Rounding out the events

So far we’ve had one presentation of Sustainable Power and Influence and Applying Finance. This week is our first presentation of Designing Experiences that Stick. Take a look at what’s in store for the fellows from Detroit on Thursday:

Chicago Future Leadership Fellows

Last Thursday was our second Future Leadership outing.  This time we were in Chicago, working with a great pair of partners, Arts Alliance Illinois and The Boeing Company, and a great group of Fellows. 

Where to next? Chicago!

Next week at about this time, we will be meeting with the Future Leadership Fellows from Chicago.  We will be presenting Applying Finance featuring Professor Greg Reilly in partnership with Arts Alliance Illinois.  Here’s an overview of what we’ll be covering:

Who was there?

Yesterday the first Future Leadership event took place in Minneapolis.  Each of the fellows attended Sustainable Power and Influence presented in partnership with Springboard for the Arts.  They will also have access to resources from NAS throughout the next year and will have opportunities to connect with fellows from across the country.

Future Leadership Fellows: 

4 days and counting

Tuesday is the big day: the first Future Leadership event in Minneapolis.  The session being presented in Sustainable Power and Influence featuring Paula J. Caproni.  It looks like it’s going to be a really interesting session based on the agenda:

The planning continues…

One of the many great things about the faculty we work with is that they are very dynamic individuals as well as teachers with a range of interests.  They are passionate about their subject areas; they have deep experience in their respective fields, and they respect the knowledge and experience their students bring to the classroom.

Based on our knowledge of the field and many conversations with faculty member Paula Caproni, Professor Caproni is building a module around power and sustainable, ethical influence.  Key learning questions and subtopics include:

• What is ethical, sustainable power and influence?
• What are the characteristics of highly influential people?
• What are the strategies for developing sustainable, ethical power and influence?
• Avoiding dysfunctional politics
• Developing your personal action plan for enhancing your influence

Dave Owens, the professor we’ve identified to teach about innovation, has offered an alternate topic in his area of expertise — Product/experience development: concepts and application. This module focuses on how to take an idea for a product, program, presentation or the like and use experiments to learn more and build support.  Key learning questions and subtopics  include:

• How do you take a new idea and experiment it forward to build buy-in and support from the right people at the right time?
• How do you see the needs and make sure the idea matches the needs identified?
• Managing change at different levels.
• What you need to know to move new ideas forward?
• Defining process to create the buy-in required.

It about using process to build on new ideas, from a bit of a different perspective.

Greg Reilly, our finance faculty member, believes that finance is more than numbers. It provides a connective architecture for an organization.  It helps to quantify long and short term strategy and operations.  Finance writ large is about understanding, capturing and communicating value.

Professor Reilly is designing a day focusing on these key questions and subtopics:

• If value creation is THE goal of all organizations, how can financial management help quantify and compare aspects of value creation for stakeholders?
• What role does finance play in key organizational decisions?  How does timing and approach affect a team’s or an organization’s ability to make decisions?
• How do individual leadership styles affect the roles and goals of people as they contribute to and take from the financial system?
• Everyone has varied degrees of understanding and expertise in finance.  In thinking through career paths, what additional learning would be beneficial?

Let us know what you think.  Are these topics that feel valuable now and into the future?  What are you struggling with in your careers right now that relate to any or all of these topics?

The full list of cities

This just in: we will be presenting one of the events  in Detroit in partnership with the Cultural Alliance of Southeast Michigan.  The six metropolitan areas where we’ll be having the Future Leadership pilot events are:

• Chicago
• Detroit
• Miami
• Minneapolis/St. Paul
• New York
• San Francisco Bay Area

We are in the process of figuring out which faculty should go to which city and when.   Be sure to give us your feedback and let us know which topics are of greatest interest to you and your colleagues.

Add Chicago to the list

I am pleased to announce that we will be presenting one of the Future Leadership events in Chicago in partnership with the Illinois Arts Alliance.  Those of you from around the area, be sure to give us your feedback as we continue to develop the content for the events!

Introducing the faculty (and content)

Now that we know who our faculty are, we can tell you a bit more about each of them and what we think they’ll be teaching:

Paula Caproni is an expert in leadership and management skills. Her research focuses on understanding the complex interactions of people in organizations, including understanding characteristics that enhance job effectiveness, career success, and general well-being. The content that she focuses on will revolve around two main areas: managing teams & individuals and power & influence. Within these broad areas, subtopics that are likely to be highlighted include:

• Learning the most fundamental skill for advancing from a “doer” to a “manager”
• Managing up and down
• Designing a successful organization/department
• Distinguishing and dealing with job design vs departmental issues
• Helping with the hardest transition in work (supervising people/teams)
• Learning to read people’s interests and styles
• Understanding and influencing organizational politics
• Ethical influence – what is it / how to use it
• Building trust and support
• Managing change

Dave Owens is an expert in strategic innovation and product development. His research focuses on innovation and change within organizations, informal status processes in groups, and group composition. Professor Owens’ content will focus on the role of a leader and processes for driving new ideas forward. Subtopics will likely include:

• Process of innovation
• Brainstorming techniques
• Group dynamics
• Strategies for driving new visions forward

Greg Reilly is an expert in performance measurement. His research focuses on strategic risk-taking and financial decision making, as well as the development of a framework and process for analyzing, assessing and improving performance measurement systems. Professor Reilly’s content will focus on ways to analyze, think about and communicate about the financial health of an organization. Subtopics will likely include:

• Corporate financial analysis
• Financial modeling/risk assessment
• Communicating effectively with key stakeholders

We’ll be matching the content to each of our communities over the course of the next couple of weeks.  For those of you from the regions that we’re definitely going to (New York, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, San Francisco Bay Area) make sure you let us know which of the topics above are of the most interest and value to you.

Exciting Developments!

We’ve been continuing our conversations with the prospective faculty and site partners… and we currently have agreements with three of our sites and two of our faculty in hand!

So where will we be?

• The Twin Cities in partnership with Springboard for the Arts.
• The San Francisco Bay Area in partnership with Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Theatre Bay Area
• New York in partnership with New York Foundation for the Arts
• Miami in partnership with the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs

The faculty whose agreements we’ve received are Paula Caproni and David Owens:

Professor Caproni is the Academic Director of Executive Skills Program and Lecturer of Management and Organizations at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Professor Owens is the Clinical Professor of Business Strategy and Innovation; Faculty Director, Professional Development Institute; and Assistant to the Provost for Strategy Process Innovation at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.

I will let you know as we continue to finalize all these agreements.  For those of you in the cities we’re officially going to be in, please don’t forget to share your thoughts about content and timing – matching the dates, locations and content will be one of the next steps after we’ve got all the agreements in hand.

Update 6/09/09: We have received confirmation from our third faculty partner: Greg Reilly, Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Connecticut School of Business.