Rabu, 12 Agustus 2009

Authentic Leadership Development (Bagian dari: Organizational Behavior 1-9)



Course Purpose

The purpose of Authentic Leadership Development (ALD) is to enable students to develop themselves as leaders of organizations and to embark on paths of personal leadership development. ALD requires personal curiosity and reflection from students and personal openness and sharing in class discussions, leadership discussion groups, and one-on-one sessions with peer mentors and the professor. Leadership development concepts used in the course will be immediately applicable for students and useful for the rest of their lives.

Objectives

  1. To enable students to understand their leadership journeys and their crucibles through framing their life stories and experiences to date.
  2. To understand why leaders lose their way and the self-awareness needed to avoid derailment.
  3. To gain clarity about their leadership principles, values, and ethical boundaries, and how they will respond under pressure when severely challenged.
  4. To understand what is motivating them, both extrinsically and intrinsically, and to find leadership paths that will enable them to utilize their motivated capabilities.
  5. To explore how to build support teams and lead an integrated life.
  6. To understand the purpose of their leadership and to create a Personal Leadership Development Plan to guide them throughout their lives.

Intellectual Premise and Course Concepts

The premise of ALD is that leaders who know themselves well and consciously develop their leadership abilities throughout their lifetimes will be more effective and successful leaders and will lead more satisfying and fulfilling lives. To do so, leaders must take responsibility for their own development, rather than relying on their companies for development.

ALD will provide students with ideas, techniques, and tools to assist in their leadership development journeys, exploring concepts such as lifelong leadership development, the power of leadership crucibles, discovering your authentic self, knowing your principles, values and ethical boundaries, building authentic relationships and support teams, leadership style and power, integrated leadership, and purpose-driven leadership.

Who Should Take This Course

ALD is designed for students desirous of becoming authentic and effective leaders, committed to develop themselves, and who want to understand their motivations and the purpose of their leadership. Students must be open to sharing their personal insights, experiences, ambitions, and fears.

Course Format

ALD students will meet two times per week, once for ninety minutes with the full class, and once for 110 minutes with their six-person Leadership Development Group. Class sessions will be built around a series of cases written specifically for this course, including established leaders and younger leaders, as well as leadership readings and outside class speakers.

Requirements

  • Weekly individual assignments on personal subjects related to the week's theme.
  • One 110-minute meeting with the six-person Leadership Development Group (LDG) for twelve weeks from 3:10-5:00 pm (on Thursdays for sections with Profs. George and Nohria and on Wednesdays for sections with Profs. Kaplan and Olson), with assigned topics and rotating facilitators drawn from the group. Groups will be assigned in advance by the professor on the basis of composing a diverse group of participants.
  • One 90-minute class each week for twelve weeks from 3:10-4:40 PM (on Mondays for sections with Profs. George and Nohria and on Tuesdays for sections with Profs. Kaplan and Olson).
  • Each of the four sections will be limited to 60 students in order to facilitate open dialogue.
  • In lieu of an exam, students will write a mid-term paper on the greatest crucible of their leadership journeys and a final paper on the purpose of their leadership, as well as develop their Personal Leadership Development Plan.

Course Topics

Discover Your Authentic Leadership * Your Journey to Authentic Leadership * Why Leaders Lose Their Way * Crucibles of Leadership * Discovering Your Authentic Self * Values, Leadership Principles and Ethical Boundaries * Motivations and Motivated Capabilities * Building Your Support Team * Leading an Integrated Life * Leadership Purpose and Legacy * Empowering Other Leaders * Optimizing Your Leadership Effectiveness

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The Board of Directors and Corporate Governance






Why This Course?

Why should a second year MBA student take a course about board of directors and corporate governance? For the same reasons you take courses about other issues facing CEOs and other corporate leaders. Most graduates of HBS will end up in top management. Most HBS graduates will also serve on multiple boards of directors of public, private, and non-profit organizations. A clear understanding of how boards function and the issues their members face is a prerequisite to being an effective director. The course also will be helpful if you plan a career as a consultant, investment banker or investor by providing tools that will allow you to be an effective advisor to top managers, corporate boards, and in making investment decisions based on rigorous evaluations about the quality of a firm's governance.

