Business leaders and executives are invited to a new, interactive BizTimes Media event this month aimed at helping companies improve in the areas of culture, accountability and leadership development.
The Executive Forum will take place from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. Thursday, March 21 at the Italian Community Center, 631 E. Chicago St., Milwaukee. The event features John Lankford as keynote speaker and workshop leader.
Lankford is a multi-award-winning business advisor and author of the book “The Answer is Leadership … What is the Question?”
He has 23 years of corporate experience and another 12 years as an entrepreneur. He has facilitated more than two dozen mergers and acquisitions and launched three businesses, selling two of them.
The presentation and workshop will focus on developing leadership teams, funding leadership development with solutions that pay for themselves, improving talent attraction and retention, and increasing the value of the company.
Executive Forum is targeted to businesses with 10 to 100 employees, a group that makes up around 22 percent of businesses in the state and nearly 25 percent of employment, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Attendees will be limited to CEOs, presidents, owners, partners and COOs at companies with 10 or more employees.
The event is presented by Park Bank. To register, visit biztimes.com/execforum.
Dan Meyer, publisher and owner of BizTimes Media, said many leaders at small to midsized businesses do not take the time to prioritize the things needed to set their company up for future success because they are busy working on everyday challenges.
“Take the morning to take a breath and think about how you can be more intentional about some of your critical areas,” Meyer said.
Executive Forum is designed for business leaders to leave with actionable items they can implement in their own businesses. The workshop will help companies address whether they have the right leadership skills in the right positions, craft a plan to develop current leaders, and form a process to measure performance throughout the organization.
The issues addressed at Executive Forum all contribute to employee attraction and retention, a major challenge for businesses throughout the region. The challenge is only getting more difficult with unemployment rates around 3 percent. More than 3.3 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in December, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from around 2.1 million in December 2013. The average monthly total of people quitting their jobs has increased every year since 2010.
While the old adage might have been that people do not quit jobs, they quit bad bosses, Lankford says that is changing. A 2017 Gallup poll found the top reason people leave is a lack of training, development and career options. Lankford says that is especially true among millennials.
Whatever the reason for their departure, losing employees costs businesses time and money. While it might be tempting to accept that turnover is just a way of life, Lankford says his experience is that issue often comes down to broken accountability or leadership development systems. Executive Forum will help businesses explore what challenges they are facing. ν
