19 November 2026 09:15 - 09:45
Think outside the checkbox: Deal desk's evolution from gatekeeper to growth engine
Every Deal Desk has one (or hundreds): the approval no one remembers creating, the button only one person's allowed to press, the checkbox that was supposed to fix data tracking forever, but never did. This session starts there; we'll workshop those pesky nuisances live, then trace them to the strategic work Deal Desk is all too often left out of. Throughout our journey, you'll see exactly how starting small snowballs into thinking big.
This is a working session, not a lecture. Come ready to participate and bring real-life examples! We'll build off those examples and dig into how to identify - fast, and often without perfect data - whether Deal Desk is solving a real problem, solving the wrong problem, or stuck solving no problem at all (and what to do about it). But we won't stop there! We'll keep peeling back layers - how to prioritize when everything's "urgent," how to spot the root patterns hiding behind messy deals, and how to get a room full of disagreement to land on a decision that sticks.
By the end, you'll leave with practical ways to kill the work wasting everyone's time (especially yours), a model for turning constant fire-fighting into proactive policies your stakeholders will actually adopt, and a clear-eyed case for how "small stuff" is exactly how Deal Desk earns a seat at the strategic table.