event was a major corporate retreat playing host to several key stakeholders, and featuring events that were designed to be majority outdoors. The complication was an unpredictable, and unfavorable, weather forecast that threatened to rain out the event, and Benisch was forced to decide whether or not to move forward with it at all.
She followed her process, consulted with her team, analyzed the weather patterns with expert help, and reviewed the contingency plans, and decided to continue the event while also simultaneously preparing indoor backup plans. The weather did in fact disrupt the outdoor portion of the event, but the planning and preparations made the switch to indoor activities seamless and made for a fantastic experience. According to Benisch, the feedback was “overwhelmingly positive,” with several attendees calling out the flexibility and smooth execution of the transition.
Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Relationships
Much of Anne Benisch’s decision-making framework is as applicable to leadership and entrepreneurship as it is event planning, which has been a clear boon for her growing business. But strong leadership and savvy business-ownership are not built on good decision-making alone—they are built on relationships, values, and achievable goals. For a business like Planned By Anne, Benisch especially prioritizes relationships, as they are the core of her business model and personal passion alike.
For Benisch, and many others, building and maintaining relationships has been the critical ingredient for growing their career and finding success. From colleagues and mentors to clients and vendors, all business is built on relationships, and few more so than Planned By Anne. To that end, Anne Benisch has distilled her secret to cultivating these connections into 10 key components:
- Be authentic and trustworthy
- Communicate effectively
- Show appreciation
- Be supportive and collaborative
- Maintain professional boundaries
- Engage in mentorship
- Invest In continuous learning and growth
- Be consistent and reliable
- Navigate conflict with grace
- Reflect and adapt
Both of Benisch’s lists emphasize three core things: communication, learning, and empathy. All effective leadership, entrepreneurship, and organizational careers can be boiled down to these three focuses. The vision and adaptability of a leader is influenced by their willingness to learn and expand their horizons, their emotional intelligence and effective team management is driven by their empathy, and their integrity and decision-making is dictated by their communication skills. All are necessary for someone to be an effective leader, entrepreneur, and/or organizer.
By Chris Bates
