McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management knows a lot about business education. The Montreal-based evenko, one of the world’s top concert promoters, knows a lot about organizing one-of-a-kind events. Working together, the two organizations have come up with an unusual and ambitious one-day business conference that will feature a roster of star speakers, including Wayne Gretzky, cosmetics pioneer Lise Watier and Scotty Bowman, who coached NHL teams to nine Stanley Cups.
APEX 2016 is the brainchild of evenko’s Brent Steer, BCom’09.
“Evenko has a huge repertoire of speakers, so we already had access to some of the best talent. The next step was to line up the right partners,” says Steer.
Last September, Steer approached one of his former McGill professors, Richard Donovan, BCom’88, about involving Desautels in the planning for the event as an educational partner.
“We felt that it was a good fit for our educational mandate,” says Donovan, a professor of practice in information systems. “We decided to use Henry Mintzberg’s reflective mindset as the basis for the conference’s design.”
Mintzberg, the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at Desautels, is widely acknowledged as one of North America’s top experts on the subject of managing. One of the things he advocates is that managers should take the time to periodically reflect on their experiences, even as they contend with the frenetic pace of change in their workplaces.
An array of speakers from different backgrounds will address four key topics at APEX: negotiation, communication, teamwork and leadership. Some of the speakers taking part include Jon Favreau, who served as the director of speechwriting for U.S. president Barack Obama, and Patricia McCord, who worked as the chief talent officer for Netflix for 12 years.
“The idea is to give the Quebec business community, and students, a chance to learn from these people,” says Steer. “We want to retain the learning aspect, while making the conference more exciting than power point presentations with clip art from 1992.
“There are a lot of good business conferences, but we’re just trying to build a better mousetrap. Our format will integrate the speaker format, but go a little further.”
Steer emphasizes that APEX 2016 will be more of a social learning experience.
“Attendees will be organized into small groups of two or three. Speakers will present questions, and the groups will be given time to reflect on their answer. Then they will hear the speakers’ answers. So participants will learn both from the speakers as well as from each other.”
That element of interactivity will keep participants engaged during intensive training sessions. Questions which will challenge the audience and speakers are provided by CoachingOurselves, a peer coaching program developed by Mintzberg.
Steer offers this example: “Attendees will be asked: ‘Give an example of how you planned your last negotiation.’ While the groups of participants develop their answers, on stage we will have Alain L’Empereur, who is a Harvard law professor, as well as a mediator at the United Nations. We will also have Marc Bergevin, general manager of the Montreal Canadiens, and Pat Brisson, one of the most prolific hockey agents. So participants will have the opportunity to compare what they did to some of the best in the world.”
Says Donovan, “In most conferences, you go listen to a speaker for an hour, then you go away and hope that something sticks. At APEX, people will be asked to actively reflect on what they’ve learned, and write it in a journal, so that there are key takeaways back to the office. We want to make sure that there is transfer of learning; in other words, good ideas that they can use at work the next day.”
APEX, which will be held at the Bell Centre, can accommodate up to 5,000 participants. It is a training session on a grand scale.
Says Donovan: “Training sessions for 30 or 40 people are common, but for 5,000, that is unique.”
The organizers have looked beyond the boardroom to choose speakers who can teach “soft” business skills like leadership from a non-business perspective. Scotty Bowman, the winningest coach in NHL history, will discuss teamwork. Gretzky, the captain of the powerhouse Edmonton Oilers in the eighties, as well as the executive director of the 2002 Olympic champion Canadian men’s hockey team, will share his views on leadership.
“The best practices in other areas can easily be applied to business,” says Donovan. “We have people from the world of sports, from the arts. For example, we have an actress, Guylaine Tremblay [from the TV series Unité 9], who does improv. The way she uses her voice and body language can be applied to the business world, in what we call paraverbal communication.” Paraverbal communication refers to the way we say something, not the content of what we say.
If the event is a success, it could become an annual conference in Montreal, and one held in other Canadian cities as well.
Says Steer, “We want this to be the annual opportunity for the business community to sit back, reflect and reexamine, and ask themselves whether they could be more effective, whether they could do things differently.”
The event will grant training credits/hours for members of APEX 2016’s six training partners: l’Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec (OIQ), the CPA Order of Quebec, l’Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés (CRHA), the Chambre de la sécurité financière (CSF), l’Ordre des administrateurs agréés du Québec (ADMA) and the Barreau du Québec.
Students and faculty from the Desautels Faculty of Management will be able to attend APEX 2016 for free. McGill alumni can save $125 on the price of tickets in the 100 level (reds) by using the password ALUM2016C1 when ordering here.
