When:
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 5:30 PM (GMT)

Where:
The Guoman Tower Bridge hotel
St Katharine’s Way
E1W 1LD London
United Kingdom

Hosted By:
Erudyte Ltd

Erudyte Ltd is proud to bring to our clients, Rainmakers who have had hands on experience as being leaders, delivered on their goals and now share a vision to create a better world.

Our Rainmakers are driven by a deep passion towards making a measurable, significant and permanent difference in the world and are therefore people who have all made things happen – people who have brought an edge of demonstrable value into an organisational environment.

They do this by imparting their knowledge through popular methods such as speaking, consulting, training and one to ones or a seamless programme working alongside existing training schedules, consulting processes or conference events.

Rainmakers will take you and your organisation
to the edge – beyond the boundaries!

Register for this event now at :
http://rainmakerwednesday240210-rss.eventbrite.com

Event Details:

A Rainmakers dialogue
How to Get Great Performance in a Recession
(Intermediate and Advanced level)

The Business Scene and Economy are changing rapidly.
Corporates increasingly struggle to keep customers and staff engaged.

The Discussion will consider:

• What will the business environment look and behave like in the future?
• How can corporates and individuals grow and thrive in this brave new world?
• The Economy – Where do we go from here?
• Bonus Culture – Good, Banned or Evil?
• Interim Management and Part Time Workers – What’s next?
• The New Economy – Freeze, Flee or Fight?

The audience will also have a chance to ask their own questions on the night too.

“The global financial storm has produced a global shift in awareness, not only have the rules changed – future sustainable business will need to understand that there is a new value equation out there – value 2.0 if you wish – achieving great performance will depend on truly understanding how to deliver and support this value.”

- Gary Sage February 2010

You should attend if you need to:

• Develop high-potential employees
• Grow future senior managers/leaders?
• Retain and engage key staff?
• Reduce costs yet maintain high value?
• Build critical business relationships?
• Understand where business and markets will be in 3-5 years?

Management is vitally important in a time of recession. Indeed, the recession is making the development of your business and your talented people more critical.  Staff turnover remains high in the UK, despite the contraction in the number of people out of work and the face of business is rapidly changing as the way we do business is evolving.
 
As part of your strategic business practice and also management, development and leadership programmes, naturally you will already be examining the ideas about ‘How to Get Great Performance’.  

No doubt you have discovered, the rules have changed.  If this is the case, are you now ready to go to the next stages and learn about how to get great performance in a recession at both INTERMEDIATE and ADVANCED level?
 
You could have a happier, more cohesive, more effective leadership team to help you exploit and grow through the recession rather than be damaged by it.  Isn’t it worth a few hours of your time to find out how?
 
Thought Leaders:
Rainmaker – Gary Sage of SageHagan.
Gary Sage is a ‘Super Skiller’.  He is a gifted consultant and Communications Coach whose personal clients span the globe.  Gary has coached and conducted seminars and workshops on five continents to thousands of people and successfully taken his unique methodology into organisations from as diverse a background of; international banks to luxury goods manufacturers to multinational computer companies, to sole traders.
 
Rainmaker – Gordon Lovell-Read of Orgmentor.
Gordon is an experienced C-level executive with an outstanding track record of leading, and delivering, change in global companies. A recognised transformation expert and leadership guru, he can often be found engaged where individuals or organizations need to intercept, or outpace, significant market trends through fundamental shifts in strategy, thinking and behaviours. Having been involved in integrating over thirty corporate acquisitions, he is particularly well versed in the challenges and opportunities around cultural diversity and the building of shared service functions to drive out synergies.

Cost: Is to cover room hire as all profit will be going to the charity: ActionAid 

All prices listed above.

Next step – book now: Places are limited so click the button now. Additional donations gratefully received.

                                                                                                     Registered Charity No 274467

For more details about Erudyte and Rainmakers Company, go to www.rainmakerscompany.com

Supporters of this event:

Rainmaker Thursday
Value 2.0 The Next Level -

- Thick Value or Creative Destruction?

