Tag: AY 2021-22

MLD-802M: Nonprofit Management and Leadership with Arthur Brooks

Greg Dorchak
Arthur Brooks
Arthur Brooks, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership

Students seeking a broad introductory overview of non-profit management — from historical and legal origins, relationships to government, organizational structure, strategic planning, fundraising and communications, and modes of leadership — will want to enroll in MLD-802M: Nonprofit Management and Leadership with Arthur Brooks.  As President for 11 years of the American Enterprise Institute, and, before that, as a scholar of the non-profit sector at The Maxwell School at Syracuse University, Brooks, now William Henry Bloomberg Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, is uniquely qualified to teach both the academic and practical concepts critical to future leaders of non-profit organizations.

His course is appropriate for students with interests ranging across the sector, from social services, to international aid, to the arts. This course will draw on proven frameworks and real world examples to provide students an intellectual and practical foundation for further coursework and careers in the sector. The course features guest lecturers from premier scholars and practitioners. Past visitors have included HKS pioneering scholar on Public Value, Mark Moore; President Emerita of Harvard University and the Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Drew Gilpin Faust;  Ian Rowe, founding CEO of Public Prep, a nonprofit network of public charter schools based in the South Bronx and Lower East Side of Manhattan; and social entrepreneur Dan Pallotta.

In addition to his interest in non-profit management, Brooks writes, speaks, and podcasts on a wide range of topics. Find out more at his personal homepage arthurbrooks.com.

MLD-802M will be taught at HKS in the Fall semester.  A complementary course in non-profit financial management MLD-427 Strategic Finance for Nonprofit Leaders with James Honan is offered in both the fall and spring semesters. Both courses may be taken for credit.
HKS also offers several other courses in the non-profit and social innovation areas:

MLD-820         Strategies for Social Impact with Matthew Lee
MLD-830         Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Private and Social Sectors with Richard Cavanagh
MLD-831         Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the Private and Social Sectors – Business Plan Workshop with Richard Cavanagh
MLD-836M      Social Entrepreneurship/Social Enterprise Deep Dive: How to Operationalize & Scale for Social Impact
with James Bildner and Stephanie Khurana
DPI-312           Sparking Social Change through Arts and Culture with Sanderijn Cels

If you have any questions about this course, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.

 

 

MLD-355: Public Narrative with Marshall Ganz — A Leadership Practice Translating Values into Action

Greg Dorchak

According to MLD’s  Marshall Ganz, the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society, “To lead is to accept responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.” But where should a student aspiring to lead for the the greater good begin?  For Ganz, the process of leadership starts with the “self” and builds outward into a constituency, creating “us,” a group that’s ready “now” to meet the challenges on the path to shared goals.  In MLD-355: Public Narrative Ganz and his highly collaborative teaching team introduce students to the discursive process through which individuals, communities, and nations learn to make choices, construct identity, and inspire action. The goal is teaching students to link their our own callings to that of a community that shares a call to action, translating deeply held personal values into effective action. Ganz continues, “Because it engages the ‘head’ and the ‘heart,’ Marshall Ganz's Public Narrative Leadership Pedagogy: Head, Heart, Handsnarrative can instruct and inspire – teaching us not only why we should act, but moving us to act.” Based on a pedagogy of guided reflective practice, students work in groups to learn to tell their own public narrative. Developing their own personal practice of public narrative builds students’ leadership capacity, and is especially critical when they are called to respond in moments of challenge like facing loss, lacking power, confronting inequality and difference, and enacting meaningful change.

Over the years Ganz and his course graduates have introduced public narrative training widely across the globe including in  the Obama presidential campaign (2007-8), Sierra Club, Episcopal Church, United We Dream Movement, the Ahel Organizing Initiative, (Jordan), Serbia on the Move (Belgrade), Avina (Bogata), National Health Service (UK), Peking University (Beijing), Tatua (Kenya), Community Organizing Japan (Tokyo) and elsewhere, proving the relevance of narrative practice across disciplines, professions, and cultures.

Students seeking to extend their narrative practice and learning often follow up MLD-355 in the spring by enrolling in Ganz’s other courses MLD-377M: Organizing: People, Power, Change, and the MLD-378M Practicum, in which students put into practice what they’ve learned in organizations, movements, and campaigns of their own.

Beyond HKS, Ganz and graduates of his teaching have established the Leading Change Network, a global community of organizers, educators and researcher aiming ” To meet the challenges to democracy by developing the leadership to organize communities which build power and realize the values of equality, solidarity, and dignity.”

