Reminder: The August 26 and October 7 Manager Forum meetings will be devoted to a 2-part workshop to frame the September Management Summit webinar series.
The theme for the workshop is Confronting Change, and our objective will be to examine our attitudes about change, leadership, and mission. Change is disruptive, but disruption can provide an opportunity to take a close look at the fundamentals of what we believe and why we believe it, and how we can apply that clarity to individual personal development as well as organizational leadership. The program will focus on concepts from two well-known titles in the genre of professional development literature: Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson and Start with Why by Simon Sinek.
Who Moved My Cheese explores the psychology of change and the strategies that we use to navigate it. The book is presented in the form of a fable about four characters who inhabit a vast maze and spend their days searching for (or making excuses to not search for) cheese. Each of the characters exhibits different behaviors, representing different aspects of change psychology – some more successful than others. Start with Why presents the concept of the “Golden Circle,” which is a conceptual framework for properly aligning our sense of purpose (the “why”) with our behavior (the “whats” and “hows”). When applied to personal and organizational leadership, this framework illustrates the importance of motivation, as opposed to manipulation, in supporting team cohesion and achieving our big-picture goals.
The August 26 Pre-conference workshop will review the themes of both books and focus on the manager as an individual, and at the October 7 Post-conference workshop we will discuss the application of these themes to the manager’s role as an organizational leader. Each workshop session will include interactive exercises and some short “homework” assignments to support the learning objectives. Attendees are encouraged to review some the resources below for an introduction to the concepts in each book before the workshop:
- Who Moved My Cheese – The Movie (16 minutes)
- Who Moved My Cheese animated book summary (8 minutes)
- Who Moved My Cheese animated book summary (5 minutes)
- Start with Why TED Talk (18 minutes)
- Start with Why Book Summary (11 pages)
For those who do not have an opportunity to prepare prior to the August 26 Forum, we will be screening all the videos linked above starting at 1pm, one hour before the Pre-conference workshop at 2pm.
For more information, contact Matt Miller mmiller@pacd.org.