Keynote address

In leading organizations, creativity drives business results and executable ideas are the core of strategic and competitive advantage yet talented and motivated individuals cannot jointly achieve effective results until the enablers of collaboration are in place.

Entrenched organizational hierarchy is the roadblock to collaboration.

A new mindset is required to lead and enable co-creators to increase the quality of ideas, speed up decision making, and solve the toughest problems throughout the organization.

And without responsibility-sharing, decision-making, and idea-generation protocols, individual assets are limited, innovation is stifled, and in many cases organizations are on the path to steady decline.

Collaborative leaders create conditions for their company to outshine the competition by out-thinking them, out-creating them, and out-innovating them repeatedly. If your role is to help leaders and all contributors in the organization learn to collaboratively formulate and execute a winning strategy, this eye-opening webcast is for you!
What You Will Learn

* How to take a systemic view of strategy creation
* Ways to link strategy to execution with practical techniques
* Advice on nurturing idea generation, innovation, and engagement
* Strategies for enabling organizational velocity
* Advice on leveraging on-line resources and discussions to further collaboration and innovation

While attending the Webcast is FREE, reservations are required.

Once in a generation, a book comes along that transforms the business landscape. The New How is that book!

In The New How, Nilofer Merchant shows us that by including employees at all levels we can create the best business strategy. Typically company strategies have been planned by corporate chiefs in annual meetings, and then dictated to managers to carry out. But when employees help to create the strategy, they believe in and are equipped to implement, it is the best way to create a winning strategy.

To register online, go to: www.scu.edu/business/gidrsvp/

Too many companies have their execs or planners decide the strategy for the company and then tell others what to do. This is an artifact of the past. It’s what we did when we didn’t have a highly educated, creative workforce. It’s what we did when information didn’t flow freely and we needed to tell people what to do. It is a relic of the time when markets and competitors moved more slowly. Organizations that win need to engage people everywhere within their organization — be transparent about the problem, have the necessary debates, pick well, and ultimately take responsibility for creating (or rather, co-creating) the new future.

While all of this sounds “motherhood and apple pie”, experience suggests it’s not at all easy because of the humans involved. So we need some tools and approaches — a New How — to actually make this idea more than a Utopian idea but a way in which we create better results together. The session will share 3 key tools to make insights — your insights — from anywhere get heard at the table, get built into strategy, and ultimately into a new marketplace reality.

February 25, 2010
8:30 - 10:00 AM

$15 BMA members / $30 non-members. Includes breakfast.

1535 Broadway
New York, NY

Book signings during the morning and evening receptions.

Here’s a rule of thumb: during a downturn, executives are much more likely to think change is necessary. In a similar fashion, during times of great growth, we assume that what we’re doing is causing the desired results so staying the course makes sense. Neither point of view is necessarily true. It could be that a rising or falling tide lifts or lowers all boats, and what our strategy needs to do is propel our organizations to better than general market outcomes!

There’s a way to bringing teams together to look at organizational trade-offs—decisions across all areas of their business or department. Remember “White Boarding” — the tool we use to envision new horizons, new products, new opportunities, new growth? Well here’s a tool to help make tough decisions — MurderBoarding™

The opposite of white boarding, is MurderBoarding, we select from among the many initiatives to choose only the best. The desire is to cull and eliminate. Many times resources are wasted because we try to do too much. MurderBoarding is a process that helps narrow opportunities so that decisions can be made. This methodology invites us to narrow our focus to what is critical, what is crucial.

MurderBoarding is the opportunity to let some things really flourish by trimming off the excess that can distract you and your staff. By killing those time and resource draining activities, the company or department gets “pruned” so it can come back better, stronger for it. And in reality, it’s less about “killing ideas” than putting them into purgatory so they can be resurrected when the time is right

Come hear seasoned Entrepreneurs and Professionals at the annual OPEN Women’s Leadership Forum 2010. Building on the success of last year, OPEN is excited about 2010’s theme: “Finding Your Power: Creating Opportunities in Tumultuous Times.”