Morning Joe and Mika Waking Up the Opening General Session

Joe Scarborough & Mika Brzezinski
Sunday, September 30 – 10:15–11:30 a.m.
Mandalay Bay

Two media superstars are bringing their collective expertise to NECA’s 2012 Opening General Session — Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Joe and Mika have carved out a following of devoted viewers, who tune in daily for their thoughtful analysis and commentary about the public events and politics shaping our daily lives. Joe and Mika are lively debaters with their guests and each other, unafraid to express different opinions without crossing the line to negative attacks.

Convention-goers will enjoy the story of how this unlikely on-air duo started working together, where they have found common ground, where they disagree and what we can all learn when we stop talking and start listening. Read more about NECA 2012 general sessions >>

Closing Keynote Steve Farber Brings Love, Energy, Audacity and Proof

You have to get excited about a speaker who named his company Extreme Leadership, Inc., and starts off his remarks about what’s going through the mind of a skeleton-sledder (a Winter X-Games event that in Farber’s words, “involves sliding face-first down an ice-slicked course on a roasting pan.”) But that willingness of face-first leap off an icy mountain is exactly what Farber sees as the best characteristic in real leaders. He called that realization that you’re doing something unnatural as the “OSM,” for “Oh [redacted] Moment,” and said it’s usually the first indication that you’re doing something extraordinary. Farber focused on four primary things extreme leaders will do – radical stands they will take daily at their companies: Cultivate Love: “This is about making the customer, the clients, the community love what you’re doing. And you have to love it, too.” Create Energy: “Ask what’s the higher purpose in our work. You can’t make other people think it’s important unless you can describe it in a way that energized people to be a part of it. Show you’re a part of something great.” Inspire Audacity: “This isn’t just a blatant disregard for normal constraints. It’s asking, ‘how are we going to change the world of our customers, employees, or company?” It’s stepping up to the challenge.” Provide Proof: “Basically, it’s Do What You Say You Will Do. As a leader, people are watching everything you do and comparing it to what you say.” Farber is the president of Extreme Leadership, Incorporated, an organization devoted to the cultivation and development of Extreme Leaders in the business community. His latest book, Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson In Leadership, was a Wall Street Journal® and USA Today® bestseller. His second book, The Radical Edge: Stoke Your Business, Amp Your Life, and Change the World, was hailed as “a playbook for harnessing the power of the human spirit.”  And his first book, The Radical Leap: A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership, is received Fast Company magazine’s Readers’ Choice Award and was recently named one of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time.

NECA Honors Leaders at Closing General Session

Six outstanding members of the electrical construction industry were recognized as this year’s award winners at the NECA 2001 San Diego Closing General Session.

Association Executive Distinguished Services Award: Danal W. Neal
(Western Ohio Chapter, NECA)
This award recognizes a staff executive or chapter manager who has made significant contributions to the association and the industry. Neal is renowned as both an educator and a first-rate manager of NECA-IBEW labor relations. He has been the executive director of the Western Ohio Chapter, NECA since 2000 and an NTI faculty member since 1989. He was recently honored by the Dayton Building & Trades Council with its 2011 Labor Relations Award.

Wendt Award: Thomas F. Curran
(Red Top Electric, Livermore, CA)
The Foundation for the Electrical Construction award its highest annual honor on Curran this year.  The award is named for Albert G. Wendt, President, Cannon & Wendt Electric Company, Inc., in honor of his outstanding philosophical and financial commitments to the electrical industry. Mr. Wendt passed away at the age of 89 a few days before the ceremony, and Curran was touched to be recognized as “ELECTRI’s chief ambassador.”

Coggeshall Award: Wayne Brinkmeyer
(Britain Electric, Houston, Texas)
The Coggeshall Award recognizes NECA members who have made an outstanding contribution to the industry in technical or training activities. Its namesake, who worked for electrical contracting firm Hatzel & Buehler, Inc. in New York City, was integrally involved in the development of the National Electrical Code for many years. This year’s recipient, Wayne Brinkmeyer, has similarly contributed to refining the Code for a long-time; 2012 will be his 25th year on NECA’s National Codes & Standards Committee and on the National Fire Protection Associations NEC Code-Making Panels.

Comstock Award: John R. Colson
(Quanta Services, Houston, Texas)
The Comstock Award honors a NECA member who has made great contributions in the complex field of labor relations. Colson is noted for his role in developing new labor agreements focused on making NECA/IBEW line contractors the electrical utilities’ first choice — whether responding to disaster or tackling non-emergency transmission work.

