BigBusiness

Recently, Leadership Excellence Magazine unveiled its Excellence 100 list for 2009. This elite roster is comprised of business gurus who possess a rare combination of traits and abilities, encompassing eight criteria:

1. Preparation: academic and professional.
2. Character: values, ethics, beliefs, purpose, mission, integrity, walk the talk.
3. Principles: big message, point of view, tenets, main points.
4. Personality: charisma, style, originality, authenticity, one of a kind.
5. Performance: inspiring action, real-world performance, work ethic.
6. Experience: beyond local and regional, more national and international.
7. Expression: substance and style in writing, speaking, coaching, consulting, mentoring, training, or teaching.
8. Influence: difference, results, change, transformation.

Gary Hamel #1	Dave Ulrich #3	Marshall Goldsmith #4	Ram Charan #7	John P. Kotter #11
James Kouzes #16	Marcus Buckingham #18	Peter Senge #19	Meg Wheatley #20

For a complete list of the Excellence 100, visit leaderexcel.com/best_100.html And to bring the members of this esteemed group of gurus and their particular brand of excellence to your organization, contact BigSpeak.

BigBoost

Power to (and from) the people.

Here in California, the State Senate Energy Utilities, and Communications Committee met this month to discuss AB560 which would effectively increase the amount of electricity that solar customers can sell back into the state power grid from 2.5 percent to 10 percent. The bill has garnered widespread support from groups including the California Public Utilities Commission and the Union of Concerned Scientists. This is a significant step in the future of alternative power, as it brings to the fore the issue of distributed energy, aka the micro-grid as a potential new renewable power paradigm. Instead of building costly new power plants and inefficient transmission/distribution infrastructure ("line-loss" is estimated at 10-15%), neighborhoods could be re-fitted/re-metered at substantial savings (through tax subsidies, fixed-rate loans and other financial incentives) to sell stored, unused energy back to the grid. According to Fast Company Magazine, corporate giants like GE and IBM have even projected that almost half of all American homes could be generating their own renewable energy within ten years. BigSpeak's own energy experts Amory Lovins and Jeremy Rifkin have long advocated such a "smart-grid" reciprocity approach, wherein consumers can also act as producers, uploading surplus energy to the grid as well as downloading from it. Rifkin has worked extensively with European Union members helping to craft energy policy and guide the current model, where the renewable grid system has shown impressive results - interestingly enough in sun-scarce Germany, where rooftop panels produce a staggering 5.4 gigawatts of electricity. Lovins estimates that every dollar spent on local renewable systems and resources is akin to spending ten dollars on large-scale megapower projects. With continued success abroad and the advent of new, inexpensive technologies and innovative financial incentives, the power may soon be literally, back in the hands of the people.

BigHouse

On June 29, former financier, Bernard Madoff, who once served as a non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange, was sentenced to 150 years in prison - the maximum allowed. Madoff pled guilty to an 11-count criminal charge, admitting to defrauding thousands of investors of billions of dollars. He was convicted of operating a Ponzi scheme that has been called "the largest investor fraud ever committed by a single person." Federal prosecutors estimated client losses of almost $65 billion. Workplace Humorist Matt Weinstein was one of those clients. But true to form, in his trademark style, when misfortune made-off with his fortune, Matt turned the situation into grist for his latest presentation.

Matt started writing a blog for the Huffington Post entitled, What I Learned from My Misadventures with Bernie Madoff. It was so well received that they put it on the front page. The Post even embedded the preview video for Matt's new program What Bernie Madoff Couldn't Steal From Me in the middle of the blog, and it got more than five hundred views the first day! At first, he thought What Bernie Madoff Couldn't Steal From Me would be a program that would be of interest mainly to financial services clients, until a Credit Union association requested "... a speaker to focus on navigating through crisis. The economy is such that none of us who are working ever encountered such a crisis, but there are always opportunities in crisis." Matt thought that was the perfect kind of speaking request for his program. He responded, "Obviously you don't have to be invested with Bernie Madoff to be feeling the pain of the downturn in the economy! Probably everyone in the room will be feeling the effects of the downturn, both personally and professionally. The participants in What Bernie Madoff Couldn't Steal From Me will walk away with a sense of their own personal resilience, and a practical, individual understanding of how they best react in times of crisis. Plus, this is by no means a downbeat program -- it's humorous, and inspirational, and fun!" To join clients like the American Society of Association Executives, the International Dance and Exercise Association, Fairmont State College Staff Convocation, the California Assisted Living Association, and the Western Association of Chamber Executives, who've enlisted Matt Weinstein to help them navigate their own turbulent times, call BigSpeak today.

BigBox

For over 25 years, Vijay Govindarajan has been advancing the field of strategy execution and advising senior executives in all industries on how to modify their organizations to achieve their strategic ambitions. Reading the zeitgeist of the past three decades, Govindarajan has helped companies adapt to the global business environment and change the way they look at strategy. In a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled Preparing for the Recovery, VG as he is known, stressed the need for companies to adopt far-reaching strategies that will position them in the most advantageous stance for an economic rebound- despite the recession, companies must do more than just play defense. As a response to the economic crisis, many companies focus almost exclusively on the present, cutting costs and neglecting the future. It's at times like these he says that it‘s time to think inside the box. Actually boxes; Dr. Govindarajan's favorite metaphor for strategy involves three boxes - and he encourages managers to think about what goes on inside all three of them. In Vijay Govindarajan's three-box framework, Box One involves managing the present - for example, improving the efficiency of today's business. Box Two involves selectively forgetting the past. And Box Three is about creating the future. Often, Dr. Govindarajan maintains, companies spend too much of their time managing Box One - the present - and think that's strategy. Instead, he argues, companies need to spend more time and energy on thinking about Box Two and Box Three, which he contends, are critical despite these tough times. According to VG, there are several things that stand out about recessions:

- Expansion always follows recession - and the expansion lasts longer and is more robust than the recession.
- A recession fundamentally changes the competitive landscape in most industries. There are new winners and new losers.
- The best time to prepare for expansion is during a recession, because during a recession, assets are cheaper and talent is cheaper and more available.
- In normal times, spend about 50% of company resources on the core business and about 50% on adjacency and breakout innovation - perhaps 35% on adjacency innovation and maybe 15% on breakout innovation. But during times like this, the percentages shift. Shift to spending more like 70% on the core business and perhaps 25% on adjacency innovations - and maybe 5% on really breakout innovation.
- There's a big difference between planning for the future and preparing for it. Preparing for the future simply involves asking what the broad trends are. If people in your organization can at least have a shared perspective on some of the big, nonlinear shifts that may happen. Prepare for 2025 in 2009.

BigLeap

On the scale of personal phobias, Fear of Public Speaking generally outranks Fear of Heights. At BigSpeak our trainers, consultants and speakers frequently and fearlessly engage in the former with abandon...the latter, not so much. Normally, we don't require our speakers to leap at 13,000 feet from a perfectly functioning aircraft, but Leilani Munter is no ordinary speaker. As an eco-activist, stunt-double, fashion model and professional race car driver, Leilani is used to travelling at speeds in excess of 200mph - just not in the air... straight down. So when we presented her with an opportunity to skydive with the U.S. Army's elite Golden Knights parachute team at North Carolina's Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, she (pun intended) jumped at the chance.
To view Leilani's aerial adventure, check out...

And if that's not patriotic enough for you this July, Reader's Digest just placed Leilani on their "10 Reasons to Love Our Country" list, naming her "Best Green Speed Demon". To bring fast, famous and fearless speakers to your next event, contact the fast, fearless & friendly folks at BigSpeak.