MDBizExpo

Top 3 Leadership Priorities in a Recession

How do you survive a major recession? How do you deal with continuous change?

Answer: Strong leadership and strategic thinking skills. According to a recent study by the IMA, the top 3 leadership priorities needed are:

1. Productivity - doing more with less
2. Motivating the workforce
3. Pursuing growth opportunities

These and many other key leadership skills are being featured at the MDBIZEXPO. Here are a couple of key sessions that provide skills development in these three areas:

Our keynote titled 10% or Die using innovative leadership to thrive in a brutal economy - covers both productivity and pursuing growth opportunities. Jim Swartz, Author of "Seeing David in the Stone" will give you new ways to think about increasing productivity, decreasing costs, and increasing your value offering to customers using techniques from the "deep lean"and innovative leadership fields.

Motivating the workforce is covered in our high energy session titled Leadership at the helm in a storm by BLI favorite instructor, Greg Conderacci, Inspiring Accountability - excellence in management, and Finding the strength to get it done - energy management all provide skills you can apply immediately to help motivate and inspire your team.

As for opportunities, the EXPO is full of sessions designed to help businesses and CPAs, large and small find opportunities in maryland that they can put to use immediately. Working with a broad coalition of Maryland's top business associations and federal and state business development groups we have sessions that teach you "how to" and provide resources and contacts in areas like BRAC, government contracting, international trade, SBA loans, financing, and more. Here is a list of our associate sponsors:

Maryland Chamber of Commerce , Maryland Bankers Association, Greater Baltimore Tech Council, Maryland World Class Consortia, Maryland Department of Business & Economic Development, US Small Business Association, National Federation of Independent Business, Association for Corporate Growth, Maryland Bar Association - business section

The EXPO will provide special "Connection Plus" sessions for many of these programs giving you time to interact with the speakers, exhibitors and attendees as we provide facilitated conversations about these key topics at your table. you will gain the perspectives from the community, build new relationships, and have time to think about how these concepts can help you and your business or firm.

And an all-star line up of business sponsors and exhibitors with resources and services you need to survive the recession.

Register now - 2 days, 60 workshops, $250.00 Registration link

See the agenda here

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Mindmaps: Turning chaos into order

There is hope yet for scatterbrained organizers like myself.

It's called mindmapping, a visual way of organizing your thoughts, planning your strategy, managing a project -- any type of activity that involves drilling down to the nuts and bolts of an issue or task. It's kind of like preparing an outline, but way more graphic, interactive and effective. The photo above gives you a very basic idea of what a simple mindmap looks like.

What I love about mindmaps are their multimedia functionality. With each topic and subtopic, you can add hyperlinks, documents, notes, images and more. You can collaborate on Web-based maps with colleagues in multiple locations and save them as PDFs, Flash files or images.

Mapping your thoughts? Heck, done right, mindmaps will map things you haven't even thought of yet.

OK, maybe they're not that good. But they're close.

"Mindmaps visually connect ideas and information," said Michael Deutch, chief evangelist at Mindjet, one of the leaders in mindmapping software and creator of the MindManager mapping software. "Mindmapping brings together broad ideas and the depth, the flow of ideas to create a holistic representation of your thoughts."

Deutch has taken a keen interest in the worlds of finance and accounting, and has even gone so far as to work closely with MACPA Executive Director Tom Hood to create a special edition of MindManager specifically for CPAs. That edition will make its debut at the Maryland Business and Accounting Expo on June 16 and 17 at the Baltimore Convention Center.

The special edition includes about 25 preloaded maps that center on audit plans, change management, marketing strategy, meeting facilitation, social media strategy, XBRL implementation and more.

"We've leveraged the expertise of CPAs and the power of the software to pull together some great, meaningful content," Deutch said.

I spoke with Deutch on the phone recently to find out more about mindmapping and how CPAs can take advantage of it. Listen to what he had to say in this MACPA podcast.

• Subscribe to our podcast here, or search for "CPA Spotlight" in iTunes.

More at the Expo
Besides launching the CPE edition of MindManager, Deutch will be on hand at the Maryland Business and Accounting Expo to deliver a presentation titled, "Using Mind Mapping to Increase your Productivity." The session will take place on June 16 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Get complete details about the Expo and register here.