Date: 6th May 2010

Venue: Castle Hill House, Windsor.

‘Adding Value’ is fast becoming an over used, worn out corporate buzz word and it could be damaging your organisation.  It’s taking some organisations to crisis point – especially those that are not even aware of it’s true nature.

Simply ‘Adding Value’ is no longer enough to get the attraction you desire.

Consider:

• After pulling your belt in for over a year are you sure you are not on the extinct list or can you rebuild and flourish?
• Has pulling in your belt over the last 6 months killed your next big thing?

Every day it seems yet another product or service is being labelled as ’added value’ and laying claims that it’s now better than ever before or better than its rival!  But lets really think about this… what IS the difference between one ’new added value’ offering  to another? How would your organisation’s value truly stand up to comparisons?

• Research has shown that many customers think value is intrinsictly linked to money either as a ‘how much can I get for my money’ or ‘How little can I pay for this?’ stance.
• ‘Value’, in the opinion of some, has turned into the ‘Spam’ phrase of the corporate advertising, marketing and PR collateral as well as some of the corporate thinking and strategy.
• Somehow ‘value’ seems to have become lost along the way as more people view ‘added value’ as a standard that a company should be offereing and thereby no longer a true added value!

So how do you do something which is better than others and more importantly seen to be better, valued to be better and talked about as being the best?

As rainmaker Gary Sage said in a recent interview:

“The global financial storm has produced a global shift in awareness, not only have the rules changed – future sustainable business will need to understand that there is a new value equation out there – value 2.0 if you wish – achieving great performance will depend on truly understanding how to deliver and support this value.”

This session is for those wanting to understand the future of ‘Value’ today and it’s impact to organisations before it arrives!  Do Not underestimate the value of ‘Value’!

To be held under Chatham House Rule

Thought Leader:

Rainmaker – Gary Sage of SageHagan.

Gary Sage is a ‘Super Skiller’.  He is a gifted consultant and Communications Coach whose personal clients span the globe.  Gary has coached and conducted seminars and workshops on five continents to thousands of people and successfully taken his unique methodology into organisations from as diverse a background of; international banks to luxury goods manufacturers to multinational computer companies, to sole traders.

Cost: All refreshments and lunch are included. If you are multi-booking, you may be entitled to a group discount.  Please contact Chris on 0 845 0941044 for further details.

All prices listed above exclude VAT.

Next step – book now: Places are very limited so click the button now to secure your place.  Alternatively, this can be delivered in-house and tailored if required.

Everyone talks about being ‘sustainable’ but what exactly does that mean when it comes to staff engagement?

Simple – treat your staff and people like valuable human beings – your social capital is important as society adjusts to a new generation of younger thinkers. These younger thinkers are in a position where they will soon work out that they don’t really need stability formerly know as “a real job”, they already know that they can provide value, that means they can live off the land . . . . er  . . . world that the baby-boomer built.

To be truly sustainable people will in some casesneed to wait for the dinosaurs of an archaic pre-baby-boomer industrial age to retire or die out.  The platform for sustainability is already around us – the baby boomers built it – the new generation knows exactly how to make sustainability work – they are building for tomorrow and doing right to others.

The secret rests in applying the “Golden Rule”.

Adding Value is starting to become another phrase that’s been hijacked by the bandwagon brigade. How should a business avoid being labeled as ‘oh another one’ when it starts to talk about its own adding value?

Value is possibly on of the most worn-out terms in the corporate buzz word book: Today much of which is accorded value is an fantasy (think financial markets – value is not solid – it’s all about leverage – it’s made up – the King dollar and Queen pound are naked so to speak).

