The implicit understanding among Alliance members is that, in exchange for their willingness to share their own experience and knowledge, they gain access to the extraordinary collective wisdom of the Alliance community of CEOs. Our members do amazing things and here we've collected some of their lessons learned to preserve and highlight the wealth of knowledge in our membership. Alliance Founder & CEO, Paul Witkay, also shares his perspectives on topics such as leadership, strategy and innovation.
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While the world is changing at an exponential rate of speed as industry after industry is being transformed, most CEOs are either seeking breakthrough ideas that will disrupt back, or are in fear of falling behind – or both. Here, Alliance Founder & CEO Paul Witkay shares four types of breakthroughs as learned from Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack’s latest book, The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking. The authors describe not only their findings based on neuroscience, but also provide practical tools one can use to increase the probability for creating breakthrough ideas.
Read MoreCase categories include: Entrepreneurship Executive Development Founder’s Insights Leadership
Every successful CEO strives to be more effective, make better decisions and become more productive, which are key reasons why we bring leaders together at the Alliance of CEOs. Learned through Charles Duhigg’s new book, Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity, Alliance Founder & CEO Paul Witkay shares three valuable concepts for improving individual productivity.
Read MoreCase categories include: Executive Development Founder’s Insights Leadership
Paul Witkay
The implicit understanding among Alliance members has always been that in exchange for your willingness to share your knowledge and experience, you gain access to the extraordinary collective wisdom of the entire community of CEOs. I believe that during volatile times, it is even more critical to share our experiences, knowledge and ideas with each other. Read my recommendations as to how to best use the unique resources within the Alliance community of CEOs.
Read MoreCase categories include: Founder’s Insights Strategy & Planning
Since March 19, 2020 Alliance leaders have participated in a CEO survey to measure how businesses are experiencing the COVID-19 crisis -- to gauge the depth of impact, the latest business trends and the progress of returning employees to their workplaces. Here, you'll find the most recent Week #92 (December 13, 2021) CEO Survey results.
Read MoreCase categories include: CEO Survey Health Leadership Strategy & Planning
In the spirit of sharing the collective wisdom of our Alliance community during the COVID-19 crisis, we invited leaders from world-class organizations to share their critical considerations for “Return-to-Workplace” (RTW) planning at our Alliance Leadership Forum on April 29, 2020.
Presenters in areas of Health Issues (One Medical), Employee Issues (Lattice Semiconductor), and specific industries including Manufacturing (Flex), Construction (Webcor Builders) and Scientific Laboratories (Triple Ring Technologies) shared their Back-to-Office principles and timelines, employee health, safety and training plans, strategies for risk mitigation and more.
Read MoreCase categories include: Culture Health Human Resources Leadership Operations Strategy & Planning Trends
In a flash survey completed by members of the Alliance of Chief Executives taken on March 19, 2020, just a few days after the USA’s first shelter-in-place order, 75% of the CEOs report negative impacts, while 9% are being positively impacted. Collectively, these Bay Area leaders believe it will be 4.9 months before we return to “normalcy.” The survey was completed by CEOs in the six Bay Area counties who were issued the shelter-in-place order on March 17. The State of California just expanded this order statewide on March 20, and more than likely, other states will follow. CEOs in other regions can look to this data to help make their own plans.
Read MoreCase categories include: CEO Survey Health Leadership Strategy & Planning Trends
As Alliance members John Aisien of Blue Cedar, Linda Hand of Prealize Health, John Kelly of Zenreach, Johnny Loiacono of Movius, Alon Matas of BetterHelp.com, Rick O’Connor of Invicta Medical and Said Ouissal of ZEDEDA can attest, accelerated change has profoundly impacted the challenges they face–including how they manage, who they hire and how they communicate. It also forces business leaders to confront an almost impossible question: How does one lead when everything seems subject to change in today’s digital age?
Read MoreCase categories include: Leadership Strategy & Planning Technology
The Alliance creates private, safe environments where leaders have confidential conversations, exchange strategic insights, and challenge conventional thinking. Something magical often happens when talented leaders with diverse backgrounds and experiences come together. They find ways to collaborate on new strategies, extraordinary ideas and opportunities, and sometimes create entirely new companies. Here, we share a few of the many impactful connections made by our amazing community, with a spotlight on Alliance members Alex Ashton of Image Design Works, Nate Harding of FoxEye Robotics, Joe Heanue of Triple Ring Technologies, Lynn Heublein of SkinSpirit, Cal Lai of Ask.Vet, Phil Murphy of GNU Group, Dave Summa of Business Model Innovations and Dean Zikria of AsthmaTek.
Read MoreCase categories include: Leadership Strategy & Planning
When it comes to finding ways to give back to our communities and the world at large, Alliance members contribute an enormous amount of their time, energy and passions to a wide range of worthy initiatives inside and out of their professional roles. Here, we highlight the impactful work of just a few of our Alliance members: Stéphane Bette of SpineGuard, Peter Cooperstein of Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria, Ross Fernandes of Q Analysts, Marc Guillet of Agile Physical Therapy, Mark Johnsen of Wealth Architects, Rod Kalune of RK Logistics Group, Michel Lopez of e2f and Sandy Walker of the YMCA of Silicon Valley. We invite all Alliance members to share with us their stories of giving back so we may continue to engage, support, educate and inspire one another.
Read MoreCase categories include: Leadership
As Alliance members Evan Bailyn of First Page Sage, Ann Barnes of Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO), Ross Fernandes of Q Analysts, Everett Harper of Truss, Paul Lipman of BullGuard and Bernie Tobin of Crescendo Bioscience will argue, leveraging a virtual workforce is definitely worth the effort. While the benefits can be significant, there are no guarantees of success. Only by planning properly, finding employees with the right mindset, focusing on culture and investing wisely in technology, can leaders ensure their teams are all on the same page, even when they aren’t in the same place.
