Organizations and Environmental Leadership

ESM-280

Organizations and Environmental Leadership

Course Syllabus - Fall Quarter 2012

Class Sessions

Lectures: Wednesdays 8:30 – 11:20 AM in Bren Hall 1424

Attendance at the lectures is mandatory.

Visiting Lecturer John Jostes, AICP, MPA

Office: Bren 4414,

Office Hours: Wednesday’s 12:30 – 3:30 or by appointment

(805) 452-9807 (cell)

Context

Individuals play an important role in leading organizations toward environmental sustainability and implementing cross-sector initiatives. Getting results in today's complex world requires collectively influencing and motivating peers, managers and executives at a variety of organizational levels to take action in a world full of risk and complexity. This course will focus class participants on their own behaviors and build skills to more effectively influence environmental decision-making within groups, organizations, networks and society.

Leadership skills are increasingly important in the full range of corporate, NGO and public agency settings. There are varying perspectives on leading and leadership, but in this class, we will focus on leading and leadership as it relates to challenges and change inherent in personal, business and social situations in the Twenty-first century. Leadership is what individuals do in mobilizing other people, in organizations or communities to do “adaptive” work – work in the context of environmental social and economic change rather than the maintenance of a given “status quo”.

Leadership entails not only the capacity to have and maintain influence beyond your authority, but the ability to get people to face the gap between the values they stand for and the conditions they live in. While many of our personal and community core values may be somewhat stable, the conditions we encounter are subject to increasing change.

Course Objectives – Why Teach Leadership?

There are only two ways to influence behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it. This course focuses on the latter, while not ignoring the trade-offs of the former. Leadership for change demands both inspiration and perspiration. I am teaching this course because the challenges we face in the next decade or two require value-driven risk-taking and inspired collaboration coupled with diagnostic skills and action-taking if we are to create a sustainable future.

Leadership skills and the act of leading are critical to the survival of our planet, civil society and the need to anticipate and respond to events, trends and decisions that affect our quality of life. Environmental sustainability, resource management, urban design, public policy and many other professional fields all require individuals to face and facilitate change, build collaborative networks, and generate results. In the words of Peter Drucker, managers are tasked with “doing things right” whereas leaders “do the right thing”.

All environmental problems have a human dimension. Environmental change will only occur through individual leadership and collective action. ESM 280 introduces students to organizational dynamics and the analytical and communication skills which environmental leaders need in order to motivate change.

This course focuses on leading with and without authority in a variety of public and private settings[1]. You will also learn about group dynamics in order to become a more effective team member.You will gain agreater understanding of your own personality preferences, and your strengths and weaknesses as a leader/ manager through your interaction with a team during group work and in the classroom. This course will provide an opportunity for you to become reflective about your own ability to lead environmental change in the organizations where you will work, and to hone the communication and persuasion skills necessary for your success in these change efforts.

1. Learning Method

Our work together will utilize a combination of tools and techniques with a strong emphasis on class discussion, case studies, team presentations and situation assessment. A variety of teaching materials have been selected to help you learn about leadership, communication and risk-taking. Case studies, group projects, film viewings, team teaching, negotiation exercises and academic/ practitioner articles will be used during the course. The case work requires not only disciplined assessment, but prescriptive responses to emerging leadership challenges. This teaching method requires students to engage in self-motivated actions to learn about their own leadership abilities thus developing new analytical and organizational skills. Since most organizational work is done in groups, a central locus of this learning about one’s self and one’s abilities takes place in self-selected groups.

Participants in the course are expected to attend all class sessions, and to have read all required readings. This syllabus provides a number of optional books that are offered for those who want to explore certain topics in greater depth.

Since there are significant differences in the experience levels of students in the MESM program, we expect that much of the learning in this course will be self-generated: Students are encouraged to provide themselves with challenging situations from which to learn new skills. Risk-taking is an essential element of class preparation and participation. For example, groups will be asked to develop presentations. If you are expert on Power Point, but a poor presenter, we encourage you to let someone else become the group expert on Power Point, and for you to volunteer to make the verbal presentation! Furthermore, students with significant work experience are encouraged to seize this opportunity to mentor and coach others in their groups and in the class, honing preexisting managerial and leadership skills.