Before the iPhone every phone handset maker spent over 15 years claiming to “add value” to their phones (no-one really noticed) – yet all they really ended up doing was creating a market for “upgrading” – value in this context simply defined a process of profiting from obsolescence dressed up as wanna-have-a-new-one “inspired upgrades”.  Joseph Schumpeter had a great term for innovation  – he called it “creative destruction”. Innovation in the mobile handset industry was a delusion and it added very little true value – in contrast the Telco’s have created a Thick ‘n Deep world of value – they got the whole world communicating – even in some of the remotest places in Africa and South America – they made the world a friendlier and more accessible place that’s what I call “Thick ‘n Deep” Value.  In contrast many Financial Advisors, Food producers and pharmaceutical companies claim they’re “adding value,” but mostly they’re just hyper-marketing – government and regulators tell us they are adding value – yet we fail to notice. If one fails to notice or one needs to analyse whether something is of true value – then the following assertion remains – it’s thin value.

The vast majority of companies today deliver superficial thin value. Thick ‘n Deep value is real, meaningful, and sustainable. It happens by making people authentically better off — not merely by adding more bells and whistles that your boss might like, but that cause customers to roll their eyes.

How to avoid the “oh another one” labeling, frankly that’s obviously easier said than done – I believe successful business needs to create not just thick value (a term coined by Umair Haque of Harvard Business School) but deep value as well.

“Thick ‘n Deep” Value is the key and can be tested by asking these questions.

1. Does it enrich the business?
2. Does it leave the people it serves sustainably and deeply enriched?
3. Does your customer trust you?
4. Does it make the world a better place.

Thin value is all about assertion. Now with “Thick ‘n Deep” Value you just know – deep down – you know that it’s good.

What about, those who think it’s just semantics? What about those who believe there is a thin line separating the two types of value? What about those who don’t know the difference?  There is an answer ‘out there’ to those questions as well . . . .  fire up your favourite browser – navigate to Wikipedia and search for the following word “extinction”.

We appear to be moving into the age of individuals wanting to make a difference. Why is this happening and is it something businesses should embrace or fear?

Why is this happening – those who equated human beings with industrial machines, those who applied depraved Cartesian reasoning to human capital and poisoned the very space they live in are why thing are changing! Those who misguidedly cite progress as the high road to some holy grail are soon to be buried and gone. The baby-boomers and their wonderful progeny Generation X and M, will embrace true capitalism one that embraces people, profit and planet.

Making a difference is the essence of  “Thick ‘n Deep” Value – today wise people take the triple bottom line (3BL) and embrace it. If I may quote my friend Vinay Gupta the inventor of the Hexayurt – he sums it all up beautifully in the following statement:

“Triple Bottom Line asks that businesses justify themselves in three ways: natural capital, social capital and financial capital, [these] are the terms [of reference] for the three “bottom lines. These three are often shorthanded as planet, people and profit.”

Consider this – Africa is home to 70% of the ‘bottom billion’.  It would be truly stupid to ignore 700million people, who amongst them are the potential producers of your food, and who become the affluent consumer countries and even venture capitalists of the future.  It is possible that in our lifetime that Asia and Africa will be providing the some of metaphoric First World with handouts.

Fear is probably not an issue – the relics; the greedy ‘old school thinkers’ of the pre-baby-boomer industrial age are almost extinct – they are old now – they will soon die off.

Many motivational speakers keep telling us Its all about attitude, or positive mental thinking, whilst the politicians say we need to keep spending to get ourselves out of the recession. is this enough /right?

Motivational speakers want you to succeed (which is a good thing) it’s in their DNA and they are right in my opinion – it is truly about attitude, without high self esteem and positive mental attitude society would be listening to politicians (whom I might add are pretty short on leadership and good ideas right now) who are reacting to spin and rhetoric dressed up as public opinion. Politicians today act only on short term events. Politics is about power – and power is all about what you can control.

That’s about to change – society is far more open today. Young people think and act – some may think it’s because they are precocious – perhaps? They do know what is good and they know what is special and they care about people – and they know what freedom looks and feels like because the upcoming world, demands freedom, as it demands air to breathe; and you know what freedom is all about don’t you? Freedom is about what you can unleash – freedom is about “Thick ‘n Deep” value for humanity!

The politician telling to spend your way out of the recession is acting out a party ideology in a bid to stay in control – which ultimately means they are not civil servants and guardians anymore are they?

