New Service for Out of Town  MFN Participants	If you're traveling to Chicago for the MFN Conference, CLICK HERE for information about our travel consolidator's "One-Stop-Shopping" and SUBSTANTIAL SAVINGS on hotel rates, air/rail fares and rental car rates. Government pricing available for Federal Agencies.
SPONSOR: Nightingale Conant	Nightingale Conant (NC) is back with MFN as a sponsor!  Since 1993, Nightingale Conant (Niles, Illinois) has been the most significant sponsor to MFN contributing the vast majority of door prizes.  Nightingale Conant is the largest producer and distributor of instructional and motivational audio and video tapes for Personal and Business Development, Wealth Building, Sales, Mind Technology, Health & Wellness and Spiritual Growth.  Nightingale Conant also provides Coaching Services and has a full-service Speakers' Bureau. Visit their website at: http://www.nightingale.com
SPONSOR: University Associates	For the April 2002 Conference, University Associates (UA), another long-time and significant MFN sponsor, will provide a door prize of one workshop registration worth $999.00 for any of their standard a 3-day or 2-day workshops in 2002. (The Extended DISC Certification course is excluded from this offer).  The winner must be present at the drawing time to receive this prize. Visit their website at: http://www.universityassociates.com
Conference Fees	$100.00 per participant on or before April 19th (Early Registration Discount) $120.00 per participant after April 19th $120.00 per participant at the door (no guarantee of availability) Forté Communications Survey Option: $25.00 per participant to take the survey.  If you elect this option, you will be sent an e-mail with a link to the survey on the Forté Institute Website.  You should be able to complete the survey in about 5-10 minutes.  Select "PDF" as the output format - you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader - a free download.  After completing the survey, you will be e-mailed a copy of the results.  You may also view your results on-line. Please bring your printed profile to the Conference. Fee includes Conference, Materials, Continental Breakfast & Lunch.  Fee Does NOT include Lodging (see suggestions below). Cancellations after April 19th or no shows may be assessed a cancellation fee
5 Ways to Register	Click Here to go to Registration Information Page Phone: (773)-463-2288 - During the recording press the "2" key. Please announce 'MFN Conference Registration', your company name, and the name, phone # and payment information of each registrant. Fax: (773)-463-9322 - Fax completed registration form with payment information for each registrant. E-Mail: register@midwest-facilitators.net - E-mail completed registration form with payment information and subject: 'MFN Conference Registration'. Snail-mail: Mail completed registration form with payment information to: MFN c/o Jordan-Webb, 2656 W Montrose Ave,  Suite 110, Chicago, IL 60618. On-Site: Registration and payment ($120.00) on-site is subject to availability. No guarantee without pre-registration.
On-Line Information	Chicago, IL Information Websites: Weather Information - http://www.weather.com/weather/local/60601 City of Chicago - http://www.cityofchicago.org  or  http://www.ci.chi.il.us City Search for Chicago - http://www.chicago.citysearch.com  World Web Travel Guide - http://www.chicago.worldweb.com Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau - http://www.choosechicago.com All About Chicago - http://www.allabout-chicago.com AreaGuides.Net - http://chicago.areaguides.net Chicago Tribune - http://www.chicagotribune.com Chicago Sun-Times - http://www.suntimes.com Chicago Reader - http://www.chireader.com Navy Pier - http://www.navypier.com Wendella Boat Rides - http://www.wendellaboats.com Mercury Boat Cruises - http://centerstage.net/other/mercury-boat-cruises.html Daily Herald - http://www.dailyherald.com Chicago Public Library - http://cpl.lib.uic.edu Fun Places to Go With Kids - http://www.FunPlacesToGoWithKids.com Ken Schessler's America/Chicago Tours - http://members.aol.com/KSchessler/wizzk.html Palmer's Walking Guide - http://www.palmersguide.com/chicago Sears Tower - http://www.searstower.com Museum of Science & Industry - http://www.msichicago.org Field Museum of Natural History - http://www.fmnh.org Shedd Aquarium - http://www.sheddnet.org Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum - http://www.adlerplanetarium.org Art Institute of Chicago - http://www.artic.edu Museum of Contemporary Art - http://www.mcachicago.org Chicago Historical Society - http://www.chicagohs.org Chicago Children's Museum - http://www.chichildrensmuseum.org Morton Arboretum - http://www.mortonarb.org Chicago Botanic Garden - http://www.chicago-botanic.org Chicago Architecture - http://www.yelodog.com Chicago's Greektown - http://www.chicagosgreektown.com Chicago's Chinatown - http://www.chicagochinatown.net Musicals - http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Performing_Arts/Theater/Musicals/Shows/Chicago Theater - http://dir.yahoo.com/Regional/U_S__States/Illinois/Cities/Chicago/Entertainment_and_Arts/Theater Chicago White Sox - http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/cws/homepage/cws_homepage.jsp Chicago Cubs - http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/chc/homepage/chc_homepage.jsp
Meals	Continental breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack are included in the Conference fee.  Participants with special dietary needs contact Linda Romansic: (847)-566-0644 or  romansicl@aol.com
Dress Code	Business Casual.

