Category: Urban and Civic Innovation

Boston as Leadership Learning Lab | MLD-618 Leadership, Social Change, and its Challenges with Chris Winship and Ira Jackson

Greg Dorchak

Throughout history, Boston and Massachusetts have been progressive leaders in social change: the first public school, the Revolutionary War, the first public library, the Abolitionist Movement to eliminate slavery, Women’s Suffrage, Universal Health Care (almost), and Marriage Equality, to name of a few.

Yet, Boston has had, and continues to have, serious challenges. Today its economy is booming; some talk about this being Boston’s “Golden Age.” That said, Boston has one of the highest levels of income inequality of any city in the U.S. Its history of difficult race, ethnic, and class relations issues continue to this day.

In their fall course, MLD-618: Leadership, Social Change, and its Challenges: Focus on Race, Class, and Social Justice, Christopher Winship and Ira Jackson of Harvard’s Sociology Department explore a range of challenging issues facing Boston through a leadership lens. Examining cases like Boston’s school busing crisis, the Catholic church child sex abuse scandal, the Boston Harbor cleanup and Seaport development, and Boston policing, this course focuses on the analytic aspects of leadership: the careful assessment of a situation and the potential for individuals or groups to create change.

Winship and Jackson posit that social change, for better or worse, often occurs, at least in part, because of individual or group leadership. But what makes for effective, or ineffective leadership? Is it the quality or skills of an individual? Do ethics matter? A good match between what is needed and who is in leadership? Or is it making the right strategic choices based on a thorough understanding of situation?

Answering these questions requires someone to be a good social scientist – to have a sophisticated understanding of the manifest and latent dynamics of a situation and the potential leaders within it. Importantly, different situations require different types of leadership and individuals differ in their leadership skills and resources.

Through MLD-618 students have fantastic opportunity to deeply examine local issues and actually interact with the key individuals who are, or were, the protagonists in the cases being studied.

Students can ask these special class guests how they understood the situation(s) they were in, why they made the decisions that they did, and if now, in retrospect, they would have done anything differently. A few examples of guests in the course are:

The core learning goal of this course is to give students the tools to rigorously analyze and evaluate situations where leadership is an issue and social change is the goal. You will learn how to do this by using a specific framework consisting of a series of steps:  analyzing a situation, determining what options are available, and then evaluating each option in term of its consequences and its ethics. In addition, many cases in the course are interrelated. What is possible to do in any situation will often be constrained by what happened in previous situation(s). It is important that the cases we examine be understood in context, not as isolated situations. The local focus on Boston as a community allows students to do this. The course also provides a unique opportunity for students to learn about Boston and its environs. Through three different trips to explore Boston: one as a class (Museum of African American History), and two on your own (The Black Heritage Trail and the Ella J. Baker House) give students concrete experience of the city in which they are studying, and to see the city as a learning laboratory.

MLD-618 is also listed at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as Sociology 1119. It will be taught in Fall 2022 on Mondays 3:00-5:45 in William James Hall.  The course makes a good complement to other MLD courses in Leadership, Strategic Management, Urban and Civic Innovation, and Organizing Civic, Political, and Social Action. For questions about these courses, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator

MLD-102: Getting Things Done: Management in a Development Context with Matthew Andrews

Greg Dorchak

MLD-102: Getting Things Done: Management in a Development Context taught by Matthew Andrews, Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development, is a core, required course for the HKS MPA/ID program. It is also open for enrollment by non-MPA/ID students; permission of the instructor is not required. With a focus on developing country contexts, this course introduces students to critical concepts in organization theory, public management, and the practice of development to enable them to understand the individual, structural, and systemic underpinnings of good management and governance. The development context requires a focus on service delivery from both government and civil society (non-profits and aid agencies in cooperation with one another, and with the local government partner).  Service delivery includes a wide variety of activities from education to regulatory enforcement. A critical driver of success is good management and governance, especially in the face of major resource constraints and in complex settings. Through theoretical readings, case study discussions, and simulations, students will apply theoretical concepts to real-world situations and, through simulations, experience the difficulty of managing. Building on analytical work from other courses, students will focus on such critical issues as corruption, participatory development, scaling up, social service delivery, and emergency response.

Learn more about Matt and his approach to management in a development context:

MLD-102 will be offered in two sections at Harvard Kennedy School in Fall of 2022. If you have any questions about this course, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.

Female doctor attending to male patient

MLD-636: Managing Transformations in Healthcare with Thomas Glynn

Greg Dorchak

Learning from practice is a hallmark of the Harvard Kennedy School, and our faculty includes numerous talented individuals who have spent significant portions of their careers in public service.  Perhaps the best example is adjunct lecturer Thomas Glynn.

