When you are beginning the process of planning an event, everything tends to come from your own perspective. What I mean by that is - you know what you want the event to do / be, which is fine so long as you are the only one going to be affected by the choices and decisions you make. Of course unless you are planning a holiday for yourself - by yourself, you will have to involve other people in the process. You will need your partners thoughts and suggestions if you are planning a wedding for example. You may also want to include parents in the decision making process or any children you may have. Which if you have ever chosen to get married can be enormously stressful - especially if their needs and desires don't match yours.

So what do we mean - by "beware the self-reference criteria"? Well - take a holiday for example. We know where we want to go, and we will do everything in our power to ensure we get to do those things we say we want - and be darned to anyone who doesn't want to join in. Or we may feel responsible in some way for the holiday and try and enforce our suggestions on the people who are travelling with us. They may not know what they want to do - they just don't want to do what you want.

As you will have gathered by now - planning an event is all about compromise. You may have to change the dates / times / destination / venue / speaker / colour scheme / decorations / marketing material / route - and everything else associated with it. Now you may be able to take your ego out of the equation and be able to discuss the matter rationally with the other people involved. Believe me it certainly helps if you can. Or you may not be able to get rid of your ego at all and you will compromise on none of the details. It's YOUR event and that's what YOU want, so there. But if you want the event to be successful - beware the self-reference criteria, after all their suggestions may be better than our initial thoughts (see I told you, you needed to think about taking your ego out of the equation).