Leadership Training

Jay Scherotter is the Director of Learning Resources and Organizational Effectiveness for the Scottsdale Insurance Company, a subsidiary of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. This property/casualty insurer specializes in excess and surplus insurance lines (E&S) — insurance coverage for higher-risk individuals and businesses. Scottsdale Insurance was founded in 1982, and currently employs over 1,400 associates and in 2007 recorded annual sales of more than $2 billion in premium.

Jay will be a featured presenter at the upcoming Training Leadership Summit in San Diego on May 5th. The topic of his seminar will be “Implementing a Knowledge Continuity Management Process”.

• “Can you please give us an overview of you professional background?”

I’ve been in the Human Resources and Learning and Development field for over 26 years now, with 8 of those years spent as the Director of Learning Resources and Organizational Effectiveness for the Scottsdale Insurance Company. Prior to my time here (and oddly enough), I directed the training function for an international private fire and ambulance company. Before that, I provided learning and development consulting services for commercial and consumer banks. I have also served as the director of the Quality University for American Express.

The origins of all this began with my time as a trained social worker. But early on I became very attracted to the human development opportunities that a corporate environment provided.

• “What brought you to your current role as Director Learning Resources and Organizational Effectiveness for the Scottsdale Insurance Company?”

For me, it was a combination of wanting to stay in this area and also have a position that serves a meaningful purpose and is also very satisfying from a personal perspective.

We have over 1,400 associates that work on one campus, so from a learning and development standpoint, it’s a dream scenario! Also, insurance is really about creating and assembling people lives, and I really feel that makes this a very noble business. Finally, Scottsdale Insurance has always been ranked very highly as a top organization to work for, both by the community and by publications such as Training Magazine. It’s probably why our retention rate is currently at 93%.

The anchor to all of this really comes down to our culture, which is expressed in the integrity of our intent. It’s all about doing what we say we are going to do.

• “Is there a specific person or mentor from your past who was instrumental in leading you down your current career path? What was it about this person that resonated with you?”

Here’s a story that just recently was able to weave together on it’s own. Back when I was in graduate school in 1978, I took a class in Organizational Development that was taught by Jack Dauber. Somehow I was magnetized by Jack, as well as by the content of the class. We had conversations after class where I asked him more and more about this OD field that seemed very different and unique to me.

Fast forward now to this past May, when I went to a ceremony at this school where my friend was given an honorary doctorate. I hadn’t been back there since ’78, but the moment I walked back through the halls I realized that it smelled just the same as it did nearly 30 years ago! On one of the walls there was a picture of Jack Dower. When I asked someone how he was doing, I learned that he had passed away about 7 years ago. In that moment, it really hit me just how influential Jack had been to me, and how he had led me down the career path that I had chosen.

After my visit, I wrote a letter to the Dean of the College to let him know just how much Jack’s class had meant to me. I wrote that the experience had led me to take on a career that I had devoted my life to, and I asked the Dean if there was anything I could do to honor Jack’s memory. Here replied and told me that there was: I could teach his class at the university. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do for a week this summer.

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Karie Willyerd is the Chief Learning Officer at Sun Microsystems, and is responsible for product and technical training, executive learning, business, management and professional skill development, and sales and service learning for Sun around the globe. Sun Microsystems provides network computing infrastructure solutions that include computer systems, software, storage, and services. Its core brands include the Java technology platform, the Solaris operating system, StorageTek and the UltraSPARC processor.

Karie holds a Masters in Instructional & Performance Technology from Boise State University and a Doctorate in Management from Case Western Reserve University. She is a former board member of ASTD and serves on several local non-profit boards near her home in Redwood Shores, California.

• You’ve had quite a distinguished learning career, starting as an instructional designer at an engineering training consulting firm in the nuclear industry, and serving recently as Vice President and Chief Talent Officer for Solectron. What was it about the culture and environment at SUN Mircosystems that made you decide it was a good fit for you?

I completed my education as an adult, and one of the degree programs I enrolled in was a doctoral program at Case Western Reserve University. Because it was a program in executive management, one of the requirements was to select a company to study; profiling their leadership teams, what the organizational culture is like, and assess their leadership capabilities. I picked a company that at the time was actually a client of the company that I was working for, and that company was Sun. I read everything I could find in the press on them, attended conferences where leaders from Sun were speaking, and I really became intrigued with them. So when I decided I was ready to move to a new position, I was actually approached by Sun about a role that they had just created, that being Chief Learning Officer!

