Leadership Conference 2024

AGENDA

Wednesday, November 6

Optional Pre-Event Programs

These events run concurrently and only one may be selected during registration. Click on each box to learn more about the activity.

Golf Outing

11:00 am - 5:00 pm

Event attendees listen to a speaker in a small group setting

AI Bootcamp

9:00 am - 5:00 pm

8:00 - 9:00 pm

Welcome Reception

Courtesy of Chief Executive Network

Thursday, November 7

7:30 - 9:00 am

Registration and Welcome Breakfast

7:45 - 8:45 am

Breakfast Workshop | The Authority Advantage: Elevating Your Influence Through Impact

Join Adam Witty, a 6-time author with two decades of experience in shaping industry leaders, for an exclusive session on harnessing authority to drive meaningful business growth.

In this engaging and actionable workshop, Adam will unveil 4 proven strategies for leaders to cultivate genuine authority and leverage it for substantial business success, including insights on:

  1. Surpassing Competitors with Smart Strategies: Learn how to secure a dominant position in your market through effective use of rented, owned, and earned media.
  2. Building Your Personal Brand Through Strategic Influence: Discover how to align with centers of influence to enhance your brand’s reputation.
  3. Maximizing Authority for Digital Presence: Understand how to utilize your growing authority to capture high-value organic search results on Google.
  4. Transforming Authorship into Business Opportunities: Explore how publishing a book and establishing yourself as an author can open doors to new PR, speaking engagements, and business connections.

Don’t miss this opportunity to unlock the full potential of your leadership and personal brand authority. As a special value-add, attendees have the opportunity to sign up for a complimentary executive Book and Authority Blueprint to help jump start their goals.

Adam Witty

Founder and CEO of Advantage Media and Forbes Books

9:00 - 11:00 am

Alan Mulally: Our “Working Together”© System for Leadership and Management

One of the most successful and most respected CEOs of the last 50 years, Alan Mulally successfully led the value creation and turnarounds of two of the most critical industrial organizations in the world—Boeing and The Ford Motor Company—through a system and culture he calls “Working Together.” 

It reflects his own formation and experiences as well as the work of some of the world’s top leadership thinkers, including Patrick Lencioni, Marshall Goldsmith, Ram Charan, Frances Hesselbein, Peter Drucker, and Dale Carnegie—all close friends and mentors to Mulally. In this highly-interactive session, Mulally will share the essence and implementation of “Working Together” with the Chief Executive community — how he creates and implements connected, collaborative, and aligned cultures that create value, growth, and a brighter future for all stakeholders and the greater good—and how you can, too, with a set of clear principles and practices:

  • People First…Love ‘em Up
  • Everyone Is Included…Including All of the Stakeholders
  • Compelling Vision, Comprehensive Strategy, and Relentless Positive Implementation
  • Clear Performance Goals
  • One Plan
  • Facts and Data…We Can’t Manage a Secret…The Data Sets Us Free
  • Everyone Knows Plan, Status, and Areas That Need Special Attention
  • Propose a Plan, Positive “Find-a-Way” Attitude
  • Respect, Listen, Help, and Appreciate Each Other
  • Emotional Resilience…Trust the Process…And Each Other
  • Have Fun…Enjoy the Journey and Each Other…And No Humor at Other’s Expense                                                                       

Developed over decades through his unprecedented tenures at Boeing and Ford, he honed the “Working Together” Leadership and Management System into a reliable and disciplined operating process with clear expected behaviors to manage and serve organizations, including all stakeholders, to sustainably deliver value and growth for the greater good in our rapidly changing world. Both immensely practical and deeply inspirational, “Working Together” is a system and culture you can put into practice immediately to change your organization and everyone involved for the better.

Alan Mulally

Former CEO, Ford Motor Company

11:00 - 11:40 am

Networking Break

11:40 - 1:45 pm

Working Lunch and Roundtable Discussions

Select from relevant topics to discuss with your peers and uncover ideas that are working in other companies:

Featured Speaker: Andy Harris, President North America Strategies, STS Capital Partners

If you’re thinking about your exit any time in the next few years, be sure to join this roundtable to discuss and learn how a strategic sales process will maximize your value and get you the other outcomes you require/desire. The roundtable will explore:

  • How is the M&A market now?  And expected in the next 1-2 years?
  • Best practices and most common mistakes
  • Prepping for a sale (minority or majority) of your business
  • The differences between financial and strategic buyers
  • How to get the outcomes you want and maximum valuation

Featured Speaker: Chris McChesney, Co-author of The 4 Disciplines of Execution; Global Practice Leader of Execution, FranklinCovey.