My money is on the motivational speaker.

Many companies are pulling in their belts and cutting costs in order to survive. Others are thriving and growing even if they are in the same industry. In your opinion What could be the main reasons for this difference?

If they are pulling in belts and cutting costs (that’s what people are, aren’t they costs) then there is probably a cesspool of thin value festering. If you have to pull in your belt for more than 12 months remember you aren’t a slave – you should really go somewhere more exciting – maybe join those who are thriving. Anyone?

Imagine this cutting costs parable. A restaurant that that cuts it’s costs on a 12.95 chicken meal worries me – because instead of “Thick ‘n Deep” chicken value you are getting the thin and cheap version for the same price as the “Thick ‘n Deep”.

Those that are thriving – oh  – that’s easy they are delivering value, “Thick ‘n Deep” Value – you know . . . . the stuff that humanity needs.

When:
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 from 5:30 PM – 10:00 PM (GMT)

Where:
The Guoman Tower Bridge Hotel
St Katharine’s Way,
London E1W 1LD
United Kingdom

The Business Scene and Economy are changing rapidly.
Corporates increasingly struggle to keep customers and staff engaged.
The Discussion will consider:

• What will the business environment look and behave like in the future?
• How can corporates and individuals grow and thrive in this brave new world?
• The Economy – Where do we go from here?
• Bonus Culture – Good, Banned or Evil?
• Interim Management and Part Time Workers – What’s next?
• The New Economy – Freeze, Flee or Fight?

The audience will also have a chance to ask their own questions on the night too.

“The global financial storm has produced a global shift in awareness, not only have the rules changed – future sustainable business will need to understand that there is a new value equation out there – value 2.0 if you wish – achieving great performance will depend on truly understanding how to deliver and support this value.” – Gary Sage February 2010

You should attend if you need to:

• Develop high-potential employees
• Grow future senior managers/leaders?
• Retain and engage key staff?
• Reduce costs yet maintain high value?
• Build critical business relationships?
• Understand where business and markets will be in 3-5 years?

Management is vitally important in a time of recession. Indeed, the recession is making the development of your business and your talented people more critical.  Staff turnover remains high in the UK, despite the contraction in the number of people out of work and the face of business is rapidly changing as the way we do business is evolving.

As part of your strategic business practice and also management, development and leadership programmes, naturally you will already be examining the ideas about ‘How to Get Great Performance’.

No doubt you have discovered, the rules have changed.  If this is the case, are you now ready to go to the next stages and learn about how to get great performance in a recession at both INTERMEDIATE and ADVANCED level?

You could have a happier, more cohesive, more effective leadership team to help you exploit and grow through the recession rather than be damaged by it.  Isn’t it worth a few hours of your time to find out how?

Thought Leaders:
Rainmaker – Gary Sage of SageHagan.
Gary Sage is a ‘Super Skiller’.  He is a gifted consultant and Communications Coach whose personal clients span the globe.  Gary has coached and conducted seminars and workshops on five continents to thousands of people and successfully taken his unique methodology into organisations from as diverse a background of; international banks to luxury goods manufacturers to multinational computer companies, to sole traders.

Rainmaker – Gordon Lovell-Read of Orgmentor.
Gordon is an experienced C-level executive with an outstanding track record of leading, and delivering, change in global companies. A recognised transformation expert and leadership guru, he can often be found engaged where individuals or organizations need to intercept, or outpace, significant market trends through fundamental shifts in strategy, thinking and behaviours. Having been involved in integrating over thirty corporate acquisitions, he is particularly well versed in the challenges and opportunities around cultural diversity and the building of shared service functions to drive out synergies.

Cost: Is to cover room hire as all profit will be going to the charity: ActionAid

All prices listed above exclude VAT.

Next step – book now: Places are limited so click the button now. Additional donations gratefully received.

Registered Charity No 274467

Hosted By:
Erudyte Ltd

Erudyte Ltd is proud to bring to our clients, Rainmakers who have had hands on experience as being leaders, delivered on their goals and now share a vision to create a better world.

