Event Archives

Date: Friday, August 19, 2016
Location: San Ramon

At this Alliance Regional Meeting at the San Ramon Valley Conference Center, we continued our “Alliance Voices” presentation series featuring a range of engaging topics from four of our members. These talks, packed full of great information, insights and business expertise, also shared some of the keys to success – solid planning, dreaming big and never losing hope. Here are the highlights from this hour-long session. Video highlights from these presentations can be watched by clicking the blue links below.

Peter Hill, Chairman & CEO of Bailard, kicked off the talks with a story about an exciting victory. In 2012 at the London Olympics, Peter’s nephew, Alex Gregory, won the Gold in the Men’s Four Rowing for Great Britain. This success was not a fluke. Instead, it was obtained by a thoughtfully-executed plan, one that could work in business as it had in sports. Inspired by this Olympic win, Peter explained the framework he established at Bailard, and a plan his team nicknamed “Rio2016.” Using the 5 Olympic Rings as a symbol of success, he outlined the major milestones needed to reach “Rio Gold.” Not only did the five separate categories of success allow Peter to focus his team on myriad objectives simultaneously, but attaching the plan to the actual Rio Olympic Games provided a historic and motivating timeline with a fixed date. The take away of Peter’s talk was the power in identifying real, global events and leveraging them to inspire the form and timeline of your corporate goals. If your results are anything like Peter’s, you’ll attest to the efficacy of this approach.

Up next was Paul White, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Muir Equity, who drilled down into what it takes to optimize outcomes in complex business dealings. To animate his presentation with a real world example, Paul discussed the considerations, analysis and detailed work that went into one specific business sale.  The need to optimize the outcome of the sale on many levels presented a complex decision making process – from family and employee considerations to one’s own personal achievement ambitions and financial wellbeing. Ever the strategic surgeon, Paul described a strategy for defining objectives, evaluating options and finally selecting the most optimized decisions. To sell a company in a manner that is sustainable and scalable for the business, while protecting one’s employees, family and financial position, is indeed the ultimate goal.

The third “Alliance Voices” presenter was Jans Aasman, CEO of Franz, who discussed “cognitive computing” as it relates to clinical predictions, probabilistic inferences in criminal networks, product similarity in e-commerce and even the infamous “Panama Papers.” The applications of cognitive science and big data machine learning to disparate problems in unrelated fields truly showed the power of data to catalyze problem solving. Refreshingly, Jans not only proselytized the theory of cognitive computing, but also presented in-depth examples of data-driven predictions that ended up perfectly matching real-world outcomes. For example, if you’re allergic to peanuts, you have a statistically greater chance of having asthma and other known diseases. Who knew? The data did.

Our fourth presenter, Ian McLean, President of Thermal Press International, spoke passionately about the power of dreams. What unfolded was a heartfelt story about his grade school friend, Darren Dent, nicknamed “Hoody,” with whom he shares a great passion for horseracing. After learning of Hoody’s battle with ALS, Ian embarked on an amazing and ongoing journey by purchasing a racing horse named “Runninforhoody.” He invited Hoody to partner in the adventure of racing the horse while raising awareness for ALS. To boot, the horse turned out to be a media sensation and a real contender in important races, raising money and awareness for the disease. The deferential silence in the room as Ian shared his story spoke volumes to the power of human connection and the love of this sport. It was a poignant story on which to conclude the thoughtful presentations from these Alliance members.

Many thanks for the participation in Alliance Voices! We look forward to hearing the voices of other Alliance members in the near future.