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.

So who are these “future leaders” anyway?

We know that the language of “future leaders” can be confusing – there are any number of programs and organizations using similar language. Our initial definition for our audience was “people who see themselves three to five years away from senior positions in nonprofit cultural institutions.” But the environment is much less predictable than it was even a year ago, and it is no longer as clear to people where they will be in three to five years.

As we’ve been having conversations with communities across the country, we’ve been challenged to think more specifically about who our target audience is. It’s become clear to us that there are any number of ways to define our audience. Some of the alternate ways to describe the characteristics and interests of our audience include:

• Mid-career professionals, with 5-15 years of experience in the field interested in advancing to the next level of leadership, in part, by acquiring additional skills
• Professionals who have just come into a leadership role in a smaller organization and are interested in pursuing additional formalized training
• Professionals working their way up through larger institutions interested in understanding the politics and paths of advancement and in expanding their professional networks/mentors

When you boil it down, we see our target audience as people with experience, who are dedicated to the field, and have aspirations to move into more senior roles. We don’t see age or educational background as a factor. And we see our audiences coming from both the administrative and artistic sides of organizations.

What do you think – do these descriptions fit your vision of our sector’s future leaders? If no, what are we missing?

Getting deeper into the content

I want to take a few minutes to paint more of a picture about what we’re envisioning with each of the content areas we’re currently considering.  Since the content doesn’t exist yet , it’s hard to say exactly what will evolve.   That said, here’s what we think each topic might include:

Finance/ financial strategy – This module would likely focus on different ways to analyze and understand financial health in an organization and how to communicate about financial health with different stakeholders (especially board members and donors).

Managing teams/ individuals – Participants would learn ways to enable those being managed to work to their full potential.  This would likely include looking at how to create an environment that reinforces productivity and exploring different techniques for managing individuals and teams.

Power and influence – This would likely focus on how to cultivate the support of others to be more effective in current roles and in the future.

Network mapping – Participants would take an analytical approach to thinking about existing networks and how to intentionally develop networks for personal/mentoring and professional/organizational purposes.

Innovation processes – This module would likely focus on processes for generating and implementing new ideas and the role of aleader in helping move new ideas forward.

Negotiation – This module would focus on thinking through, planning and maneuvering through various types of negotiations.

We’re not going to be able to develop each of these content areas for this set of presentations.  With that in mind, which 3 topics are you most interested in?

Narrowing down the content

Clearly the list of 8 broad topics needs to be narrowed down so we can focus on developing the 3 content areas that will actually be presented. The first step in the process was checking in with our pool of faculty to gauge their interest and availability.  Because we work with a limited pool of faculty – and they each teach in their areas of expertise – their availability is a big factor in determining what content we can present.

At this point we’ve talked to the faculty who would most likely teach each content area. We received a great deal of interest, but had to remove some of the options from the list. The broad topics still under consideration are:

• Finance/ financial management
• Managing teams/ individuals
• Power and influence/ managing change
• Innovation processes/ group dynamics
• Network mapping – how to think strategically about how you build relationships
• Negotiation

As we continue to discuss the content possibilities, I’ll flesh out what each of these might look like in more detail – so definitely check back if you’re curiosity is piqued. And don’t forget to let us know what you think – how is this for a start?  Are there some topics here that have potential in terms of being valuable leadership skills and appropriate for an in-person event?

Possible event sites

In case you couldn’t guess from the last post or two, we’re ramping up the program development to make sure we’re able to present the pilot series of events in September and October.

The first step has been connecting with people across the country to help us identify partners within our targeted communities.  In the conversations we’ve been having, we’ve been looking for people (or organizations) that are already thinking about or working in leadership development and succession planning for arts and culture professionals.  We’re also looking for people who are either involved in – or have access to – networks that include our target audience (arts and culture professionals who aspire to lead organizations in the next 5-7 years).

Nothing is set in stone at the moment, but we’ve identified some strong partners in a number of our target communities.  If I had to guess, I would say it’s pretty likely that we will end up presenting events in:

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

It will still be at least a little while before we’re able to finalize the locations for the events, but if you are from one of the communities above, we would be especially grateful for your insight and thoughts as we go through the design process.  Your reactions are welcome either as comments on here or, if  you prefer, you can email me directly.  Regardless of how you do it, we’d love it if you’d share your thoughts with us as we fit all the pieces together.

Getting to the good stuff – content development

First, a bit of catch up – with 5 or so presentations, we needed to figure out whether we would present the same material at each site. At this point we’re planning to develop 3 different content areas, each of which we’ll present at (approximately) 2 events. This gives us flexibility because we won’t be reliant on a single faculty. It also limits the resources required since we won’t have to develop entirely new materials for each site.

The goal with each of these content areas is to provide leadership skills that are timeless and valuable to the individual and their organization.  We have heard widely about the desire to develop hard and soft skills, and have tried to include both here. The broad topics we’re considering include:

• Power and influence/ managing change
• Leading innovation processes/ group dynamics
• Finance/ financial management
• Network mapping – how to think strategically about how you build relationships
• Strategy formulation – external awareness
• Alignment – helping everything work together
• Thinking about customer/ psychology
• Negotiation

We’ll be narrowing this list down and fleshing some of these out based on faculty interest and their areas of expertise in addition to feedback from our partners and prospective participants.   That said – what do you think? Any initial reactions?

The search for the cities

We are concerned with figuring out which cities we should present these events in.  It would be great if we could put out an RFP and see which communities respond.  But we’re determined to present these events by the end of October and  don’t have enough time.  Instead we’re going to have to do this in a more focused process.  Here’s a list of factors that crossed our minds (in no particular order):

• Where are there communities already thinking about leadership development and succession planning for arts organizations?
• Are there cities we think we should be in that we aren’t currently?
• Are there cities we work with a lot that we think should definitely be on the list?
• We need geographic coverage to approximate a national program as much as possible.
• American Express is the sole funder for this program – do we need to think about their target markets?

Our first pass at a list of possible sites:

Chicago
Detroit
Los Angeles
Miami
Minneapolis/ St. Paul
New York
Philadelphia
Phoenix
San Francisco
Seattle
Washington DC

We obviously can’t pursue each of these, since we’re only going to present in about 5 cities.  But before we get into paring down the list – are there any cities that you think we should be looking into which aren’t on this list?