Bringing Requisite Organization to the Next Level at Vistage

Speaker A The training came about because we had these several speakers over quite a period of time. We read a couple of books. We're reading the third book now. And Art Man went to this conference and as a result met the deans, sheila Dean from Australia, and then engaged them to come and spend two days with his management team, which happened maybe three, four, five months ago. And as a result of that experience and the feedback I got from him, that sounded like something that my CEOs could advantageously be exposed to. And so I made contact, I think through Ken Shepard, to how to get hold of the deans. Anyway, I did get all of them. I emailed back and forth with them a number of times. I spoke to them on the phone and we arranged for them to come here to do a requisite organization workshop. And with the understanding that they were bringing, the thrust was to be, how do these people that have an understanding of the mechanics, the basic mechanics, how do they implement this requisite organization in their company? We had 30 people that came to this at their expense. They paid for the day because I had the deans at a fee. And in the one group, I had nine people from that group, the ones that are probably the most sophisticated about this, which is pretty good turnout since it's over. I've spoken to at least ten of these people and they are all telling me that it was a very worthwhile experience, that one of them even said that of all of the business conferences and workshops that he's ever attended, this was the one that really was the most meaningful to him. So that felt good. In general, several of them want to have the deans back, either to come to their company for only their management team, like Art Man did, or to have another group session to put on for the public where people from several companies could come that are the key executives, not just the CEOs. As a result of opportunity, I had to speak to other chairs all over the United States. I went to four regional meetings, and at those meetings, as a part of my talk to these chairs, I suggested to the people that were listening that if they weren't bringing them Elliot Jackson requisite organization, they weren't providing the service to their members that their members deserve. And I guess I got the chairman of Vistage, heard this several times, and so did the operations director. And then one thing led to another and they asked me if we're going to have a conference in November of seven, if we're going to have the opportunity to present it by having sessions, who would be a good speaker to add to that? Well. And I thought that Tom Foster, who was a chair in Florida and who had come to my groups and done a wonderful job of presenting an understanding. My people got it because of the way Tom presented that that would be a good person to have come to our conference. Tom Foster did come to the November 7 conference. He presented, I think, six times during that period, and lots of cheers got exposed to it. Gideon Malherby, who lives in New York near New York City, Westchester County, who's a South African, originally did a talk for us on La Jax. We also had Herb Copleowitz from Canada come down who talked about how to assess what stratum people are. And you could learn it yourself or he could provide that service to you. And some of my members have used him advantageously, done a good job. Visage is now embarked. We have a chief learning officer now, which we didn't have a year or two ago. And she is embarked on a program of a curriculum which is new, a totally new concept for Vistage and for our members. And I think one of the elements of that curriculum will be Elliot Jack's requisite organization, succession considerations, which everybody, as I said, needs. So there hasn't been that. And I think because of pushing a little bit forward, we may be getting going in that direction. It's a good thing for our membership.