| Wow! If you were one of the lucky attendees at last night's dinner, I am sure you rode the elevator down to your car with your head full of exciting new Supply Management stuff. And if you indulged in the buffet like I did, I am sure you rode it with a full stomach to boot.
As an answer to those curious as to why we waited until the second Thursday of this month to get together, we can now admit that it is because we wanted to make sure the first rollout of our new meeting format was special and distinctive (disclaimer: not real reason). As host David Shattuck explained, we want to make the most of our time together. The new dinner meeting format is designed to increase our opportunities to learn new things, meet new people and eat good food. We have brought new ISM-LA friends together with our new "table assignment from a hat" policy and, for those who chose to partake, provided a cash bar, which we will be able to keep as long as the sales meet the terms of our contract with the hotel.
Dave started off with an icebreaker, a race between the tables to see who could decipher then their list of riddles. They featured such diabolical twisters like, "ujustme." Once time was up, the team with the most correct answers won wine for the table. I will have you know that our table, #1, did in fact, have the most right answers, though we failed to let Dave know in time. We were just so excited to go over the answers to the ones that we got wrong that we missed Dave call our number of correct answers.
Our pre-dinner speaker was Kevin Michaels of MCT Business solutions. The goal of his presentation, "Introduction to Six Sigma", was to introduce the basics of the fast growing process management paradigm in such a way that all in attendance could walk away with what he called a "conversational" fluency on the subject matter. In Six Sigma parlance, I guess this would be enough to qualify for a white belt.
As I have already implied, dinner was excellent. I especially liked the southwestern corn salad. The second helping was even better. It is obvious from the quality of the last two dinner meeting's buffets that our President Martin Murch is a chef. I guess I have him to thank for picking the salad. Thank you, Mr. President.
However, the highlight of the evening for me was our featured speaker, Mr. Pierre Towns of Human Resource Capital Consultants. His presentation "All Leaders are not Born" touched on a very personal issue for me, the importance of leadership in management. In summary, Mr. Towns presented on the difference between managers and leaders. His stress was that many traits exhibited in strong leaders, are in fact habits and tendencies that can be added to one's own repertoire to increase their own effectiveness, regardless of whether they are managers or individual contributors. I called Mr. Towns this morning to ask if he had any recommended readings that would elaborate on his concepts. He enthusiastically recommended the following:
On Becoming A Leader: The Leadership Classic--Updated And Expanded
by Warren Bennis
The New Leaders : Leadership Diversity in America (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series)
by Ann M. Morrison
Reaching Out: Interpersonal Effectiveness and Self-Actualization (8th Edition)
by David W. Johnson
On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to thank all of our members who braved Thursday afternoon traffic to make it to the Dinner. I hope you had as much fun as I did. If you came, we hope you will want to bring a friend next time. And if you haven't visited us in a while, I hope my enthusiastic review of the evening will encourage you to make plans to see us on the first Thursday of next month. It is never too soon to register at www.ISM-LA.org.
Thanks,
Lance
Lance Hedges, C.P.M.
Director of Communications
Institute of Supply Management- Los Angeles |
