24
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
Making High-Stakes Decisions
Examine the myth that bad decisions are most often made by bad leaders. Professor Roberto uses the examples of the Challenger disaster, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Daimler's acquisition of Chrysler to uncover why good leaders can make bad decisions if the decision-making process they use is flawed.
1.
Making High-Stakes Decisions
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13.
Creativity and Brainstorming
IDEO is one of the world's leading product design firms, expert in developing creative and innovative products for many industries. What makes their process so effective? To help you understand their formula at work, Professor Roberto describes an experiment in which IDEO staff worked to design a new product in just one week.
13.
Creativity and Brainstorming
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2.
Cognitive Biases
Using the story of the tragedies on Mount Everest in 1996, Professor Roberto introduces you to three cognitive biases that play a role in bad decision making: sunk-cost effect, overconfidence bias, and recency effect.
2.
Cognitive Biases
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14.
The Curious Inability to Decide
Often as individuals or in groups we become paralyzed by indecision—unable to commit to one path or another. This lecture examines three modes of indecision in groups: "the culture of yes, the culture of no, and the culture of maybe."
14.
The Curious Inability to Decide
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3.
Avoiding Decision-Making Traps
Explore more decision-making traps you can fall into if you're not aware of them, such as confirmatory bias, anchoring bias, attribution error, illusory correlation, hindsight bias, and egocentrism. Darwin avoided confirmatory bias by keeping a separate record of observations that contradicted his theory of evolution.
3.
Avoiding Decision-Making Traps
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15.
Procedural Justice
Using case studies about Daimler Chrysler and an aerospace and defense firm, Professor Roberto explains the challenge of building consensus among team members once a decision has been made so everyone will work together to implement it.
15.
Procedural Justice
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4.
Framing—Risk or Opportunity?
The way you or others frame a problem or decision can have a significant impact on the choices you make. Understand why framing a decision in terms of what you have to lose causes you to take more risks.
4.
Framing—Risk or Opportunity?
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16.
Achieving Closure through Small Wins
To move forward through the brainstorming and decision-making processes, groups must find intermediate moments of agreement that Karl Weick calls "small wins." This lecture looks at how teams achieve closure through small wins, using cases about D-Day, Social Security, and the CEO of Corning.
16.
Achieving Closure through Small Wins
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5.
Intuition—Recognizing Patterns
Discover how to use intuition as a powerful tool in decision making when combined with rational analysis and acknowledge the cognitive processes that are part of our intuition. Professor Roberto recounts case studies from firefighting, health care, and the video game industry to explain the potential and pitfalls of intuition.
5.
Intuition—Recognizing Patterns
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17.
Normal Accident Theory
Discover how organizational culture and structure affect decision making by individuals and groups. Learn about the Three Mile Island accident to understand what went wrong in that system, and understand how catastrophes more often stem from a domino chain of bad decisions rather than one wrong choice.
17.
Normal Accident Theory
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6.
Reasoning by Analogy
Learn how the Korean War differed from the threat of Adolf Hitler. Professor Roberto explains reasoning by analogy and how you can use analogies to make sense of a complex problem. At the same time, we must avoid the common tendency to overstate the similarities of one situation to another and overlook key differences.
6.
Reasoning by Analogy
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18.
Normalizing Deviance
The tragic explosion of the Challenger space shuttle was likely the result of a flawed culture at NASA. The repeated and increased tolerance of questionable data and decisions ultimately led to a large-scale failure. How can leaders reform such cultures?
18.
Normalizing Deviance
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7.
Making Sense of Ambiguous Situations
We might like to think that we carefully examine our choices before we make a decision. However, we often do the reverse—make a decision and then figure out why, and base future decisions on how we made sense of other decisions. This process, called sense-making by Karl Weick, constantly influences our behavior.
7.
Making Sense of Ambiguous Situations
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19.
Allison's Model—Three Lenses
Learn Graham Allison's approach to examine decision making through three lenses. Use Allison's model to explore the Cuban Missile Crisis from the individual and cognitive perspective, the group dynamics view, and the vantage point of organizational politics and bargaining.
19.
Allison's Model—Three Lenses
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8.
The Wisdom of Crowds?
This lecture includes examples from game shows such as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and from the business world that demonstrate the usefulness of decision making by groups and the potential problems if group members are not fully engaged.
8.
The Wisdom of Crowds?
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20.
Practical Drift
Uncover why organizations make decisions that contradict their own rules and regulations. The concept of practical drift explains this phenomenon, as you see by studying a military friendly-fire case from 1994.
20.
Practical Drift
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9.
Groupthink—Thinking or Conforming?
Discover why even diverse groups can make bad decisions if members are not able to express divergent opinions. This lecture focuses on how groupthink led to the Bay of Pigs invasion.
