FountainBlue

FountainBlue's Transitions Event, Produced in Partnership with RAL & Associates and FWE&E

Topic:      Diversity and Innovation as a Competitive Advantage

Date & Time: Thursday, July 16, from 11:30 AM to 2:00 PM

Location: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, 2475 Hanover Street, Palo Alto

Cost:       $30 members, $35 partners, $40 general

$100 for FountainBlue Forever membership, admission, and free gift

Register at:    http://www.acteva.com/booking.cfm?bevaid=162484 or http://tinyurl.com/md9sx6 by 7/15 at noon, no exceptions please. Late and on-site registration is $50 – does not include membership.

Audience:      Senior executives who have served at the director and C-levels, and generally transitioning into a similar level position

Transitions Topic: Diversity and Innovation as a Competitive Advantage

As an experienced senior executive, are your greatest contributions and successes behind you or ahead? Many companies that were successful 100 years ago no longer exist.  Trapped by their own success, they gradually learn to reduce risk, avoid failure at all costs, and consequently squelch or kill innovation and creativity.  This makes them vulnerable to competition from new or more aggressive companies with less to lose.

A similar hazard faces successful executives.  It can be hard to see new possibilities that will allow future success, especially when it requires letting go of previously successful strategies that have served so well throughout a career. Diversity doesn’t just apply to ethnic groups, and innovation doesn’t just apply to products.  Learn to apply both to refresh your approach to business and give you a competitive advantage in an increasingly competitive business environment. You’ll enjoy this engaging and highly interactive session, and leave with strategies to:

• spark creativity and innovation
• promote sensible risk-taking and thinking differently
• inspire and leverage diversity of thought in yourself and others
• commit fully to what you can uniquely contribute to the business world

Please join this month's facilitator Kimberly Wiefling. Kimberly is a proven expert in enabling people to achieve what seems impossible, but is merely difficult.  The founder of Wiefling Consulting, LLC, and author of one of the top project management books in the US, “Scrappy Project Management - The 12 Predictable and Avoidable Pitfalls Every Project Faces”, a book growing in popularity around the world, and to be published in Japanese by Nikkei Business Press in July, 2009.  She currently spends about half of her time traveling in Japan facilitating leadership, innovation and execution excellence workshops with leaders of Japanese companies committed to becoming truly global. We hope you will join us in what is sure to be an interactive and engaging conversation.

This month's program also provides a bonus mini-topic: “Tell Me” . . . What Behavioral Interviewing Techniques Employers Use, featuring Leila Bulling Towne, Executive Coach & Organizational Development Consultant, The Bulling Towne Group, LLC.

Do you know what questions you'll be asked during your next interview? Most employers are training managers to ask questions based on behavioral interviewing techniques: learning what the candidate has done in the past and avoiding the hypothetical "What would you do?"  If you're not prepared for this interviewing method, it can feel as if the interviewer is interrogating you. Come learn what questions you'll be asked, how to answer, and watch live 1:1 practice.