To learn more, view a complete (~75 minute) mini-workshop with Marshall Ganz introducing public narrative pedagogy on the YouTube channel of The Resistance School which was founded in March of 2017 by graduate students of HKS and other Harvard schools. Lesson 1 of the 15 short videos is below; the full set is here.

Well before COVID-19 moved HKS teaching online during the 2020-21 academic year, Ganz and his team with HKS Executive Education were pioneering the teaching of leadership and organizing online. With over 10 years experience developing his online public narrative Exec Ed course Ganz and his team have created an exceptionally strong model of experiential, interpersonal, and interdependent learning. For a sample of, and in-depth introduction to their online teaching pedagogy, view here a (~60 min) video of an online interactive session led by Ganz for Harvard Kennedy School faculty on his approach to online teaching.

MLD-355 will be offered at the Harvard Kennedy School in the fall semester, and MLD-377M and MLD-378M will be taught in spring. For questions about these courses, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator. You may also contact Emily Lin, Program Director for Ganz’s Practicing Democracy Project (emily_lin@hks.harvard.edu).

MLD-304: The Science of Behavior Change with Todd Rogers

Greg Dorchak

Leverage insights about human decision making to develop interventions that improve societal well-being.

This is the primary learning goal of MLD-304 The Science of Behavior Change taught by Professor Todd Rogers.
The fast growing research field dubbed “behavioral economics” or “behavioral science” examines the mechanisms of, and influences on, human judgment and decision making, especially in the areas where our choices differ from the rational and the optimal.  Insights from this research has provided a new set of tools that complement standard economics and policy levers for influencing behavior (namely, incentives and information) and allowed us to improve implementation of interventions promoting the public good.  These new tools and ideas have relevance across fields ranging from healthcare, education, criminal justice, social welfare, electoral politics, personal finance, and beyond.
In addition to learning more about the science of how humans make judgments and decisions, students in MLD-304 will also be taught how to improve the quality of their own judgments and decisions by identifying areas of thinking prone to errors and cognitive biases. Some of these errors are particularly important for real world problems.  This course will also increase students’ familiarity with randomized experiments, enabling them to be smarter consumers of claims that interventions cause certain outcomes.

Watch Professor Rogers describe an example from his work on voter mobilization:

Read an extensive piece the HKS alumni magazine about Todd Rogers’ recent work.

Join other students at HKS and across Harvard interested in behavioral science in the Behavioral Insights Group which brings together an outstanding group of decision research scholars, behavioral economists, and other behavioral scientists. BIG’s staff are always happy to talk with students. Please feel free to reach out to Program Manager, Maja Niksic (maja_niksic@hks.harvard.edu), follow BIG on Twitter, check out BIG’s LinkedIn Network where behavioral science-specific jobs are posted, or access the resources of the Behavioral Insights Student Group.

MLD-304 is offered at Harvard Kennedy School in the Fall semester with 2 sections available. If you have any questions about this course, 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 2023. 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 : Climate, Poverty and Human Rights (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

From taking notes in the classroom to helping the front lines

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

MLD-632M: Transforming Public Interest Organizations with Grant Freeland

Greg Dorchak

Vision, Effective Leadership, Organizational Design and Culture, Developing Human Resources and Growing Capabilities are all key levers for transforming public interest organizations. How do leaders, consultants and other change agents strategically operate these levers is the subject of MLD-362M Transforming Public Interest Organizations taught by Grant Freeland.  During his years working in the field as managing director and senior partner with Boston Consulting Group, Freeland’s work has focused on driving transformations in large organizations in both the private and public sector. His work included organizational redesigns, creating high performance workforces, fostering culture change, boosting leadership effectiveness, and creating digital and agile organizations. Bringing this wealth of experience into MLD-362M, Freeland and his students explore a variety of organizations from large government departments; to foundations; to academic institutions; and not-for-profits. The course prepares students for advising leaders, and those leading organizational transformations, and is based on the premise that organizations need to adopt new strategies and policies as their environment changes. This course focuses less on developing those strategies and policies, but more on how to drive change through the organization, in order to more successfully implement that strategy. In addition to exploring multiple case examples, the course develops an integrated view on the levers that drive transformations. Applying that view, students then learn what are the tools to develop a Transformation plan to perform effective change and implementation management.  Key areas of such a plan include sequencing phases of change; change analysis; communication; stakeholder identification; stakeholder plans and actions, and creating mechanisms for tracking, accountability and transparency.

Harvard students can learn more by viewing the course video on Canvas and attending the live shopping session on Zoom (schedule linked here)

MLD-362M is offered in the Fall semester at the Harvard Kennedy School. If you have questions about this course, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.