Weekly eBulletin 2-5-2014

Today's guests and visiting Rotarians included Bob Petersen and Laura Thata, a new Rotarian from the Hermosa Beach Rotary Club on her first club visit; Barry Nichelsberg from the Downtown Atlanta Rotary Club ("I travel a lot in my business," he said. "My goal is to visit the 20 largest Rotary Clubs in the country."); Connie Siegel, Harrisburg Rotary Club; and guests Cristan Higa from the Beach Cities Health District and Kate Foster.

President Karen noted we had 69 attendees at last week's Community Social Event, comprises of 34 members and 35 guests and awardees.  She thanked members who offered to pay for dinner for recipients of the $5,653 in Teacher Mini-Grants we distributed to teachers in Redondo Beach.

The 20 recipients included Courtney Meyer, Kristen Hoyem and Kelly Rodono from Alta Vista Elementary; William Barnhart and Jill Salinaz from Beryl Heights Elementary; Megan French from Birney Elementary; Emily Butler, Cindy Gray and Denise D'Angelo from Jefferson Elementary; Elizabeth Allen, Kristin Lem, Kristen Roma, Diane Bonetati, J. Niederstrass and Camille Smith from Madison Elementary; Julie Tamashiro from Tulita Elementary; Bonnie Turner, Kimi Watanabe, Heather Ladd and Melissa Smith from Washington Elementary.

Zane Zent (c) was honored by our club for selling 10 seats to the recent USC-UCLA Tailgate Party co-sponsored by the Rotary Club of Redondo Beach. Zane, a junior at Redondo Union High School, organized the $300 fund- raiser. Shown with Zane are Rotarian Scott Fellows (l) and RUHS Athletic Director Andy Saltsman (r). Because Zane raised funds for the tailgate party, the high school qualified to receive a portion of the funds raised at the event. Coach Faltsman was presented a check in the amount of $1900 for school athletic programs.

Paul Hayashi announced winners of the club's annual Art Contest. Their works were displayed during lunch.  They are Alex Ioda, 1st place, Justin Steele, 2nd place, and Lucas Logan, 3rd place.  "There were approximately 20 entries," said Paul, "and we set an early deadline so we could enter these winning entries in time for the District 5280 Art Contest." He added the three winners will be recognized, and given their cash awards, at a future weekly luncheon.

O'Leary Logan, co-founder of Renaissance Works in Hawthorne, gave a talk he named "The Secrets of the Eight Pillars of Change."  He reviewed each of the eight pillars (vision, communication, participation, time-criticality, risk, opportunity, momentum and structure), demonstrating how paying attention to these ideas enables a business to thrive in the midst of change.

O'Leary Logan

The focus of this presentation was the vital importance of adapting to change. "Within five years, 80% of companies started will be out of business, and 80% of the remaining companies will be out of business the following five years," he said. "That means that after ten years, only about 5% of the companies will still be in business that open their doors today." He attributed the high failure rate to companies inabilities to adapt to change.

Logan cited the success of Disneyland, to which Rotarian Monique Waite told the story of how often Walt Disney failed before achieving worldwide success with the Magic Kingdom. Whereupon Logan noted, "One of the attributes of leadership is failure." 

He concluded with, "Money has nothing to do with (success). People don't buy things for money, they buy value.  Attitude is the key."