9.
Groupthink—Thinking or Conforming?
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21.
Ambiguous Threats and the Recovery Window
When a threat is ambiguous, organizations are likely to minimize the possible risks. Look again at NASA but this time at the Columbia space shuttle accident, 17 years after the Challenger explosion, to understand how conditions changed or stayed the same in that culture.
21.
Ambiguous Threats and the Recovery Window
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10.
Deciding How to Decide
After the Bay of Pigs failure, President Kennedy and his advisors reflected on their mistakes and created a new process for group discussion and decision making to prevent future groupthink and promote diverse perspectives. Here, Professor Roberto introduces the concept of developing a decision-making process.
10.
Deciding How to Decide
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22.
Connecting the Dots
Often in large organizations, no one individual can see or understand all the elements at the same time. Great organizations integrate various pieces to see the big picture. Discover how failure to connect the dots led to an inability to recognize the extent of the threat of a terrorist attack on American soil and therefore a lack of appropriate action before September 11.
22.
Connecting the Dots
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11.
Stimulating Conflict and Debate
Learn how constructive conflict can lead to new insights and stronger decisions. Discover four methods to stimulate useful debate: role plays, mental simulation techniques, creating a point-counterpoint dynamic, and applying diverse conceptual models and frameworks.
11.
Stimulating Conflict and Debate
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23.
Seeking Out Problems
Explore how complex, high-risk organizations succeed by focusing on the possibility of failure. Leaders at these organizations proactively look for problems rather than ignore red flags. Also, learn how Toyota's application of these principles has contributed to its success.
23.
Seeking Out Problems
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12.
Keeping Conflict Constructive
Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for conflict to become unproductive. Understand how to look for and eliminate dysfunctional conflict to cultivate effective teams. This lecture includes cases on Sid Caesar's comedy writing team, health care, and the nonprofit sector.
12.
Keeping Conflict Constructive
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24.
Asking the Right Questions
Examine the trend of leaders moving from making decisions themselves to focusing on how decisions are made by everyone in their organizations. Smart leaders, as you discover, ask the right questions to glean the collective wisdom of their colleagues and staffs.
24.
Asking the Right Questions
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24
Lectures
30
minutes/lecture
1.
The Challenge
Begin the course with a look at the need for stronger, more transformational leaders in today's world. Then, delve deeper into the ideas and principles behind situational leadership, adaptive leadership, and other approaches to this powerful responsibility and the ways they can shape and define an organization's success.
1.
The Challenge
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13.
Key Levers of Power
We've all dealt with office politics at one point or another in our careers. Discover the secrets of successfully navigating organizational politics in order to make change happen. Some of the strategies whose pros and cons you examine are framing, timing, information and analysis, structural change, and symbolic action.
13.
Key Levers of Power
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2.
Portrait of a Transformation
Using legendary CEO Jack Welch's tenure at GE during the 1980s and 1990s as a case study, discover the true characteristics of a leader and gain a firm definition of effective leadership. Professor Roberto also debunks some myths about leadership and illustrates the important differences between a leader and a manager.
2.
Portrait of a Transformation
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14.
Influence—Tools of Persuasion
Effective leaders should never rely solely on formal authority; they should also be able to persuade. In the first of two lectures on persuasion, focus on two "weapons of influence": authority (the necessity for people to obey authority figures and roles) and commitment (behaving in a manner consistent with prior actions).
14.
Influence—Tools of Persuasion
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3.
Do Great Leaders Share the Same Traits?
In the first of two lectures on leadership models, investigate three prominent perspectives of thought on leadership: the traits perspective (which focuses on individual attributes), the behavioral perspective (which deals with five key personality traits), and the power-influence perspective (which focuses on the amount and type of power a leader possesses).
3.
Do Great Leaders Share the Same Traits?
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15.
Give and Take
Turn now to four more "weapons of influence" you can use to persuade. The success of reciprocation, social proof, the liking principle, and scarcity are rooted in, respectively, our need to repay in kind, our looking to others to determine what's appropriate, our duty to authority, and our fear of fewer opportunities.
15.
Give and Take
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4.
How Much Does Context Matter?
Continue looking at other major theories of leadership that have emerged in recent years, each of which argues that the effectiveness of particular leadership approaches depends on contextual variables. The four you explore here are the Least Preferred Coworker model, the path-goal theory, the situational leadership theory, and the normative decision theory.
4.
How Much Does Context Matter?
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16.
Negotiating as a Way of Life
If you want to be a transformational leader, you have to know how to negotiate. In the first of two lectures on negotiation, investigate this indispensable skill's roots in theoretical games such as the Prisoner's Dilemma. Also, learn which negotiating strategies can produce the best results.