Course Objectives

The primary goal of the course is to equip you to be an effective board member or advisor to boards. You will gain an understanding of the legal, financial, managerial and behavioral issues with which directors must contend to be effective in performing their duties. When you enter a boardroom in the future, you will do so with a framework for understanding the complex dynamics between directors, executives, and their shareholders. You will also have an understanding of key elements of corporate governance activities and the work boards must do including, strategic reviews, evaluating and compensation CEOs, director selection, and managing top executive succession. You will also gain an appreciation of the costs and rewards of board service.

A related goal is to acquaint you with corporate governance systems in the U.S. and other major countries. (The term corporate governance system refers to the institutional system of stock markets, government regulatory agencies, legal duties of the board, and professional firms, which are expected to oversee corporate activities on behalf of shareholders and the public, e.g. the media and political representatives.) From this perspective, the course will provide you with an understanding of the reasons there have been so many corporate scandals in recent years, which have led to the loss of shareholder and debt holder value, as well as jobs. We shall also discuss the changes in boardroom processes that have been proposed in the hope of preventing such problems in the future.

While the primary focus will be on U.S. public companies that set the general framework for corporate governance, we shall also devote time to consider these issues in other countries and in the governance of private companies, e.g. private equity, venture capital backed enterprises, and non-profit organizations.

Content and Organization

The course is 29-sessions of class work plus a final exam. The first module provides a basic introduction to the activities and institutions that affect boardroom dynamics. We will begin with an examination of the role of shareholders and their relationship to boards of directors. Next, we will focus briefly on the legal situation of board members. In the second module, we shall discuss the activities of boards under normal circumstances, including the nature of director and CEO dynamics, board's role in strategy, in selecting, evaluating and rewarding the CEO, and in assuring transparent financial reporting. The next module will focus on how boards deal with crisis situations such as hostile takeovers, CEO dismissals, CEO succession, compensation, and unhappy shareholders. In module three, we will examine the governance of private companies, e.g. family-owned, private equity and venture capital boards, and nonprofit organizations.

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Commerce and Society: Business and Creation of Social Value



Overview

What is the appropriate role for businesses in producing social value? What are the best strategies and tools for defining and producing socially beneficial outcomes? And what effect do these activities have on customers and employees? This course explores business strategies for effective global citizenship and examines ways in which strategic and responsible practice can be associated with bottom-line benefits. Students will be exposed to an array of challenges that corporations engage on a daily basis including social and cause-marketing, labor issues, public health dilemmas, education initiatives, environmental choices, questions of human rights, and the problems of operating in diverse and foreign cultures. While many of the examples are U.S. based, a number of materials are drawn from international situations.

Career Focus

This course is meant for students who will lead businesses, or will advise or work with the leaders of businesses, as they develop a more strategic understanding of corporate responsibility, engage customers through social marketing as engines of social value-creation, and build internal systems to insure that their responsible corporate policies translate into responsible actions on the ground. Leaders of nonprofit and public agencies who will regularly interact with business leaders on issues of corporate responsibility will also find the course valuable.

Course Content and Organization

The course focuses on three central questions. First, in the rapidly evolving global environment of today, what constitutes social value? Who defines it? And how can one achieve it through the collective action of private individuals? Second, what is the role of consumers (and the extent to which they value social attributes and outcomes generated by the products, services and ideas they consume) in driving socially responsible business behavior? Third, as corporations move into what are often uncharted waters, how can they best organize themselves internally and externally to be effective and responsible global citizens? How can they best develop and articulate their implicit and explicit theories of how social outcomes are related to their business goals? What internal processes need to be initiated and developed for them to become effective? How can they assess the impact of their efforts, and learn how to be more effective at both social and business goals? How can they best organize and manage themselves to make progress on issues formerly perceived as being outside of corporate boundaries (such as dealing with AIDS/HIV in the workplace or child labor) and simultaneously be strategically effective?

Course Format and Evaulation

The course is being offered in the fall semester as a 20 session course with a paper. Class sessions will be anchored on a case discussion, with class participation counting towards 50% of the course grade. The other 50% of the grade will be for an individual paper - 3000 to 5000 words, with 3 to 5 exhibits. For the paper, students will have the option of picking an enterprise of their choice, and critically examining their social value creation strategy.

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Great Business Leaders. The Importance of Contextual Intelligence

Career Focus

This course is designed for students who want to learn more about business history and historically significant business leadership and/or students who aspire to be great business leaders. It will enable students to develop a better understanding of the role that context plays in shaping great business leaders.

