Advanced Management Practices
Course Overview


Course Content

This is a four-day course that addresses the continuing developmental needs of people who have already taken the program of management fundamentals “Contemporary Management Practices” (CMP) described elsewhere on this Web site. The following is what the course covers.


Day One: Managing a Change Initiative

“There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success or more dangerous to manage than the introduction of a new order of things,” said Niccolo Machiavelli. He was echoing Heraclitus: “Nothing endures but change.”

Although everyone knows that rapid change has become the hallmark of the early 21st Century, most people were raised to be anxious about change and resistant to it.

The first day session helps managers in a changing environment by teaching them:

• The psychological reasons why most people are change-resistant, and how to recognize these individuals
  
  
• The types of changes affecting humanitarian aid groups at this point in their history
  
  
• How those changes affect the nature of their work and how they do it
  
  
• Why change initiatives so often frustrate or fail
  
  
• Change Management: action tools and techniques for intelligently introducing a change and then managing it
  
  
• Change Leadership: communication tools and techniques for motivating and inspiring people involved in the change
  
  
• The major differences in terms of attitudes and behaviors between people who handle change well and those who handle it poorly
  
  
• How managers and their teams survive together in a world of rapid change
  
  
• How successful teams handle the pressure and stress change frequently produces
  
  
• How to create teams that thrive on change

• The characteristics and behaviors of innovative people
  
  
• The skills required to challenge current assumptions, activities and practices
  
  
• Key places in an enterprise to search for compelling opportunities
  
  
• The place of vision in the innovative process
  
  
• Critical thinking as a set of tools for defining opportunities well
  
  
• Risk analysis–applying the principles of a calculated risk
  
  
• Addressing the fear of risk
  
  
• Selecting an opportunity goal and making a decision to pursue it
  
  
• Creating an opportunity-seeking environment by developing an entrepreneurial spirit, behavior and techniques
  
  
• Involving team members as innovators

Day Three: Enhancing Group Cohesions and Performance

The qualities of self-direction and self-initiation required of the change agents and innovators described above require a management style more evolved than the situational leadership model taught in the CMP program. This style is called team management, and it builds on the previous model.

The session on Day Three teaches managers and their colleagues:

• How teams differ from more traditional work groups
  
  
• The different kinds of team formats, the positive and negative aspects of each and criteria for selecting the right one
  
  
• How groups go about the process of forming a team
  
  
• How team members communicate and work together
  
  
• The role of the team leader and the difference between leadership and management
  
  
• Characteristics and behaviors of effective team leaders
  
  
• Best practices in conducting effective team meetings
  
  
• The role of effective team members
  
  
• Tools and techniques for motivating and inspiring team members

Day Four: Managing and Retaining Talent

Humanitarian aid groups consist mostly of knowledge workers, and so, NGOs everywhere have a high incentive to see to it that their human capitol is used intelligently every day. It explains why this session on Talent Management is a part of the AMP program.

One can also make the case that the Career Planning training provided in this session is also in the best interests of aid workers. These workers are intensely aware that the biggest single asset that any of us has is the mix of skills, knowledge and talents that allow us to earn a living. That skill mix is a huge asset but, unfortunately, a constantly depreciating one. Because that depreciation occurs in tiny increments, it can become literally a silent career killer.

The session on Day Four teaches advanced managers the following:

• Common techniques for recognizing talent
  
  
• Profiles of employees most likely to participate actively in career planning efforts on their behalf
  
  
• Likely career paths in the humanitarian aid sector
  
  
• Career expectations today, especially among younger workers
  
  
• Career planning fundamentals
  
  
• Techniques for conducting a career guidance session
  
  
• The Gallup model for placement by talents and strengths
  
  
• Planned developmental activities and assignments
  
  
• The role of periodic coaching and mentoring
  
  
• Use of the ” Pygmalion Effect”
  
  
• The basics of succession planning at the unit or group level
  
  
• The comparative advantages and liabilities of promoting from within and recruiting from the outside

Methodology

All four sessions in this AMP program are taught in much the same way as those in the CMP: The course is constructed mostly around discussions, problems, cases and role-plays. We ask participants to apply the models we teach to the real problems and issues they face. We distribute numerous support handouts, and participants analyze their own styles and work preferences by completing several diagnostic questionnaires.

Workshop Outcomes

When participants of this workshop return to their jobs, these are the things they are prepared to do:

1. Introduce any change into the workplace in the most effective way
   
   
2. Manage that change as an ongoing process
   
   
3. Pick up on difficulties people have with such changes and address them
   
   
4. Deal with the normal resistances people have to any change
   
   
5. Set up a process for recognizing and then pursuing new strategic opportunities
   
   
6. Identify promising and actionable new ideas and support them
   
   
7. Use brainstorming and other normative techniques for solving complex problems, especially those involving group action and commitment
   
   
8. Practice good risk analysis and risk management; support new ideas, processes or forms of organization with appropriate failure tolerance techniques
   
   
9. Introduce some basic team formation steps and test them; support the ones that work
   
   
10. Analyze the way operating meetings are conducted and the roles people play in them; make appropriate changes where necessary

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