Our Rainmakers are driven by a deep passion towards making a measurable, significant and permanent difference in the world and are therefore people who have all made things happen – people who have brought an edge of demonstrable value into an organisational environment.

They do this by imparting their knowledge through popular methods such as speaking, consulting, training and one to ones or a seamless programme working alongside existing training schedules, consulting processes or conference events.

Rainmakers will take you and your organisation
to the edge – beyond the boundaries!

We live in a power hungry world where so many so called leaders are simply dressed up authority figures -  they are not true leaders at all. The next generation of true leaders will use entirely new approaches to convey their fresh ideas. Today’s manipulative and over-regulated business processes and authoritarian prescriptive business mindset will not survive intact.

I  know, because I spend a lot of time working with a lot of young people – and they are quite happy to toss what is truly wrong in business out of the window and start again.

Umair Haque, a consultant for big business  has written a preview of tomorrow in something he calls the Awesomeness Manifesto.

“SO. What is awesomeness? Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That’s a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics.

I’ve talked to many boardrooms about awesomeness. Beancounters feel challenged and threatened by it, because it feels fuzzy and imprecise. Yet, it’s anything but. Gen M knows “awesomeness” when we see it — that’s why its part of our vernacular. It’s a precise concept, with meaning, depth, and resonance.”

Awesomeness may sound fuzzy and imprecise .  Haque’s point is that the new generation leader knows awesomeness when they see it. The Awesomeness Manifesto is chock full of ideas for business built on sustainable value where the central role is to make the world a better place.

Haque talks about the power of Love, sustainability, remixing value, and the new way of innovation.These are the four pillars of his Awesomeness Manifesto:

Ethical production: without an ethical component, awesomeness isn’t possible. The buy low, sell high mentality is yesterday’s mantra.

Insanely great stuff: put creativity front and center and you’ll get an emotional reaction from anyone who sees it. Delight the customer.

Love: Apple creates products people love. Their employees love to show off how awesome these products are and customers love shopping in Apple stores. Compare this with Best Buy.

Thick value: this is real, meaningful, and sustainable. Thick value, not thin value, actually makes people better off.

Finally a business guru who understands!

awesome!

Want to help kickstart awesomeness? The Manifesto is now a collaborative, open-source project, to which anyone can contribute. READ this post for details.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/09/is_your_business_innovative_or.html

View Rainmakers Bio »
Go to Source »

Before engaging in any rainmaking activity, you must determine the investment to payoff ratio. Simply put, what results will your investment of time and energy buy you? Is there another activity that likely has a better yield? Your goal is to determine whether a given activity is likely to move you closer to your rainmaking goals in proportion to its expense in time, energy, and money, recognizing that your estimate is only an estimate.

Although each business development plan is unique, the most successful plans tend to have a distribution of high, medium, and low investment/result ratios. High-yield activities tend to indicate low-hanging fruit, meaning opportunities that will likely result in new business reasonably certainly and reasonably quickly. Medium-yield activities are more uncertain and take longer to show good results, and low-yield activities tend to be experimental or subject to removal from your list.

Some general guidelines are useful here:

• Activities with clients are the most valuable activities you can do. The more you can do to develop a client relationship, the more likely you are to retain that client’s business and to receive more business and referrals from that client.
• Activities with “warm contacts” (those with whom you already have some relationship) have a higher yield than activities with strangers. Developing relationships with others and enhancing the “know, like, and trust” factors is almost always more valuable than one-time meetings with complete strangers.
• Writing and speaking tend to be time-intensive activities with low immediate payoff. If you are looking to generate business quickly, writing and speaking rank as a low-yield activity. If, however, your goal is to enhance your credentials, writing and speaking can be high-yield activities.
• One-to-one activity generally has a higher value yield than one-to-many. . .
• But group participation is more valuable if you hold a leadership position. If you hold a leadership role in an organization, you will become known to more people more quickly than you will if you meet other one-on-one.
• Sometimes an activity’s value cannot be measured in purely financial terms. For example, a client may request that you speak at a conference, and doing so would be a favor to that client. While you are unlikely to see any financial value directly traced to delivering the favor and the presentation, the client’s gratitude may be equally valuable.

