Forty Years of NCEO Conferences

In April 1982 the NCEO held its first annual conference. We were just two years old and still figuring out how to be a self-sustaining, effective organization. We had no almost money, just two staff members, and had held only one small local event before. But how hard could it be? Find a place, arrange for some food, send out brochures (a piece of standard paper folded in three), and set up some panels.

We held it at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard to lend some cachet (and because they gave us the space free) and charged $50 (about $150 in today’s dollars) to attend— two lunches and coffee included! We bought some cheap jug wine to go with crackers and cheeses for the reception. We had 175 brave souls in attendance.

The last time we held a live conference was in Pittsburgh in 2019. We took up most of the space at the convention center and had 1,960 attendees and about 130 sessions. We had more speakers in 2019 than total attendees in 1982. As we go into this April’s conference, we have a four-person events team, have learned to do very effective virtual meetings, and have lots of great events.

As much as things have changed, some things remain unchanged. We put an emphasis on interaction, keeping panels small enough so that people can be active participants. Many of the sessions are organized around attendees talking to one another, and we provide lots of other ways for informal and structured conversations. We always cover the key issues, but we also look to highlight emerging ideas. We provide lots of technical information, relying on the best experts in the field, but the soul of the conference has always been about ownership culture. We tell the stories and share the ideas that create the kinds of high-involvement companies that make employee ownership so effective. Most large conferences seek celebrity speakers, but our celebrities are the innovative employee ownership company leaders and their employees.

I have learned a lot from these events, but a few things really changed the way I understood employee ownership—and more.

Early on, people came to conferences in suits and ties and dresses and heels—business attire. I hated packing suits and wearing a tie, so at one conference I asked the audience who among them would favor a business casual dress code, which was just becoming a thing at the time. Almost everyone said yes. The next year, I joined a lunch table and people were having an animated discussion about fairly high-level business financial issues. A group of managers, I assumed—wrongly. They were a group of line employees from a few ESOP companies. Absent the dress distinctions of prior meetings, you couldn’t easily tell who did what. It was a lesson I would learn over and over—don’t make assumptions about employee-owners or what they are capable of doing. Good ideas can come from anywhere.

Then there was the extraordinary keynoter, Moose Mallard, formerly the chief pilot at Southwest Airlines. He got a standing ovation. Moose had been diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years before, but had beaten it till that point (he did sadly die a few years later). He said he approached his diagnosis with “rational optimism,” not underestimating the problem, but focusing as much as he could on what he could do now. Rational optimism, he said, was a good way to tackle just about any business issue as well.

Another keynoter, Dean Schroeder, explained why small ideas matter, and how they can ultimately lead to big ones too. As he said in his book with Alan Robinson, Ideas Are Free, the best companies are the ones that generate lots and lots of small ideas.

But the best lesson of all has always been the importance of community. The conference is about a lot more than learning. It is about recommitting to a set of shared values, friendships, and goals. I can’t wait to do it again.