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.

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?

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?