Educational Objectives

To analyze the role that contextual factors (specifically government intervention, global affairs, demography, social mores, technology, and labor) played in shaping leadership opportunities in the 20th century and how these factors will shape leadership in the future. The course is also designed to provide insight into the legacies of great business leaders over time providing a foundation for students to understand the role that business has played in shaping the way individuals live, interact, and work. Through the course, students will develop their own sense of contextual intelligence and how their decisions/choices are influenced by and influence the contextual landscape in which they live and work.

Course Content and Organization

The course content is organized to provide students with an historical view of the evolution of leadership over the course of the 20th century. Each decade of the 20th century is explored to uncover the salient contextual factors that were at play and how businesses were developed, managed, or transformed to seize the zeitgeist of the times. The course will include biographical interpretations and case studies of business leaders within the context of their time. We will explore the different ways in which leaders were able to forge business opportunities presented by their context. In addition to case studies, the course will include videos, discussions, and supplemental readings to place key leaders within the context of their times. Finally, the course will include some assessment exercises for students to better understand their own personal leadership style and approach.

The book, In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the 20th Century will be used to provide additional conceptual frameworks for much of the first part of the course. The course is organized into three main modules: (1) context-based leadership (U.S.-based); (2) leadership archetypes - exploring ways in which leaders created, maximized or reshaped businesses and industries; and (3) global leadership legacies. In concluding the course, we will explore the manner in which one company's leadership approach evolved with the changing contextual landscape of the 20th century.

Evaluation Information

Final Paper: There is no final exam for this course. Instead, students are required to write a paper which analyzes a Great Business Leader based on the principles and concepts discussed during the course.

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Leading Innovative Ventures

Career Focus

This course is intended for students interested in launching a venture in a novel, innovative industry context — either as a start-up or a corporate venture. It should also appeal to students interested in venture capital/private equity, consulting, or general management in innovation-driven industries.

Educational Objectives

Entrepreneurial opportunities often exist when industries are either created or transformed by innovation: new products, new business models, and/or new technologies. The pursuit of these opportunities, however, creates challenges for both start-ups and established firms. This course introduces a set of conceptual frameworks and tools that help students to identify, evaluate, and manage innovative ventures. Like the RC Entrepreneurial Manager course, this course integrates concepts from multiple domains including strategy, marketing, operations and organization behavior.

Course Content and Organization

The course examines innovative ventures with both an external and internal lens. The first two modules focus outside the firm on the challenges of shaping new categories and new industries, and the third module looks inside the firm at organizational challenges. We will explore a range of novel contexts/categories including: folding bicycles, bidet-toilets, online Indian art auctions, aviation (e.g. jet taxis), electronic publishing (eBooks), fashion, digital imaging, clean energy, and special education.

1. Innovation in established industries

We begin by examining the challenges of introducing innovative products/services in established industries. How should a firm position and market its product to increase awareness and trial? What consumer beliefs, biases, and behaviors must be changed to encourage adoption, and how? Should a firm attempt to create a new category, or associate itself with an existing category? What are the trade-offs associated with these different positionings?

2. Shaping industry evolution

We next evaluate broader patterns of industry and ecosystem evolution, with a focus on proactively shaping an emerging industry early in its life cycle. How can firms influence customer perceptions of new products, the structure of the ecosystem, and the institutional environment (e.g. regulators, trade associations, and standards)? How do analogies influence the way individuals make sense of novel products? How can firms influence the analogies formed? How can a firm create incentives for complementary producers in the ecosystem to support its products / standards and overall industry vision?

3. Leading Organizational Renewal

Finally we examine the internal organizational challenges inherent in leading innovative ventures, with an emphasis on successfully exploiting a core business while at the same time exploring new domains. How can a start-up move beyond its initial product / customers and grow successfully? Why is it so difficult for established firms to be entrepreneurial? What are the cognitive and behavioral sources of inertia and bias, and what organizational levers can help to overcome them? How can firms simultaneously drive both incremental and radical innovation? What is the role of the senior team?

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Leading Professional Service Firms

Career Focus

There are three educational objectives for this course. The first is to develop an understanding of what makes professional service firms successful. There are some particular aspects of these types of firms which make it difficult to use management practices common in corporations, such as how strategy gets set and how leadership is exercised. Second, since the performance of a professional service firm ultimately depends upon the performance of its professionals, the course will address what it takes for individuals to be successful throughout their careers, including at the very early stages, as their responsibilities change.