Friday, April 26, 2002

This session provides a provocative look into the cultures of organizations and the barriers that hinder or prevent organizational change and renewal.  Dr. Ray's unique and insightful perspective on why organizations do and do not change will help you develop a better understanding of your own organization and what would be required to bring about a transformation.  From selected principles within Dr Ray's latest book, The Performance Culture, you will learn how to analyze organizational dynamics from a new perspective.  Organizations are really composed of two cultures, the formal (or intentional) culture and the informal (or endemic) culture.

The formal (intentional) culture is designed and implemented by management to establish a course for the organization.  It is evident in policy and procedure manuals, hiring, promotion and appraisal systems, corporate statements about vision, mission, values, goals and guiding principles, in organizational charts, corporate slogans, strategic plans and in performance measures.   The informal (endemic) culture is not formed in response to a business need, has no unifying organization or structure and is beyond the control of management.  It manifests itself in the gossip systems, in the sub-cultures of smokers, in the gatherings around the water cooler or copier, or in the lunchroom or parking lot, and it can have a positive or negative effect on an organization.

The informal culture has a great deal of power to support or undermine management policies and decisions.  Executives and leaders who ignore this culture put themselves and their organization risk. Creating high levels of trust between these two cultures is a first step in developing high performance human work systems that take advantage of the vision of leadership and the power of the endemic culture.

Learning Points:

• Two cultures in conflict (Formal and Informal Cultures)
• Who runs your organization?
• How management undermines the culture of performance
• Trust as the currency of high performance
• How to create a Performance Culture


Dr Darrel W Ray has consulted throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom since 1978 and has directed major departments in two organizations. He specializes in Management Development, Team Building and Self-Directed Work Group implementation. As a psychologist Dr. Ray has studied groups and group dynamics since 1976, and has worked with groups and organizations in development and change efforts throughout his career.  He specializes in Leadership Team Assessment and Development, helping top management teams work together more effectively and at a high level of performance.  He is perhaps the most experienced consultant in the United States on the subject of Self-Directed Work Teams and has helped companies implement all types of teams since 1976. He is a pioneer in the development of Self-Directed Work Teams in both union and non-union environments having developed the Teaming Up^® process that is now widely used across North America and the United Kingdom.

A graduate of George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, he holds a doctorate in counseling psychology. Dr. Ray is certified by two national organizations as a trainer and holds certifications in Neurolinguistics as well. He is a professional member of the American Psychological Association and has taught undergraduate courses at Tennessee State University and Graduate MBA courses at Webster University.  Dr. Ray has helped implement high participation and Self-Directed teams in many settings, both service and manufacturing. Dr. Ray's client list includes: Hallmark Cards, Motiva Enterprises, Unilever, Fort James Corp., Harmon Industries, Fleetguard Corp., Butler Manufacturing, Standard Motor Products, AFG Industries, Leader National Insurance, The Windsor Insurance Group, Bell Atlantic, Plastics Pack Corp, Boelte-Hall Litho, North Supply, Data Documents, MCI Telecommunications, US Sprint, GE Capital, Exxon Corporation, QC Data of Calgary Canada, Mobil Oil, South Central Behavioral Services, The States of Nebraska, Kansas and Tennessee. For more information visit: http://www.teaming-up.com and http://www.teamdeveloper.net

The Forté Communication System is a simple, powerful, pragmatic and cost-effective system for cultivating and promoting good communication between individuals and within teams.  Unlike other instruments that measure aspects of "personality type", the Forté is designed to assess current, changing and perceived "communication styles" and to help individuals and teams minimize the chances for misunderstandings and conflicts.   In this session, you will experience how the Forté System can be used to improve interpersonal and team communication.  This session will provide additional insight to those who have elected to take the Forté Communications Survey for this session (see the Forté Communications Survey option under Conference Fees).

