Events
Lecture I: "Traps and Tools for Deciding as a Team"
David Morrison, M.D.
October 25, 2008
There are many tools to deal with the challenges of making decisions in a group (executive teams, boards, etc.). The tools, challenges, and responsibilities for such decisions make up this presentation. It has been given to a group of officers in a large retail organization and the board of the International City Management Association. Both times there was so much discussion it was not completed. The WLS group will have more time but will also be full of ideas.
Lecture II: "Patronage, ‘Nephewtism’, and other Staffing Anomalies: the Likely Organizational Impact"
November 8, 2008
Guest speaker, John Novinson
Retired City Manager, Northbrook IL
With the up-coming national election, we decided to repeat a popular topic John presented a few years ago. Politics has been the focus of much of the news for many months. This is an inside look at what happens in local government and how that affects our professional and private lives. This topic promises to deliver many avenues for discussion after the elections are decided.
Lecture III: "Financial Derivatives and the Crash of 2008"
November 22, 2008
Guest speaker, William Kovacs, Esq.
The takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by the United States represented the culmination of years of intermingling of public and private financial interests. The $85 Billion dollar transaction between the US and the largest insurance company in the world, AIG, is de facto a government nationalization of a bankrupt private company. Nothing like this has ever happened before in the United States. This presentation will explain why this happened and how it could have easily been prevented.
Lecture IV: "The Person Who Puts the Organization at Risk"
December 13, 2008
David Morrison, M.D.
This review of a study to understand the forces, which cause a person to put his or her organization in danger, is to set up the presentation on White Collar Crime (1/17/09). The study was intended to find personality characteristics of the person who got the company sued. The results, however, pointed at multiple factors, which were more important than the person’s personality.
Lecture V: "Bringing Freud to Fraud: Understanding the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal"
January 17, 2009
Daven Morrison, M.D., Sridhar Ramamoorti, PhD.
Daven and Sri will present the preliminary version of their white paper: “Bringing Freud to Fraud: Understanding the Mind of the White Collar Criminal.” There are many models of fraud, but little understanding of the motivations of the white-collar criminal, whether acted alone or in collusion with others. Their paper is built around a model of the factors that permit or encourage white collar crime: the individual personality, the motives, and the rationalizations, the organizational/professional culture in which they are imbedded, and the environment/zeitgeist of the senior officer(s) who act as trust violators. This work builds on the work of David Morrison, which will be presented on December 13, 2008.
Lecture VI: "Managing Negative Emotions"
February 7, 2009
David Morrison, M.D.
Anger, fear, distress, and shame all have survival value for individuals and groups. Most leaders are more familiar with how they disrupt or stop work than their contributions to it. Together, we will examine how understanding their functions and biological roots will show leaders how to minimize the destructive outcomes of those feelings and enhance their contributions to productivity.
Morrison Associates Winter Lecture Series is a free symposium intended to encourage discussions on unique challenges of leaders from a variety of disciplines and perspectives. Please call 847-991-2260 or e-mail us for further information.