Read MoreCase categories include: Culture Operations Organizational Design Trends
With the increasing speed at which technology is fueling change, running a real-time business can be a huge difference maker. But as Alliance members Chris Beall of ConnectAndSell, Victor Chapela of Suggestic, Yvonne Linney of Transcriptic, Dennis O’Malley of Caliva, Rodney Pearlman of the Bluefield Project and Jack Peurach of Ekso Bionics can attest, theory and practice are two different things. One thing is certain, running a business in real-time can lead to incredible breakthroughs and achievements, but it also comes with a heavy set of challenges.
Read MoreCase categories include: Leadership Operations Sales Strategy & Planning Technology Trends
Alliance members Ian Cohen of Experian Consumer Services, Himanshu Dwivedi of Data Theorem, Ted Elliott of Jobscience, Ju-kay Kwek of Switchboard Software, Ersin Uzun of Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and Christy Wyatt of Dtex Systems, discuss the sweeping new Data Privacy and GDPR rules taking effect, and how organizations should reconsider the ‘what, where and why’ behind their data practices.
Read MoreCase categories include: Finance Human Resources International Business Marketing Operations Sales Strategy & Planning Technology Trends
Tom Siebel, Chairman & CEO, C3 IoT
In an exclusive interview with the Alliance of Chief Executives, Tom Siebel, Chairman & CEO, C3 IoT, says a major “extinction event” is under way in the form of a multi-layered digital transformation that will crush organizations that aren’t prepared to survive. The technologies driving this transformation include cloud computing, big data, social media, artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). And every CEO should understand them all.
Read MoreCase categories include: Leadership Technology Trends
Accountability for CEOs can range widely depending on the structure, size, ownership and stage of the business. But the bottom line is that CEOs are accountable for delivering on their promises to all stakeholders and doing what is best for the organization. Learn how Alliance members Sunil Bhatia of Infogain, Christopher Burnley of Corefact, Jonathan Corr of Ellie Mae, Craig Goehring of Brown and Caldwell, JR Matthews of Tregaron Capital, Sean McCarthy of CytomX Therapeutics, and Doug Murray of Big Switch Networks, meet the complexities of accountability head on.
Read MoreCase categories include: Entrepreneurship Executive Development Leadership
Peter Koshland
New businesses that tap into large and severely under-met needs are destined to grow rapidly. But if the founders starve the company of capital, their conservativism eventually will kill growth. Even more important, it will burn out the founders. It is also avoidable. The story of Koshland Pharm and its Founder, Alliance member Peter Koshland, illustrates this well. In this Forbes article from Alliance Director and Founding Principal of CEO to CEO, Robert Sher, learn how the key to stability and long-term sustainability for growing, profitable businesses is increasing throughput.
Read MoreCase categories include: Executive Development Leadership Operations Strategy & Planning
Automation will soon reshape the way we work in very profound ways, and present enormous economic and societal benefits. According to Alliance members Steve Cousins of Savioke, Irit Eizips of CSM Practice, Lisa Im of Performant Financial, Mike Jellen of Velodyne LiDAR, Jane Macfarlane of the Sustainable Transportation Initiative at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, John Pavlidis of Vytronus, Lizz Vilardo of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and Christy Wyatt of Dtex Systems, embracing innovative technology may be the best way to not only survive tomorrow’s robot revolution, but actually lead it.
Read MoreCase categories include: Entrepreneurship Leadership Technology
Alliance leaders know that today’s labor force is experiencing fundamental, permanent change. Alliance members Laura Bergheim of Wordsmithie, Andy Berkenfield of Duncan Channon, Nathan Collins of SRI International, Ross Fernandes of Q Analysts, Glo Gordon of Cisco-Jasper, Kathy Zwickert of NetSuite, and Alliance Director Marion McGovern, share their strategies for growth in the gig economy. This transformation will create critical questions for today’s leaders, and their solutions will be customized for each unique situation. Given the track record of Bay Area innovation, we think it’s not a matter of if the answers will come, but when.
Read MoreCase categories include: Human Resources Leadership Operations Strategy & Planning Trends
Todd Johnson
If trust is the foundation of all strong, positive inter-company relationships, then transparency is the primary path to achieving that trust. This article by Alliance member Todd Johnson, President of Kollective, identifies and describes the essential categories of content that form the foundation for best practices in employee engagement; content that builds trust and positively influences company culture long-term. Keep these ideas in mind as you build and fine-tune your own blueprint for internal communications success.
Read MoreCase categories include: Leadership Operations Strategy & Planning Trends
Alyson Watson
Stories of company sales are riddled with strife. The staff that is asked to weather the transition often experiences wage cuts, department rollbacks and painful non-alignment among competing business units. Alyson Watson, former President of RMC Water and Environment, survived to tell the tale of her company’s acquisition. Better yet, the story is one of harmonious success, a triumph that began with letting go of control.
Read MoreCase categories include: Ethics Leadership M&A Strategy & Planning
In a fast-changing world, Alliance members Joe Budelli of ABBYY USA, Bill Grosso of Scientific Revenue, Arwed Niestroj of Mercedes-Benz R&D North America, Barb Paldus of Finesse Solutions, Glen Shu of Bay View Funding and Antoine Villata of Planisware USA share their strategies for preparing to meet future market needs.
Read MoreCase categories include: Entrepreneurship Leadership Strategy & Planning Trends
The Alliance of Chief Executives is an active community of business leaders that focuses on deep strategic exchanges, challenging existing assumptions and generating fresh ideas.
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