Gazelles Growth Series: Live webcasting executive education right to your office

Geoff Smart

Best Selling Author, Hiring & Retention Expert and Leadership Advisor to Billionaires, Boards and CEOs

Geoff Smart is Chairman & CEO of a management assessment firm for CEOs and investors, which he founded in 1995.

Geoff Smart solves every manager’s #1 problem: making hiring mistakes. The stories and advice Geoffrey Smart presents, draw from some of the most extensive research, interviews and experiences ever assembled on the topic of talent management: Why most managers are terrible at hiring. How to generate a source to locate the right candidates. What to look for in choosing the right candidate. How to sell the ideal candidate on accepting the job at your company. The session includes a significant amount of audience interaction including live demonstrations of the interview techniques, audience realtime Q&A, and simple “takeaway tools and templates” to help attendees maximize financial performance and their own career success.

In their instant New York Times best seller Who: The A Method for Hiring, Geoff Smart and Randy Street interviewed over 20 billionaire entrepreneurs exclusively for the book (a record) to collect their best advice and stories on thr topic of hiring and hiring mistakes. The largest statistical study every done on this topic was conducted with the University of Chicago’s Steve Kaplan, which revealed some startling findings about types of candidates who succeed and fail, and simple, practical solutions are presented. The book is a New York Times Bestseller, Wall Street Journal Bestseller, USA Today Bestseller, and was ranked the #1 bestseller of all books on Amazon. Over 20 CEOs have endorsed Who.

Jeff Jarvis: Strategy

What Would Google Do?

Jeff blogs about media and news at Buzzmachine.com. He is also an associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York's new Graduate School of Journalism

In talks around his book, What Would Google Do?, which has been featured in BusinessWeek (cover story), Inc., Newsweek, Forbes, CNBC, The Daily Beast, and Library Journal, Jarvis has unpacked the strategic and operational principles that have underpinned the Google’s phenomenal success and applied them outward. In talks, he provides an indispensable manual for survival and success.

Jarvis underscores how critical it has become to see the world as Google sees it. “The question we ask is about thinking in new ways, solving problems with new solutions, facing new challenges, seeing new opportunities, and understanding a different way to look at the structure of the economy and society and how we relate to each other,” says Jarvis.

He explains how businesses can grow and prosper in what he calls our “new Google century” by following such laws as:

• MANAGE ABUNDANCE, NOT SCARCITY
• MAKE MISTAKES WELL
• GIVE UP CONTROL
• GET OUT OF THE WAY
• LOW PRICES ARE GOOD (FREE IS BETTER)
• DON’T BE EVIL

Chip Heath

Co-author of "Making Your Ideas Stick" and Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University

Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? Chip answers these questions and will help you, as a leader or marketer, create messages that will break through the larger marketplace of ideas and stick to what’s important. Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast fast-paced tour of idea success stories (and failures.)

Author of Made to Stick which is a New York Times, Business Week, and Wall Street Journal Best Seller. Chip’s new book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, is scheduled for release in early 2010. He’ll be touching on this new book in the webcast as well.

Chip and his brother Dan have taught and consulted on the topic of “making ideas stick” with dozens of organizations including corporations such as Microsoft and Nike and nonprofit groups such as The Nature Conservancy and Springboard Schools.

David Allen

Author of "Getting Things Done"

Discover David Allen’s powerful methods and vastly increase your personal organization, efficiency and create results-at work and in life. In today’s world, yesterday’s methods just don’t work. Allen’s’ premise is simple: our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we achieve effective results and unleash creative potential. Getting Things Done can transform the way your work and live, showing you how to pick up the pace without wearing yourself down.

Learn how to:

• Apply the “do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it” rule to get your in box empty.
• Reassess goals and stay focused in changing situations
• Plan and unstuck projects
• Overcome feelings of confusion, anxiety, and being overwhelmed
• Feel fine about what you’re not doing

David Allen is president of The David Allen Company and has more than twenty years experience as a consultant and executive coach for such organizations as Microsoft, The Ford Foundation, LL. Bean and the World Bank. His work has been featured in, Fast Company Fortune, Atlantic Monthly, O and many other publications.

