The Drive Back

Well I've returned from Drive '06 and am still decompressing. Tuesday turned into Wednesday which bled into Thursday. Once the conference kicked into 5th gear, it did not slow down. As I continue to work through the principles and insights that I took away from the conference I will share my thoughts. I commented to the guys in our van that I felt like I was returning from Summer Camp for grown-ups. We did everything but trade e-mail addresses with the friends we made while at "Camp". On the way back we jammed to some of the CD's which I picked up from the conference (which I'll highlight) in a future post.

I thoroughly enjoyed returning home and spending the evening with my boys. While at the conference Denny caught a DVD of "Cars" that Drive was tossing into the crowd. He gave it to me to give to my boys. We will watch it many times.

25-50-25
I've come to a bit of an opinion on the value of leadership conferences like this. The conference itself is only 25% of the value. The conference is really just a dump of information and principles. So you typically walk away from such experiences with a notebook full of useless information... unless it proceeds to the other steps. Half the value of the conference (50%) is the discussion that it causes or starts with those to whom the ideas apply. This is where the notebooks come to life and is internalized and contextualized. It can be tempting to jump to implementation without having necessary and difficult conversations. The final 25% value of the conference is the execution and implementation of the principles into the local context. This is the bottom-line return-on-investment of going to the conference.

I'm not sure, but its seems like there are steps somthing like this to the conference experience.