Planners Want a Seat at the Table. Here’s the Price of Admission.

Planners like to joke they can run the world. Sasha Frieze more or less agrees — but she thinks the industry’s real problem is that too many of its leaders are stuck running the how, not shaping the why.

In her book, “The Chief Event Officer’s Playbook,” event strategist Frieze argues that execution has become table stakes. The next competitive advantage for event teams is strategic power: the ability to design gatherings that advance an organization’s goals, build lasting community, and create measurable change.

Speaking to Skift Meetings, Frieze said her motivation started with a basic observation about the industry’s social wiring. “I realised when I first got into the events industry that actually each event is its own little world, its own little community.” But Frieze’s bigger point is that community is not a nice-to-have; it is the mechanism that can turn an event into something that matters.

Frieze frames that shift as participant-centered design, not organizer-centered production. “Putting the participant at the heart of the event story really creates transformation.” She argues that events become strategic when the participant’s experience is treated as the product, and the change it produces is treated as the outcome.

The “Croissants” Trap

“No one gets promoted for knowing how many croissants to order or doing a really great RFP,” Frieze said. And career progression is the core reason why she wrote the book.

She says senior event leaders are “very often just really busy creating events, and they don’t have the time or the headspace to think strategically.” That busyness has consequences. When a team is measured by administrative deliverables, it’s easy to become an internal service desk rather than a driver of growth, brand, or community.

Frieze is careful not to dismiss operations. Instead she treats it as the baseline assumption. “I am taking execution excellence for granted,” she said. The point is what comes next, the chief event officer mindset, which involves designing and creating events aligned with the organizational strategy.

That is the “chief event officer” concept in practice. It is less about a literal C-suite title and more about a leadership posture: designing events as instruments of strategy rather than outputs of a brief. 

The Price of Admission

Frieze wants event leaders to learn how to translate their craft into executive language. “This is a time for event professionals to take on the chief event officer mindset, to raise their game, to talk the language of the boardroom,” she said. She argues that this is a mindset shift that reframes the job as strategic design.

That is the difference between a coordinator and a strategist, Frieze argues. Too often event teams get straight into operations after receiving a brief. In her framing, the job is not just to execute orders, but to take ownership of what the event can help an organization achieve.

The book features practical examples illustrating the chief event officer approach. A notable favorite, highlighted by Frieze, details how Eszter Mattiassich-Aszody, Head of Global Events at Siemens Healthineers, transformed a simple request. Originally, her team was tasked with arranging a marquee and catering for a wind farm opening deep in the Australian outback. Recognizing that key government officials and the press were unlikely to make the three-hour journey from Adelaide, they strategically reframed the event.

Given that the windfarm was on an Aboriginal site and wind power aligned with both Indigenous traditions and net-zero goals, Mattiassich-Aszody's team shifted the focus. They turned the event into a community celebration centered on unveiling an Aboriginal painting on one of the turbines, involving local schools and farmers. The results were remarkably successful: ministers and media flew in via a specially chartered flight to participate in the community celebration. This overhaul earned Siemens a significant reputational boost.

Examples like this are why Frieze argues that the mindset shift not only changes individuals but also organizations, and can ultimately impact entire industries and sectors.

The Promotion Catch

There is a catch though — a career paradox. 

As event leaders become more strategic, they are more likely to move into broader marketing, strategy, or executive roles. Frieze doesn't dispute the pattern, but she frames it as evidence that the capability of chief event officers is real and valued.

She believes this is a good reason to build a bench of strategic talent inside events. A bench of “conductors” that understand all the different pieces of the business to create events. “In a way I think it's a positive. It creates space for the next great strategic thinker in the events team to move on up.”