2008 Scanlon Leadership Network
Annual Conference
Innovation: Catalyst for Growth
May 5-7, 2008, Ritz-Carlton
Dearborn, Michigan
Why Attend This Conference?
“Despite all the pro-innovation rhetoric that one encounters in annual reports and CEO speeches, most still hold the view that innovation is a rather dangerous diversion from the real work of wringing the last ounce of efficiency out of core business processes. Innovation is fine so long as it does not disrupt a company’s finely-honed operating model. As change becomes ever less predictable, companies will pay an ever-escalating price for their lopsided love of incrementalism. Gary Hamel, “Leadeing the Revolution”
A Scanlon culture - one that embraces openness and involvement - is key to creating a culture of innovation. The Scanlon Leadership Network has assembled an outstanding array of keynote speakers and workshop facilitators who will teach you the theories and tools you need on your journey to Build a Culture of Innovation.
Join over 250 Scanlon Practitioners and friends while we study innovation and learn from international experts. Share best practices. Learn how to create cultures of innovation using the Scanlon Principles and Processes.
Overall Agenda
Monday, May 5, 2008
PreConference Events and Tours
Greenfield Village “Inventor’s Tour” 12:30 - 3:30
America is the birthplace of big ideas, and this guided, private tour explores the lives and stories of the people who gave the world extraordinary innovations like powered flight, the first electric light, amazing agricultural advances, and more. See Edison’s Menlo Park complex at the moment when his development of the incandescent lightbulb was about to transform the world. You will see the actual workplaces that gave birth to Edison's extraordinary innovations, and the first buildings to be illuminated by his amazing electric light.
The Tour includes Edison’s Menlo Park Complex, the Wright Brother’s Home and Shop, the Ford Home, and more!
Best Practices and Frost Beacon Awards Ceremony 5:00 – 6:00 Ritz-Carlton
Come celebrate the best of the best in Network Member’s ideas, processes and service to the Frost Scanlon Principles.
Welcome Reception and Keynote Address 6:00 – 8:00 Ritz-Carlton
Nibble on some appetizers, have a drink, and visit Scanlon Members and Associate’s tabletop exhibits. This is one of the best ways to network and learn more about your Scanlon Community.
 We are also very excited to have Sarah Miller Caldicott presenting a keynote address during the reception. Sarah is a great grand-niece of Thomas Edison, and holds an MBA from Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. She is a 20-year marketing veteran who has spearheaded domestic and international innovation initiatives during her tenure with Pepsico, Bayer AG, and Unilever. Sarah now heads her own innovation marketing firm, which has served DHL Global Mail, Cox Enterprises, and Lucent.
Sarah has recently co-authored Innovate Like Edison - The Success System of America's Greatest Inventor with Michael J. Gelb, who is the bestselling author of How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. Innovate Like Edison translates the best practices of the supreme American inventor into contemporary terms to help you unleash your innovative potential. The authors introduce a comprehensive and easy-to apply system for success inspired by the creative methods of Edison himself. Carefully researched and presented in a step-by-step fashion, Innovate Like Edison introduces the Five Competencies of InnovationTM, which provide the tools and strategies you need to compete and win in he business world - and in everyday life.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
44th Annual Scanlon Conference 8:00 – 5:00
8:00 – 8:30 Registration
8:30 – 9:00 Opening Remarks
9:00 – 9:30 Keynote Speakers: Charlie and Maria Girsch, Creativity Central (see below)
9:45 – 10:45 First Concurrent Workshop Sessions
11:00 – 12:00 Second Concurrent Workshop Sessions
12:00 – 1:00 Networking Lunch
1:00 – 1:30 Scanlon Stewardship Award Presentation
1:30 – 4:30 Innovation Simulation (see below)
4:30 – 5:00 Closing Remarks and Company Rallies
Keynote Speakers: Charlie and Maria Girsch of Creativity Central check out Creativity Central
  Thriving as award-winning independent toy designers for more than 25 years, Charlie and Maria Girsch were often asked how they came up with their ideas and how they stayed creative. After all, marketably novel ideas were their lifeblood and "toy biz" is notorious as a trendy and volatile arena where innovation on demand is key.