Look at your business development plan and begin making an estimate of the investment/result value of each activity that you have planned to incorporate.

Author: Julie A. Fleming
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger

During my 35 year career, I have had the privilege of being referred to as a “Rainmaker” in several news articles and stories during interviews with some of my clients. I take that as a very kind compliment. Some may ask, what is a “Rainmaker?” The American Indian tradition would say that the Rainmaker used magical powers to bring rain to nourish crops to feed the people of the tribe. Today, the most common and simplistic definition I can offer would be this: A “Rainmaker” is a person who brings the most revenue into a company or organization and the revenue or money is the rain. Today’s “Rainmaker” makes things happen, generates the most new customers, new business and takes the art of the doing business to new levels.

This past Christmas (2004), I was given a very special and interesting book by Jeffrey J. Fox. The title: “How to Become A Rainmaker.” This is a great book and I have reread this book once a month since I got it. Jeffrey Fox has hit a home run with this book, in my opinion, because he has put his advice into a handbook form that is easy to read and understand and very valuable to anyone who wants to become a “Rainmaker.”

And just to wet” your appetite further, here is “The Rainmaker’s Credo” from Jeffrey Fox’s book – How To Become A Rainmaker”

Cherish customers at all times.

Treat customers as you would your best friend.

Listen to customers and decipher their needs.

Make (or give) customers what they need.

Price your product to its dollarized value.

Show customers the dollarized value of what they will get.

Teach customers to want what they need.

Make your product the way the customers want it.

Get your product to your customers when they want it.

Give your customers a little extra, more than they expect.

Remind your customers of the dollarized value they received.

Thank each customer sincerely and often.

Help customers pay you, so they won’t be embarrassed and go elsewhere.

Ask to do it again.

Author: Glenn Ebersole
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Gary Sage :

We live in a power hungry world where so many so called leaders are simply dressed up authority figures -  they are not true leaders at all. The next generation of true leaders will use entirely new approaches to convey their fresh ideas. Today’s manipulative and over-regulated business processes and authoritarian prescriptive business mindset will not survive intact.

I  know, because I spend a lot of time working with a lot of young people – and they are quite happy to toss what is truly wrong in business out of the window and start again.

Umair Haque, a consultant for big business  has written a preview of tomorrow in something he calls the Awesomeness Manifesto.

“SO. What is awesomeness? Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That’s a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics.

I’ve talked to many boardrooms about awesomeness. Beancounters feel challenged and threatened by it, because it feels fuzzy and imprecise. Yet, it’s anything but. Gen M knows “awesomeness” when we see it — that’s why its part of our vernacular. It’s a precise concept, with meaning, depth, and resonance.”

Awesomeness may sound fuzzy and imprecise .  Haque’s point is that the new generation leader knows awesomeness when they see it. The Awesomeness Manifesto is chock full of ideas for business built on sustainable value where the central role is to make the world a better place.

Haque talks about the power of Love, sustainability, remixing value, and the new way of innovation.These are the four pillars of his Awesomeness Manifesto:

Ethical production: without an ethical component, awesomeness isn’t possible. The buy low, sell high mentality is yesterday’s mantra.

Insanely great stuff: put creativity front and center and you’ll get an emotional reaction from anyone who sees it. Delight the customer.

Love: Apple creates products people love. Their employees love to show off how awesome these products are and customers love shopping in Apple stores. Compare this with Best Buy.

Thick value: this is real, meaningful, and sustainable. Thick value, not thin value, actually makes people better off.

Finally a business guru who understands!

awesome!

Want to help kickstart awesomeness? The Manifesto is now a collaborative, open-source project, to which anyone can contribute. READ this post for details.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/09/is_your_business_innovative_or.html