1. Content and Organization

Addressing environmental and public policy challenges with a long term view requires engaging cross-sector individuals and organizations in collective action and risk taking. It is our assumption that no one (not even the President of the United States, or the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company, etc.) has perfected his/her ability to lead change in an organizational setting. The most experienced people are always trying to learn how to be better leaders and managers.

ESM 280 will not focus solely on environmental issues. Rather, it will focus on learning how organizations and institutions work, what motivates individuals and teams to perform work, and identify/develop skills a leader needs to influence change in organizations. My expectation is that students attending programs at the Bren School are interested in becoming environmental change leaders. Therefore, the students, their interests, their experiences, and their expertise bring the environmental context to ESM 280.

We will look at two levels of organizational theory analysis in ESM 280. The first level is about making sense of the individual’s role in organizations. This is the micro level of analysis with which we start the course. Individuals are the basic unit of organizations. Most work in organizations is done in groups with individuals playing instrumental roles in creating the solutions to organizational problems. Organizations are made up of these groups of individuals (workgroups, departments, research teams, divisions, business units, etc.). We will look at what motivates individual behaviors and analyze group dynamics to gain an understanding of the micro-level. In certain settings, groups are assembled without a common purpose. In other situations teams are designated to create specific outcomes. Individual values will form the building blocks of class engagement and team building. The understanding you gain about how to motivate other individuals and groups to change will be highly important to your success as an environmental leader.

The second focus of organizational theory is what we call the macro level. Issues of organizational formation (design), culture, change, learning, and ethics are all part of the organization-as-a-whole analysis that we study during the course. This holds particularly true in the context of cross-sector networks for implementing change. Part of the macro-level analysis includes understanding inter-organizational dynamics (interactions between organizations). A catch phrase for these dynamics is “stakeholder relations”. You will learn to map the set of internal and external stakeholders that bring pressure to bear on different types of organizations.

1. Teams as a Central Element of the Course

Each member of the class will become a member of a workgroup or team during the first session of the course. These groups will stay together for the duration of the course. Each week the groups will prepare for the class sessions during the discussion sessions. Work in the discussion sessions includes Myers-Briggs Type interpretation, negotiation exercises, interpretation of the assigned readings, case studies, and films, preparation for teaching one class session, and the development of a group project analyzing the leadership challenges and opportunities of an organization. The organizational analysis will be presented to the rest of the class during the penultimate week of the course.

Some weeks you will find that additional group meetings are necessary to prepare for class. We expect that your groups will meet together regularly outside of class time to get your work done, since during many discussion sessions we will have case discussions, negotiation exercises, and other learning activities related to the course.

Starting in their brief presentations of their target organization in Week 4, groups will take responsibility for developing a thirty- minute teaching session to be presented to the full class in Week 9. In this way the class will develop and lead its own organizational learning efforts. These sessions will be on organizational topics related to managing environmental issues. We encourage you to think about creative ways to teach your cohorts about the topic you select, developing in-class exercises or inviting outside speakers, for example.

The group will create the format (i.e. lecture, dialogue, learning exercise, etc.) for each presentation/teaching session in consultation with the professor. This consultation with the professor should take place during office hours or another pre-arranged time one week prior to the formal class session in week 9. Please be prepared to explain the teaching purpose for your teaching session to the professor, and your teaching plan, including how you plan to utilize the 30 minutes of classroom time.

On the day of our last meeting the class will select the group that it feels has contributed the most to their organizational learning.

Your faithful and creative participation in all group activities are key to meeting the course objectives. Working closely with your group will be an excellent opportunity to learn about group behavior and your own leadership skills in a group of your peers. It will also prepare you for future group projects at the Bren School and elsewhere. The assessment of your committed and energetic participation in your team/ workgroup will influence your participation grade in the course.