Neither Charlie nor Maria ever had any of the credentials you would expect of professional toy inventors. Neither had ever given much thought to the foundation and scope of their creativity. Yet they were intrigued by the admiration and questions—intrigued enough, in fact, to take a year off in the mid-90s. During that time, they not only studied creativity as an academic discipline, but they spent many hours analyzing their own proven innovation skills. In 1998 they wrote their definitive book called "Fanning the Creative Spirit: Two Toy Inventors Simplify Creativity". They also developed a curriculum that would become the basis for their seminars, keynotes, training and brainstorming.
Creativity Central was born, and to the present day its message is highly embraced, its reach is bountiful, and its growth extensive. It is the mission of Creativity Central to reawaken and energize the creative spirit that is innate in everyone and every organization.
Each conference participant will receive a copy of "Fanning the Creative Spirit" by Charlie and Maria Girsch
Innovation Simulation
We all know we need to be innovative to survive in this global economy. But how do we do it? This simulation will take teams through the entire process, from environmental scanning to taking the product you create to market. All participants will leave with an understanding of what it means to have an organizational culture that supports innovation, and how their own roles support an innovative culture.
Workshops
4 Simple Steps to Solving Complex Problems Dr. Gregory Huszczo, Eastern Michigan Univeristy You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to contribute to a problem solving team. You just have to remember four words (Awareness, Analysis, Alternatives, Actions) and follow these steps in that order. Join us for a session where you will not only learn this proven approach now used by many successful companies but you will also solve a problem of your choice while you are learning it.
Barriers to Innovation Adam Hartung, Spark Partners Adam has done intensive research into why companies fail to innovate, and subsequently fail, with some surprising and eye-opening conclusions. Re-creating his much-talked-about presentation from the Scanlon Innovation Tour of Motorola last fall, Adam will show you how to recognize the warning signs of losing your business, why some of your common business practices could be holding you back, and how to get to the point where you can freely innovate, survive and thrive.
Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Dr. Sandi Nielsen, Director, Professional Education Center, College of Business, Eastern Michigan University Roughly 70% of how employees perceive their organization’s climate can be traced to the action of one person – THE LEADER. With effective leadership, the value of employees’ actions can be optimized to realize higher growth, greater shareholder value and sustainable competitive advantage. Organizations today are constrained by inadequate staff and resources, and leaders must leverage them to higher levels of innovation, productivity, creativity, and optimization, to achieve a competitive advantage. Building emotional intelligence (EI) competencies in leaders and staff is a very smart organizational investment. This workshop will focus on what EI is, why it matters, what the competencies look in action, and it’s impact on the bottom-line.
The Kaizen Advantage SGS Tool Company team members will show you their multi-formatted best practice program, which details a basic training class on the principles and processes of Kaizen. Developed entirely in-house, this program is designed to give all associates a better idea of what a Kaizen program is all about, teach them how it supports the goals of objectives of their TEAM (Scanlon) Plan, and enable them to hit the ground running when entering into any Kaizen project.
Improving Corporate Cultures with the Scanlon Principles Rob Ptacek, Competitive Edge Associates and Approved Scanlon Consultant What is Corporate Culture, and how do you change it? Corporate culture is simply a set of collective behaviors that have become acceptable within an organization, To improve culture, you must first define what it is (Current State), create the vision of what you want it to be (Future State) , then design an accountability system to achieve the vision (Action Planning & Follow-up or PDCA). This is everyone’s work! Participants will begin to define a corporate Identity that describes acceptable behaviors and ‘culture’, and learn secrets to improving it.
Innovation Roadmap: Developing Your Own Creativity and Innovation Community of Practice 3M Grass Roots Innovation Team Representatives from the 3M community in Minnesota will share the methods of how they started and grew a creativity and innovation community of practice at 3M - which has been sustained for 13 years! The community became known as “The GRIT” for Grass Roots Innovation Team and ultimately expanded to include the community outside 3M. Join this panel discussion and learn how to create a roadmap for building a community of practice in your company and local community.