James H. McGraw Award: Daniel Palmer
(Tri-City Electric, Davenport, Iowa)
The McGraw Award is NECA’s top annual honor for a member, given in recognition of important personal contribution to progress in the electrical industry.  This year’s recipient Daniel F. Palmer, CEO of Tri-City Electric in Davenport, Iowa, has a knack for acting locally while thinking globally. He has spearheaded several innovative labor relations initiatives with the Quad Cities Chapters that have been adopted nationally and makes a point to lead by example, going so far as to loan his company’s tools to his local training center.

Industry Partner Award: Robert M. Gasperow
(Construction Labor Research Council (CLRC))
The NECA Industry Partner Award recognizes those organizations or individuals that, though not members of the National Electrical Contractors Association, contribute to the electrical contracting industry’s success through their decisions, actions, or cooperation with NECA. Gasperow  earned this recognition on the basis of the benefits, both direct and indirect, that our association has gained due to his work as former Executive Director of the Construction Labor Research Council.

NECA TV – View Monday’s Top Take-Aways from NECA 2011 San Diego

2011 Fellows Inducted into Academy of Electrical Contracting

While General McChrystal encouraged NECA members to look forward and never give up at yesterday’s Opening General Session, the Academy of Electrical Contracting honored nine new Fellows for their decades of service to the association.

• Gregory Davis (Bob Davis Electric, Shreveport, Louisiana)
• Thomas Driscoll (E.S. Boulos Company, Westbrook, Maine)
• Charles Ewton (Lawson Electric, Chattanooga, Tennessee)
• John S. Frantz (Sidney Electrical, Sidney, Ohio)
• Bradley S. Giles (Giles Electric, South Daytona, Florida)
• Thomas Ispas (Daniel’s Electrical Construction, Fontana, California)
• Thomas G. Moore, Jr. (J P Rainey & Co., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
• Alex Owen (Brooks-Berry-Haynie & Associates, Mableton, Georgia)
• Daniel Palmer (Tri-City Electric, Davenport, Iowa)

The Academy of Electrical Contracting honors outstanding leaders in the electrical contracting field in order to preserve the wealth of experience and ability these leaders have developed through their years of dedicated effort, to the benefit of the entire construction industry. Their service is continued through membership in the Academy as the voice of experience for NECA and ELECTRI International. Congratulations to the 2011 Class of Fellows!

Labor Relations General Session: Pension Plan Update

Today’s Labor Relations General Session was a departure from the traditional panel discussion. Rather, the session focused on the important, if somewhat hard to hear, news about multiemployer pension plans.

Randy DeFrehn, Executive Director of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans, kicked off the session with a run-down of the legislative action NCCMP has pursued to protect local pension plans in the face of the economic downturn, including a freeze on plans’ “Zone” status, options for small plans to merge, “partitioning,” and some technical corrections.

“There’s a misconception that multiemployer plans’ benefits are too high,” DeFrehn said. “That’s not the case. Yes, some plans will have to make strategic decisions to cope with rising benefit costs to make these plans more stable. But Congress is trying to give us the breathing room to make those changes.”

Labor Relations Task Force Chair and NECA President-elect Dennis Quebe echoed DeFrehn’s comments. “When we look at our so-called ‘benefit burden,’ we want to ask ‘who’s to blame?’ To me, blame implies that at the time, someone knew there would be negative consequences.  But at the time, they were the right thing to do. I still think they’re the right thing to do. But we need to change how we do them. The impact will be significant, but not overwhelming.”

NEBF Executive Secretary/Treasurer Larry Bradley make a great report on the fiscal health of NEBF. “NEBF’s actuaries have certified our plan in the Green Zone since the law was passed in 2006, and I’m proud to report that even through the recession, we have remained in the Green Zone.  Our actuaries remain optimistic of the future health of the plan.

“What’s important to us are the people behind the plan – the lives we touch and the very real ways we can help them,” Bradley concluded. He also mentioned that NEBF’s website will soon have sample disclosure forms for contractors to use to meet the revised FASB reporting requirements for pension plan withdrawal liability, now based solely on publicly available plan information.

The Beauty of Plywood: General Stanley McChrystal on Leadership

When a four-star general boasting a 34-year military career, including bringing together dozens of disparate defense organizations under the Joint Special Operations Command, offers some advice on leadership, you want to sit up a little straighter and listen closely.

Few leaders can claim to have overcome obstacles as large as those faced by retired four-star General Stanley A. McChrystal. McChrystal has been praised for creating a revolution in warfare that fused intelligence and operations as the former commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan and Director of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that captured Saddam Hussein and killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. With McChrystal at the podium, NECA’s 2011 Opening General Session today was a frank discussion on what it makes to be an honorable leader in difficult times.

