Panel on business leadership Sept. 16

The Berry Center for Economics, Business and Public Policy will host a panel on business leadership featuring four local business leaders on at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 16. in Hedges Conference Room in the Thomas Commons. The event is free and open to the public.

The panel, entitled “Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Customer Focus,” will be led by Gary Nesteby, executive director of the Iowa Quality Center, and feature Gary Robertson, director of leadership development at Centro, Inc. in North Liberty; Bob Loyd, chief executive officer of Clipper Wind Turbine Works in Cedar Rapids; and Eric Sutter, director of business development at Saint Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids.

The four panel members will present how their business integrates these core values into their leadership system. They will make a short presentation on their organization and then take questions.

The Iowa Quality Center is a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide leadership for performance excellence by connecting individuals, organizations, and communities. To this end, the center connects organizations with resources that include training, consulting, mentoring, and benchmarking. The center is also the administrator of the Iowa Recognition for Performance Excellence, the state’s Baldrige-based quality award program. This program will describe the Baldrige framework.

The framework is built on 11 core values evident in high performing organizations:

• Visionary Leadership
• Customer Focused excellence
• Organizational and personal learning
• Valuing workforce members and partners
• Agility
• Focus on the future
• Managing innovation
• Management by fact
• Societal responsibility and community health
• Focus on results and creating value
• Systems Perspective

The panel is for students and business representatives interested in organizational performance through deployment of a leadership system used to align the customer needs with the strategic plan; also how the plan is deployed to the workforce through the leadership commitment.

For more information, contact Leon Tabak, faculty director of the Berry Center, or Rebecca Sullens, associate director of the Berry Center.