Association for Strategic Planning breakfast event is Sept. 23

Association for Strategic Planning breakfast event is Sept. 23

Jim Swartz, author and founder and chairman of Competitive Action, a consulting firm, will speak at the Association for Strategic Planning 2008 fall breakfast series event Tuesday, Sept. 23, in Room 202, Opus Hall, Minneapolis campus.

He will talk about his research titled "10% or Die: Strategic Imperatives to Survive and Thrive in a Brutal Global Marketplace" (to be published). Registration begins at 7 a.m., breakfast will be served at 7:15 a.m., and Swartz' talk will be given from 7:45 to 9 a.m.

This presentation is the result of a 20-year study aimed at answering three questions:

  1. How did some people find and seize the great opportunities of their times?
  2. What can we learn from them to help us find and seize great opportunities?
  3. How did they help others (or organizations) to find and seize great opportunities?

Swartz and co-researchers studied the work and past research on more than 100 highly successful leaders and/or their organizations, including: Edison, Einstein, Gates, Eiji Toyoda, Ohno, Morita, Curie, Eisenhower, Welch and Walton.

They discovered that great innovators all had the same strategies and took the same actions to find and seize the great opportunities of their times. These are best practices that make the difference between great individuals and organizations and the mediocre ones. Their research reveals the 12 actions leading to high success that all of the most successful individuals discovered and practiced.

This session is packed with examples of the ways in which great innovators and achievers positioned and prepared themselves to find opportunities that others did not see. It reveals how they mobilized others to willingly support their opportunities and, finally, how they seized the opportunity while others missed the chance.

Swartz has been a leader in both the value innovation and deep lean movements since the mid-70s and has led or consulted on hundreds of successful lean projects in nine countries. His 1994 book, The Hunters and the Hunted, showed how American manufacturing companies were fighting for survival using lean thinking. He concluded that success in the marketplace is far more than applying lean practices. It's about mastering the science and art of opportunity finding and seizing. Swartz is also author of Seeing David in the Stone, released in July 2006.

Swartz founded Competitive Action in 1987. The company specializes in training and consulting to help organizations develop and sustain aggressive improvement cultures, find major improvement opportunities and mobilize their people to willingly seize them. In the past 20 years, his company has led or facilitated more than 500 successful transformations of manufacturing, engineering and business systems in over 50 corporations, serving 11 of the Fortune 100.

The cost for the ASP breakfast discussion is:

  • $25 – students
  • $25 – members
  • $35 – standard prepaid guest
  • $40 – guest rate at the door

The registration deadline is Friday, Sept. 19; call (952) 457-6396 or register online.