Let's Spend Two Great Days Together in DC or Dallas!

Preview: This post tells you how to join me (and David Zinger and Terry Starbucker) in Dallas and DC for exciting conversations about state-of-the-art management.

ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) asked me to partner with them to provide a kick butt two day conference on developing great managers. My book by the same name is apparently a very popular seller for ASTD and they want to extend the conversation about management development.

The design for this two day conference is very cool.

It is a two day workshop whereby the participants will create and share many (maybe dozens, depending on the group size) of Power Hours - ready to take back to their workplace and use to help develop great managers.

What are Power Hours? A power hour is a one-hour informal learning conversation that is designed to get managers into discussions that will help them generate and implement new/renewed ideas to move the business forward and build their management and leadership craft.

All of the participants will get access to everything that's generated during the two days - no licenses, no limitations. Bottom line: Participants will leave the two days with years worth of management development materials and the ability to easily blend power hours into their training regimens.

Managers who develop managers, trainers of managers, and HR professionals are the target audience for this conference. Anyone interested in management and leadership will love it.

But there is MORE. You will work with me for most of the two days, but there will be a guest speaker - who I am calling the provocateur - that will spend 2-3 hours with the group talking about:

The new management skills and requirements - what are the emerging management topics that ought to be a part of your training programs but probably are not yet? Emerging, new, cutting edge, under recognized - we will be focusing on creating power hours for NEW or underdeveloped management topics.

That's why I am calling the guest speaker a provocateur - he will provoke our brains and create head spinning goodness that will then lead into our creative work for the rest of the conference. This is going to be an energizing two days.

I am thrilled to tell you that my guest speakers are people you might know and read on a regular basis! My "provocateurs" for this conference are:

David Zinger! David will be joining me in DC (Alexandria, actually) on December 9th and 10th.

Terry Starbucker! Terry will be joining me in Dallas on December 4th and 5th.

David and Terry are amazing and I am really looking forward to working with them. For those of you wondering how to pitch your desire to attend this conference to your boss - how does this sound?

When I come back from this conference I will have with me many hours of management development training we can use, reproduce and modify with no additional costs or caveats. No licensing, nothing more to buy. I will be set for great material for the next year. And I will be creating this material with a group of very smart professionals and we will be sharing all the work. This is an ASTD conference, so we can trust that it will be top notch and valuable.

And besides, with the strong economy and the drastic drop in fuel costs, the travel expenses will be very low. The take-aways from the conference will make this well worth the travel and conference expenses.

And besides, nobody gets any real work done between Thanksgiving and Christmas anyway, so I might as well go to the conference.  Early December is a great time to go because it will give me lots of information I can use to help us kick off a great 2009.

And besides, our current training topics are lame - the same ole stuff. People are sick of it. Our training could use some updating, this is a new world and managers have a lot more to deal with than they used to.

How about it, will I see you there? Drop me a note if you register.

Oh, here's one more thing that might really appeal to my blog readers - on the evening of the first day, I will invite you to an informal chat in the hotel lounge - we can talk about whatever you want.

I hope you join me. Let's do some great work together! You can find out more information about these conferences on the ASTD website here.

Also, pass this post along to the fine folks who work in your training departments, OK? (Especially if you think their training could use some updating.... :-)

Oh, this is going to be so much fun! Here's your not-so-subliminal visual.

Comments

[Luann Budd]

Hi Lisa,
I just signed up for the 2-day conference in VA. I look forward to an engaging time. I haven't thought much about Middle Management except when things go wrong -- besides your book, any other resources I should read before I come?