Robert Cialdini

Author of "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion"

With more than two million copies sold worldwide, Influence has established itself as the most important book on persuasion ever published. Robert Cialdini, Ph.D explains why some people are remarkably persuasive and how you can beat them at their own game. You’ll learn the six psychological secrets behind our powerful impulse to comply, how skilled persuaders use them without detection, how to defend yourself against them-and how to put those secrets to work on your own behalf. Whether you are a mere consumer of someone weaving the web of persuasion to urge others to buy or vote for your product, this is an essential book for understanding the psychological foundations of marketing. The material Cialdini presents guarantees two things:

• You’ll never say “yes” when you really mean “no”
• You’ll make yourself more influential than ever before

Extensive training in the psychology of influence, together with over 30 years of research into the subject, has earned Dr. Cialdini an international reputation as an expert in the field of persuasion, compliance. Influence has been listed on the New York Times Best Seller List. Fortune Magazine lists Influence in their “75 Smartest Business Books.”

Dr. Victoria Medvec

Adeline Barry Davee Professor of Management and Organizations
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University

Dr. Medvec, Northwestern University's premier negotiations expert, has several critical negotiation tools useful during these turbulent times - ranging from emphasizing "avoidance of loss" vs. "benefits" to the importance of driving all negotiations via synchronous communication - a critical technique for dramatically reducing sales cycle time. Given the current environment:

• It is challenging to be calm in the midst of the current economic environment and the stress that this environment is creating.
• Many of you are probably encountering tough negotiations as a result of the economic pressure today. In this session, we will talk about how to manage these challenges by using the right negotiation strategies.
• Today's business environment creates many opportunities though. This session will highlight how to leverage these opportunities to your advantage.
• Crisis creates the opportunity to build customer relationships because of their increased dependence on you.
• Crisis also creates the perfect opportunity to lead change initiatives. People tend to be risk seeking in the domain of losses and risk averse in the domain of gains. This makes the status quo very sticky in gain periods. The losses we are currently experiencing create an ideal environment for change.

David Meerman Scott

New Rules of Marketing and PR and World Wide Rave -- author of two #1 selling marketing books

The web has profoundly changed the rules. Smart marketers now communicate with buyers through content rich Web sites, blogs, YouTube videos, ebooks, and other online media that buyers actually want to consume. And David Meerman Scott has written the first highly readable and practical guide for leveraging these tools in growing businesses. And his new hit book, World Wide Rave, is set to be released March 2009.

Self described as a recovering VP of marketing for two publicly traded technology companies, Scott was also Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world's largest newspaper and electronic information companies.

Scott provides a step-by-step action plan for harnessing the power of the new rules of marketing and PR, showing how to identify audiences, create compelling messages, get those messages to the most customers possible, and lead those customers directly into the buying process. Told with many case studies and real-world examples, he'll lead a practical discussion about the new reality of PR and marketing.

Keith Ferrazzi

The breakthrough program to build the deep, trusting relationships that create success - and won't let you fail

Disregard the myth of the lone professional "superman" and the rest of our culture's go-it alone mentality. The real path to success in your career and in your personal life is through creating an inner circle of "lifeline relationships" - deep, close relationships with a few key trusted individuals who will offer the encouragement, feedback, and generous mutual support that every one of us needs to reach our full potential. Whether your dream is to lead a company, be a top producer in your field, overcome the self-destructive habits that hold you back, lose weight or make a difference in the larger world, Who's Got Your Back will give you the roadmap you've been looking for to achieve the success you deserve.

Keith Ferrazzi, the internationally renowned thought leader, consultant, and bestselling author of Never Eat Alone, shows us that becoming a winner in any field of endeavor requires a trusted team of advisors who can offer guidance and help to hold us accountable to achieving our goals. It is the reason PH.D candidates have advisor teams, top executives have boards, world class athletes have fitness coaches, and presidents have cabinets.

KEITH FERRAZZI, CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, has counseled the world's top enterprises on how to dramatically accelerate the development of business relationships to drive sales, spark innovation, and create team cohesion. As a thought leader and advocate for corporate citizenship, he has rallied executives around initiatives to improve healthcare and education nationwide. Ferrazzi has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Inc., and Fast Company, and has appeared on Today and other national TV. His previous book, Never Eat Alone, is a national bestseller. He lives in Los Angeles.