8:30 – 9:30 a.m.

Mega-Session presenter David Nour, who was born in Iran, came to America as a young person and now lives in Atlanta, is working with major companies to transform the way that management views talent.

He's catching the eye of a growing number of corporations, mainly by focusing on concepts like mentoring and candor to create relationship-centric organizations. His "Relationship Economics" model stresses "the art and science of relationships." He is viewed as an expert on talent and is widely quoted in major media. "In addition to the war on terror, there's a war for talent," he said.

The urgency of competition for talent, he suggested, can be addressed by employers who understand the readiness, goals and aspirations of the people they hire - whether they're young or not. Developing a keen grasp of how employees view their work experience and the companies they work for is a critical part of the approach, a sort of 'adopt the reverse perspective' mandate for what he termed overly-traditional, "WASP"-like company cultures that are missing the point on the value of a diverse workforce.

The transformation concept is based on "Relationship Currency" building "professional net worth."

- Value is promised
- Value is delivered
- Value is recognized
- Recognition for delivering value
- The "Reputation Capital" of the employer is then built

Another key: Celebrate failure and learn from it, because relationships don't often start up easily. If you fail, however, fail forward, Nour advised." Keep improving from what you learn about each other. Relationships are not a stand-alone proposition. Building trust means instilling predictability. Empathy and credibility equal trust."

Relationship-centric cultures create the environment to attract and retain talent, is the main point. Another salient piece of advice: Organizations that mentor their people are also good at keeping them on board.

Companies today need to deliver in these key areas for their employees:

- Competitive Differentiation of talent to optimize how people are positioned
- Developing and Nurturing Process
- Proposing a Win-Win Solution with Unique Value-Add
- Delivering Exceptional Experience
- No fear of retribution
- "You've got to build a culture that's unafraid to talk (honestly)"

Companies that are not doing these things are at risk and face a critical list of issues that influence people to look for other jobs and that don't always involve compensation:

- Didn't fit in
- Ideas never heard
- Couldn't change anything

"Leverage soft assets like brand people and relationships to offset these outcomes," he added. "It's your fiduciary responsibility to build and nurture talent."

Nour prefers face-to-face contact as a primary means of collaborating. "Nothing replaces feet on the street," he said in response to the question of how to best manage around remote workers. But Gen-Y workers are good at social networking, so this is an advantage for younger workers in terms of flexible work practices like telecommuting. "Your adoption of social networking" is commendable, he said in response to a question about how CoRE 2010 predicted 25% of knowledge workers would be working remotely by the year 2010. The forecast the came true in 2007 with release of new CoreNet Global data showing the 25% ratio of remote workers had already been attained.

Recognize, reward and raise the bar, he went on say in relation to the idea of building return on investment through talent.

He outlined an "ROI Talent Cycle" consisting of: Search, Assess, Onboarding, Training & Development, Organizational Alignment, Outplacement elements.

