Welcome to this week's edition of Event Pulse! In our featured article, we explore a counter-intuitive career strategy that might sound a bit shocking at first—the concept of "mutual expendability" in the workplace. While this piece is packed with insights specifically for event professionals looking to advance their careers, the principles and practical advice shared here can likely benefit employees across virtually any industry. It's a must-read for anyone wanting to take control of their professional trajectory and ensure their contributions don't go unnoticed.

Your Secret Weapon for Event Career Success

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say something that might sound counterintuitive: the ideal workplace relationship is one of mutual expendability. Your employer should be building systems and processes that don't depend entirely on any single person, while you should be continuously making yourself indispensable through the unique value you bring. When both sides maintain this balance, you create a dynamic where you're valuable enough to keep around, but the organization is resilient enough to thrive regardless. What?!? You might say, are you crazy? As if the work place isn’t stressful enough as it is.

Hear me out.

This isn't about creating an adversarial relationship - it's about recognizing that both parties are optimizing for their own interests, and that's perfectly healthy. The employer wants stability and continuity; you want security and growth. The sweet spot is where these interests align.

But here's where most people stumble: you assume that doing good work is enough. You think your contributions will be remembered, your impact will be obvious, and your value will be self-evident when review time comes around. You’re wrong. Today, you might be the hero who saved your event from disaster, tomorrow, it’s already forgotten, replaced by the next problem.

This is where my secret weapon comes in, and it's transformed how I approach every role, whether as an employee or a consultant.

My Secret Weapon: The Win Diary

I keep a diary. Not the kind where I pour out my feelings about office politics or complain about difficult clients. This is a strategic document that captures every win, every success, every moment of value creation. It's my professional insurance policy, and it's been directly responsible for raises, promotions, bonuses, and renewed contracts throughout my career.

You can write this anywhere, I keep a dedicated notebook but you don’t have to. Use a digital document, even quick notes in your phone if that’s what you prefer. The format doesn't matter; the consistency does. What matters is that you're capturing your wins in real-time, when it’s still fresh in your mind, and not scrambling to remember them six months later when you're sitting across from your boss trying to justify why you deserve that raise.

What Goes in the Win Diary

It’s starts with a date. When it happened is important.

Every entry follows a simple structure: briefly spell out the problem, outline the solution you implemented, and quantify the win. This could be saving the company money, generating new revenue, streamlining a workflow, or solving a persistent issue that was frustrating your team or clients.

For example:

• When I joined a professional conference organizer, I found their filing system in disarray. Yes, while each conference or exhibition is different, certain items from an administrative point of view, like contracts, timelines, payment schedules, are uniform. Not finding things at critical moments, wastes precious times. Missing rooming list deadlines with your hotels can depending on the wording of your contract either mean you have inadvertently released rooms, or have committed to more rooms than you actually need. With a background in business administration, I set about creating a standardized filing system for each and every one of my events, that was eventually adopted company wide, and for which I received a bonus.

But wins aren't just about big, measurable outcomes. Positive feedback counts too. When your supervisor mentions in passing that your presentation was particularly well-received, write it down. When a client emails to say they appreciate your responsiveness, save it.

For example:

• Back in the day, before video outputs on Mac computers were standardized, the IT guy for a major Fortune 500 company forgot to bring his dongle, the adapter cable for their Mac Book with him for their CEO’s presentation. Not being a standard part of their kit, the AV company didn’t have one handy. I found out about it less than an hour before his scheduled presentation, tracked down the nearest Apple dealer, grabbed a cab and made it back with dongle in hand with less than 15 minutes to spare. The client, the director for the New York office was so grateful, he wrote an effusive thank you letter to my CEO. I brought it up at my annual review, and it was one of the reasons why I earned myself a promotion that year.

When a colleague thanks you for mentoring them through a difficult project, that's a win. These moments of recognition are just as valuable as the quantifiable results, sometimes more so.

The Strategic Advantage

Here's what most people don't realize: your manager is juggling dozens of priorities, hundreds of interactions, and constant pressure from above. They genuinely forget the great work you did four months ago. They're not being dismissive - they're being human. Your client is running their own business, dealing with their own challenges, and your project is just one item on their endless to-do list. After all, they pay you to solve their problems for them.

When you walk into a performance review or project wrap-up meeting with a clear, documented record of your contributions, you're not just advocating for yourself - you're making their job easier. You're giving them the ammunition they need to advocate for you to their superiors or to justify bringing you back for the next project.

I've seen this play out repeatedly. Colleagues who do excellent work but can't articulate their impact struggle to advance. Meanwhile, those who can clearly demonstrate their value - backed by specific examples and quantifiable results - consistently outperform in reviews and negotiations.

Making It Stick

The key is building this into your routine. I update my win diary every Friday afternoon, reviewing the week and capturing anything worth noting. It takes maybe 10 minutes, but it's 10 minutes that have paid dividends for years.

Don't wait for the big wins. Capture the small ones too. The client who said your communication style made their job easier. The process improvement that saved your team an hour each week. The training session you led that helped a colleague become a better event planner. These accumulate over time into a compelling narrative of consistent value creation.

The Mutual Benefit

Remember that mutual expendability concept I mentioned? Your win diary is how you maintain your side of that balance. You're continuously documenting your unique contributions while helping your employer or client see the concrete value you bring. You're making yourself indispensable not through gatekeeping or creating dependencies, but through consistent, demonstrable impact.

When review time comes, or when that contract renewal conversation happens, you're not hoping they remember your contributions - you're reminding them. And in my experience, that reminder often makes all the difference between a standard review and a career-defining opportunity.

Your wins are happening already. The question is: are you capturing them?