Innovations in Employee Participation (Something Old and Something New...) Peter Scontrino, Scontrino & Associates In this workshop we will quickly explore the major employee involvement trends from the past fifty years. We will identify the programs that have passed the test of time and those that have faded quickly. Next we will look at employee involvement today as organizations are linking EI to serious organization change initiatives such as lean manufacturing. We will investigate how some organizations are using employee feedback and EI to drive change at the unit level.
Innovative Communities David Bloom, Executive Director, Ann Arbor Spark Businesses that fully embrace Web 2.0 best practices are reaping returns in reduced cost of customer acquisition and service, better brand penetration and portability, and improved conversion rates and revenues. Online communities focus on user interaction, rather than content – and on many-to-many communication, rather than one-to-many or one-to-one. Learn the most effective approaches for online engagement with customers and targeted audiences, to optimize marketing, operations and support. This workshop will cover alternate approaches for creating purposeful online communities, with examples and guidelines, how-to’s and how-not-to’s.
It’s Your Money - Make, Multiply and Manage It! Don Barkman, The Business Center and Certified Scanlon Consultant Are you a millionaire and don’t know it? Is there such a thing as ‘free money’? What six strategies can you use to create financial well-being? Do you know how to legally escape taxes? Find all these out and more! Can you find the keys to unlock enhanced earnings, smart spending, savvy saving and intelligent investing? We’ll let you try. Can one hour of personal finances help you change financial distress into financial success? Can all this be fun? Sure! Join Don Barkman, creator of BIZ WIZ, the basic business education seminar for everyone and author of the personal money management book “When do you Eat the Cherry?” for a money-making adventure.
Making Scanlon Personal: Developing a Family Identity Rob Ptacek, Competitive Edge Associates and Approved Scanlon Consultant The Scanlon Principles are universal, and work just as well at home as at work - but many don’t realize the benefits that could be provided by doing just that! In this session, a case study of using the Scanlon Principles at home to create a Family Identity will be reviewed. Then each participant will begin to develop their own Family Identity, and make a plan to use the Scanlon Principles to improve their personal lives.
Practical Business Innovation Praveen Gupta, President ,Accelper Consulting and Approved Scanlon Consultant No lecture, no training! Just get down to Innovating something NEW! Bring your problem, and work at it individually or in a group. Just bring your laptop and access the Internet. We will walk through the steps to innovating a new solution fast. This workshop is designed specially for participants to practice the innovation process for solving problems or creating new solutions. Participants will start with an opportunity to improve or innovate, and with the instructor’s guidance be able to create an initial practical solution that they can take back to work for refinement and implementation. The innovation methodology that will be used is TEDOC (Target, Explore, Develop, Optimize, Commercialize). Each participant will get the Business Innovation in the 21st Century book, and a set of templates to develop the solution.
A Practical Approach to Servant Leadership David Veech, Executive Director, Institute for Lean Systems; Jahn Ballard, Performance Management Institute and Approved Scanlon Consultant Discover what it means to yourself and your organization to Connect Innovation in Measurement to Servant Leadership and Involving People. • Transfer understanding of implementing Servant Leadership principles and how to evolve and cascade non-directive leadership throughout the enterprise. • Learn the basic elements of Whole System Organizational Design and Lean Thinking.
• See how the principles of comprehensive self-auditing apply to supporting clear thinking across reporting levels.