The really fun thing about this job is that Sun got very radical about the position they put together. I now run technology training for one of the largest IT Global Training companies in the world. I also run training for our sales and services team, our partners who help us sell and support Sun products and services, as well as support training for our developers and universities. So in total, I have four main audiences; customers, partners, employees and communities, which covers a total of 150,000 people. Last year alone we delivered over 5 million hours of training to those individuals.

Because we work with all four of these audiences, I get to leverage the purchasing power and the infrastructure of a much larger organization than if we only worked with employee learning. Also, I love that Sun is a company of innovation; that’s a very attractive feature in a company to me. If you come up with a good idea, it’s the idea that carries, not your position in the company. People that come to Sun tend to stay a long time, and at the risk of sounding sappy, I can say that I have simply fallen in love with the company and really enjoy working here!

• Because you’re responsible for training so many employees, can you tell us more about the people that you work with in each of these areas?

We have several key positions, starting with our advocates, who are customer facing: think of them as our account executives. One of them heads up the customer community advocates, and another runs employee and partner learning. We also have a technology & reporting group, as well as a significant design & development group. I also have three regional CLO’s, and they in turn manage sixteen additional CLO’s, also organized by their location. Each of these regional CLO’s has to wear the same hats that I do, so you see just how important these individuals are to our organization.

• Sun Microsystems has a very extensive blogging network for their employees, and I noticed you have a blog called “Learning 2.0”. What does writing for this blog do for you personally, and how does it help connect you with the SUN Microsystems community?

It’s interesting, because my very first job was as a newspaper reporter, so I started blogging with more of a personal essay style simply because that’s a style that I’m comfortable with. But in the future, I see myself blogging more about leadership observations and focusing more on how to use technology in a learning environment. The Sun blogging community is a very interesting and active community, and it’s always great when I get emails from employees asking me when my next blog entry will be!

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Cynthia Kiser Murphey is the Senior Vice President of Human Resources for MGM MIRAGE, one of the world’s leading and most respected hotel and gaming companies. MGM MIRAGE employs over 68,000 employees worldwide, and is the largest corporate employer in the state of Nevada. The Company’s 17 destinations are renowned for a winning combination of quality entertainment, luxurious facilities and exceptional customer service.

• Can you give us some insight on what a typical day for you at MGM MIRAGE consists of? What are some of your daily challenges and deliverables?

One of the exciting things about HR is that there really is not a ‘typical day’! We have a very, very dynamic organization; growing rapidly, changing rapidly, and we’re very much in the people business. So our days are about us being out in our properties, and out in the community, trying to have as many face-to-face interactions with people as we can. At the same time, when necessary we utilize technology to have audio and video conference calls. Either way, we need to be communicating with our employees and our properties as much as possible. So no two days are alike, and that’s what makes my position so interesting and challenging as well!

Especially at this time of year; there are some days I need to be at four different properties in one day. That’s when I take comfort in the fact that I work for such a great company with awesome people!

From an HR perspective, the last few years have been all about growing our company. The company has doubled in size twice in the last seven years, with the merger first in 2000 with Mirage Resorts and then the 2005 merger with Mandalay Resort Group, so you can imagine what type of activity that creates, and what kind of new planning initiatives that requires. We are constantly learning, and constantly meeting and communicating with people to put proposals together that meet our growing needs.

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Sylvia Allen is the Director of global organizational leadership, diversity and inclusion for International Game Technology (IGT), a global company specializing in the design, development, manufacturing, distribution and sales of computerized gaming machines and systems products. Based in Reno, Nevada, the company also operates a facility in Las Vegas, has branch offices around the United States, and also has offices in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan, and South Africa.

• In a recent Diversity/Careers article, you were quoted as saying that IGT relies on an inclusive culture “because of our commitment to customers, employees and communities worldwide.” What steps do you take in order to foster this type of working culture?

We really take a great deal of that direction from our CEO, who has said continuously that we need to take very good care of our customers, our employees, and ourselves. We realize that for this whole industry, diversity is a critical platform for how we do business. Because the industry is going through such enormous change, the whole focus on leadership skills and capabilities is increasingly more of a critical priority for us.

So at IGT, we are much more focused on leadership development for our employees. Also, we are increasingly looking at ways in which we can partner with our customers, not just by the way in which we sell them product, but by the way we partner in the community with them. We’ve worked with a number of educational non-profits in terms of scholarships and board memberships; several of our leaders sit on boards that do some really important work around education, health and underserved communities. IGT is also a member of a subcommittee of the AGA (American Gaming Association), which focuses on human resources and diversity initiatives.