The Forté System was developed by C. D. Morgan in 1979. Since then, it has been refined and re-normed several times and was one of the first such diagnostics to be completely available on-line.  The Forté is easy to administer, taking no more than 10 minutes. The Forté may be used to develop top-performer profiles and to screen potential candidates for job positions.  It can also be used to build model profiles and in coaching for improved performance.

While people are generally aware that they have communication strengths that govern their everyday behavior or communication style, they are not aware that these traits are well defined and produce specific and unique profile patterns. In most profiles, a primary communication style will be evident and depending upon the intensity of its strength and will control that individual's attitude, action and responses 50% to 70% of the time.  Communication style characteristics reflect how one thinks, understands, relates and comes across to others; thus, there is tremendous value in knowing one's communication style characteristics and the characteristics of others.

The Forté brings together a respondent's communication strengths (traits) and provides a highly accurate understanding of personal and interpersonal preferences.  An adapting profile identifies how the respondent has been adjusting to an unlimited number of others/environments for the past 30 days and further captures the respondent's current decision-making style, current stamina and current goals index. A perceiver profile tells the respondent how they are "most likely" coming across to others.   Unique to Forté System is: the ability to show interactions between individuals that give them specific action plans for improving communications and help pinpoint areas of potential conflict, and the ability to create comparative profiles for teams.

LEARNING POINTS

Understanding your Forté profile

Building teams and teamwork with Forté

Using the Forté in Teams

Using the Forté for conflict management

Understanding the characteristics of the four primary categories

Dominance/Non-Dominance - The Control Category

Extroversion/Introversion - The People Category

Patience/Impatience - The Pace Category

Conformity/Non-Conformity - The Systems Category

Dr Darrel W Ray (Click Here to See Bio Above).

The "Activity Workshop" will involve participants in a condensed version of what is normally a series of 3-4 half day facilitated sessions.  This interactive process helps a department, functional area, or cross-functional process team to understand the "what", "how" and "measures" of their work and to how use this understanding to identify action plans for process improvement.

What work is actually performed in an organization? Each employee can tell you what he/she does, but how does it all tie together? The first step is to identify the key activities that are performed ("what we do" in an organization), and tie the individual employee tasks ("how we do it") to these key activities.

The Activity Workshop is a series of 3 to 4 half day facilitated sessions that take a department, functional area, or cross-functional process team through an interactive journey to better understand how work is performed in an organization. This is the building block for improving how work is performed. It is difficult (some would say impossible) to improve that which is not understood. The goal of these sessions is to gain that understanding.  As a result of what a group has learned from the workshop, they identify action plans for improvement. Implementation of these plans will pay for the cost of this session many times over.

We are going to condense this workshop to 2 hours, and apply it to Strategic Planning and Management, an area many of us address as facilitators.  As a group, we will identify:

• the key activities in the Strategic Planning and Management process, with tasks tied to each activity
• the customer of each activity (who the work is performed for)
• the output of each activity
• how to identify the cost of each activity (and unit cost)
• the factors that cause resources to be consumed by each activity
• the measures that are used to measure the performance of the activity
• the action plan to improve the activity

Patrick Dowdle is the President and Process Architect at Balanced Perspectives, Inc, a Process Management consulting firm. Prior to starting this firm, he had been the Director of Activity and Process Management at GATX Corporation for 5 years. He is currently the co-chair of the Process Management Interest Group at CAM-I, a non-profit research group that provides a forum for the advancement of cost and resource management practices. He was also a member of the Advanced Implementation Group for Activity Management sponsored by the American Productivity and Quality Center.

Patrick's prior experience at GATX included Financial Reporting for GATX, Controller for GATX Capital, Manager of Financial Systems, Project Manager to develop and implement a Portfolio Management System, and mergers and acquisitions project team member.  Pat started his career in the Audit group at Arthur Andersen.

This session will give participants an overview about the mindset and fundamental skills of creativity and will provide opportunities for individuals and groups to practice these skills.  Among the areas to be reviewed will be creativity builders and blockers, the four phases of creativity, the ideation process, dealing with paradigms, brainstorming techniques, and creative techniques such as using unrelated words, pictures or objects to stimulate idea generation.

For those new to creativity concepts, these activities will help you experience how to play with your knowledge and wisdom and to use them in new ways to think of things from different perspectives.

For those who are familiar with creative thinking, the activities in this session can be thought of as a model or template for a workshop that you can use to stimulate a group's creativity.