1. Attendance is Mandatory – Observation and Risk Taking are Part of the Work

It is required that students be present for all class sessions. The only exceptions to this requirement is if: (1) you have a physical or family emergency which prevents you from attending, or 2) an unavoidable conflict occurs between attending a given class and a meeting or event that is critical to your future employment (i.e., a job interview or scholastic competition). Conflicts with other classes, holiday or vacation plans or social engagements are not valid reasons for missing class. Unexcused absences will negatively influence your final grade in the course. Missing the first day of class will disqualify you from taking the course.

In addition to attending classes and discussion sessions, you have three other requirements to fulfill in order to graduate from this course. You must complete an on-line survey of your Myers-Briggs personality type at the Counseling and Career Services office by October 2nd. (It is imperative that you do this by the deadline!) You are also asked to complete an on-line survey before the first class articulating your responses to a short questionnaire. Thirdly, you must attend one session to view “Twelve Angry Men”. The film will be the basis for discussion and class sessions for the following week. Attendance at the film viewing sessions is mandatory unless your entire group makes arrangements to view the film together at another time that is approved by the professor at least one week in advance of the viewing date.

The last week of class there will be a session where you will be given the opportunity to provide your group members with feedback on behaviors they had that you found either helpful or not so helpful to your learning. Therefore, all students of ESM 280 have an on-going assignment to observe the behaviors of their group members in the class and discussion sessions. (We suggest that you look for both “helpful” AND “not so helpful” behaviors that contribute to and detract from the organizing values your team/group agreed to on Day One and take note of these throughout the course. Otherwise it may be difficult for you to recall these behaviors when you will be giving feedback at the end of the course.)

1. Readings, Web Links and Case Studies

A number of readings are assigned for study during this course, both in hard copy and via GauchoSpace. If a particular assignment is specified for a given class, or an article, web link or You Tube video assigned, it is expected that the assignment will be completed prior to class and that all participants come to class ready to offer insights gleaned from the assignments. It is recommended that each group spend part of each discussion session discussing the readings in order to integrate their themes and knowledge into the group’s learning.

GauchoSpace postings will include all required readings and the case studies with the exception the two required texts. These books are available at the bookstore:

Ronald Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994)

Joseph Badaracco, Jr., Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right (Cambridge MA; Harvard Business Press)

Other books that may be of interest to you for further study, but which are not required for the course will be summarized in a bibliography to be posted on GauchoSpace.

1. Grading

There will be no final examination for this course. Grades will be based upon discussion session and classroom participation, a group presentation, an integrative paper, and weekly memos.

Discussion and Classroom Participation:25 %

Organizational Analysis Group Project:25 %

Paper:25 %

Weekly Memos:25 %

1. Classroom Participation:

Students are expected to attend and participate actively in all classroom sessions. Full participation will be measured by the degree of preparation and thoughtful input that the student brings to these activities. As a rule of thumb, good participation will be judged to be at least one high quality, insightful comment per class session. We are looking for thoughtful comments that help the learning of the rest of the class. We believe that if a student has read the pre-reading, and has thought about the material, there is no reason that that student will not have something important to contribute during each class sessions.

1. Group Project:

Students will work together with their self-appointed groups to analyze and respond to environmental leadership opportunities and challenges within an organization. During the second week of class groups will select the type of organization that they will study. The fourth week of class groups will present the name and description of the selected organization to the entire class for their feedback. Twenty-five (25) percent of the class grade for each team member will be based upon faculty assessment of the group project as it is presented in the final week of the course. Each team member will receive a common grade.

1. Integrative Organizational Analysis Paper:

Students will each prepare an individual paper where they combine the leadership and organizational theory taught in the course with the analysis of an organization. The organization can be the class as a whole, an outside organization to which the student belongs or for which the student has worked, or the organization studied during the group project. Basically, any organization that the student is in a position to know is an acceptable organization to analyze for this organizational behavior and leadership theory paper. We do not recommend the analysis of an organization that one has learned about from a book or a film.

The paper will be graded based upon the degree to which the student has shown us that s/he has synthesized learning from the course and its readings. In general, exceptional organizational leadership analyses demonstrate an integrated and complete understanding of the concepts presented in the course. Additional guidance will be provided in a teaching note distributed two weeks before the paper is due.