Other Key Points by Nour

* A-Players don't want to work with C-Players
- Start by getting the right people on the bus, in the right seats; and the wrong people off the bus, quoting author Jim Collins.
- Every person that works for the company is an extension of you
- Be outstanding or get involved elsewhere
- Find out from employees: What's your core strength, your passion and your competitive differentiation?
- What sets you apart from everyone else who does the same thing?
- What can we learn from other industries? What can CRE learn from the hospitality industry? What can we learn from the transportation business? There are similarities with what we do.
- Our economy, demographics and even our health and happiness depend on adequate stocks of social capital, quoting from the book "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam
- What are you doing Kodak moments in your business where people want to capture and share their experience?
- Team member is one idea, but teammate is another
- Reciprocity is one of the hallmarks of being a teammate
- Noah's Arc was built by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals
- Some of the best leaders know what their weaknesses are
- Best leaders know, what's my best value-add, and let me surround myself with the people to help me get it done
- Pass the baton, or the race cannot be won
- It's very difficult to drive looking into the rear-view mirror
- Most businesses manage by what happened or what's happening rather than projecting into the future
- Less than one percent of teams spend more than one hour a month talking about their strategies
- Diversity is about inclusion and bringing different perspectives to the organization
- Digital resident vs. Digital tourist to describe the digitally-driven social networking skill set of young people
- 499 of Fortune 500 have profiles on LinkedIn and other social networking services like MySpace
- Reconnect with people we already know using LinkedIn (Nour provides a tutorial on how to use it)
- Reward high performers but also reward high potential, the next generation of leaders in your company
- We need the high performers, but don't confuse the two
- Reverse mentoring - younger people showing mature executives or board members what the kids are doing and how they do it (social networking for example)
- Build a 'Culture of Candor' - how many organizations reward relationships?
- Kevin Bacon's 6 Degrees of Separation, it does work
- 40 Under 40 Lists - are there people on your team on this list? If not, why not?
- This is a group that will lead major initiatives in the next 5 - 10 years
- It's 2007 going onto 2008, tell me about diversity in your firm
- It's about different persuasions, different walks of life - how diverse is your business?
- They bring amazing ideas and experiences
- Dubai is attracting talent from the world over, and your business is competing for that same talent
- Some of your best future employees are friends of your current employees. What does that say?
- Courage to Fail: The medical profession does post-mortems. How about pre-mortems? Let's start anticipating the challenges before they happen.
- Concept of "Return on Influence" showing who goes where to get their information
- Front line people often know more about the people around them than the CEO or other top executives. The higher you go in an organization, the more administrative roadblocks make them less connected
- When you lay off one person you lay off four - loyalty's out the window. Alignment of personal and professional preferences will drive them to do more, not loyalty.

The Top 5 Things You Can Do to Improve Talent

1. Succinctly define what a relationship-centric culture means in your place
2. Get proactive at the University level, raw talent in kids can be molded
3. Develop a "Pre" high-potential program, like professional scouts going to high school game
4. Get to know 5 of your colleagues
5. Invest in one relationship each week

Ultimately, it's about reducing what Nour called "flight risk" of employees leaving companies because their bosses and sometimes coworkers are not in the mindset of a relationship-centric culture. Collaboration is a big piece of this new puzzle. He repeated one of his leading rules of thumb: "Get the right people on bus. Invest in your talent development efforts."

More information on David Nour is available at www.relationshipeconomics.net

10:00 – 10:45 a.m.

What happens when a national company known as brainy and hip meets up with an abandoned cluster of abandoned buildings used as a former Navy shipyard? Moderator Kate North, Haworth, introduced the session attendees to Urban Outfitters, whose focus was on "People - Culture - Brand - Doing the Right Thing" as it searched for a location for its new headquarters in Philadelphia.

David Ziel and Jeffrey Scherer, presenters, gave session attendees a virtual tour of the new headquarters, consisting of eight renovated warehouses, which had been abandoned by the Navy. The goal was to transform this group of buildings into a campus designed to motivate creativity, draw the best of the best in employees and provide a workplace that would inspire creativity and community.

The project took 18 months to complete, and was accomplished on a weekly phased schedule. The twelve- member team committed to 7-day weeks during the project, which enabled the project to move ahead steadily and be completed on the time-sensitive schedule.

The results? A campus of functional buildings, each with its own personality and retaining much of the history of the original, allowing the "Navy ghosts" to float around. Great care was taken in recycling materials from the demolition, and equally great creativity in finding new purposes for materials that might have otherwise been discarded. It is also a place where people enjoy working and want to stay. Over the course of the relocation, only 9 of 650 employees left Urban Outfitters, employee turnover is down 11%, recruitment time is down 41% for senior managers, and speed to market for product is down from 24 to 11 weeks. The campus itself has become a recruiting tool, and the design and resulting workspace attracts creative talent.

11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Suzanne Maillet, MCR, MCS Committee Co-Chair and Project Manager, Ivan Allen Workspace; Trex Morris, MCR, MCS Committee Board Champion, and Americas Director, Real Estate Services, Ernst & Young; and Alice Wilson, MCR, MCS Committee Co-Chair, and Vice President, LBA Realty presented the Fifth Annual North American 2007 Chapter Awards.

