Colin Rorrie stepping down from MPI
Colin Rorrie, Jr., PhD, CAE, recently e-mailed members of Meeting Professionals International to say that he’ll be stepping down as president and CEO as of this week. Mark Andrew, chairman-elect, will take a leave of absence from his job as general manager of The Westin Bayshore Resort Marina in Vancouver to temporarily take over the Dallas MPI office. Rorrie says of his seemingly abrupt departure:
- When I became President and CEO of your association in 2003, there were specific objectives I set out to accomplish on behalf of our members and staff. We have succeeded beyond my early expectations, and I feel the time is right for me to explore new horizons both personally and professionally.
Oh wow, oh wow. I thought he did a remarkable job, and I loved the way he was reaching out to and working with other organizations to accomplish mutual goals. That’s not easy in this business.
Let the wild CEO hunt begin…
Update: I’m on a press conference call about this right now. There’s talk about restructuring the organization (to be more of a matrix structure—sorry, I mean this type of matrix), and wanting to get someone with the proverbial “new skill set” to take them on the next step. Rorrie says he doesn’t have any immediate plans, so it doesn’t sound like he got a better job offer. They say it has nothing to do with merging with any other association. They talked a lot about how they’re going to remake MPI in concordance with the Blue Ocean Strategy, which, according to Value-Based Management, means:
- Rather than competing within the confines of the existing industry or trying to steal customers from rivals (Bloody or Red Ocean Strategy) in the HBR of October 2004 W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne suggest Blue Ocean Strategy: developing uncontested market space that makes the competition irrelevant.
According to Kim and Mauborgne, competing in overcrowded industries is no way to sustain high performance. The real opportunity is to create blue oceans of uncontested market space…
There are two ways to create blue oceans:
- One is to launch completely new industries, as eBay did with online auctions.
- It is more common for a blue ocean to be created from within a red ocean when a company expands the boundaries of an existing industry.
I guess I’d need to read the book to understand what that’s all about. But there’s no doubt that this is a crowded market space. Still, I can’t figure out why he’s leaving so quickly, when they stressed on the call that all structural changes will evolve over time.
Related Topics: Industry association news
March 8th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Blue Ocean, with MPI, would mean stepping back to explore what mix and matrix of experiences that attendees, exhibitors and the other current and possible players really want in a what-if world - and , how they could be provided, and by what organizations, To truly explore the Power of “Us” might mean a whole new way of inviting those players into the conversation.
March 14th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
When I was a young girl scout working on my Swimmers badge, the girl scout leader took us to the river, designated a goal spot where she put a barrel of shells precariously perched on a banca (kayak). We were instructed to get a shell which we could then exchange for a badge to put on our uniforms. That was the purpose of the whole exercise but it had also become a fierce swim and shell competition. We were only required to swim a specified number of meters and get one shell but the winners always boasted about swimming faster and getting a lot more shells.
There were about 30 girls in a narrow pre-defined area where wwe could swim. The bigger, more aggressive girls had occupied the front row. I was an excellent swimmer but I was small and puny. A friend whispered to me “Swim for the open waters.” Even then, that sounded like a great strategy to me. But how to do it?
Well, I saw a short coconut tree several meters from the goal with its branch overhanging the finish line. While the crowd were elbowing each other swimming directly towards the goal, I swam unencumbered towards the coconut tree. It was a longer distance but I could swim faster because nobody was kicking me (Isn’t that so true in our professional and business lives?) Then I climbed the tree and somersaulted to the finish line. I made such a big splash that the precariously perched barrel of shells fell from the kayak and I was the only one who caught a few shells. All the rest sank to the bottom of the river before the girls got to the goal.
Was that a Blue Ocean strategy? No, I call it my Coconut Tree strategy. But the essence of my friend’s advice - “Swim in the open waters” is the essence of both Kim / Masuborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy and Sigler’s Coconut Tree strategy.
March 14th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
I love this story! Thanks for sharing it, Andrea.
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