Our industry is a very inclusive one, and we care about our involvement in those kinds of programs, which demonstrates our ongoing commitment to them. That becomes extremely important as the growth of the international markets continues to be very aggressive.

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Wayne Davis is the Manager of Organizational Development for Sierra Pacific Resources, a holding company whose principal subsidiaries are Nevada Power Company, the electric utility for most of southern Nevada, and Sierra Pacific Power Company, the electric utility for most of northern Nevada and the Lake Tahoe area of California. Sierra Pacific Power Company also distributes natural gas in the Reno-Sparks area of northern Nevada.

• Please give us some background on your career and how you came to work for Sierra Pacific.

Initially, it was purely by accident that I came to Sierra Pacific! I had spent the early part of my career in Salt Lake City, and then I moved to Southeast Michigan, where I resided for six years. For that move, my wife followed me, but when we made the decision to come back west, I was following her! She had a job opportunity in Las Vegas, and I started up my own human resources development company, working for small to mid-sized companies.

I was contacted by a headhunter about an opportunity with Sierra Pacific. At the time my business was just picking up, so I basically ignored the call. They called back a week later, so I figured, oh what the heck? This might be a great way to get a new client in the utilities industry! But as the conversations began and went on with Sierra Pacific, I realized that for the first time I was going to have the opportunity to work with an organization where, for lack of a better term, the senior leadership “got it” when it came to organizational and leadership development. It really excited me, and I was very impressed with the different leaders I met within HR, operations and support. Then when I visited with Steve Wood, the Senior Vice President for Administration, he started using terminology that I had believed in all along, and the two key phrases that hit me the strongest were, (1) one of the company’s values was stewardship, and that’s a principal that I’ve been teaching in leadership development for years, and (2) Steve is a retired captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, and one of the key guiding principals in the Marine Corps is servant leadership. Those two points were key driving points for me realizing that I had discovered an organization where I can truly provide value because we were already on the same fundamental page regarding organizational and learning development.

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Today we’re talking with Brooks Longfellow, the Vice President of Operations for KB Home’s Phoenix Division. Mr. Longfellow oversees the day to day operations of the construction and customer service departments for KB Home, a Fortune 500 home building company based in Los Angeles.

Before Longfellow joined KB Home in August of 2005, he spent 8 years with another national homebuilder where he moved up the ranks of the company from purchasing manager to vice president of construction operations. Mr. Longfellow was recognized with a performance award for customer satisfaction in 2004.

• What was it about the KB Home work environment or philosophy that made you decide to join the company?

From a personal perspective, I just found that it was a great fit in terms of both the people I met, but more importantly in regards to a common dedication to customer satisfaction. Our number one priority is to deliver a quality product to each one of our homeowners and make sure that they are 100% satisfied. That’s something that I believe heavily in, and since KB Home feels the same way, I found that very appealing when I was looking to make a career change.

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Ian V. Ziskin is Corporate Vice President and Chief Human Resources and Administrative Officer for Northrop Grumman Corporation, a global defense and technology company with $30 billion in revenues and 122,000 employees. He has 25 years of global leadership experience in human resources, executive selection and development, organization change and effectiveness, and people-related cost management.

Mr. Ziskin has been a speaker and author in areas including acquisition integration, globalization, HR strategies and competencies and leadership/talent development. Last month, he was a participant in a panel discussion at the Milken Institute for the California State Forum “The War For Talent”.

- What has been your greatest challenge in your current role as Head of Human Resources with Northrop Grumman? How have you approached and/or conquered that challenge?

I’d say it’s been the daily challenge to strike the right balance between the decentralization that each of the eight major sectors within Northrop Grumman require in order to run effectively at the local level, versus the ‘one Northrop Grumman’ commonized approach we are striving to create. This approach includes a shared mindset and common culture, the sharing of resources and services to minimize overlaps and redundancies, and being able to present one face to our customers. Striking that balance culturally and operationally is an everyday occurrence.

The way we are approaching this challenge is through a series of organizational change and transformation initiatives that involve cross-organizational teams who are helping to plan and implement those changes. By no means have we completely conquered this challenge, but we are on the right path.

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Today we spend time with Walter Osterman, the President of TLC Marketing in North America. TLC Marketing is No. 1 in the world of consumer incentives, using travel and lifestyle rewards of a high perceived value for powerful acquisition and retention campaigns.

• How did you come across TLC Marketing, and what made you decide to open the US Office?