Glynn’s long and distinguished career has spanned across the public-, private- and non-profit sectors, and covered an array of public policy domains, including public health, labor, transportation, and urban development. From 1983 to 1988 Glynn served as Deputy Commissioner of Public Welfare in Massachusetts which included oversight of the Commonwealth’s Medicaid program. From 1989 to 1991, Glynn was the General Manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority which includes subway, trolley, bus, paratransit and commuter rail services for Greater Boston. In 1991 the Mayor of Boston, Raymond Flynn, tapped Glynn to chair the Mayor’s Healthcare Commission with a focus on improving the performance of neighborhood health centers. Then, in 1993, Glynn was nominated by President Bill Clinton to be U.S.  Deputy Secretary of Labor. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent and served through April 15, 1996. HKS adjunct lecturer Tom Glynn

Subsequently, from 1996 to 2010 he served as COO of Partners Healthcare (now called “Mass General Brigham | Integrated Health Care System”), a network of Harvard hospitals, clinicians, and neighborhood health centers. Stepping down from Partners in 2010, Glynn joined the Harvard Kennedy School for the first time, teaching MLD-101, then the introductory public management course in the MPP core, and serving as the faculty chair of an executive program for new State Commissioners for Public Health.  Called into public service again, Glynn left HKS to serve from 2012-2018 as CEO of the Massachusetts Port Authority which includes Boston’s Logan International Airport, four maritime businesses in the Port of Boston and significant real estate portfolios in the South Boston Seaport and East Boston Waterfront. In 2018 Glynn returned to Harvard, becoming Chief Executive Officer of the Harvard Allston Land Company, overseeing the University’s non-institutional development of its Enterprise Research Campus in Allston, MA. In Fall of 2019, Glynn stepped back into the HKS classroom as an adjunct lecturer teaching courses in on strategic management for public service organizations.  Glynn continues to serve on the Board of Directors of the Pine Street Inn, an agency that serves the homeless, the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Health Professions, and several other non-profit healthcare organizations.  For his exceptional service, Glynn was named a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Bringing his wealth of experience into his course MLD-636: Managing Transformations in Healthcare Glynn focuses on how to successfully manage transformations in the U.S. healthcare system. Transformations in healthcare include changing reimbursement models, initiatives to improve quality, and projects to redesign the care delivery system. Unsurprisingly, given his experience, this course will work across sectors – non-profit, private, and public sectors, including federal, state and local levels.  Using primarily the case-method pedagogy, this course will begin with a focus on diagnosing specific contextual, organizational, and cultural challenges faced by organizations delivering healthcare.  Then the course will turn to management tools that can transform the healthcare delivery system. These tools include: 1) managing silos, 2) enhancing the role of clinicians, 3) goal setting and monitoring, and 4) public health campaigns. Glynn also plans to bring into his class several distinguished guest lecturers who are in the heart of current practice.

MLD-636 will be offered at Harvard Kennedy School in the fall semester. If you have any questions about this course, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.

MLD-601: Operations Management with Mark Fagan

Greg Dorchak

Operations are at the heart of public service delivery. Considering essential service providers currently in the spotlight like the U.S. Postal Service, state-level providers of unemployment insurance, and public health agencies throughout the world charged with distributing the COVID-19 vaccines to populations across the globes, we see that optimal operations management can be critical to people’s lives.  What, then, does it take for leaders of organizations like these to optimize for both effectiveness and efficiency, delivering for the public, and satisfying those to whom they are accountable?  MLD-601: Operations Management taught by versatile Lecturer in Public Policy Mark Fagan explores how operations management is critical to value creation in the public sector. Featuring experiential learning through consulting projects with local government agencies and non-profit organizations, Fagan’s course helps students tackle real operations management issues. Past clients have included the City of Boston, Boston Public Schools, Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, Massachusetts Department of Youth Services, Massachusetts Department of Revenue, and Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy.  One recent notable student project was on “Improving Data Operations at Pine Street Inn’s Workforce Development Unit,” which aimed to help this major Boston organization understand and manage its job training program for homeless people.

At the end of this rigorous but fun course students will be able to:

  1. See opportunities to improve operations.
  2. Diagnose the problems and barriers to creating value.
  3. Design effective and efficient solutions.
  4. Apply concepts to solve client issues.

In addition to Operations Management, Fagan also teaches MLD-605: Systems Thinking and Supply Chain Management (Spring) and a  section of the MPP core course API-501 Policy Design and Delivery I.

Learn more about the work of Fagan and his students in these courses by exploring the Autonomous Vehicles Policy Initiative at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government,
Listen to Fagan discuss how policymakers can navigate the robot car revolution on this HKS PolicyCast podcast.

Read how students in the Spring 2020 Supply Chain Management course went to work to help when the COVID-19 struck

Harvard Kennedy School course helps COVID-19 front lines

For questions about any of Mark Fagan’s courses, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.

Make a Difference through Government: Data-Driven Public Management with Elizabeth Linos

Greg Dorchak

In this age of deep societal challenges and growing complexity, when government at all levels is tasked with implementing a wide and growing range of policies to ensure and improve the public good, public managers and those working with governments can find it very difficult to move the needle on important programs and policy initiatives.
With her new course MLD-125 Data-Driven Public Management , Professor Elizabeth Linos introduces graduate students to the central elements of public management and policy implementation, with a focus on three core challenges that public managers face: managing programs; managing people; and managing change.  A sampling of the questions explored in this course include:

  • How can governments use data and evidence to improve program performance and what do you do when the data is bad?
  • How do we reduce administrative burdens in government and why does it matter?
  • How can we recruit, retain, and support frontline workers?
  • What are the big dilemmas around algorithmic decision-making, nudging, participatory government, and other innovations that an effective public manager should consider?

