Members of the Board of my Company have mmade the observation that our CEO didn't "get" (ie understand) e-commerce until he had attended the WEO at Davos followed by an invitation the Bill Gates annual CEO summit.

After that it was full steam ahead for e-commerce. But now we need a "Davos" effect in the HR area. We are undergoing a major organisational change and the CEO again just does not seem to understand the full negative effect the changes being orchestrated by him are having on the organisation.

Davos/Gates worked because peers he respected were talking positively about e-commerce.

So where can I find a similar event dealing with HR at the CEO level?

Surprise me and tell me one exists.

-- Graham Johnson (graham@johnson.org), December 16, 2000

Answers

I suppose the closest thing to it would be summits run by the Marcus Evans organization http://www.marcusevans.com , but those HR related vents are mainly for Senior and Vice President of HR level. You could also try one of the organizations that support the HR Summit events such as the International Association of Human Resource Information Management at http://www.ihrim.org . Again all of these conferences and summits are heavily weighted on supplier solutions.

I would call what Bill Gates arranged as a C2C event or Chairman/CEO to Chairman/CEO, and the only way to find a correlating event of the magnitude of the CEO summit (remember this is 107 CEO's who are on the A-list of corporations) is for a comparable CEO involved in the HR area to host it. Even Bill Gates did not try to turn the CEO summit into a Microsoft event and he realized that it was far important to make it a greater event than a massive vendor opportunity. Maybe your own CEO could host that type of event, they have experience with the Bill Gates led event and also the WEO set up at Davos. The CEO summit originally invited 450 of the leading CEO's of which 107 accepted the invitation.

Maybe there is that great HR type of event out there that matches the level of the CEO Summit but I have not heard of it. I too am waiting for someone to surprise me that it does actually exist.

M.

M Profile at: http://www.fastcompany.com/fasttalk/replypost.html? p=9738 "To be or not to be that is the question" A quote by Willy Shakes. Mantra of M. "Life is about Private Relations not Public Relations"

-- Mark Zorro (zorromark@consultant.com), December 18, 2000.

You might try scouting Linkage Inc. events (www.linkageinc.com).

I had the opportunity to attend a consulting skills workshop in Orlando produced by this company - it was top shelf material. Linkage consistently books top speaking talent the likes of Peter Senge, Peter Block, Benjamin Zander.

Another route you might consider would be shopping for the message (i.e. scouring Fast Company for the "right message", visit the messenger's web site and find out where he/she is speaking publicly, try to pick the right audience to surround your boss and try to hitch a ride to the same event to observe the success/failure of this strategy. There's never an idea so engaging or compelling as an idea "discovered" on one's own! (Let's kindly say this is an assisted version of 'When the student is ready, the teacher appears' philosophy).

all the best bb

-- Barbara Blackwell (bb@salesflight.com), March 24, 2001.