Michael Lee Stallard

I’m in San Francisco this week filming SmartBytes for Athenaonline.com, speaking at ALI’s social media conference, doing a television interview and meeting John Walker, a producer at Pixar Animation. John was the producer of “The Incredibles” and pre-Pixar he produced “The Iron Giant.” John’s the business guy in a partnership with director Brad Bird.

Presently, I’m working on an article about Pixar Animation and why it has been so successful. My thesis is that Pixar has a Connection Culture that provides a competitive advantage. I also suspect that there is so much pressure to produce results that the risk to Pixar is that it focuses on task excellence alone to the detriment of its Connection Culture. To sustain its success, Pixar must keep its eye on maintaining both task excellence and a Connection Culture that produces relationship excellence.  When organizations fail to maintain relationship excellence it ultimately sabotages task excellence because disconnected workers don’t give their best efforts to their work and stop communicating (which leads to ill-informed decisions.) 

I’m pulling for Pixar and believe as long as it stays keenly aware of this risk and actively maintains a Connection Culture, it will continue to be the shining star in the dismal motion picture production industry.

Today the American Management Association posted a podcast I did with the AMA’s Dave Summers. The topic of the podcast is how to create Connection Cultures that increase employee engagement. You can hear the podcast and even download it on an iPod or iPhone by clicking on employee engagement.

Here are links below to follow-up materials for the participants in the American Management Association webcast I’m doing tomorrow. The 2,600 spots for the webcast were oversubscribed but the AMA is making the recording of it available on or around November 10. You can click here to sign up for an email to access the recording. Here are the materials:

Free download from changethis.com:
Connection Culture eBook

Free Getting Started Guide to Connection Cultures:
e-pluribus-partners-getting-started

Feel free to pass them along to anyone who might benefit!

This Thursday November 6 at 11:00 AM Eastern, I’ll be participating in a webinar hosted by Lee White of E Quint Consulting. The webinar is titled “The Connected Enterprise: Using Social Connectivity to Drive Productivity.” It will consist of a panel discussion with Lee Bryant, Co-Founder, Headshift, Mark Scrimshire, Founder, Ekive and yours truly.

The focus of the conversation will be around the factors that contribute to a successful Enterprise 2.0 implementation, and practical advice for carrying out such a project. Some of the questions the panel will address include:

• How important are the social and behavioral aspects of creating a successful “connected enterprise” initiative, as opposed to the strictly technical aspects?
• How does the use of social tools in the enterprise lead to improvements in employee engagement and employee retention?
• How does opening up information access reduce organizational risk?

Don’t miss what is certain to be an enlightening conversation about the intersection of Enterprise 2.0 and corporate culture. To register for this webinar, click here.

On November 5th I’ll be doing a webcast for the American Management Association entitled “Fired Up Leadership: How to Make Your Team Thrive.”  The webcast is already oversubscribed but the AMA will be making it available to the public at no charge beginning on or around November 10.  To receive an email notifcation from the AMA when the webcast becomes available, click here.

Join me this Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern when I will host a presentation by Marc Effron, Vice President of Talent Management at Avon and head of The New Talent Management Network. Marc is a thought and practice leader in talent management who is challenging industry practices when it comes to developing talent. Tune in to learn more about how Marc and his team have transformed Avon into one of the leading talent engines worldwide. You can sign up to attend the free webcast by clicking on employee engagement.

Yesterday, Jason Pankau and I had the honor of conducting a Connection Culture Leadership Training Workshop for General Dynamics’ Electric Boat Division.  This group builds nuclear submarines for the U.S. Navy. It was evident that the group of leaders we met felt a great deal of pride in their work. They should. Read more »

On November 5th from 12:00 P.M. until 1:00 P.M. Eastern, I’m presenting on a webcast for the American Management Association. The webcast is about Connection Cultures, leadership, teams and employee engagement. It will include Q&A with AMA program manager Susan Zeidman as well as from listeners. There is no charge for the webcast. You can register to attend by clicking on employee engagement.

I wanted to let you know that I will be presenting at the Advanced learning Institute’s “Social Media For Internal Communications Conference: How To Engage Employees, Drive Change & Improve Your Bottom Line Using BLOGGING, PODCASTING & The Latest WEB 2.0 Technologies,” November 17-20, 2008 in San Francisco, CA.  This conference will focus on how to use social media for internal communications and leverage the latest interactive tools and techniques to advance your organizational goals. You can save $200 by mentioning email code “SPK” when registering and another $400 on top of that if you register by October 2nd (the “early bird” registration deadline).

My session topic will be:“Giving Employees A Voice: How H&R Block Built An Online Community”

For more information or to register, see below or click here to go to the conference website. 

Hope to see you there!

Tune in on Monday September, 29 at 11:00 AM Eastern to hear my guest Paul Spiegelman, CEO of Beryl Companies, talk about the remarkable corporate culture at Beryl and how it has resulted in high levels of employee engagement and retention.  This organization is one of the best examples of a Connection Culture that I am aware of and Paul is an extraordinary leader and author of Why is Everyone Smiling?  

For more about the webcast click on employee engagement.