Congratulations to Jason Jennings on the May 12, 2012 release of The Reinventors – How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change, (Penguin Putnam).  The book promises to reveal the secrets of leaders and organizations that have successfully reinvented and transformed themselves.  It also forms the foundation for his new speech topic:  “Reinvention – The Six Secrets of Change”.

Reinvention seems to be on the minds of many executives.  Yet, reinvention isn’t innovation, according to in-demand business speaker, Jason Jennings.  Innovation might be the latest hot product from a company, a creative new restaurant concept, or a unique way of delivering service.  Reinvention goes far beyond a new product or service.  Reinvention is a top to bottom ruthless review and rebuild of an organization, asking and answering hard questions:

• When are we a candidate for reinvention?
• What business are we in and what business will we be in?
• How are we going to get paid for what we do?
• How do we change everything we do to take advantage of the latest technologies that might not exist yet?
• How and when do we start pulling the plug on the things we are doing now?
• Who stays and has a role and who goes?
• What are the things we need to do to be relevant?

Jennings and his teams have screened and studied more than 120,000 companies, but research from the IBM Study of the Global Marketplace helped solidify his decision to write the book.  The study makes the case that 66% of all CEO’s believe their present business model is sustainable for less than three years, while an additional 32% believe the lifespan of their current business model is under five years.  That’s an astounding 98% of CEO’s who believe their current business models are ultimately unsustainable!

Jason Jennings is a researcher and one of the most successful and prolific business and leadership authors in the world.  He has written numerous books including, It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small – It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow and Less is More, which identifies the world’s ten most productive companies.  Jennings is available as a speaker to help lead individuals and companies to their full economic potential.

For speaker availability: Contact Diane Goodman at diane@goodmanspeakersbureau.com or call (800)875-2893.

Jason Jennings: Full biography and video

Ever wonder what drives an organization’s culture to high performance and peak productivity?  In their new book, All In:  How the Best Managers Create a Culture of Belief and Drive Big Results, speakers Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick provide insights to the success behind companies with high-achievement employees.  All In presents groundbreaking new findings on workgroup culture and performance based on an unprecedented 300,000-person study and numerous in-depth interviews with leaders and employees from high-buy-in companies.

During their research, they discovered high-performance organizations provide cultures that support employees who are engaged, enabled, and energized.  These three characteristics, or “three E’s” create a “culture of belief” that has proved to generate average annual operating revenues three times higher than those of comparable companies that lack this positive environment.

To help others succeed, Elton and Gostick offer a simple 7-step road map that all managers can follow to create their own culture of belief, secure high-productivity, and encourage high-achievement.  Through specific how-to’s, they illustrate each of the following points with support from their research and extensive business consulting experience:

1. Define a burning platform
2. Create a customer focus 
3. Develop agility 
4. Share everything 
5. Partner with your talent
6. Root for each other
7. Establish clear accountability

Elton and Gostick are also the authors of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestsellers:  The Carrot Principle and The Orange Revolution, which are sold in more than 50 countries.  Chester Elton is a popular keynote speaker and an influential voice in global workplace trends.  He is founder of the global training and consulting firm The Culture Works, with a focus on recognition, teamwork and culture.   Bio and video clip of Chester Elton.

Adrian Gostick is a leadership expert and vice-president of The Culture Works who has appeared on network television and has been quoted in dozens of business publications.  He speaks to audiences on leadership, productivity, employee engagement and retention.  Bio and video clip of Adrian Gostick.

For more information on reserving Chester Elton or Adrian Gostick for your next event, contact Liz Piacentini at 800-875-2893 or liz@goodmanspeakersbureau.com.

Health & Wellness Speaker, Andy Core

Spring is a busy time of year for meeting professionals!  Take a few tips from Health and Wellness Speaker, Andy Core, to keep yourself in peak performance while delivering successful events.

TO BE MORE CONNECTED:

1.  Gratitude ~ Researchers from U.C. Davis suggest that happiness can be significantly improved by reviewing the simple things you are greatful for.  It increases your motivaton to do things (like exercise), and significantly reduces stress and anxiety.

2.  Better Management of Transitions Between Work-life and Travel-life ~ The brief moments of transition between work-life and personal-life set the motivational tone for your current day and the next.  Consider getting up a bit earlier, taking an extra trip around the block before you reach home, or factoring in whatever you need to be in a patient and encouraging state of mind for friends, family and co-workers.

3.  Build Better Relationships with Encouragers ~ List the top three most encouraging people in your life.  Ask yourself, “What can I do to encourage them?  What can I regularly schedule that gives us the opportunity to encourage each other more often?”

TO HAVE MORE ENERGY:
4.  Stuff your Suitcase, Purse or Briefcase with Protein Bars ~ You might say, “Don’t those have a lot of calories?”  Maybe, but they have fewer calories than a candy bar or a chocolate fondue fountain and will provide longer lasting energy.

5.  Take your Vitamins ~ Unless you eat five fruits and veggies a day and two servings of cold water fish a week, then it’s worth swilling 8oz. of water along with a multivitamin, 1200mg Calcium, 1000mg flax seed or fish oil and 1500mg glucosamine supplements right after breakfast.

6.  Stimulate Responsibly ~ Caffeine is optional, but too much early in the day is like taking out a high interest loan against your afternoon productivity.  Most people can have up to four 6oz. cups of coffee a day and reap increased productivity without stimulating unnecessary stress, sleeplessness and crankiness.  Oh, and this amount of coffee has shown it can reduce your chances of cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease.

7.  Implement a Nightly Deep Sleep System ~ Two hours before bed, shut down your fluid intake.  One hour before bed, cool and darken your bedroom to give your body the “go deep” signal.  You’ll sleep deeper and feel great when you wake up.