• Experience how it is possible to measure and explain the most important financial and operational measurements of your business, and use visual tools to make them accessible to everyone. • Use Hoshin and Cradle-to-Cradle thinking to integrate and connect values to execution
Scanlon 101 Paul Davis, President Scanlon Leadership Network and Certified Scanlon Consultant Who was Joe Scanlon and why was he so important? Who was Carl Frost, Learn the history and development of the Scanlon way of doing business. What are the Scanlon Principles and Processes, and how do they work in your organization? Learn all this and more! For those with little or no knowledge of Scanlon
Training Within Industry Roger Bilas, TWI Institute Certified Trainer “Training Within Industry” is called the roots of lean, the origin of Japanese management and Kaizen. Developed by Americans during WWII to increase production output to support the Allied Forces war effort, TWI was taken to Japan after the war to help rebuild their industrial infrastructure. The Japanese embraced the concepts and refined and evolved the ideas into some of the most successful management techniques the world has seen. As Jim Huntzinger, renowned expert in manufacturing and lean says, “TWI may well be the ground zero of these modern manufacturing philosophies that have developed into the most promising methods in industry today”. This session will give you the fundamentals of TWI, and show you how it can work for you.
Turning the Blame Game into Problem Solving Dr. Greg Huszczo Eastern Michigan Univeristy Do people at your workplace spend lots of time trying to say who is at fault for things instead of figuring out what needs to be done about the issues? How’s that working for you? Come to our workshop to learn how to turn the blame game into problem solving. Learn 5 ways to deal with conflict situations plus a bonus strategy of how to deal with particularly difficult people. Together let’s quit finger-pointing and start getting stuff resolved instead. Let’s learn how to focus on the what, not the who.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Post Conference Tours
Witness the celebration of the innovation of manufacturing in America – where history and the future merge. This tour consists of 5 unique components:
1. Historic driving tour of Henry Ford grounds
2. Historic footage viewing: Learn about the triumphs and tragedies surrounding the Rouge, much of it told through rare, never-before-seen historic footage
3. Virtual reality experience: a 360-degree look at how automobiles are made
4. Observation deck: view the world’s largest ‘living roof’ from this 80-foot high deck
5. Assembly plant walking tour: see where the new Ford F 150’s are assembled in a new lean and flexible manufacturing plant
Scanlon Member Thomson-Shore Tour 9:00 – 12:00 visit Thomson-Shore
See the Scanlon Principles and Processes in action! This long-time Network Member is a 100% employee owned book printer. Thomson-Shore's award-winning programs and practices have helped them become “the book printer for the Pope”. They were the first Printing Manufacturer to become a member of the Green Press Initiative and has earned its FSC certification.
Conference Hotel Information
Ritz-Carlton Dearborn, Michigan
 Reservations Deadline: April 7 All participants are responsible for making and paying for their own lodging. Scanlon Leadership Network has a block of rooms reserved at the discounted rate of $149+tax. Rooms are available on a first come first served basis. After April 7 all rooms will be released to the general public. For large groups, mail or fax the completed Ritz Carlton Reservation and Payment Form to the hotel. DO NOT send the Form to the Network office. If you call in your reservation, be sure to indicate that you are with the Scanlon Leadership Network group to receive the special rate.
The hotel does NOT recommend that you try to make reservations online, due to a possible technical glitch that could cause problems. Fax group reservation lists directly to Jacqui DeWitt at the below number, or email them to her at
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Location: 300 Town Center Drive, Dearborn MI 48126 Ph. 313.441.2000 Fax 313.253.4418
Directions: I-94 to Southfield Freeway (M-39) North. Take Southfield Freeway to Michigan Avenue (#6) exit. Exit and stay on the service drive. Take service drive to Hubbard Road. Hotel is on the left hand side.
The Ritz-Carlton, Dearborn recommends Metro Car for your transportation needs. Please call the Concierge Desk at 313.441.2000, ext. 3450 to inquire about available services and fees.
Conference and Tours Fee Schedule and Registration Forms:
Conference Registration: $250 for Network Members, $475 for non-Network Members
Welcome Reception: $15
Greenfield Village "Inventor's Tour": $20
Ford Rouge Factory and Scanlon Member Thomson-Shore Tours: $25 for Network Members, $40 for non-Network Members
To Download the conference brochure and hotel registation form click on the link below....
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To learn more about the Scanlon Conference please contact the Network Office at
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or call (517) 332-8927.
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