I have written recently about some of the reasons why you should make plans to attend Winning Workplaces and Inc. Magazine's joint 2011 Leadership Conference, which will be held next month in Dallas, Texas.

We hosted this same type of event with Inc. in Denver last year.  What did the small businesses who attended take away from it, in terms of tips and strategies to improve their organizations?  The following is feedback that several key executives from PortionPac Chemical Corporation recently shared with us about their experience at our 2010 conference and subsequent actions taken in their firm:

Two examples from the conference stood out to us as being the most impactful: the employee fitness testing at Gentle Giant Moving Company and the entrepreneurial culture at Tasty Catering.  We have incorporated elements of both approaches in our work.

Gentle Giant Moving Company stands out for testing both the physical fitness and the psychology of potential employees with the famous stadium run test.  We appreciated the advantages of evaluating a potential employee who struggles to complete the stadium run but who takes responsibility for completing it thoroughly.  Since learning about Gentle Giant, our own company has evaluated our onboarding process and made some changes that better measure a person’s spirit in addition to their technical skills.  After all, it is not just the competence that matters – it’s how the person meshes with our culture and whether they demonstrate in subtler ways the degree to which they  take responsibility for their actions.

Tasty Catering inspired us with the way the company cultivates employee-driven ideas.  We applaud Tasty Catering’s culture of identifying and fostering entrepreneurship in its company.  Since the leadership conference we have begun to have regular check-ins with our customer service staff to uncover employee-generated solutions to everyday challenges.  Tasty Catering has demonstrated the value of having a motivated workforce whose ideas are heard, and we have taken their example to heart.

As one of the few manufacturing companies at the conference, we enjoyed comparing challenges and solutions with companies that were so different than us.  Our commitment to producing environmentally responsible, user-centric cleaning products gave us a strong connection to the values held by Winning Workplaces, Inc., and the other conference attendees, and we enjoyed the opportunity to find our common ground as well as identify exciting opportunities for growth.

If you'd like to get value similar to what PortionPac got, and you're free on June 15-17, click here to register for our Leadership Conference.  I'll be there and I'd love to meet you and learn about your firm and how you're investing in your workplace for greater workforce effectiveness.