8.  Fry Stress with 3 Interval Exercise Sessions a Week ~ Warm-up for 5 minutes.  Then, do 20-minutes of your favorite exercise, alternating one minute of pushing it a little (about 80-90% effort), with two minutes of slow and steady recovery, then cool down.  Interval training is the #1 most efficient way to clear stress and crankiness and boost the fitness of your heart and lungs.

TO BE MORE PRODUCTIVE & FOCUSED:
9.  Schedule 30-Minutes Right After Lunch to Outline Tomorrow’s Highest Value Activites ~ Productivity experts swear by this, and the bonus is that it will help keep your mind from racing when you are trying to sleep that night.

10.  Physically Remove the Snooze Button ~ The snooze button only provides extra minutes of poor quality interrupted sleep.  This will make you feel worse than if you just got up in the first place!  Plus, it can add a rushing energy to your morning, which is stress you don’t need.

Andy Core has been selected as one of 2012′s Global Top5 Speakers in Health-Healthcare.  He believes that improving productivity, employee engagement and health are all work-life balance issues.  Andy has a master’s degree in the science of human performance and has spent the last 16 years mastering the art of inspiring people to become energized, healthy, motivated and better equipped to thrive in today’s hectic society.  Full bio and video clip.

To check Andy Core’s availability or to reserve him for your next event, contact Liz Piacentini at liz@goodmanspeakersbureau.com or call 800-875-2893.

If Wendy’s founder, Dave Thomas, were with us today assisting in this new age of digital videos – this is the question he would still be asking.  But unlike eating a hamburger we are processing a video file.  The key here is the word “FILE”.  To reflect, the file is the least thing thought of regarding videos.  We have watched our videos on BETA and VHS tapes never even thinking that the media is just the carrier for the file.  Same goes with DVDs.  The media is the carrier for the digital video file.  And now, most all speakers are saving the cost of DVD production by placing their videos on the internet. This has many advantages, especially for satisfying our appetite for immediate gratification if we have a case of the “give-mes”.

There are many ways a speaker can have a video placed on the internet.  A few popular trends include placing them on the speaker’s own website, YouTube or Vimeo for viewing purposes.  Most speakers do just that and will send us a video link to look at their videos.  Some become more technically savvy and send us the “Embed Code”, so if we want we can plug in the code and the video appears as if we have it on our site. The problem is we are really pointing to the hosting location in the code and taking the client off our site.  This all seems very technically sound and appealing,  but it truly does not satisfy our needs here at the bureau.  Most speakers and their technical support people fail to think about our clients, who work in Fortune 500 companies, and would never be allowed to access the videos from locations that are not business oriented.  YouTube especially may have a high failure rate against Firewall filters, because of it’s open content.

So we may best present a speaker’s video on our website, we need the file.  Remember this?  Where’s the Beef?  When you send a DVD, we get a video file.  This file will be the best resolution for viewing.  We most often are required do some video editing so it best suites our needs.  We compress it to put on our website.  When we do not have the file we must download the video off YouTube, or elsewhere, which  renders the final product similar to that of a Xerox copy of a copy of a copy — not as good as if we had the FILE.

The BEST way to provide us, your bureau, with a video file is to either have your website setup with a DOWNLOAD page so we may select your video file in a couple format varieties like:  .mov  .wmv or .mp4.   In lieu of a download page you can send a large video via an email file transmission carrier/service, and there are a few services out there.  Beware that many of these free services will ask the receiver to create a user account to try and sell their services, but we do not wish to sign up for any of these.   My experience with the service “You Send It”, seems to be the most seamless in this process and easiest to work with.

To many of you out there this may not be cutting edge news, but our hope is to reach those who are struggling with digital media processing and are seeking solutions to delivery their digital hi-res videos.  Please let us know if this has been helpful.  We look forward to new updated videos from all of you in 2012!

Greg Fortin, CIO

Speaker & Author, Doc Hendley

Congratulations to speaker, Doc Hendley, on the recent release of his book, “Wine to Water: A Bartender’s Quest to Bring Clean Water to the World”, the captivating story of an ordinary bartender who’s changing the world through clean water, (Avery: Penguin Group, Jan 2012).

Doc Hendley never set out to be a hero.  In 2004, Doc Hendley -a small town bartender – launched a series of wine-tasting events to raise funds for clean-water projects and to bring awareness to the world’s water crisis.  He planned to donate the proceeds through traditional channels, but instead found himself traveling to one of the world’s most dangerous hot spots: Darfur, Sudan.  The number one weapon there wasn’t bullets – it was unclean water.

With limited funds, Doc realized that he couldn’t build new wells costing $10,000 each, but he could hire local workers to restore a damaged well.  He had found his mission.   Today, Doc is the Founder and President of the non-profit organization, Wine to Water, and continues to help stricken people repair and maintain water-containment systems in places like Darfur, Cambodia, Uganda, and Haiti.  Doc is a regular, rough-and-tumble guy who loves booze, music, and his Harley.   Doc calls himself proof that anyone, even a tattooed key-tapper, can cure what ails the world and in 2009, he became a CNN Hero.

“Wine to Water” is a gripping story about braving tribal warfare and natural disasters and encountering fascinating characters in far-flung regions of the world.  It is also an authoritative account of a global crisis and an inspirational tale that proves how ordinary people can improve the world.  This inspiring speaker helps audiences understand the immense power of relationships to transcend perceived barriers and how to do what we can with what we have.  Doc truly proves that one person can transform the impossible into the inevitable.   

For a full bio and video clip of Doc Hendley, click here.   

To reserve him as a speaker for your event, contact Liz Piacentini at liz@goodmanspeakersbureau.com or call 800-875-2893.