Managing for excellence

Introduction

This is a program on how to manage for excellence in organizations through a dual attention to what makes people thrive and grow and what creates extraordinary performances. The course assumes that employee and group thriving is the key to organizational excellence and that we need to understand how work practice can be generative for both individuals and organizations. Drive, energy, initiative, humility and action orientation are the basis virtues that we seek to develop. The program is based on an assumption that individual and team thriving and growth is key to unleashing the extraordinary. Building a sustainable performance culture neccessitates that we put the concerns of humans and nature first.

We build on traditions of research and managerial practice that are explicitly strength-based, including Positive Organizational Scholarship and Appreciative Inquiry. We also borrow from recent developments within practice-based approaches to organizations, regenerative leadership, narrative psychology, philosophy and the field of Design thinking.

The target group of the program is middle managers, project managers, domain experts and other professionals in business, voluntary organizations and the public sector: people who are responsible for developing the performances of themselves and others in organizations.

We emphasize practice from both an academic and an action oriented point of view. Leadership and professional creativity to bring about excellence is first of all something that takes place sin everyday practice, something that we do.

You will be challenged to discover and/or cultivate those generative practices in which you yourself can thrive, manage at your best and be valuable to others. In line with the focus on practice, the course will present rich examples from recent research along with new theory and historical overviews. The course has four main themes, all integrated with a sustainability perspective. Each of them will be the subject of a separate 4-day program session.

1.Quality and energy in relations
2. Motivation and driving forces
3. Positively oriented development work
4. Experimenting and building culture

Course content

MODULE 1: Quality and energy in relations.

Objectives

• Get a broad introduction to the program and the lecturers, as well as getting to know and create relations to other participants
• Learn about key concepts and approaches within the program, including strength based approaches
• Master and being able to apply theory about building quality and energy in relationships as a basis for managing for excellence
• Kick-start the individual reflection log and clarify expectations to personal learning and achievements during the program, as well as organizational benefits
   

MODULE 2: Motivation and driving forces

Objectives

• Acquire deep understanding of the motivational basis for achieving excellence and what it means for practice
• Be able to apply this understanding to develop the motivation of oneself and others to pursue the extraordinary
• Understand and be able to apply theory on pro-social motivation through end user involvement, including the power of mastering experiences, visualizing of progress and activating drama
• Gain experience in using the reflected best self-portrait exercise as well as mechanisms for energizing behavior in one' own organization
• Start term paper projects linked to development challenges in (some of) the participants' own organizations

MODULE 3: Positively oriented development wok 

Objectives

• Understanding positively oriented development work as applied to individuals, organizations and for social change
• Gain deep knowledge of systematic prepping for creativity and extraordinary performance
• To acquire deep knowledge of practices and philosophy for development workT in leading high-performance organizations
• To discuss experiences with the first phase of student term paper projects and adjust research design

MODULE 4: Experimenting and building performance culture

Objectives

• To learn about the theoretical basis and practices for experiential learning as a work form in development projects, including prototyping, design of small experiments, design thinking and punk.
• To get an overviw over and being able to compare approaches to building high performance cultures in organizations
• To share preliminary findings from student projects and prepare the finalizing of the thesis.
• To summarize the learning in the program and get examples from the recent research front