Every leader has goals they want to achieve, but how do you focus and leverage your teams to accomplish them despite a whirlwind of competing priorities? Unlock the secrets to effective strategy execution with The 4 Disciplines of Execution® methodology, proven to elevate organizational performance. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to:

  • Drive success at all levels of leadership by creating a high performance culture.
  • Execute on critical priorities amidst everyday distractions using the principles of focus, leverage, engagement and accountability.
  • Foster engagement & create winnable games for your teams.
  • Recruiting, retaining and aligning rock star employees
  • Leading a multi-generational workforce
  • Leveraging AI and other technologies in your business
  • Leadership requirements for changing company stages
  • Lessons from a Veteran CEO Coach

1:45 - 2:15 pm

Networking Break

2:15 - 3:30 pm

The 6 Traits of The Best CEOs In the World

Over decades of research and hundreds of in-depth interviews, Carolyn and her partners at McKinsey examined what CEOs and other top executives at the companies who rank in the top 20% of their industries (and generate 2.8x the returns of their competitors on average) do differently. They uncovered 6 common traits of top performing leaders. In this session, you will gain insights to improve:

  • How do you look into the future, respond to unexpected challenges, and motivate others? (some of the insights are counterintuitive!)
  • How do you sharpen your skills in leading your organization to higher levels?
  • How do top CEOs treat the “soft stuff” like the “hard stuff”?
  • How do top-performing CEOs mobilize their leadership teams to work toward a common vision?
  • What are some of the best practices for managing personal effectiveness?

Carolyn Dewar

Senior Partner, McKinsey; Co-author CEO Excellence

3:30 - 4:00 pm

Networking Break

4:00 - 5:30 pm

Harnessing Loyalty: The Most Powerful Force for Profitability

The creator of the world-renowned Net Promoter Score shares his latest and most powerful tool for improving financial performance: Earned Growth. It’s the shortcut to supercharging your team’s results by reshaping activities to focus on customer satisfaction and loyalty – and the impact that this simple concept can have on growth and profitability throughout your organization will astound you. Fred will share his insights into the best performing companies in industry after industry (e.g., Apple, Enterprise, etc.) and how they use it to focus their teams on the right activities. You will learn how some of the most successful CEOs use these concepts to drive repeat business and referrals – and how these actions can accelerate your revenue and profits.

Fred Reichheld

Partner, Bain & Company

5:30 - 7:00 pm

Networking Reception

Friday, November 8

7:30 - 8:30 am

Breakfast

8:30 - 9:30 am

Scaling Up Compensation: Turning Your Largest Expense into Strategic Advantage

How you compensate people is one of the most important strategic decisions your company makes—but few “get it right and out of sight.” Nail it and you can add hundreds of percentage points to the bottom line while driving up the energy in the organization. Make the wrong call (or piecemeal the decision together), and the results will create needless drama throughout the organization.

In this highly practical working session, based on Verne’s book of the same title, one of the most widely followed and deeply respected business thinkers of our time shares his 5 principles for designing effective compensation systems along with plenty of examples from leading small, medium, and large firms across various industries.

You’ll learn:

  1. The #1 mistake business leaders make in setting up their compensation plans
  2. The psychological aspects of compensation underpinning successful plans
  3. How individual bonuses can backfire
  4. The power of gamifying gains to drive up energy and engagement
  5. Whether you want to be queen/king or rich!
Headshot of Verne Harnish

Verne Harnish

Business Advisor; Best-selling Author, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up

9:30 - 9:45 am

Networking Break

9:45 - 10:45 am

The New World Order: A Strategy Session for the Future

One of the world’s most respected CEO coaches, boardroom advisors, and the author of numerous bestsellers will share his perspectives on where the world is heading – and where the smartest CEOs are placing their bets and focusing their efforts. In addition to a macro-perspective on Geo-Political trends, Ram will share how he sees technological, demographic and other trends impacting business and provide unique insights and advice to help you navigate and prepare for the future. Gain insights from Ram that top CEOs pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to make better multi-million- and billion-dollar decisions. 

Ram Charan

CEO Advisor; Author, Execution, Leading Through Inflation, and over 20 other best-selling business books

10:45 - 11:00 am

Networking Break

11:00 am - Noon

My Silence: How a Setback Taught Me a Better Way to Lead and Inspire

Kevin is the 7th generation leading his $700 million family-owned lumber company in Maine. For the first few decades of his career, he led as his predecessors did, as a strong leader and decision maker who made most of the important decisions. Command and control.  But when a rare disease caused him to partially lose his voice, he was forced to become a better listener and ask more than he answered. The result was a surprise. As he talked less and listened more, his employees became more engaged, and his company’s growth and profits accelerated.  He learned that when his employees felt more trusted, respected, valued and heard, it changed their attitudes and actions. Kevin is now on a mission to help other CEOs and their teams gain these advantages.  Fortunately, you don’t have to lose your voice to learn how the power of shared leadership can transform your organization, and ultimately, yourself.    

