Cedar Rapids keynote speaker for aerospace, manufacturing, healthcare, and association events.
Chris Sund is a keynote speaker, Maxwell Leadership Certified Coach, and sitting executive who leads national healthcare staffing organizations. He speaks on workforce motivation, leadership, retention, and human potential for eastern Iowa employers, engineering and advanced manufacturing organizations, food processing operations, health systems, campuses, and Iowa association audiences.
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You promoted your best problem solver. Then you pointed that skill at people.
Cedar Rapids has more engineers per capita than any other city in the United States, and that one fact shapes how leadership goes wrong here in a very particular way.
Collins Aerospace is the largest employer in the city, with roughly nine thousand people working on avionics, mission systems, navigation, and communication, in a company that started in Arthur Collins’ basement in the 1920s. Around it sits the largest corn-processing city in the world, including Quaker Oats, which has run the largest cereal mill on earth here since 1873, along with ADM, Cargill, General Mills, and Ingredion. There are close to three hundred manufacturing plants in this city and two dozen Fortune 500 companies with operations here. Transamerica and UFG carry insurance and financial services. Mercy Medical Center and UnityPoint Health St. Luke’s carry health care. Kirkwood, Coe, and Mount Mercy carry education.
What all of that produces is a workforce trained, rewarded, and promoted for being right. Precision is the point. In avionics it is the difference between a safe flight and a fatal one. In a continuous process plant it is the difference between a good run and a costly one. In a hospital it is everything. Nobody should want less rigor from any of these places.
The trouble starts at promotion. The person who was best at finding what was wrong gets put in charge of people, usually with no training, and quite reasonably keeps doing the thing that got them there. They review a person the way they review a design. They open with the defect, because that is where the useful information is. They stay quiet when things work, because a system that works does not need attention.
Aimed at a circuit, that is excellent discipline. Aimed at a person, it reads as never being good enough. The employee hears about the one slide that was wrong and never hears about the eleven that were right, and after two years of that, a genuinely respected leader has a team that quietly believes it is failing.
The fix is not softer standards, and any room full of engineers will reject it if you pitch it that way. It is recognizing that people and systems require opposite defaults. A system tells you when it is broken and stays silent when it is fine. A person needs to be told when they are fine, and will fill the silence with the worst available explanation. Saying out loud what somebody is doing well is not a morale exercise. It is supplying missing data to someone who is otherwise guessing.
Cedar Rapids has more of these leaders per square mile than almost anywhere. Most of them are good at the job and have simply never been told this one thing.
Chris runs national healthcare staffing organizations and has keynoted state association conferences in eleven states, including LeadingAge Illinois and health care associations in Iowa, Montana, South Dakota, and Colorado.
Operator, Not Consultant
President and COO of national healthcare staffing organizations, promoting technical experts into leadership and living with the results.
Technical Leaders
Material for people promoted on expertise who were never taught the other half of the job.
Engineering, Plant, and Clinical Rooms
Works for an aerospace leadership meeting, a process plant session, or a hospital leadership day.
Groups Chris speaks for.
Cedar Rapids is the second largest city in Iowa and the state’s largest by industrial employment.
- Collins Aerospace and the aerospace and defense supplier network, including precision machine shops, fabricators, and engineering firms, for leadership meetings and technical manager development
- Quaker Oats, ADM, Cargill, General Mills, Ingredion, and the corn processing operations, for supervisor development and shift-based sessions
- Mercy Medical Center, UnityPoint Health St. Luke’s, and Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa, for nurse leadership, all-staff, and recognition events
- Transamerica, UFG Insurance, and the region’s financial services employers, for leadership and all-hands sessions
- Kirkwood Community College, Coe College, and Mount Mercy University, for campus, staff, and workforce programming
- Cedar Rapids Community Schools, Linn-Mar, and College Community districts, for staff in-service days
- The Cedar Rapids Metro Economic Alliance and Iowa statewide associations, the format Chris works in most often
Cedar Rapids employers built on getting it right.
Healthcare is where Chris operates, and clinical leaders have the identical problem with different vocabulary.
Aerospace and Advanced Manufacturing
Organizations where correctness is safety critical and technical excellence is the promotion path.
Food and Corn Processing
Continuous operations where process discipline is the culture and supervisors come up through it.
Hospitals and Clinics
Clinical leaders trained to spot the error, leading people who need to hear more than errors.
Insurance and Financial Services
Analytical workforces where rigor is the standard and encouragement is treated as optional.
Cedar Rapids and eastern Iowa venues.
- Downtown hotel and convention space, including the DoubleTree at the Alliant Energy PowerHouse, for Iowa association annual meetings
- Corporate and engineering campuses for leadership meetings and all-hands sessions
- Mercy Medical Center and UnityPoint St. Luke’s for nurse leadership and all-staff days
- Plant and processing facilities for supervisor sessions, repeated across shifts
- Kirkwood, Coe, and Mount Mercy facilities for campus and staff programming
- District facilities for staff in-service days
- Iowa City, Marion, Hiawatha, Coralville, and communities across the corridor
Cedar Rapids events Chris speaks at.
Company and Leadership Meetings
All-hands gatherings, annual meetings, kickoffs, and banquets.
Association Conferences
Iowa statewide association annual meetings and general sessions, the format Chris works in most often.
Hospital and Health System Events
Leadership days, nurse recognition events, and all-staff meetings.
Frontline and Technical Leadership
Development for people promoted on expertise and now responsible for a team.
Recognition and Engagement
Sessions on why silence reads as disapproval and what to do about it.
Nurse Leadership
Charge nurse and manager development for clinically excellent new leaders.
Keynote topics for your Cedar Rapids event.
Every session is customized for the audience, the format, and what you are actually trying to change.
See what conference organizers and HR leaders have said after booking Chris.
Booking a keynote speaker in Cedar Rapids
Has Chris spoken to Iowa healthcare, corporate, and association audiences?
Does Chris travel to Cedar Rapids?
Will an audience of engineers find this too soft?
We do not want to lower our standards. Is that what this is?
Can this work for a plant floor audience as well as an office one?
What does a Cedar Rapids keynote cost?
Can Chris speak virtually to an Iowa audience?
Bring Chris to your Cedar Rapids event.
Send your date, location, and audience. You will get availability and a quote back within one business day.
info@chrissund.com · 402-212-5771 · Iowa speaking · All locations