Aside from our company's own team of superstar organizational coaches, I was introduced to some other industry superstars on the second and final day of our management conference. In the video amphitheater, I caught a bit of Loretta LaRoche, who is described by some as the "Jolly-lama" for her unique approach of using humor to diffuse tension in the workplace.

The closing speaker was David Maister, a former Harvard Business School professor, and author of the highly regarded books, Managing the Professional Services Firm and The Trusted Advisor. David's speech was deliberately provactive with proclaimations such as "strategic planning is intellectually trivial!" and "training and performance management should be abolished!" His basic point was that no strategy can be realized without truly committed people, and that all organizations should face the hard reality that if their people don't improve, the organization should help them move on. What made the talk entertaining was David's humorous examples sketched on an overhead projector, and spoken in a british accent punctuated by loud snorts and body bows for emphasis. Even cooler was the fact that he was in spitting distance (I was actually worried about spit!) of the CPO, who shifted uncomfortably in her chair a few times. Memorable. Here are some of articles by Maister.

And as a parting gift, we all got a company logo'd 128mb MP3 player/USB memory/FM radio/digital recorder gadget.

- mike lee - north bethesda, md