The purpose of the chapter awards system is to give all chapters an opportunity to be recognized for their outstanding efforts to advance the mission and further the goals and objectives of CoreNet Global at the chapter level. The process is meant to promote a chapter's awareness of its own progress and define opportunities for growth. These awards also help us identify innovative practices that can be applied to other chapters as well.

Submissions came from chapters all over the world, showing that CoreNet Global chapter participation continues to thrive and expand.

Our first award category is Chapter Achievement. This category recognizes a noteworthy strategy, effort or Best Practice employed by a chapter that promotes or increases awareness of CoreNet Global. Special mention goes to the New Zealand Chapter for their dedication towards the development of a new chapter. The 2007 winner is the New York City Chapter.

Our next category is Membership, which refers to the methods or programs used by a chapter to recruit and retain members and to promote participation in the chapter with special consideration given to net growth. First, special mention goes to the Brazil Chapter for the exceptional growth they've achieved in such a short period of time. The 2007 winner of the Membership Award is the Atlanta Chapter.

The Chapter Development category rewards those chapters whose areas of improvement include: Leadership & Governance, Chapter Planning, Financial Management, Communications, Community Reinvestment Challenge (CRC), Programs & Events, and Alliances & Partnerships. This award is given to medium and large chapter sizes.

The winner of the Chapter Development Award in the Medium Category is the Houston Chapter; In the large category, an honorable mention goes to the Southwest Chapter for the passion the chapter has in their overall Chapter Development Strategies. The 2007 winner is the Atlanta Chapter!

Charlie Sloan of Boyette Levy presented the Community Reivestment Challenge for the Atlanta Summit.

The initiative started in 2002, when the CoreNet Global Board of Directors unanimously approved the creation of CRC. Since then, members have contributed their talents, thousands of hours and more than 2 million dollars in CRC initiatives.

The benefiting organizations to date have been: Mission Ministries in San Antonio, Eastlake Community in Atlanta, Chicago's Little Village, Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, Child Haven in Las Vegas, Parkside Community in Philadelphia, Children's Home Society in Orlando and Denver's Children Home. The Atlanta Chapter has been hard at work since even before the Denver summit. It is my privilege to introduce Anna Ford, Vice President with Jones Lang LaSalle America and the Chair of the Atlanta CRC Committee to tell you more about it. This project was with the St. Jude Hospital.

2:00 – 3:30 p.m.

Attendees to this breakout session were welcomed to a room set up like the set of a talk show, with a different seating arrangement from the typical educational session. A slide show of places around the world was projected on the large screens in front, accompanied by the music of Johnny Cash singing "I've Been Everywhere." Not the typical CoreNet Global room set-up, it was obvious from the beginning that this session would be unique.

Chris Calhoun, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, was the host and emcee of the show. He told the "audience" that the purpose of the session was to "shake the tree a little bit" as he encouraged participation and interaction. He welcomed panelists, Joel Ratekin, Capital One Financial; Michael Brendes, Northrop Grumman; John Vivadelli, AgilQuest Corporation; and Arnold Levin, Gensler to the "show".

The topic of the talk show was employee mobility in terms of a triple helix: People, Place, Process. It's all about the whole person- how mobility frees both organizations and people to do things they're not able to do locked into traditional office space. It's not working at home, but being able to work anytime, anywhere. The goal should be to allow people to choose the best working environment for them with a variety of work and space options, so that they can be productive, creative, and happy in their jobs.

Audience participation kicked in as hands went up to ask questions, make comments and share stories. Among the topics bouncing around the room were teaming environments, collaboration, the c-suite's fear of mobility, productivity, distributed work, empty space, work styles, business continuity, socialization, demographic issues - to name a few.

Ideas, opinions, stories and questions and answers were the theme of the day and the session ended before anyone was ready for it to be over. It was one of those times when "you just had to be there!"