Making a successful business case for attending the ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference
ICAN
The ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference is well known for boosting professional development, expanding networks and impacting careers.
While these benefits are important and are what our team most consistently hears as reasons leaders keep coming back to the conference year after year, it’s also important to tie this investment back to your company’s bottom line to show the value and how you will bring learnings back to your organization.
In other words, if you want to convince your manager to use their budget to send you to the ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference this year (and we hope you do!), we recommend including the return on investment in your business case in addition to what the conference will mean to you personally.
How to advocate for yourself and others to attend the ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference
One of the best ways to attend the ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference is to go with colleagues from your company. It can be especially valuable to expand your internal network and sit with people from other teams who you may not work with as often. Building relationships with leaders from other teams can be a big benefit to the company: it can improve productivity, innovation and collaboration.
In today’s reality of tight budgets and even tighter schedules, how do you sell your management team on sending a group of leaders to the ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference? You build a convincing and authentic business case.
“It was THE BEST conference I have been to, and I have been to many across the U.S.”
— 2024 conference testimonial
A business case structure you can use right away
Business cases don’t have to be complicated or long. It’s our experience that simple is better – just ensure your most important points are prominent and easy to understand if you aren’t able to make the case in person.
Before writing the business case, familiarize yourself with the speaker lineup and their topics, and determine which are especially relevant to your company’s strategic goals.
Here’s a simple yet effective business case structure you can follow, with some sample language that you can customize, whether you’re advocating for yourself or for a group.
Sample structure
- Executive summary: I am seeking approval for myself and [number] other colleagues to attend the ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference on April 22 at the CHI Health Center in Omaha. My goal is to strengthen our collective leadership skills and acquire new leadership frameworks that will directly impact our company’s departmental efficiencies. [If local to Omaha] In addition, this highly regarded conference requires no travel expenses.
- Strategic alignment: Attending the ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference supports our current company goals in the following ways:
- [Company Goal 1]: The conference features a breakout session on emotional intelligence, which aligns with retention, job satisfaction and management effectiveness.
- [Company Goal 2]: The keynote addresses on technology and innovation will directly impact our goals on company growth and brand awareness.
- [Company Goal 3]: Most leading companies in our community have a presence at the ICAN Women’s Leadership Conference, with 97% of survey respondents giving the conference a satisfaction rating and 96% saying the conference has relevant business applications.
- [Company Goal 4 – If local to Omaha]: This conference is an easy-to-execute way to deliver a transformational and inspiring development opportunity to your employees, providing access to a highly valuable learning and networking experience from global experts right in our backyard.
- Personal development: The conference will help me achieve my individual goals in these ways:
- [Personal Goal 1]: Learning more about optimism intelligence will help improve internal culture.
- [Personal Goal 2]: Expanding my professional network by meeting leaders from across the community.
- Return on investment: Attendees who attend will agree to a knowledge transfer session within their teams to review their takeaways and actionable steps they learned at the conference. These learning recap presentations will also be shared widely on our intranet. This ensures the total investment doesn’t just stay with the people who attended; it will have a ripple effect throughout the company. ICAN produces a Continuing the Conversation toolkit that we will use as a template for these presentations.
- Attendee recruitment: I propose sending a message to managers for nominations to fill the [number] other seats at the table. If more people are nominated than we have seats, we can start a waiting list for next year.
- Proposed coverage plan: To ensure zero disruption to my daily responsibilities, [Colleague Name] will be the point of contact on April 22. I will be reachable by text if any emergencies were to arise.
Mark your calendar for April 22
More than half of attendees each year are repeat participants. Many have attended multiple years. It’s a singular event that allows attendees to focus on themselves and on their contributions to their companies.
One recent survey response summed it up: “I am blown away! I have already started putting the knowledge I gained to work in my current role.”
Whether you’re wanting to attend for the first time or you’ve attended multiple times, we look forward to welcoming you for a day of growth, connection and motivation on April 22 at the CHI Health Center.
