Hard to believe that Corporate Meetings & Incentives magazine is turning 25 this year! The editors have put together an excellent compilation of nostalgia, trends, perspectives, and other fun stuff for those of us who like to stroll down memory lane.

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I am blessed with having one of the great managers of all times, Tamar Hosansky. She daily inspires me to stretch and grow both myself and my job. While I doubt she’s even read this article by Marcus Buckingham from the Harvard Business Review (via Brand Autopsy), she lives what he prescribes. As he says,

In my research, beginning with a survey of 80,000 managers conducted by the Gallup Organization and continuing during the past two years with in-depth studies of a few top performers, I’ve found that while there are as many styles of management as there are managers, there is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: They discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it.

If you are a manager or team leader, read this article. It’s long, but well worth the time. Reminds me of an editorial I wrote a while back for our e-newsletter (I just posted it here for those who missed it the first time around). It seems so basic, yet so few managers get it right. But those who do, reap the rewards. Go for it.

I am blessed with having one of the great managers of all times, Tamar Hosansky. She daily inspires me to stretch and grow both myself and my job. While I doubt she’s even read this article by Marcus Buckingham from the Harvard Business Review (via Brand Autopsy), she lives what he prescribes. As he says,

In my research, beginning with a survey of 80,000 managers conducted by the Gallup Organization and continuing during the past two years with in-depth studies of a few top performers, I’ve found that while there are as many styles of management as there are managers, there is one quality that sets truly great managers apart from the rest: They discover what is unique about each person and then capitalize on it.

If you are a manager or team leader, read this article. It’s long, but well worth the time. Reminds me of an editorial I wrote a while back for our e-newsletter (I just posted it here for those who missed it the first time around). It seems so basic, yet so few managers get it right. But those who do, reap the rewards. Go for it.

I just read a post over at Slashdot that got me thinking. It said: "I want to hear from readers who have quit jobs or turned down offered jobs because it was not what they wanted to do. Why did you do it? Was it ethics, ambition, pride, or disgust? And how did it turn out? Did you get to do what you wanted to do, are you still looking, or did you come back begging for another chance?"

I’ve never quit a job for those reasons, though there are a few I had where I probably should have. I’m just a loyal dog, what can I say? But I have turned down jobs. Most notably, while I was waiting on pins and needles to hear if I landed this dream job I have now with The Meetings Group, I was offered a technical editor position with a computer company. The salary was more than three times what this job paid, but I would have had to commute 45 minutes, work in a cube farm, and deal day in and day out with material that did not, as my mother-in-law would say, "float my boat." So I held out for what I really wanted, and thankfully, I got it. No regrets whatsoever.

I’d love to hear your stories (you can comment anonymously, if you like, by not filling in the top fields in the comments box).

Wow, this is really something–but what exactly to make of it, I’m not sure. Southwest Airlines has come up with a new program it calls "Ding," which will let you download a little icon that will ding whenever the airline has a hot sale going on so you won’t miss out on any great deals.

While it could end up saving you some money, I don’t see anywhere that you can customize it (maybe you can and I just didn’t find that part of it). If you could ask to be alerted just for flights from Manchester, N.H., to Las Vegas on a certain date, sure, that’d be great. But not to have the thing dinging all the time for deals you could never take.

Well, the big cheeses at Microsoft seem to like it, anyway, according to the Scobleizer.

Wow, this is really something–but what exactly to make of it, I’m not sure. Southwest Airlines has come up with a new program it calls "Ding," which will let you download a little icon that will ding whenever the airline has a hot sale going on so you won’t miss out on any great deals.

While it could end up saving you some money, I don’t see anywhere that you can customize it (maybe you can and I just didn’t find that part of it). If you could ask to be alerted just for flights from Manchester, N.H., to Las Vegas on a certain date, sure, that’d be great. But not to have the thing dinging all the time for deals you could never take.

Well, the big cheeses at Microsoft seem to like it, anyway, according to the Scobleizer.

The U.S. Supreme court heard arguments yesterday on whether the ADA extends to cruise ships that call at U.S. ports. Here is a link to an article about it in the New York Times (free registration req’d). While I think it’s a crying shame that all countries don’t require facilities to accommodate people with disabilities, I have to agree with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is quoted in the article as saying: "You are in effect saying, ‘The U.S. rules the world.’ No matter what the other ports say, U.S. law is going to govern."

It’s a difficult argument,though, nothing cut-and-dried about it. And there’s also the money factor: U.S. Cruise lines save huge amounts of money by flagging their ships under foreign countries. On the flip side, it would cost them huge amounts of money to retrofit to make their ships ADA-compliant. I’ll be watching to see how this one plays out–and how it ends up affecting cruise meetings.

