High Future Conference

Celebrating the art of thinking differently.
Together.
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HighFuture Conference, October 4th, 2017
Stejarii Country Club, Bucuresti
During the Second World War, a young sailor took the initiative to double-check his navigation officer's calculation of their location. In doing so, he broke an important safety rule and put his vessel at risk of being detected by a German submarine. However, by his action, he saved three of his fleet's vessels from running aground.
This kind of risky initiative is very easy to observe in entrepreneurial organizations at the very beginning. However, when the organization begins to grow, such freedom of initiative becomes limited.
So what should we do in order to preserve our access to the resources of talent and engagement of the employees in our company?
Let's meet on October the 4th and talk:
• about the unique way in which each member of the team can contribute to our strategy, be it in the military or in business
• about the challenges we meet, as leaders, in the global economy
• about new concepts in work and entrepreneurship.
And we will find out about all this directly from our remarkable international and national speakers, who elaborated original models and implemented them with great success!
Find out more about the speakers, sessions and agenda of the event in the menu on the left side!
Agenda
Detalii sesiuni


As today’s business world becomes ever-more global and virtual, executives and managers are expected to work harmoniously together with counterparts from a broad array of cultures and backgrounds, often without leaving their desks. But when you throw people together who come from starkly different backgrounds and cultures, the result can be interesting, even sometimes funny, but can also lead to misunderstanding and confusion.
In this talk, Professor Erin Meyer offers a highly practical and timely perspective on one of today’s most pressing business issues: how do different cultures influence the way to do business when working globally? Even those who are culturally informed, travel extensively, and have lived abroad often have few strategies for dealing with the cross-cultural complexity that affects their team's day-to-day effectiveness.
Meyer provides a new way forward with vital insights for working effectively and sensitively with one's counterparts in the new global marketplace.
You will learn:
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To improve your own ability to communicate, build trust, and negotiate deals with those from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds.
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To analyze the positioning of one culture relative to another on a series of behavioral scales, so that you can decode how culture is influencing your international collaboration.

- What are the latest trends in digitization and automation?
- How will the future look and what do "exponential technologies" really mean?
- Who should be interested in (and why) abstract issues like Artificial Intelligence or Augmented Reality?

Ricarda Zezza, Ashoka Fellow from Italy, will introduce to us "Maternity as a Master" (MAAM), the first and only program in the world that transforms parenting experiences of employees into growth opportunities by developing new skills such as efficient problem solving, decision making, time and priorities management, empathy, which are key to their productivity and success. Thus, more women return to work after parental leave and actively contribute to the economy and society.
Riccarda believes that the balance between personal and professional life should be redefined, so that parents no longer perceive the child-raising period as being in conflict with their own career, and parental leave should be understood, both by parents and by colleagues and employers, as a moment of profound learning, not a time away from work.
Adrian Fako will give a presentation on Artificial Intelligence in corporate learning programs.
Successful companies aren’t just built on products alone. They’re built on the new habits they help you form. What technologies could you implement for continuous learning and behavioral change in your company? How do coworking spaces influence the employees of the future and the future of work? How do you measure performance and scale your business through new technologies? How can you customize learning at an individual level, for each unique personality type, in real time?
Cristian Covaciu will present a case study on "IPEC - From a Small Manufacturing to a High-Tech Company".
He will detail on the evolution of the automation of various processes and how industrial robots can improve processes and contribute to better remuneration of company employees.
Daniel Matei will speak about coworking trends and the accelerated local growth of this field over the last 2 years, but also about these trends globally and locally.
He will present data that will contain the profile of the typical coworking space user, as it emerges from the research conducted by the Impact Hub network among 15,000 members globally.
This year we have prepared two Master Class Sessions that will be held in parallel, between 14.30 - 18.00. Should you like to register for one of the Master Class, please contact us at florina.dinca@hr-club.ro.
Master Class 1: How to transform your organization into a liberated company - Session sponsored by Carrefour
Imagine you are watching a boat of eight rowers training for a big race in the middle of a lake. You hear the whistle blow, and puzzled by what you’re seeing, you ask the coach: “It doesn’t seem that the boat is moving”. To what the coach replies: “It’s because I haven’t explained you what’s going on in the boat. You can’t see it from here, but the first rower is really rowing hard. The five behind are splashing the oars so that the first chap thinks they are working hard. And the last two, well, they are rowing hard… but in the opposite direction. So you say the boat is not moving? Well, that’s what we call a good day, because usually it goes backwards.”
Indeed, most of the companies want to become champions and yet very few succeed. This mystery drove four years of research that brought my co-author Brian Carney and me close to thirty very different companies which we called “liberated”. A liberated company is one in which employees are free and responsible to take actions that they – not their bosses, not procedures, decide are the best for the company. Of course, they aren’t former prisons, but the two key ingredients of performance, employee initiative and potential, which are stifled in a traditional command-and-control company, are freed up in liberated companies.
In this session we will discuss how to build a liberated company which unleashes these employee initiative and potential.
Since there is no model for the liberated company, every company and every operational unit of larger corporations and administrations must build their own unique liberated mode of functioning by articulating this philosophy in their own cultural and human context.
Hence, Michelin started their liberation several years ago in six plants in six different countries and each plant does it their own way. The transformation is carried by the head of each plant, often helped by the local HR director. We dubbed this company’s head a liberating leader. Plant directors in Michelin or Airbus, CEOs of small-medium sized companies as Harley-Davidson, or start-ups as IDEO or W.L. Gore.
In this session we will discuss their lessons:
- #1 You can’t transform your organization if you haven’t transformed yourself
- #2 You need an explicit mandate from your “stockholders” to launch a corporate liberation
- #3 You don’t talk, you act to create a trust environment by focusing on the irritants
- #4 You co-invent a unique liberated organizational mode together with your company’s employees
- #5 You become the guardian of company’s vision and values
Isaac Getz is a Professor in Idea, Involvement, and Innovation Management at the top-ranked ESCP Europe Business School (Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Torino, Warsaw). You can find the complete description here.
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In this session Erin Meyer provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business. She combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice for succeeding in a global world.
In this presentation Prof. Meyer will focus specifically on:
- How to lead teams and make decisions across cultures
- How to influence international counterparts
- How to build and nourish relationships with people from around the world.

