Leading Organisations in Disruptive Times Programme Onboarding

In the Launch Week, you will find guidance on how to make the most of the programme, information on completion and certification requirements, and an overview of the learning journey. You will learn how to navigate the platform, get to know your faculty and peers.

You will also find out about the “Action Learning Project” (ALP). The ALP is an integral part of the online course. It offers you the opportunity to apply your learning to explore ways to contribute to digital strategy design and execution in your work. The objective of the ALP is to reinforce your learning and develop a tangible action plan for strategy execution. During the Launch Week, you will need to submit the scope of your ALP.

Note: In order to successfully pass this programme, you must complete your ALP to a high standard. 

The introductory week begins with foundations in effective leadership. We acknowledge a paradox of leadership: it should be easy, given how natural hierarchical systems are amongst human populations and history, but we know that it is hard, that humans are complex—as much as we accept ranks and power differences, we also challenge our leaders, expect them to conform to various norms that are beyond even the authority of the most powerful leaders. We therefore need leadership models that acknowledge certain core human principles (most explicitly fairness and procedural justice) while leaders carry the responsibility to shape and enact, in other words own and be accountable. In Week 1, we explore one such model. We will challenge some common practices of leadership and offer a more modern perspective. 

Learning Objectives:

• Acknowledge the importance and impact of decision-making as the core work of leadership
• Recognise how decision-making in today’s “empowered” workforce is less about “telling” than it is about guiding and facilitating an effective decision-making path
• Explore a practical model for implementing Fair-Process Leadership norms in your setting.

Week 2 turns the lens outward, from the leadership of relatively smaller units (although scalable, from specific people, to teams, to larger groups) to orchestrating change in larger organisational settings. Based on aggregate research reviews on the most popular change models in recent decades, we take you through the fundamental steps and considerations in leading programmatic change (meaning planned change). These are the essential ideas around change leadership that have accumulated in this vast literature over the decades, and they form an important set of tools and principles for leaders needing to ensure adaptive organisations. 

Learning Objectives:

• Deepen your understanding of the complexities of change amidst digitisation
• Explore ten pillars to guide organizational change in your organisation
• Acknowledge the ‘X factor’ to change management while considering essential shared elements to lead to success.

In Week 3 you will complete a Social Capital Questionnaire which will give you a personal report that captures key features of your social network and help you better understand the concepts around political influence and social capital that will be covered in Week 4.

Week 4 builds on the change challenge, but it confronts an uncomfortable reality of leadership—while we must have solid, systematic tools for leadership and strategic change, sometimes leaders need to “move mountains” without full authority while facing powerful undercurrents and political challenges in the organisation, confronting ideas and assumptions that don’t normally surface and yet create major obstacles to change. We believe these types of challenges are a reality for many digital/disruptive forces, because they can be so distant from the “status quo” of the organisation. We need to deepen, therefore, the modern leaders toolkit. We need to explore the challenges of power and politics in leadership, and we need to offer some additional ideas and tools. But we need to do this while grappling with the paradox of leadership with which we started, that leaders will face challenges to their plans, ideas and authority and yet must somehow find a way to shepherd change while being mindful of the norms of her/his community. We will also delve deeper and consider some of the political dynamics leaders should be aware of and the mindfulness of successfully navigating political challenges.

Learning Objectives:

• Explore why people often have ambivalent reactions to power and influence
• Differentiate between hard and soft power, emphasizing the significance of developing the latter, especially in increasingly horizontal and network-driven work environments
• Examine the human proclivity for “familiar” and “clan-like” relationships, instead of exploring new and diverse relations, and understanding the importance of cultivating social curiosity and openness.

Week 5 continues the theme of being effective “under the current” leaders, having tools that go beyond “normal” programmatic change. Inevitably, this means confronting organisational culture, perhaps the deepest frontier of resistance or challenge faced by leaders, powerful, because it is so silent but stable and repetitive. Also, digital and disruptive forces, we have found, face substantial challenges from organisational culture, and tend to require new assumptions (about time, cooperation, responsibilities, etc.). Modern executives, therefore, need tools that can help them deal with organisational culture. 

Learning Objectives:

• Develop a deeper understanding of how to pinpoint and define something as seemingly abstract as organisational culture
• Gain insights into analysing organisational culture and navigating the array of diverse mental models and competing organisational narratives
• Explore ideas for shaping organisational culture so that it supports your change management strategy.
   

Week 6 brings together insights and research from the general area of Ambidextrous Leadership – effectively the “art” of coping with contradictory forces and operations in modern business organisations. A key starting point is the acceptance that ‘contradiction’ is a good thing and that successful companies do not try to “resolve” but instead find a way to embrace it. To successfully deal with such forces, personal development of paradoxical thinking is essential. We will examine ambidexterity at both micro (leadership and team mindset) and macro levels (structural design, contextual work) and our focus will be on the challenge of balancing conflicting forces within modern, complex organisations: the near and far, to explore and execute, whether autonomously or through synergies. 

Learning Objectives:

• Develop an understanding of the major contradictions facing organisations in fast-paced environments
• Learn from companies that manage ambidexterity well
• Discover the MC (Managing Contradictions) Framework to help you manage contradictory forces in your organisation.

The last two weeks are for you to synthesise your learning from the programme into a compelling Final ALP Assignment submission, building on your reflections from your weekly ALPs into your narrative for your change initiative. 

The Peer Review process offers you an opportunity to give feedback to, and receive feedback from, your peers on the Final Assignment.