Last week, an editorial I wrote for MeetingsNet Extra, about PCMA’s going through CEOs like a kid with a bag of Oreos, got a lot of responses. I was a little bemused by the explanations we were given for the latest ouster of David Kushner, and asked for a little more transparency on PCMA’s part when communicating the reasons for the changes. Gregg Talley, PCMA’s chair, wrote that, among other things, "the change from our longtime CEO was the result of several years of political change due to who sat on the Board and who controlled the organization. No surprise, it’s the members, and they were certainly aware of what they wanted. Talk about accountability!" (For his full response, click here.)

But this is a bit at odds with the other e-mails I received. Here are a few excerpts:

"Good for you for writing what everyone else is thinking about PCMA. I read about the change of command in 4 different newsletters and you were the only one who called it for what it appears to be."

"Huge congratulations for ‘telling it like it should be told.’ Sure, I had a feeling this was not a happy mutual decision, but the issue seemed to be avoided in all PCMA communications."

"I agree with you and applaud you for asking for integrity. Hopefully with your article and continued probing we will find out the real truth and set Deborah Sexton up for success rather than another short term failure."

"Any time a manager of a sports team is fired or resigns, the press learns what happened and writes about it, including salary levels. It would make for better community relations if corporations and associations played by the same rules. We don’t need to know the juicy details, but honesty, integrity, and some semblance of accurate explanation would be appreciated."

So while Talley is saying, "this is normal," we don’t really believe it, for reasons I outlined in last week’s editorial. This distrust between an association and its members is pretty common–I’m really not just picking on PCMA here, they’re just the latest example of how an unexpected move on the association management’s part, inadequately explained (though Talley’s latest comments are the best I’ve heard yet), increases that level of distrust. And, I’ve heard from some, the fact that this must have been in the works at this year’s annual meeting but was not discussed by the leaders, was grist for a rumor mill that churned out all kinds of innuendoes and what-ifs.

Meetings are one of the few opportunities members have to really get to know their leadership, an opportunity that’s all too often served with just a few speeches and a couple of lopes around the floor. It’s a wasted opportunity for association leaders who want to foster greater trust, and a greater sense of community. Having a terminal CEO glad-handing members who know (and they always do–this stuff gets out a lot faster than the association leadership seems to think) that his days are numbered, plastering on a smiley-face and pretending nothing’s going on, doesn’t inspire trust. It does the exact opposite, which may be part of the reason people feel there’s more to the story than we’re being told.

Last week, an editorial I wrote for MeetingsNet Extra, about PCMA’s going through CEOs like a kid with a bag of Oreos, got a lot of responses. I was a little bemused by the explanations we were given for the latest ouster of David Kushner, and asked for a little more transparency on PCMA’s part when communicating the reasons for the changes. Gregg Talley, PCMA’s chair, wrote that, among other things, "the change from our longtime CEO was the result of several years of political change due to who sat on the Board and who controlled the organization. No surprise, it’s the members, and they were certainly aware of what they wanted. Talk about accountability!" (For his full response, click here.)

But this is a bit at odds with the other e-mails I received. Here are a few excerpts:

"Good for you for writing what everyone else is thinking about PCMA. I read about the change of command in 4 different newsletters and you were the only one who called it for what it appears to be."

"Huge congratulations for ‘telling it like it should be told.’ Sure, I had a feeling this was not a happy mutual decision, but the issue seemed to be avoided in all PCMA communications."

"I agree with you and applaud you for asking for integrity. Hopefully with your article and continued probing we will find out the real truth and set Deborah Sexton up for success rather than another short term failure."

"Any time a manager of a sports team is fired or resigns, the press learns what happened and writes about it, including salary levels. It would make for better community relations if corporations and associations played by the same rules. We don’t need to know the juicy details, but honesty, integrity, and some semblance of accurate explanation would be appreciated."

So while Talley is saying, "this is normal," we don’t really believe it, for reasons I outlined in last week’s editorial. This distrust between an association and its members is pretty common–I’m really not just picking on PCMA here, they’re just the latest example of how an unexpected move on the association management’s part, inadequately explained (though Talley’s latest comments are the best I’ve heard yet), increases that level of distrust. And, I’ve heard from some, the fact that this must have been in the works at this year’s annual meeting but was not discussed by the leaders, was grist for a rumor mill that churned out all kinds of innuendoes and what-ifs.

Meetings are one of the few opportunities members have to really get to know their leadership, an opportunity that’s all too often served with just a few speeches and a couple of lopes around the floor. It’s a wasted opportunity for association leaders who want to foster greater trust, and a greater sense of community. Having a terminal CEO glad-handing members who know (and they always do–this stuff gets out a lot faster than the association leadership seems to think) that his days are numbered, plastering on a smiley-face and pretending nothing’s going on, doesn’t inspire trust. It does the exact opposite, which may be part of the reason people feel there’s more to the story than we’re being told.

Jeffrey Brown is going wild over there at TradeshowBlues–he’s added a blog, and is promising more goodies to come. Jeff, post early and often!