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.
Terrific line-up! Throughout my year’s of attending professional development workshops I have rarely had the opportunity to learn from academic experts who have dedicated their career / life’s work to these areas of skill development.
One (minor) concern: How will our arts administrators respond to these experts from outside of the cultural arts industry? It will be important for our instructors to acknowledge and address the application of teachings to the arts. Many times (to their own detriment), arts professionals will put themselves in a perceived bubble (by discipline and as an industry) and shut down at the thought of learning from an outsider. We’ve seen this happen when we invite professional marketers from the for-profit world to serve on panels at our marketing workshops. Andrew Taylor references this issue on his blog, The Artful Manager” http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/main/the-difference-that-makes-a-di.php
With the years of work NAS has in providing these types of interactions, I’m sure you have addressed this issue. Do you have thoughts / tips / ideas to share?
Thank you for the observations and for the questions. In developing our programs, we focus on helping leaders form “systematic strategies” relevant to themselves and their own organizations. We create learning experiences around solid analytical frameworks and use the experience of the professors and of colleagues present in the classroom to drive the learning. In this way, we hope that leaders can build their own skills, tackle important issues in their organizations, and build new ideas in a setting away from the daily pressures of the office.
It is hard for professionals to connect with and translate ideas from experts outside their field. We select top flight faculty from leading business and graduate schools around the country for our programs. These professors are expert in their fields and perhaps even more important, they are very skilled at facilitating meaningful and deep conversations with diverse groups of executives. They have taught executive education to many levels of leaders and worked with many different types of corporations around the world. The hallmark of each and every one of our faculty members is that they bring relevant ideas and ways of thinking to our field that we have had little or no access to because of cost or location. They are sensitive to the diverse needs of arts and culture leaders, and do not teach “the one answer”.
In cities around the country, there are many excellent opportunities to learn specific skills and exchange information around specific or discipline based topics. Our programs cross disciplines and bring ideas from outside our field to help us all see things in new ways. Comments from previous program participants show us that this complementary approach is much valued.