Kevin Hancock

Chairman, Hancock Lumber; Author, The Business of Shared Leadership

Noon

Event Concludes

Golf Outing

11:00 - 5:00 pm
Arizona Grand Golf Course

Enjoy the beautiful Arizona Grand Golf Course on the resort property. This award-winning Golf Digest Top 50 Course is a links course offering panoramic views of the surrounding desert landscape. You will have access to the practice facilities before a shotgun start at noon. Take advantage of the chance to get to know fellow attendees through a friendly scramble competition and various contests. Golfers of all capabilities are welcome. A $295 fee covers greens/cart fees, use of practice facilities, and boxed lunch and cocktail reception. Noon shotgun start.

To sign up, select this option in your registration form. Additional fee of $295 will be added to your total.

Event attendees listen to a speaker in a small group setting

AI Bootcamp

9:00 - 5:00 pm

Excited about AI but need to know more, fast? Tried your hand at it already but want to sharpen your skills? Or are you a ChatGPT 4.0 power-user who wants to spread the gospel to the rest of the team and show them what they’re missing? Whichever you are, this full-day, hands-on workshop will help you leverage Generative AI to become far more productive, leaving you with new hours in your day. You’ll leave with specific tools for specific use cases and able to apply AI in your own routines and that of your teams.  Learn how to use AI to create a job description, a marketing plan, a customizable sales outreach letter, to do financial variance analysis and—most important—a process for developing your own creativity and best practices you can use to tackle whatever comes your way.  A $995 fee includes lunch, instructor and workbook. Participants must bring their own laptop and have a subscription to ChatGPT to get the most out of the day.

To sign up, select this option in your registration form. Additional fee of $995 will be added to your total.

Event attendees seated around a boardroom table

Strategic Planning Workshop

1:00 - 5:00 pm

We are in a period of rapid change. Customer needs, technologies, competitors, and internal capabilities require companies to review and update their strategies for the new realities. In this workshop, strategy experts Steve Rutan and Denise Harrison will show you a systematic approach to strategic planning to help you refine or redefine your business strategy and approach including:

  • Learn what you need to know to develop an effective strategic plan.  Put the right players on the strategic planning team.
  • Develop strategies that leverage your company’s unique position in the marketplace.  Lift your management team beyond “business as usual” thought processes and activities.
  • Translate your strategies into action.  Achieve your vision for success and generate superior financial results.
  • Identify exactly what you need to do now to position your company for future success.

To sign up, select this option in your registration form. Additional fee of $695 will be added to your total.

Roundtable

Strategic Planning Workshop

1:00 - 5:00 pm

Over 70% of Executives Surveyed Agree: Many Strategic Planning Efforts Lack Systematic Approach Tips for Enhancing Your Strategic Planning Process

Executives expressed frustration with their current strategic planning process. Issues include:

  1. Lack of systematic approach (70%)
  2. Laundry lists without prioritization (68%)
  3. Decisions based on personalities rather than facts and information (65%)

 

Steve Rutan and Denise Harrison have put together an afternoon workshop that will provide the tools you need to address these concerns.  They have worked with hundreds of executives to develop a systematic approach that will enable your team to make better decisions during strategic planning.  Steve and Denise will walk you through exercises for prioritizing your lists and steps that will reset and reinvigorate your process.  This will be a hands-on workshop that will enable you to think about your business as you use the tools that are being presented.  If you are ready for a Strategic Planning tune-up, select this workshop in your registration form.  The additional fee of $695 will be added to your total.

To sign up, select this option in your registration form. Additional fee of $695 will be added to your total.

New York, NY: ​​​Chief Executive's Corporate Citizenship Awards 2017

Women in Leadership Seminar and Peer Discussion

2:00 - 5:00 pm

Female leaders face the same issues all leaders do, but they often face additional challenges too. In this peer session, we will facilitate a discussion of best practices and how to overcome common barriers to help women leaders be more effective within and outside their organizations. 

Limited space available.

To sign up, select this option in your registration form. Additional fee of $495 will be added to your total.

Golf Outing

10:30 - 5:00 pm
General’s Retreat at Hermitage Golf Course
Sponsored by UBS

General’s Retreat, built in 1986 with architect Gary Roger Baird, has been voted the “Best Golf Course in Nashville” and is a “must play” when visiting the Nashville, Tennessee area. With the beautiful setting along the Cumberland River, golfers of all capabilities will thoroughly enjoy the golf, scenery and hospitality.

The golf outing fee includes transportation to and from the hotel, greens/cart fees, use of practice facilities, and boxed lunch. The bus will leave the hotel at 10:30 am for a noon shotgun start and return to the hotel after the cocktail reception following the completion of the round.

To sign up, select this option in your registration form. Additional fee of $295 will be added to your total.