Early in their careers professionals need to develop the appropriate technical skills and do exceptional work for clients, learn how to work with their peers, learn how to manage teams, learn how to work with partners who have different skills and preferences and fashion a career that will lead to long-term success in the firm or a timely decision to leave. As professionals progress in their careers they become "producing managers" where they must learn to deal with the conflicting pressures that come from managing important client relationships while taking on increasing internal responsibilities regarding the management of the firm. Those professionals who take on more senior leaderships responsibilities-under such labels as "Managing Partner," "Sector Head," "Practice Head," or important committee assignments (e.g., promotion, compensation, governance and strategy)-must learn how to effectively exercise this leadership in situations where many of the formal sources of power and authority that exist in corporations are limited or do not even exist.

Finally, since professional service firms provide services that are critical to a company's performance, it is important to understand how to manage this relationship from the client's perspective. In some cases companies have decided to incorporate professionals "in-house," such as with lawyers and strategy consultants, and so this relationship becomes an internal one that poses some particular challenges on both sides.

Course Content and Organization

This course builds on a half-course of the same name that was offered in the Winter of 2007. As such it will contain a large proportion of new cases that have been selected to illustrate some of the leading-edge practices in professional service firms today (such as the use of technology), as well as some of the significant challenges (such as reputational risk) many of them are facing, particularly in certain professions. Additional insights will be gained from class visits by senior executives from many of the firms these cases are about. We will also have guests from some of the other firms discussed in the course. The course includes a very broad range of professional service firms including accounting, advertising, executive search, investment banking, landscape architecture, law, management consulting, medicine, outsourcing, public relations and venture capital.

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Leading Teams

Course Number 2020

Career Focus

This course is intended for students who will be responsible for leading and managing a group of people and who wish to increase their competence in working across a wide variety of group settings

Educational Objectives

The objectives of this course are 1) to sharpen your understanding of both the disruptive forces that can derail teams and the conditions that increase team effectiveness; 2) to develop your ability to diagnose complex team dynamics and take action to improve team functioning, particularly in teams that bridge geographical and cultural differences; and 3) to build the combination of analytic and interpersonal skills you need to effectively lead teams.

Course Content and Organization

Soon after graduation, many students take responsibility for leading a small group of people. If you are in charge of such a group, your own success will depend on your ability to 1) enhance the performance of each individual group member, and 2) foster the appropriate amount and type of coordination among all members. Effective group leaders leverage the skills, talents, and insights of group members, guiding the group to accomplish far more than members could achieve by working independently. Unfortunately, many dysfunctional groups do the opposite, wasting or even undercutting members' contributions. This course will help you identify the common problems that groups encounter along with the actions that group leaders (or members) can take to avoid or remedy these problems. In doing so, the course will sort through the widespread myths and misconceptions about teams that often stand in the way of effective teamwork, even as teams become a way of life in many organizations. The course consists of three modules.

Module I. Team Design: Creating the Conditions for Optimal Team Functioning
The goal of this module is to develop an understanding of the enabling conditions that maximize a team's chances of success. The module will focus on how leaders can assemble and launch effective teams by putting into place appropriate contextual conditions, structures, members, and task assignments.

Module II. Team Processes: Diagnosing and Remedying Team Dynamics
The first goal of this module is to provide conceptual guidelines for diagnosing team dynamics and determining one's strategic options as a manager for intervening to improve these dynamics. We will identify the problems that most frequently disrupt team members' interactions, and the underlying sources of these problems. The second goal is to impart practical interpersonal skills for implementing effective interventions in group situations.

Module III. Bridging Differences in Teams
This module gives special consideration to the challenges and opportunities of leading teams that are culturally diverse, with a special emphasis on differences among team members in race, ethnicity, gender, religion, nationality, and other dimensions of social identity that are marked by a history of intergroup prejudice, discrimination, or misunderstanding. These differences give rise to different life experiences, knowledge, and insights that teams can leverage to spur high performance. Yet they also breed conflict, mistrust, and misunderstanding. This module explores the forces within society and individuals that hinder the effective functioning of culturally diverse teams and examines how team leaders can foster conditions that make cultural diversity an asset rather than a liability.

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