An MSCI After Action Review of an Annual Conference

At the MSCI conference recently held in San Antonio, Texas, we had the pleasure of hearing from Thomas Magness from the Thayer Leader Development Group (TLDG).  A key take-away was “Treat every event as an opportunity to learn.”  So, if conferences are an event, and therefore an opportunity to learn, let’s do an After Action Review (AAR) on the MSCI conference, what did we learn, what did we bring home, and what are we doing about it.

Alan Beaulieu, the President of ITR Economics discussed the economy relative to the metals industry.  He then spent time reviewing the rate-of-change ratio which he considers to be a key management tool.  The rate of change in a data series can illustrate cyclical change and identify trends.  According to Alan, the year 2021 will be a record year for manufacturing.   So how does this rate of change impact us and what are we doing at CareGo now to address this?  If we assume that we are in Phase B, we are addressing the following from the Beaulieu authored book “Prosperity in the Age of Decline.”

• We are addressing any bottlenecks in our process and strengthening our capabilities to scale for growth.
• We are collaborating with local academic institutions to accelerate our R and D process.
• We are looking beyond the current trend to determine “What Is Next?”  Our strategic plan has been developed and our business is implementing the plan.

Thomas Magness also spoke about high impact leadership and the importance of leadership to motivate our employees.  At CareGo we are actively pursuing several initiatives to engage, motivate and retain employees, these include:

• An on-going mentorship program which is being enhanced with a new on-boarding cross-skill set training program
• A unique profit-sharing program which ensures that our friends and colleagues are all motivated towards the same goal
• Movement of personnel from Product Development to Project Assignments for rotation
• An employee review with a member of the executive team to discuss roles, responsibilities, career paths and impact to determine where employees are on the “Anxiety, Flow, Boredom” axis that Thomas demonstrated.  Based on responses new paths, goals and responsibilities are being explored

Thanks for an informative conference, looking forward to next year at MSCI!