Using academic theory from public management, real-world case studies, and a series of guest speakers who work in and with government, students will learn about the barriers and opportunities to make a difference through government.  While most of the cases studied will focus on federal, state, and local government challenges in the U.S., Linos draws on best practices and studies from around the world.

Portrait photo of Elizabeth Linos smiling
Elizabeth Linos

Dr. Elizabeth Linos joined HKS in July 2022 as the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor for Public Policy and Management.  Linos is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College with majors in Government and Economics. She earned her PhD in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2016, and went on to spend 5 years as Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley
Between college and graduate school, Linos worked directly in government as a policy advisor to the Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, focusing on social innovation and public sector reform. While pursuing her doctorate, Linos spent two years as Vice President, Head of Research and Evaluation at the Behavioral Insights Team – North America, working with government agencies in the U.S. and the U.K. to improve programs using behavioral science and to build capacity around rigorous evaluation. In 2021 she was appointed, and now remains, a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution.

Linos’ research focuses on how to improve government by focusing on its people and the services they deliver. Specifically, she uses insights from behavioral science and evidence from public management to consider how to recruit, retain, and support the government workforce, how to reduce administrative burdens that low-income households face when they interact with their government, and how to better integrate evidence-based policymaking into government. To those ends, Elizabeth founded and now directs The People Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with a mission to empower the public sector by producing cutting-edge research on the people of government and the communities they are called to serve. For more information, follow the work of The People Lab on Twitter.

MLD-125 will be offered in the fall semester. For questions about these courses, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.

MLD-412 MBTA student site visit

FAB in MLD: Finance, Accounting, and Budgeting are Central to Organizational Success

Greg Dorchak

Budgeting, accounting, and financial management are central to the successful operation of government, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations.  MLD offers a sequence of three courses for students seeking to boost their understanding how “FAB” concepts and techniques can be powerful management tools.

 

MLD-401M: Financial Analysis of Public and Nonprofit Organizations taught by Brian Iammartino is an introductory, general-audience course intended for students with no background in accounting or financial analysis. By the end of the course, students will be able to: 1) Understand commonly-used accounting and financial analysis terminology, concepts, tools and processes; 2) Evaluate financial statements in order to ask probing questions, identify risks and/or opportunities, and think critically about financial performance; and 3) Recommend and justify courses of action based on analyses of accounting and other financial data. Specific topics covered include an overview of the financial reporting landscape and governance; accounting principles and concepts; a detailed review of the major financial statements; and the analysis of major financial topics such as organizational liquidity, solvency, operations, funding, and benchmarking.  Main focus will be on features of public and nonprofit accounting, but many of the topics covered are applicable to all types of organizations. Students completing MLD-401M will be well prepared to take the the following course.

 

MLD-411M: Introduction to Budgeting and Financial Management also taught by Brian Iammartino is a rigorous introductory course aims to demystify FAB topics for a general audience of students, even those lacking any related background. Iammartino will, step-by-step, help students understand the entire budgeting process, including budget formulation and execution, variance analysis, budget strategies such as activity-based costing, revenue forecasting, and capital budgeting. Accounting topics include an overview of the financial reporting and governance landscape, accounting principles and concepts, and a detailed review of the major financial statements.Linda Bilmes, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy The course will build on these budgeting and accounting principles to progress to financial management techniques such as the Balanced Scorecard, financial benchmarking, and the analysis of organizational liquidity, solvency, operations and funding.

 

Students successfully completing MLD-411M may apply for Linda Bilmes’ spring course MLD-412: The Greater Boston Applied Field Lab, an advanced, field-based, experiential learning course in which students work on challenging urban management and financial projects. A comprehensive video about the course is available here.

Of MLD-412 , Mid-Career MPA (’20) and recent program fellow Will Eden says, “No course at the Kennedy School I’ve taken has been as thoughtfully composed, incorporated as much feedback, or offered such a valuable hands-on learning experience.” Real world course projects in the past year included a detailed estimate on the financial viability of plans for building a performing arts center in Gloucester, MA; an analysis for the town of Hingham, MA about funding federally mandated storm water runoff infrastructure; rethinking energy supply and demand options related to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority‘s (MBTA) the South Boston Power Station; and, for the Massachusetts Port Authority (MassPort), an assessment of threats/opportunities for the Boston seafood cluster in the global supply chain.  Past projects have included a number of meaningful collaborations with the City of Somerville, MA, documented on video here. For more details, read the AY21 Report on the Applied Field Lab.

 

MLD-401M and MLD-411M will be offered at the Harvard Kennedy School in Fall semester. MLD-412 will be offered in the spring semester. For questions about these courses, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator. You may also contact Greater Boston Advanced Field Lab Program Director Susan Krusell (susan_krusell@hks.harvard.edu)