Managing Complexity
Management is the process of efficiently completing the tasks necessary to achieve organizational objectives. The traditional functions of management, such as planning, organizing, and controlling, are based on managerial authority and provide direction and order. However, in today’s era of rapid technological and demographic change, the traditional approach of pursuing fixed targets in stable environments is inadequate. This module will look at where our concepts of management come from and how progressive organizations are moving from a directive management approach to an instructive one.
Leading Change
The work of authority is the application of current expertise to a known set of problems. However, there are sets of emergent problems where the application of current expertise is not sufficient to address them. These ill-defined problems challenge the organization to revisit priorities, learn new ways of doing, build tolerance for experimentation, and get buy-in from organizational members. This requires facilitating a process of change that challenges the status quo and builds new organizational capacity. In this module, we explore the contours of what it means to lead when confronted with these emergent challenges.
Conflict in Organizations
Conflict occurs when something we care about is threatened. Understanding how the conflict unfolds can help anticipate what is going to happen and allows us to take action that will avoid escalation and increase the possibility of resolution. This module analyzes how the normal conflict response of defensiveness leads to conflict escalation and explores steps to create a third way – the creation of an integrative space.
Strategic Planning
Strategy is the process of determining an organization’s basic mission and long-term objectives and then implementing a plan of action. It describes a conclusion reached under conditions of scarcity, competition, and fluidity. It occurs at the intersection of two axes: between past and future; and between the values and competencies of the organization. This module will enable your organization to articulate its mission and values, assess its environment, identify strategic issues, develop strategies and action steps, and discover a greater sense of direction.
Strategic Thinking
All organizations exist in fundamentally changeable systems that require new responses. Strategy is essentially a guess about the future. We approach it based on our internal representations of external reality. These mental models represent a possible future and they are essentially an improvisational act that require responses outside our current repertoire. Strategic thinking enables us to respond to the immediate adaptive challenge, while continuing to build a more adaptive mindset and organizational culture so we can navigate a changing and challenging world. Strategic thinking gives us the capacity to dramatically rethink the organization’s purpose, its core competencies, and its primary value proposition.