I am from New York and my wife is from Massachusetts, but we were living in London to grow the business of my Calling Card company. During this time, I made a very good friendship with Nick True who had founded a very successful travel and lifestyle incentive company, TLC Marketing Worldwide. With 15 years of experience, and a network of 18 offices throughout Europe, Asia and Africa, TLC already held a very solid position in the world of promotions with reputable clients and hundreds of campaigns a year. I was surprised to learn TLC had not yet opened an office in the Americas.

As my family decided to move back to the States, I recognized the huge opportunity available in the opening of TLC Marketing, North America. While travel incentives are not uncommon in the American market, lifestyle incentives are still not being used with the frequency that they are in Europe. Lifestyle incentives were virtually an untapped market with no competition. Consequently, TLC Marketing, North America began with a focus on lifestyle incentives with the travel portion of our business coming a bit later.

• Give us an overview of what TLC Marketing does, and your client base?

At TLC Marketing, we take anything that people like to do in their free time, like beauty treatments or rounds of golf or traveling to new places, and create a promotion for our clients that lets them give these rewards to their customers for free. For example, get a free flight for activating your credit card or a free beauty treatment as a thank you for your business.

TLC’s niche is our sourcing department which spends all day, every day reaching out to airlines, hotels, salons, golf courses, theaters, museums and restaurants. Using our worldwide intelligence and credibility as an accredited travel agent, we negotiate unparalleled offers that we leverage for our clients in groundbreaking promotions with proven results.

While sourcing is the DNA of our agency, TLC is a one-stop-shop offering strategic planning, creative services, account management, and customer fulfillment. The end result is a fantastic promotion that results in increased sales and lasting brand loyalty.

Since TLC specializes in creating customized campaigns, TLC’s client base is broad and deep. There is no limit to the types of rewards that we can source, so we are able to work across all demographics in both online and offline capabilities. Our method is to identify the client’s objectives and penetrate the brand for a strategic understanding of what incentive and mechanic will most appeal to the client’s unique consumer.

For Banana Republic, it was off-Broadway theater as a Gift with Purchase. For T-Mobile, it was golf, beauty and day out direct mailed to platinum customers. For Hummer, it was an Adventurous Getaway comprised of a free hotel night and adrenaline activity as a purchase incentive. We even sourced free pet portraits with the purchase of Hills Pet Food, so there truly are no boundaries.

• What has been your greatest challenge as a small business owner?

While it has been a blessing to grow so quickly, managing that growth has without a doubt been the greatest challenge. We opened our Headquarters in Boston in 2001. Due to demand, this was quickly followed by the opening of additional offices in Toronto, San Francisco, West Palm Beach and Nashville. With increased sales and an expanding client base comes the immediate need for more employees to support the campaigns. Measuring the additional offices, expenses and employees against projected growth is an ongoing balancing act.

• What do you look for when you are hiring new managers/directors at your company? What traits or characteristics in a person are most important to you?

Intelligence is unequivocally the most important trait. I do not look for specific industry knowledge in new hires, and am instead more interested in overall intelligence. With intelligence and a desire to learn, I believe anyone can become versed on the nuances of TLC and our industry, quickly contributing their own ideas for our continued growth.
As we grow in size, it is extremely important to me that TLC maintains a family environment. I look for good people who will fit in well to that family to cultivate a team approach.

• When it comes to the on-going training of your staff, what resources do you utilize; both in-house and through 3rd parties?

We do not have any formal in-house training, and rely on industry training for the ongoing growth of our employees. TLC encourages the desire for increased knowledge, and employees are able to take courses or become accredited in areas they feel will enhance their contributions.

• What has been your greatest reward as a small business owner?

Definitely to watch it grow. It is amazing to compare where TLC was when I opened an office in Boston to a network of 5 offices throughout North America less than 6 years later. TLC has quickly become a robust company of talented, dynamic people establishing a solid, diverse client base with creative, innovative campaigns.

• What are some of the new projects and/or products TLC Marketing has lined up for 2007?

With our lifestyle portfolio now extremely established, with nationwide partners secured for free beauty treatments, rounds of golf, days out, theater, cooking lessons, and more, 2007’s focus is providing unbelievable travel experiences.

In 2006, TLC became an accredited travel agent and this opens up an entirely new element by which to service our clients and their consumers, tapping into leading resorts and locations worldwide.

