Many development experts use plan and control methods to introduce new policy solutions into complex settings. Too often these results end up in in failure. Effective leaders in the challenging development context should be using more flexible facilitated emergence methods instead, but often they do not know what these methods involve. MLD-103M: PDIA in Action: Development Through Facilitated Emergencetaught by Matthew Andrews, Edward S. Mason Senior Lecturer in International Development, is a Spring module course that introduces students to a new approach to doing facilitated emergence, Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) in the development context. Students will learn how to facilitate discussions about problems and potential solutions, to engage with teams, and to facilitate an iterative learning process. MLD-103M is a complementary course to MLD-102: Getting Things Done: Management in a Development Context also taught by Matthew Andrews, although MLD-102 is not a pre-requisite.
MLD-103M will be offered at Harvard Kennedy School in the Spring semester. If you have questions about this course, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.
How can effective leaders learn from experience and decisions in the past to make more effective decisions that advance one’s strategic purpose?
Book Cover: Strategy: A History, by Lawrence Freedman, Copyright Oxford University Press, 2013
Strategy is expressed in the decisions we make every day. There are no choices or actions that are truly neutral with respect to one’s strategic purpose. Yet few decisions come labelled as “strategic”; instead policy makers, analysts and managers face an unending stream of judgments and choices that arrive in varied frames from every imaginable direction.
No decision stands alone. Today’s decisions are linked undeniably to decisions in the past reflected in the experience of individuals, groups, teams and organizations, even nations. Experience both enables and limits our perceptions, beliefs, values, predispositions and capabilities. We both learn from the past (it’s all we’ve got) yet our learning can be limited by the deceptive clarity and presumed certainty associated with explanations of past events.
MLD-113M Strategy and Decision with Peter Zimmerman will help students develop more robust explanations of past decisions, their strategic impact and will help students make better predictions of the effects of future decisions. Taking as the course text cases and stories involving others, from different times and places, and even students’ own stories and experience, students will work on three parallel tracks. First, students have the chance to analyze and explain decisions large & small while experimenting in a tentative qualitative way with how things might come out differently. Next, they explore the science of behavior & decision-making (i.e., what are the sources of influence on decision and what’s going on in the black box?). Finally, they develop a framework to help improve our explanations & predictions and to integrate individual choices into a pattern of strategic decisions.
This course is offered in the spring module 2 semester. If you have any questions about this course, or any other in the MLD curriculum, email Greg Dorchak, MLD Area Administrator.
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 Honanis 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.
With a career spent weaving together smart organizational strategy and a concern for the people driven to execute towards these goals, Grant Freeland brings unique insight into what it takes to sustain a career in public service. After spending many years in the consulting field and teaching at HKS, Freeland understands that the professional prospects for HKS students are richly diverse, but also, as a result, less structured and harder to forecast than in other fields (e.g., business, law, medicine). To address this challenge, Freeland carefully designed a course, MLD-515M: Serving the Public Good: Planning for Career and Life, to help students navigate careers fueled by aspirations to contribute to the public good. Drawing on evidence from the study of professional careers and leadership journeys, work-family conflict and integration, and wellbeing, the module adopts a broader “life” perspective and asks students to reflect, explore, and develop options to successfully and sustainably work toward their aspirations in public service. The course is grounded in the premise that HKS students have agency in determining the direction of their careers. While not everything is planned and certain, self-direction is possible and is likely to be facilitated by actively exploring alternative paths.
In a short 6 weeks,MLD-515Mstudents undertake a substantial course load, with rigorous work in and out of classroom. Students read relevant academic research, conduct expert interviews, and participate in a variety of reflective and interactive exercises. Peer coaching is integral to the teaching model, which is designed to build a lasting sense of community that Freeland hopes will sustain students for years ahead. Course assignments and peer coaching are adaptable to accommodate the diversity of career stages among students in the class.
The module is structured into three blocks: knowing yourself (e.g., aspirations, motivations, values); where are you going and how are you getting there (e.g., negotiating careers, networking, developing a leadership story); and building the resilience (e.g., wellness, work and family). Students in the course also engage with HKS alumni whose own leadership stories help current students make sense of their own potential career paths.
About the Instructor:
Grant Freeland is an Adjunct Lecturer at Harvard Kennedy school, and Adjunct Professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth where he teaches a course on Transforming Public Interest Organizations. Grant is also a Senior Advisor and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Boston Consulting Group where he was previously a Senior Partner and Global Leader of its People and Organizations Practice, and the Managing Partner of the Boston office. During Freeland’s 31+ years at BCG, his client work has focused on driving transformations in large organizations in both the private and public sector. This work includes organizational redesigns, post-merger integrations, restructurings, creating high performance workforces, culture change, leadership effectiveness, and creating digital and agile organizations.
Previously, Freeland was a marketing communications manager for Hewlett-Packard. He received his undergraduate degree in marketing from the Chisholm Institute of Technology (now Monash University) in Australia. He holds a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management, where he was the medal winner for corporate strategy.
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 with Senior Lecturer Linda Bilmes 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. 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.
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. In 2023, students in the course investigated inclusionary zoning as a tool to increase affordable housing in two Massachusetts communities.
Students from the course often continue their work in fellowships with the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.
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,’ narrative 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.”
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).
