The 26th Annual Conference of the Arthur W. Page Society got off to an inspiring start today at the classic Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago, located just minutes away from Chicago’s business and financial centersatop the Magnificent Mile. Approximately 200 people are participating in this year’s conference, a signature event of the Page Society.

Welcome Remarks

Page Society President and chief executive officer, Gagen MacDonald, Maril MacDonald welcomed all participating members and spouses to the Annual Conference and thanked Raymond Jordan, chair of the 2009 Annual Conference, the Planning Committee members and Rosemary Moore, who chaired the Marketing and Communications Committee. Maril kicked off the conference with a video previewing the meeting and highlighting the 6 CEO speakers. Click here to see the video.

Introduction to Conference Theme

Raymond C. Jordan, corporate vice president, public affairs and corporate communication, Johnson & Johnson, and chair, 2009 Annual Conference introduced the conference theme “Values Under Stress” and pointed out the Page Principles that are particularly relevant and meaningful in the current environment. Ray thanked members of the Planning committee, his vice-chair Sandra Macleod, Rich Jernstedt and Rosemary Moore. He also outlined the many ways in which members can draw insights and value from the conference.

Former CEO of Motorola Delivers Keynote Address: Choices Have Consequences

E. Ronald Culp, managing director, Ketchum Midwest, and member, Annual Conference Planning Committee introduced the keynote speaker Chris Galvin, chairman and co-founder of Harrison Street Capital LLC, a private equity entity, and former chairman and CEO of Motorola, Inc. Galvin is also co-founder/general partner at Harrison Street Real Estate Capital LLC, a real estate private equity company.

Culp described Galvin as an internationally recognized business leader, driven by a strong set of values. These values were forged years ago by his grandfather and father and the Galvin principles have influenced Motorola for 75 years. Chris Galvin himself served Motorola for over 36 years. Six years ago, Galvin was well on his way to reinventing Motorola and then he was fired, part of deliberate action plan to transform Motorola.

Following the dot.com crash in 2000, Galvin led a massive three year restructuring of Motorola that included large lay-offs, closure of manufacturing facilities and reducing break-even costs. Simultaneously, Galvin led the renewal of Six Sigma Quality through Digital Six Sigma and introduced Motorola’s MOTO language advertising campaign in 2002. The RAZR cellular phone was designed by Galvin’s innovators in new product development methodologies created during the 2001-2003 timeframe. Galvin said he believes “Leading breakthrough innovation is a lonely avocation. Every time we created something new, the CEO had to stand up against the crowd.”

Galvin explained that “We speak…verbally, think visually, listen experientially and make value judgments experientially.” He elaborated how the Galvin values were constantly under stress. The Board opted to change course. He pointed out that you can’t create a reputation that you haven’t yet earned.

Galvin said that there is a widespread assumption that boards of directors are always correct unless they engage in fraud. He stated, “Leadership = take people elsewhere…to a place they wouldn’t go unless you took them there. Strategy = continuous renewal in everything.”

Galvin admitted to making 4,00,000 mistakes while he was CEO of Motorola, but he said he never failed to learn from the mistakes. He also said that as the CEO he took full responsibility for mistakes.

Galvin defined culture as the consistent application of “what to value” and “timeless principles” in the conduct of one’s everyday business. He said 90% of people spend 90% of their time trying not to get fired. “It’s why – trust, risk and innovation are inextricably linked,” he said.

The Board of Directors attempted a radical CEO and corporate culture change at Motorola.
They decided to think completely differently from the Galvins and the differences in values can be characterized as complexity v. simplicity, diverse portfolio v. more focused, some ambiguity to strategy v. tightly described like advertising tag lines, doable not but yet provable v. only the provable. The board also ended Galvin values of process rigor + freedom giver and technology roadmaps. Galvin highlighted “Trust + Essence” and “To love” a philosophy on life, as the Galvin philosophies.

Chris identified some of the Galvin Values as:

• Reflect high integrity
• Create and enable business models
• Hire stunning talent smarter than us in their domains
• Create an environment of unbounded creativity ‘balanced by’ process rigor
• Create and nurture a working environment where good people can do great things and great people can do extraordinary things

The CEO presentation was followed by an interactive Q&A session with participants.

Stress and the Impact on the Individual

Ray Jordan, corporate vice president, public affairs and corporate communication, Johnson & Johnson, and chair, 2009 Annual Conference introduced the second keynote speaker Dr. Nancy Snyderman, chief medical editor, NBC News. Dr. Snyderman’s presentation discussed the physical impact of stress today on the individual and ways of coping with stress.

Snyderman’s reports appear on “Today,” “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams,” “Dateline NBC,” MSNBC and MSNBC.com. Previously Snyderman served as vice president, consumer education for Johnson & Johnson. Snyderman has also served as Medical Correspondent for ABC News for 17 years and has been a contributor for “20/20,” “Primetime,” and “Good Morning America.” She is the author of three books, “Dr Nancy Snyderman’s Guide to Good Health for Women Over Forty,” “Necessary Journeys,” and “Girl in the Mirror: Mothers and Daughters in the Years of Adolescence.” She also writes a monthly column for “Good Housekeeping” magazine.