“Leadership is responsibility,” McChrystal said. “It’s being responsible for what people do, and for what they fail to do. 9/11 was a collective failure of leadership, and a grievous price was paid for that. Leadership demands accepting responsibility.”

McChrystal made three essential points about leadership:

• Change is necessary – but hard.
• There is always another way to get something done.
• People are often the hardest part of leadership.

McChrystal also talked about “plywood leadership.” In this philosophy, the leader is the glue that binds the planks together, producing something whose strength and efficiency is far greater than the sum of its parts. “In Iraq, everything we built was made out of plywood,” he said. “You can put it up quickly and cheaply, you can change it easily. When you’re working on plywood, it’s easy to remember you’re there for a reason. You have a function.

“But the longer I worked on plywood, the more Zen I became about it. It’s made of thin pieces of mid-grade lumber that you can break easily with your hand. But when those pieces are glued together, they have extraordinary strength. That’s what organizations are like. You take ordinary people, put them together in teams, bound together with the glue of leadership, and they can do extraordinary things. Plywood is much greater than any individual.”

Labor Relations Special Session Announced!

NECA 2011 San Diego’s Labor Relations session is all about pension plan burden and liability.

Join us for an in depth presentation on the future of the Pension Protection Act (set to expire in 2014); actuarial considerations in the light of the recent Financial Accounting Standards Board’s (FASB) efforts to impose more stringent reporting requirements on contractors; and an update from president-elect Dennis Quebe, chairman of NECA’s Labor Relations Task Force, on what NECA is doing to educate and prepare member contractors about the current and future state of local pension funds and potential options and actions that can be taken to remain competitive.

The Labor Relations Special General Session at NECA 2011 San Diego will be presented Monday, October 24, 10:00-11:30 a.m. at the San Diego Convention and Exposition Center. It’s open to everyone who is registered for the full Convention.  Early registration ends Monday, September 5!

A Walk on the Wild Side

NECA’s 2011 lifestyle session features Joan Embery –  renowned environmentalist, animal activist, preservationist, TV star and spokeswoman for the Zoological Society of San Diego – plus, some of her favorite friends, the exotic animals she cares for!

Joan, a regular on the Tonight Show, made numerous appearances with Johnny Carson, allowing viewers to meet and share in her love of the animal kingdom, all from their living room sofa. From sneaky snakes and albino koalas to Johnny singing to an endangered bush dog, millions of Americans have learned about the importance of wild life conservation from Joan and her furry friends.

Watch a short video montage of Joan and friends visiting Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show and make your plans today to hear Joan speak about her latest adventures at NECA 2011 San Diego’s Lifestyle Session! >>

NOTE: This special event is a fabulous opportunity for kids and parents to meet-and-greet exotic animals, take photos, and learn about the animal kingdom. Child registration is available for all NECA 2011 San Diego events, click this link to learn more >>

Industry Leaders and Academy Fellows Recognized at 2011 San Deigo

NECA’s 2011 national awards for outstanding industry leaders have been approved and will be recognized at the Closing General Session of NECA’s 2011 National Convention. Click on the award name below to learn more about this year’s award winners:

1)     Coggeshall Award: Wayne Brinkmeyer (Britain Electric, Houston, Texas)

2)     Comstock Award: John R. Colson (Quanta Services, Houston, Texas)

3)     James H. McGraw Award: Daniel Palmer (Tri-City Electric, Davenport, Iowa)

4)     Association Executive Distinguished Service Award: Danal W. Neal (Western Ohio Chapter, NECA)

5)     Industry Partner Award: Robert M. Gasperow (CLRC)

The following NECA-member contractors will be inducted into the prestigious Academy of Electrical Contracting during NECA 2011 San Diego:

• Gregory Davis (Bob Davis Electric, Shreveport, Louisiana)
• Thomas Driscoll (E.S. Boulos Company, Westbrook, Maine)
• Charles Ewton (Lawson Electric, Chattanooga, Tennessee)
• John S. Frantz (Sidney Electrical, Sidney, Ohio)
• Bradley S. Giles (Giles Electric, South Daytona, Florida)
• Thomas Ispas (Daniel’s Electrical Construction, Fontana, California)
• Thomas G. Moore, Jr. (J P Rainey & Co., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
• Alex Owen (Brooks-Berry-Haynie & Associates, Mableton, Georgia)
• Daniel Palmer (Tri-City Electric, Davenport, Iowa)