Faculty Chair(s):
Marshall Ganz
OVERVIEW
Read what past participants are saying about the Leadership, Organizing, and Action program.
Leadership, Organizing and Action: Leading Change is an online program designed to help leaders of civic associations, advocacy groups and social movements learn how to organize communities that can mobilize power to make change. Leading Change requires identifying, recruiting, and developing leadership, organizing community around that leadership, and building power from the resources of that community.
The program represents a unique online learning opportunity for nonprofit and non-governmental organization managers to interact with colleagues from around the world and Professor Marshall Ganz of Harvard Kennedy School. Professor Ganz and his associates have engaged people in these practices in social movements, electoral campaigns, community organizing, classroom instruction, workshops, lectures, writing – and now Executive Education Online.
“I am quite sure that I will be changed, more insightful, and perhaps even more effective as a leader as a result of this engagement. The applications of the ideas go beyond workplace but are of value in any social effort, groups, life.”
-Leadership, Organizing and Action participant 2011
Read and listen to an NPR report on the project of a 2011 LOA alumnus.
LEADERSHIP
‘Leadership’ in this course is understood as accepting responsibility to enable others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty. This is achieved through the mastery of five practices during the semester:
- Relationship Building: building the relationships through which people can commit to work together to achieve common purposes.
- Story Telling: equipping people to turn their values into sources of motivation as a story of self, story of us, and story of now.
- Strategizing: devising tactics to creatively translate resources into the power to achieve clear goals at each level of organization.
- Structuring: developing leadership by creating interdependent teams designed to collaborate across multiple levels of coordination.
- Acting: producing specific, observable, and measurable results to evaluate progress, exercise accountability, and adapt strategy based on experience.
Participants will focus their work on a specific organizing project for which they are responsible. An organizing project requires (a) mobilizing a constituency to (b) collaborate with each other, to (c) achieve a real change.
PEDAGOGY
We learn through reflective practice. Skills are explained, demonstrated, practiced and debriefed. Class is organized in eight modules, each on a specific practice. Each module begins with a live interactive 1.5 hour lecture discussion with the entire class. Participants then submit a 2 page reflection paper linking class content to their project. They view a skill demonstration video after which they video record their own skill practice. They receive feedback on both from our teaching team. Each module concludes in a live interactive wrap-up session with sections of no more than 15 students each. Multi-party video conferencing makes interactive peer coaching possible.
Although students may participate as individuals or as team members, we encourage teams of three or more. Even though teams will apply as single units, the members of the team will be distributed across sections to benefit from multiple coaches and diverse experiences. Alumni are invited to participate in an ongoing “community of practice” for peer learning, exchange of information, and possible collaboration. For more information please contact Michael Maguire at michael_maguire@hks.harvard.edu .