Speakers

Dr. Getz studied over 300 companies in 30 countries and published research on diverse topics related to innovation, leadership, corporate transformation, employee engagement, and freedom and responsibility culture.



Mihai Dragomir is a founding member of the Mioritics Association (2004) and the manager of the most important projects developed by this organization from its foundation to the present. He is involved in campaigns to promote and capitalize on the national cultural heritage, the development of ecotourism infrastructure and services, educational programs for youth and external promotion events.
He was elected in the Board of Directors of the Ecotourism Association of Romania and participates as an expert at the conferences organized by the UNESCO Regional Office in Venice. He is part of the management team of Colinele Transilvaniei, coordinates the Rasnov Film and History Festival (www.ffir.ro), the Schubz Educational Center (www.schubz.ro) and other projects.

In 2012, Riccarda Zezza co-founded, alongside Andrea Vitullo (executive coach and leadership expert), “Maternity as a Master” (MAAM). Analyzing her own experience, Riccarda noticed that the break she took to obtain her master's degree was appreciated at the workplace, but corporate culture had trouble understanding and integrating her period of parental leave. In October 2015 she also founded ARG, which is an innovative startup aiming to create new digital solutions for increasing the value of human capital.
At the core of her work, Riccarda wants to transform the workspace at a systemic level and to create environments that appreciate diversity and capitalize on parents’ experiences in raising children. Through Piano C (“The C Plan”), a physical co-working space, she offers parents, especially mothers, a place to meet, work, interact and experiment with the ideas and principles promoted by MaaM, also having facilities and services for children, who are always welcome along with their parents. MAAM collaborates with companies such as Poste Italiane, Unicredit, Eni, UBS, Nestle, Ikea or Pirelli and the methodology developed by Riccarda for both MAAM and Piano C are used and requested throughout Italy and internationally.
Riccarda is the author of the book "MAAM - motherhood is a master that makes men and women the strongest", published in September 2014. She is also a consultant and a researcher on the subjects of leadership, stereotypes and female employment.
Adrian Fako is the CEO and Co-Founder of Accelerole, a product doing mobile learning augmented by AI. The Romanian team has just been accepted to WeXelerate, the ultimate ecosystem for innovation in Europe, in Austria where they will be working in meeting the learning needs of the employees of the future.

Consistently applying the motto "The world is changing very quickly, the best way to stay on top of technology is to be the one to develop it", Cristian Covaciu turned IPEC, from a company created in the family garage in Alba Iulia, into a high-tech company that today produces more than 1% of the world's production of plates, using over 250 industrial robots.
His ceramics career began as a university assistant at the Technical University of Timisoara and received many recognitions - the most recent as the finalist of the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year competition, where he represented Romania.

Daniel Matei has built a career based on sales and marketing roles. He is currently the Manager of Impact Hub Bucharest, having worked alongside this organization ever since 2010 to develop the concept of coworking in Romania.
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