Rock Ledge Resources > Speakers and Speaking Topics
Topic: How to Delegate Authority While Retaining Control
Target Audience: Entrepreneur-Owners of Growing Companies
Speaker: Marlys Tamte
Description
Every growing company reaches an important turning point — the point when the owner can no longer be involved in every aspect of the company. The company then must transition from an entrepreneur-run to a professionallymanaged company. Owners who don't develop and delegate authority to a professional management team can limit the company's future growth.
What Listeners Will Know After Hearing This Speaker
- How do I know it's time to delegate?
- Three steps to delegation and control.
- The Why, What and How of delegation
- Control and reporting systems that keep managers on track and owners on top of important information
Topic: Lean in Manufacturing
Target Audience: Manufacturing & Quality Practitioners Interested in Lean Manufacture
Speaker: John Hunter
Description
In the modern manufacturing environment to achieve success it is necessary to optimize quality and cost. Lean techniques are a key set of tools that can be used to help achieve this. In order to achieve "Lean" manufacturing we must understand both the manufacturing process and the inputs to the process.
What Listeners Will Know After Hearing This Speaker
- Importance of design for the effective implementation of Lean in Manufacturing
- The importance of understanding the inputs into the manufacturing process
- Understanding if your process is under control is a first step to effective implementation of Lean in Manufacturing
- Robust process design delivers quality product and reduces manufacturing cost
- Six Sigma is a tool that can assist in the implementation of Lean in manufacturing, not the end result
Topic: Transportation Cost and Quality
Target Audience: Manufacturing CEOs, CFOs and COOs; Distribution Executives; Business Owners
Speaker: Bill Driscoll
Description
Many organizations ship product to their customer's daily. During the hectic day-to-day actions, they lose site of the cost of this service and how it impacts their bottom line results. Additionally, they feel when customers complain about product availability, the only way to solve the problem is with expensive transport solutions.
What Listeners Will Know After Hearing This Speaker
- There is more than one cost element affecting total transportation cost
- The key elements impacting transportation cost
- Negotiating tips with carriers
- Carrier contract needs
- Quality is a part of negotiation
Topic: Pushing to the Next Level
Target Audience: Small Business Owners and Managers
Speaker: Marlys Tamte
Description
All companies go through a series of growth stages (corporate lifecycles), encountering new challenges and problems at each stage. This presentation will help participants identify the current growth stage of their companies, understand the key issues at that stage and prepare themselves and their companies for success at the next level. Participants will be encouraged to share (without identifying their companies) situations in their own companies related to growth.
This topic can be adapted for groups that are in the same growth stage, such as a company or companies moving from entrepreneurial to professional management.
What Listeners Will Know After Hearing This Speaker
- How to map their company to its growth stage
- Why identifying and overcoming obstacles to growth is critical
- Which issues are growing pains, and which issues can become fatal
- How to move through one growth stage while preparing for the next
Topic: Hiring the Right People
Target Audience: CEO, CFO, COO, and Human Resource VPs and Directors
Speaker: Jerry Isensee
Description
Selection of new employees is one of the most important decisions that company executives will make. Companies now have available new techniques to help them gather data on perspective employees and use this data to assist them in making hiring decisions that benefit their companies. Leaders who develop a sound selection process increase their ability to improve productivity and profitability.
What Listeners Will Know After Hearing This Speaker
- How to improve their selection process
- More effective on-boarding of new employees
- Improved communication with employees
- An opportunity to team build without increased expenses
Topic: Problem Solving Outside the Box – How to Really, Finally Resolve That Operations or People Problem
Target Audience: Small Business Owners and Managers; Corporate, Education and Nonprofit Managers
Speaker: Marlys Tamte
Description
Some problems just keep cropping up, despite our best efforts to fix them. This seminar is for owners and managers who want to stop wasting time and energy on issues that never seem to get resolved. Using Systems Thinking, the Theory of Constraints and other problem analysis tools, participants will learn to "think outside the box" and find new methods for finally resolving nagging problems.
What Listeners Will Know After Hearing This Speaker
- The difference between symptoms and root causes
- Ten drivers of root problems
- How to map a problem
- The basics of Systems Thinking – positive and negative feedback loops, leverage points and how issues interrelate
- How to apply the Theory of Constraints to improve work flow
Topic: Industry or Market Futuring
Target Audience: Small Business Owners and Managers
Speaker: Marlys Tamte
Description
This session uses scenario-building, trends tracking and creative problem solving techniques to assess the impact of driving forces in an industry or market. During this seminar participants will develop a picture of their business environment for the next one to three years, and identify opportunities and risks for operating in that environment.
What Listeners Will Know After Hearing This Speaker
Participants will be able to take away information that is both insightful and useful in strategic planning and product development.
- How to use the 4X4 scenario-building technique
- How to map extreme trends
- How to use Force Field Analysis
- How to identify environmental drivers and risks that could impact a company in the future
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