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Martin McGlynn
Alliance member, Martin McGlynn of StemCells, the first company to directly identify and isolate human neural stem cells from normal brain tissue, joined us for this regional Alliance Meeting. Martin has spent several decades in the life sciences industry in Europe, Canada and the United States and will share his…
Read MoreSite Section: Public Events
The Overly Optimistic Entrepreneur
By Robert Sher He was overly optimistic in his last business. It failed. He was overly optimistic in his marriage. It failed while he was still optimistic about his second business, and he found himself sleeping on his parent’s floor while he struggled to keep the business alive. No tears,…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
Rick Cronk
Rick Cronk, Co-Founder of Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream discussed his leadership philosophies and the “Dreyer's Grooves.” These “Grooves” create a work environment where each individual is empowered, involved and encouraged (indeed expected) to truly “make a difference” in Dreyer's success as a company.
Read MoreSite Section: Public Events
Chip Conley
Chip Conley, CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and author of “Rebel Rules” and “Marketing Matters,” discussed his philosophies on leadership from his newest book “How Great Companies Get Their MOJO from Maslow.” Chip gave a brilliant analysis of how Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs enabled him to gain the…
Read MoreSite Section: Public Events
Shifting Gears from Startup to Scaled Enterprise
By Robert Sher It was new to him—that feeling of helplessness. As an entrepreneur, Uwe Druckenmueller (pronounced “oovay”), founder and CEO of Cruiser Customizing, Inc. had always been able to personally jump in, work like crazy, and fix the problem. But not that time. The growth of his company over…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
John Hamm
Former CEO of Whistle Communications, John Hamm is the author of the highly acclaimed article in the Harvard Business Review on “Why Entrepreneurs Don’t Scale.” John's presentation to the Alliance was “CEO Leadership.” Over the last six years, John has worked with over 120 CEOs nationwide providing strategy and leadership…
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Closing the Feedback Loop
By Robert Sher Scaling a business is great, and is what many CEOs strive for. When the firm was small, the CEO knew exactly how satisfied all the clients were. Yet scaling up means that sooner or later, distance between management and the customer grows. Mr. Dave Kearney, CEO of…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
After Tough Year for Image, CEOs Need Defending
Paul Witkay, Alliance Founder & CEO, authored an editorial for the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal defending CEOs.
Read MoreSite Section: News
A Door to High Caliber People
By Robert Sher “It’s amazing the caliber of people you can meet when involved in charitable causes.”—- Rand Morimoto, CEO and advisor to the White House Surround yourself with people of amazing caliber and you have the chance for amazing results. For many years, this CEO of Convergent Computing, a…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
Recruiting through Mutual Respect
By Robert Sher Nearly everyone in the Valley is struggling right now to recruit top talent. Rather than hire recruiters and dive into a bidding war, CEO Eric Scheible of ProCM (a Scheible-Rassieur company), solved his hiring needs by reaching into his past. Being self-funded and making a shift from…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
CEOs Learn Best from Other CEOs
California CEO magazine featured an article on the Alliance of Chief Executives commemorating our 10th anniversary. They believe the Alliance is a unique resource for today's business leaders.
Read MoreSite Section: News
Synchronizing Brand Image with Deliverables
By Robert Sher Branding strategies generally focus on how to portray the company to the audience. But given enough time, the real brand image will be based on what the company really delivers. You can fool them for a while, but not forever. The Corporation for Manufacturing Excellence (Manex) always…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
Bo Burlingham
Bo Burlingham, author of Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big, discussed his study of CEOs that chose to march to their own drummer. Bo is also Editor at Large of INC Magazine and Co-Author of The Great Game of Business.
Read MoreSite Section: Public Events
Brainstorm vs. Budget
By Robert Sher A beautiful brainstorm it was – replete with wonderful ideas about making the new machine fully featured and versatile. No one foresaw the bloody hatchet that would carve out the final design. The Game Ready System is a high tech, computerized ice pack – a medical device…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
Identifying New Business Ideas Take Discipline
By Robert Sher The dream of starting a company is shared by millions, but few actually ever do. Of those that do, the majority fail to get very far. Brent Dusing had been at a couple start-ups and then was working for venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, looking at investing…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
David Matheson
A co-founder of SmartOrg, David has helped the senior management teams from some of the largest product manufacturing corporations in the world to improve their results from portfolio management, product development, innovation, R & D, capital investment and strategy. He is known for finding simple answers to some of the…
Site Section: Members/Directors/Staff
From Service to Process to Product
By Robert Sher For many years, Ryan McGredy, CEO of Media Net Link in San Ramon, was solving his customer's problems by creating customized solutions. Sometimes his team was buried with work, and at other times they had excess capacity. Having built all his code in a flexible, stable platform,…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
John Dillon
John is the former CEO of Hyperion Software and Salesforce.com. He spoke to his fellow Alliance members about his experiences in the software industry that shaped his leadership philosophies and vision for Navis.
Read MoreSite Section: Public Events
Pascal Levensohn
Pascal Levensohn shared his thoughts on the challenges and opportunities of building effective boards.
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Learning from Pure Innovation
By Robert Sher Ron Johnson, CEO of WAGIC stakes his entire success on the innovation of his team. The company’s name stands for “What A Good Idea Company,” and holds as their core competency their ability to come up with great ideas for products, or to take great ideas and…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
Vision Vector
By Robert Sher Does Internet e-mail have a future? That’s a silly question today, but 12 years ago there was hot debate on just this point. Jeffrey Morrison, CEO of Stage One Partners in Los Gatos, piloted a startup e-mail firm in 1994 when the balance of opinion was against…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
Paul Witkay - CEOs Are His Business
Paul Witkay, Alliance Founder & CEO, was profiled by Katy Lieber of the East Bay Business Times.
Read MoreSite Section: News
Generalities about China
By Robert Sher My industry is moving to China – at least big parts of my industry. And with my customers flying up and back, and my products being sent to and fro, it was high time that I made my first trip there. Beware of Communists Having a proclivity…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
It is Never Forever
By Robert Sher It’s such a waste that we can’t know the date we’ll die. So many things would be simplified if we did, especially succession planning. We could do it right on time! But alas, we don’t know when we’ll meet our maker. Tom Friel, CEO of Heidrich and…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
Paul Witkay with Pete Wilson
Alliance CEO and Founder, Paul Witkay talked with Pete Wilson on KGO NewsTalk 810 about leadership. Click here to Listen (WMA)
Read MoreSite Section: News
Managing Young Employees Yields Insights for All
By Robert Sher “This is not high school,” repeated Rick and June Gaan to the team of 12 teenagers and young adults that were running LeMans Karting, an indoor go-cart racing business. Rick had bought the business in a troubled state, where the prior owner hadn’t controlled the culture or…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
Jim Pouliot
Jim Pouliot shared his experiences with how his insistence on value-based behaviors in his organizations led to better performance and higher profitability.
Read MoreSite Section: Public Events
Re-Framing Price Increases Leads to Stepped-Up Profits
By Robert Sher Do you know how shake up your sales department? Just say, “We’re raising prices.” So when I learned about a CEO in trucking and transportation who made one such pricing move, and convinced his sales team to make it happen, and grabbed 33% more gross profit, I…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
The Courage to Fire
By Robert Sher Every business needs bright people. But some businesses sell what their bright people think about. When Bud Michael came to the realization that he would have to fire one of his brightest and most senior engineers, it took courage. Having only been CEO of Availigent for six…
Read MoreSite Section: Cases
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