As a physician, Snyderman provided perspective on features of stress. She said, “Whether its corporate stress related to the workplace, pandemic stress related to SARS or personal stress, we are all very stressed.” Looking at the cause and effect of stress, she explained that we don’t switch off, and we are addicted to pizza and are “about to eat ourselves into early graves.”

She noted, “You sculpt the persona of the CEO, what CEO says, CCOs are most important people when it comes to defining how you are perceived by the rest of the world.” But when we are stressed we reach for things that make us feel good.

Food is one of the things we use when we are stressed. She said that in the U.S. we are stressed beyond belief, we eat into diabetes and heart disease. If we want to deal with stress – we need to move, to walk, to exercise.

She elucidated that we ‘underlive’ our lives and need to have the ability to run away from our lives – “it maybe extraordinarily difficult in today’s wired, hypercharged environments.” Compared with earlier times, now our day does not have a beginning and an end. We are constantly suffering from a lack sleep. Most of us have an addiction to being wired all the time and that is a great physiological stresser. When we sleep our body repairs itself. “There has to be a slice in your life where you get to replenish yourself,” she elaborated. She emphasized the importance of being able to switch off.

Snyderman recounted anecdotes from her childhood and added “The reality is we don’t run away from home enough, from work enough. Nobody cares about you the way you care about you. If you drop dead tomorrow, you will be replaced.” She also focused on doing more things that bring you joy.

A lively Q&A session with Annual Conference participants ensued.

Social Media Workshop

The conference also featured a Social Media Workshop where Kami Watson-Huyse and the Wieck Media staff examined real-world case studies, and provided insights on how to stay out of trouble while making a measurable impact with corporate social networking.

New Attendee Reception

A reception was hosted for Page Society members attending their first Annual Conference, honorary members and Board of Trustees. Maril MacDonald, chief executive officer, Gagen MacDonald, and president, Arthur W. Page Society welcomed the members and spoke about what it means to be a Page Society member. Thomas Martin, executive-in-residence, College of Charleston described the heritage of the Page Society and the origin of the Page Principles and Tom Nicholson, executive director, Page Society, outlined the opportunities and ways for new members to get involved and get the most out of the membership in the Arthur W. Page Society. Aedhmar Hynes, chief executive officer, Text 100 invited new members to leverage the Page Society’s internal social network, webPages, to connect, engage and interact with Page Society members and to extend their networking experience to beyond the annual meetings. Matt Gonring, consultant, Gagen MacDonald, and member, Annual Conference Planning Committee explained how all new members have been paired with a member of the Board of Trustees to maximize the experience of their membership in the Page Society.

Managing Abrupt Stress

Elise Eberwein, senior vice president, corporate communications, US Airways introduced Doug Parker, chairman and chief executive officer, US Airways Group, Inc. Parker became chairman and chief executive officer upon the merger of US Airways and America West Airlines in September 2005. Prior to the merger, Parker was chairman, president and chief executive officer of America West Holdings Corporation and spent four years with Northwest Airlines as vice president and assistant treasurer, and vice president of financial planning and analysis. He has also held a number of financial management positions with American Airlines.

In an industry that has frequently faced significant economic downturns as well as other chronic and uncertain external factors like the volatile price of oil, unstable weather patterns, and global unrest, to name a few, Doug Parker discussed how US Airways was challenged in a different way by the very abrupt stress caused when Flight 1549 went down in the Hudson River.

Parker shared a video chronicling the events that took place on January 15, 2009 when the news broke of flight 1549 in the Hudson river. He shared his perspective on what happened, how he learnt of it and US Airways’ communications response in the situation.

Parker said he clearly remembers where he was at that time; in a meeting in the board room with some bankers, with the CFO and president when the senior VP of government affairs came walking in from a service entrance behind Parker and leant over and told him “I just got a text message that says we’ve got an airplane down in the Hudson.”

“I knew that I had to return to the board room and immediately get started on our emergency response plan. What happened is that right behind me were people coming in and doing an incredibly professional job of doing everything right. At that point forward, when I saw it on TV, I saw it as the biggest PR situation that anyone in US Airways had ever dealt with, and hopefully, are ever going to have to deal with. We certainly benefited from the fact that the results of the story were so positive,” he explained.

Parker also shared some of the lessons from what their PR team did. “The first lesson is that planning doesn’t matter.” He said that the corporate communications team acted swiftly and tactically, to get a lot of information out quickly – they got dedicated customer relations Web sites up within 30 minutes of the accident; Parker was on, making a statement within 90 minutes of the incident. They updated internal audience throughout the night and the following days and weeks. The PR team also did other things such as contacting Google and purchasing keywords related to the flight and ‘emergency landing’ so that it would direct people to US Airways’ site.
Parker said he observed that the media was already drawing some conclusions without their confirmation.

The final lesson Parker shared was “In events like this, stay true to your value. The media was driving this process but we couldn’t let the media dictate our actions. We stuck to our values from the moment that airplane hit the water which was to take care of our customers and to take care of our employees.”

Later participants posed several thought-provoking questions for the CEO speaker.