Agenda

Warm up exercises

External stimuli that help or hinder creativity

Roger von Oech's concept of creativity phases, mental flexibility and the ability to shift in and out of different types of thinking

Phases of the ideation process - ideate/evaluate/execute

Recognizing paradigms and the importance of thinking beyond the obvious

Overcoming self-imposed limitations to recognize that there are always more ideas when you think you've exhausted the possible solutions

Rules for brainstorming and how they affect group behavior

Using words not related to a problem to prompt new thinking.

Using pictures and objects to generate new ideas

Session feedback - key learnings from participants and how they will apply the creative process back home.

In the last seven years, Janet Knupp, principal of Knupp Partners, Inc., has established a repeat clientele of some of the most respected companies in America, working both in the U.S. and internationally.  Companies like McDonald's and Gillette value the versatility Janet's broad business experience and capability bring to projects and initiatives.  Prior to starting Knupp Partners, Inc., Janet Knupp spent 16 years with the Quaker Oats Company, holding six positions in sales, sales management, and training & development, during which she was responsible for national training and development of the sales force in the largest division.  During that time, Quaker was often recognized in customer surveys as having the best trained sales force in the industry.

Janet has expertise in organization effectiveness assessments leading to recommendations for performance improvement and in implementation of tools, processes, training, or interventions; in course design with strong emphasis on student application of skills, excellent facilitation and presentation skills in delivery of courses; facilitation of new product ideation sessions and problem solving sessions, using a variety of proven creative techniques; and use of 360^o feedback instruments and self-assessments to coach managers and executives in their personal development.

Do you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information and commitments you must keep track of? Are important details falling through the cracks?  This session will demonstrate how easy it can be to keep up with tasks, appointments, schedules, e-mails, web sites and other information with the right tools.  Reduce the clutter on your desk and keep on top of the truly important things that drive your business!  Learn how to leverage technology to get more done, in less time, with less effort!

Do you have piles of paper on your desk, in your briefcase and pockets? Sticky notes on your monitor?  Do you feel overwhelmed by the number of e-mails you need to process?  Does it seem like there isn't enough time to follow-up on your emails and the people you meet?  Technology offers many alternatives for building and maintaining business relationships and keeping up with tasks, appointments, schedules, e-mails, web sites and other information that can clutter your desk.  The goal of these technologies is simple: to help users focus efforts where they count the most and to help get more done, in less time, with less effort.

Participants will, have hands-on access to try ACT! and Outlook; powerful productivity boosting tools. Outlook is the number one Email package.  ACT! is the most widely used contact management and tracking software application on the market today.  Participants will also learn how produce e-mails, faxes, and reports; all while tracking what was sent to whom and will also discover how easy it is to transfer contact information from a desktop PC to inexpensive, powerful handheld computers, such as the PalmPilot®, and web-enabled wireless telephones (Web Phones).   From time management tips to goal setting, this session will demonstrate methods to improve productivity using the latest technology.  Contact management solutions can help you deliver what your customers, prospects, and team members want and expect: namely timely, accurate information, prompt and dependable answers to questions, ongoing contact, and follow-through on commitments within the promised time frame.  Learn how you can build better business relationships and win more business!

Learning Points

• What information to track and where to track it
• How to organize a calendar and follow-up system
• How you can organize your day so you can focus on what truly matters
• How to use ACT! to improve follow up and win new business

Alan Lee Lee was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama.  He received an AS degree in Computer Science from Jefferson State University, in Alabama, a BS in Business Administration from the University of Alabama, and an MBA from Michigan State University.  He is a Microsoft Certified Professional.  Mr. Lee has been in the technology solutions arena for over 20 years. Prior to being a systems engineer for Data General in the early 1980s, Alan started out programming IBM mainframes as well as the original IBM personal computer. At VMX, he helped bring the first commercial "Voice Mail" systems to the market.

In 1988, Alan founded E Tech Systems to help organizations efficiently use technology to reach their marketing goals.  E Tech serves the sales automation needs of small and mid-size companies as well as divisions of larger organizations.  E Tech (www.etechsys.com) offers complete sales automation system specification and design, custom software configuration, computer systems support and installation, expert sales software training, and complete support for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems.  E Tech is both a Salesforce.com and a SalesLogix® Business Partner and was the first ACT!® Certified Consulting & Authorized Training firm to be established in the Midwest.  Alan is also a founding member of the Chicago Computer Society and has been the SIG (Special Interest Group) coordinator for the ACT! SIG since 1990. For more information visit: http://www.etechsys.com and http://www.oakpro.com.