Leaders Who Exemplify Values, Next-Practice Thinking Honored

WEST PALM BEACH, FL — October 8, 2013 — Two of the nation’s top talent management executives and three of the world’s leading business thinkers will be honored when Best Practice Institute’s Senior Executive Board meets in Atlanta on Wednesday.

Leslie Joyce and Brian Bules, the senior talent executives at Novelis, Inc., and GlaxoSmithKline, respectively, will be presented with the first-ever BPI Values Awards. The award recognizes talent management leaders who most exemplify the seven values of BPI’s Senior Executive Board, including transparency, leadership and being a talent “pioneer.”

Best Practice Institute is a leadership development center serving many of the world’s top corporations, including executives and employees of the majority of the Fortune 500. One of BPI’s most unique programs is its Senior Executive Board, an ultra-exclusive social network and think tank composed of the talent executives of some of the world’s largest companies.

BPI’s Senior Executive Board meets periodically in intensive three-day sessions to explore current talent management issues. The SEB will meet starting on Wednesday at global headquarters of Novelis, Inc., in Atlanta.

Louis Carter, founder and CEO of Best Practice Institute, said a highlight of the twice-yearly SEB meetings are the awards presentations.

“This is our chance to put the spotlight on those who are on the cutting edge of talent management and business leadership,” Carter said. “This is not only a way to express our appreciation for outstanding work, but to signal to our thousands of BPI members that these are the leaders who are pioneering the next practices in this industry.”

At the awards presentation on Wednesday, in addition to honoring Joyce and Bules, BPI will present Top Thought Leader Awards to three of the world’s most influential business thinkers. Bob Nelson, author of 1501 Ways to Reward Employees; Daryl Conner, author of Managing at the Speed of Change and Leading at the Edge of Chaos; and Jonah Berger, author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On; will receive the prestigious BPI Top Thought Leader Awards.

BPI Values Awards

Leslie Joyce is senior vice president and chief people officer of Novelis, Inc. She leads Novelis’s human resources and talent development efforts worldwide. Joyce holds a Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology from North Carolina State University.

Brian Bules is head of global talent solutions and effectiveness at GlaxoSmithKline. He is responsible with his colleagues to establish and execute GSK’s global talent, leadership and workforce portfolio strategy.

Both Joyce and Bules are longtime members of BPI’s Senior Executive Board. The Values Award honors leaders who best exemplify the seven values of the BPI senior board: transparency, positive feedback, leadership, appreciative practice, confidentiality, accountability and being a pioneer.

Carter said one thing that makes the new BPI Values Award special is that is being presented by the recipients’ peers on the SEB. “The best praise a corporate leader can ever get is to be singled out for recognition by one’s counterparts at other companies,” he said.

Top Thought Leader Awards
The Top Thought Leaders go to scholars, authors and innovators who have distinguished themselves as provocateurs in business philosophy and practice.

Bob Nelson is president of Nelson Motivation Inc., a management training and consulting company. He teaches organizational behavior at the Rady School of Management, University of California at San Diego. He holds a Ph.D. in management from Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management School, Claremont Graduate University, Los Angeles.

Daryl Conner is chairman of Conner Partners, an advisory firm specializing in strategy execution. He is an internationally recognized leader in organizational change.

Jonah Berger is an associate professor of marketing at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Previous Top Thought Leader Award winners include Edgar Schein, former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management; Warner Burke, professor at Columbia University; John Kotter, former professor at Harvard Business School; Sir Andrew Likierman, Dean of London Business School; David Noer, professor emeritus at the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business; and Richard Olivier, founder and artistic director of Olivier Mythodrama.

ABOUT BEST PRACTICE INSTITUTE

BEST PRACTICE INSTITUTE is a leadership development center, think tank, peer network, research institute and online learning portal. Its focus areas span all aspects of global leadership development, workforce planning and talent management. BPI was named to Leadership Excellence magazine’s “Best in Leadership Development” 2012 ranking. Best Practice Institute has corporate and individual members in about two dozen countries on five continents, including executives and employees of the majority of the Fortune 500.

BPI services and activities include innovations in assessment and online distributed learning, cutting-edge business research, a faculty of hundreds of thought leaders and business leaders, a wealth of online knowledge including hundreds of webinars, and intimate, ongoing consultation provided to its premium membership. BPI’s website, www.bestpracticeinstitute.org, offers members a treasury of research, case studies and more than 300 interactive webinars led by BPI faculty members, which include world-famous thought leaders and Fortune 500 executives. Human resources training and accreditation (PHR, SPHR, GPHR) are available. BPI also offers www.Skillrater.com, a 360-degree assessment tool built on a social networking, cloud-based platform.

LOUIS CARTER: Since founding Best Practice Institute in 2001, Louis Carter has led the company to become one of the world’s top associations for leadership and human resource development, with more than 42,000 subscribers, receiving Leadership Excellence’s Best in Leadership Development Award and Training Industry’s Innovations in Leadership Development Watch List. Carter has written eleven books on best practices and organizational leadership, including the Best Practice series and the Change Champion’s Field Guide, published by John Wiley & Sons.

Carter became chairman of the Best Practice Institute Senior Executive Board in 2005 after Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Bank of America, Corning, Saudi Aramco, Volvo, Boston Scientific and The Gap became founding corporate members. Carter is creator of Skillrater, the new performance review tool based on a social networking platform, and creator of the BPI Online Learning Portal. He received his undergraduate degree from Connecticut College and Brown University with honors in political science and economics and his graduate degree in social/organizational psychology from Columbia University with honors.

FOR MORE INFORMATION or to schedule an interview, please contact Louis Carter: 800-718-4274; lou (at) bestpracticeinstitute.org.