For example, our exclusive World for Free product, www.tlcwff.com, is a free one week’s accommodations at a choice of resorts at the most desirable destinations across North America, as well as worldwide. Whether a customer wants to finally visit the Grand Canyon, or is an adventurer looking for an exotic trip to Thailand, the WFF is an unparalleled travel incentive due to the scope of its choice.

A new Free Cruise product also joins our existing travel rewards such as Free Flight, Companion Flight or Hotel Stays. With no black out dates, TLC’s products truly empower customers to create their dream vacations.

• Where can someone go to find out more about TLC Marketing?

To learn more about TLC Marketing, North America, please visit us at www.tlcwm.com. For information on our network of worldwide agencies, visit www.tlcmarketing.com.

To learn more, contact us at info@tlcwm.com.

TLC Marketing, lifestyle, consumer, promotions

Today, we begin with our profiles of corporate executives by interviewing David Lewis, President and CEO of the Pinnacle Performance Company.

Mr. Lewis’s corporate track record includes spending the better part of the last 14 years in both Executive level sales & marketing positions at Fortune 500 companies as well as helping to start up and build the initial sales forces at hi-tech & internet start up companies, SupportSoft, Kovair, & Realm.

In addition, Mr. Lewis is the former President and Owner of one of the most respected acting schools in the country, The Actors’ Center of Chicago. The Actors’ Center has taught its students how to be engaging and believable onstage or in front of a camera for over 25 years.

Along with company Vice President G. Riley Mills, David founded Pinnacle Performance (based in Chicago, Illinois) in May of 2005. Pinnacle is distinguishable from other similar businesses by their distinctive training curriculum, use of profession actors as trainers, and groundbreaking training techniques, exercises and methodology. Their current clientele includes Oracle, Walgreens, Kodak, and USG Corporation, among others.

Brian: “Thanks for your time today, David. Tell us what it was that prompted you to create Pinnacle Performance?”

David: “During my tenure as a Vice President of Sales, I participated in a variety of training classes and public speaking courses that focused on how to be better at making a successful sale. But what was always lacking from any class I took was a methodology to be more engaging and more honest.

Now I spent a great deal of time in high school, college and post-college as an actor, so a few years back I decided to take an acting class over at The Actors’ Center of Chicago. Right after the class began, I realized that it was exactly what I’d been missing from those sales courses! I discovered that the time honored performance techniques in breathing, tension release, body language, vocal quality and movement that professional actors have been using for years, would work just as well in the corporate world. Not only for sales representatives, but for human resources personnel, product managers, executive assistants - anyone who wanted to be more confident, poised and truthful when it came to their communication skills.

So I had some discussions with the school faculty, and they were extremely interested in helping with my idea. I ended up purchasing the school, sat down with Gary [Millis] to put a curriculum together, and that’s how Pinnacle Performance was born.”

Brian: “Was there one success or event that stands out to you as a pivotal moment with Pinnacle? A moment where you realized that you could be onto something very big?”

David: “Absolutely! Just after we got started, were discussing our product with Larry Frazier, the Director of Training Practices at Oracle. He informed us that his biggest challenge was improving the quality delivery scores of their instructors. We knew that our training program would do just that, so we offered for him and a few other senior level instructors to try our one-day session for free. When the training was complete, Larry said to us, ‘all of our instructors need to do this.’ Right then we knew Pinnacle was going to flourish.”

Brian: “Speaking of the effect your training has, what have been the most common reactions of employees that have taken part in the program?”

David: “We get positive feedback all the time. Quotes like the following:

‘The class was excellent! It was great to learn about the material from someone who acts, entertains and presents for a living.’

‘Pinnacle’s training enables you to see your weaknesses so that you can identify and improve on them. I would love a follow-up session.’

People come into our class expecting someone to just drone on for 8 hours about what they should and shouldn’t do when presenting. So we immediately shatter those expectations by getting them involved: getting them up on their feet, presenting material in a realistic work setting, and video taping their progress, so they see exactly how they look when presenting. It gives them a myriad of tools that they can use on a daily basis, and they love it.”

Brian: “Where can someone go to find out more about Pinnacle Performance?”

David: “They can visit our website at www.pinper.com, email us at info@pinper.com, or contact any of our regional offices:

Chicago: 773-572-8616
New York: 646-290-6711
Sarasota: 941-870-2030
Los Angeles: 213-291-0660
Denver: 303-459-4291
Dallas: 214-281-8625

Brian: “David, thanks again for your time today, and good luck with the company!”

David: “It was my pleasure.”

Pinnacle Performance, David Lewis, leadership, training, performance, communication, skills