Scott Carson of Boeing at Tri-City Regional Chamber Annual Meeting

Scott Carson was the keynote speaker at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce lunch that I attended this afternoon. Carson is the Executive Vice President of Sales for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He has a pretty interesting bio, having started with Boeing in 1973 as a financial analyst.

His talk was interesting. I made some notes on my PDA as he spoke, so they are not verbatim but should catch some of the ideas. He started out with his motto: Be Paranoid — They really are after you. With Boeing’s financial history the last few years this seems appropriate. After 9/11 caused the airlines to go into financial tailspins, Boeing also suffered and went from 1st place to, as he called it, “Dead Last” (of course their are only 2 companies anymore).

Here are my notes:

• People First – Nothing happens without the people in the organization. They are not a human resource that can be mined & discarded

• Include Everyone – Open Book Management. If your people don’t know what your goals are and don’t know what is happening – how are they going to help you?

• Have a compelling vision – You must know where you are going

• Have clear performance goals – “What can be measured can be done.”

• Have one plan – Each department cannot have its own plan – they will not add up to the overall plan. (My thought as he spoke: One Plan to Rule Them All)

• Use facts and data as your friend. If people are afraid to tell you the truth, they will lie to keep from getting hammered and embarrassed. Use data to leveridge – not to beat them up and have them hide reality Sometimes you need a World Class Whine – Lay your turd out on the table and talk about it instead of trying to hide it. Take Accountability

Respect, Listen, Help, Appreciate Each Other – Pay attention to person who has the ‘floor’. Meetings are notorious for having ‘back room’ conversations while the speaker has the podium. Not acceptable.

• Have emotional resilience – Some days will be bummers. Pick a tag team partner that you can vent with and then be able to focus on positive with everyone else.

• Have fun – This is as good as it gets – What we do everyday is a choice that we make everyday.

Well, that was brief and not a lot of detail, it will probably run on Charter’s Community Access channel here shortly too.