16.
Negotiating as a Way of Life
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5.
Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
What makes a leader charismatic? How does charisma define transformational and transactional leaders? Is it possible that a leader can have too much charisma? These are just a few of the many questions you'll find answers to as Professor Roberto unpacks the role of charisma in effective leadership.
5.
Charismatic and Transformational Leadership
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17.
Avoiding the Zero-Sum Game
Discover value-claiming and value-creating behaviors that are integral to the negotiation process. Your focus here is on unpacking Roger Fisher and William Ury's influential model for dispute resolution, which calls for a focus on interests over positions, an insistence on objective criteria, and much more.
17.
Avoiding the Zero-Sum Game
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6.
Resistance and Reactions to Change
It takes a successful leader to make others embrace change. Here, grasp the typical behavioral responses to change, learn how to provide others with a sense of control during moments of change, discover how to avoid the dangers of threat rigidity, and see the importance of reframing changes as powerful opportunities.
6.
Resistance and Reactions to Change
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18.
Building and Leading Teams
Professor Roberto shows you how to optimize the strength and productivity of your team. Explore the benefits (and potential limitations) of the five conditions for designing and leading a team: stability, a compelling shared direction, an enabling structure, a supporting organizational context, and expert coaching.
18.
Building and Leading Teams
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7.
Phases of Transformation
Now investigate the actual process of change itself. After a brief look at the "unfreeze-change-freeze" model of change, walk through a powerful eight-step model for developing change, from establishing a sense of urgency (step 1) to using multiple vehicles to communicate your vision (step 4) to institutionalizing your new approaches (step 8).
7.
Phases of Transformation
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19.
Guiding Teams as They Evolve
Team design is important—but good leaders also need to help teams develop and dodge conflict. Here, analyze the three key aspects of process leadership: creating a solid process for team development, dealing with "fault lines" that can potentially fragment your team, and combating groupthink.
19.
Guiding Teams as They Evolve
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8.
Harnessing Emotion
Direct the rider. Motivate the elephant. Shape the path. What do these three actions have to do with the change process? Find out as you look closer at experiments and case studies that demonstrate the inextricably linked roles of reason and emotion in creating and sustaining change.
8.
Harnessing Emotion
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20.
Observation and Organizational Learning
One of the most fundamental processes of change that any leader must master: learning. Your focus in this lecture is on important strategies of intelligence gathering. Explore the problems of pitfalls such as leading questions, group dynamics, and the unconscious mind; and learn how to hone your powers of observation.
20.
Observation and Organizational Learning
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9.
Making Change Stick
In this lecture, discover the art and craft of making change last. Learn about the four key processes by which you can avoid the "flavor of the month" syndrome (chartering, learning, mobilizing, and realigning) and six principles for getting ideas to stick (simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories).
9.
Making Change Stick
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21.
Deliberate Practice and Experiment
Continue studying the importance of organizational learning with this insightful lecture on experience and experimentation. For the former concept, learn tips and strategies for improving after-action reviews; for the latter, learn how to best evaluate and learn from exploratory and hypothesis-testing experiments—especially failed ones.
21.
Deliberate Practice and Experiment
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10.
Extrinsic Motivation and Reward
Begin your focus on critical skills and capabilities of solid leadership by investigating the subject of extrinsic motivation, in which rewards and punishments (including compensation) drive behavioral change in a team or organization. Then, look closer at the limitations of external reward systems as well as guidelines for improving them.
10.
Extrinsic Motivation and Reward
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22.
Stimulating Creativity
Another essential dimension of transformational leadership—the kind that makes you stand out from the competition—is creativity. Here, Professor Roberto dispels six myths about creativity, introduces you to the concepts of "blue ocean" opportunities and group flow, reveals the seven characteristics of effective creative collaboration, and more.
22.
Stimulating Creativity
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11.
Beyond Money—Intrinsic Motivation
Switch now to key concepts and insights in intrinsic motivation, which transformational leaders can tap into as a means of enhancing their teams' performance. Central to this lecture is an intriguing case study involving two teams working on a software project that illustrates the merits of working for intrinsic goals.
11.
Beyond Money—Intrinsic Motivation
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23.
Leading Innovation
Delve into the secret benefits of open innovation and transparent research and development. Using case studies from Linux and Proctor & Gamble, discover how you as a leader can tap into the power of innovation rooted in connections that extend beyond the boundaries of your team or firm.
23.
Leading Innovation
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12.
Power—Getting It and Keeping It
What are a leader's sources of power, and how is it acquired (and lost)? How is a leader's power different from his or her authority? And what are the dangers and risks of too much power? These are three central questions about power and leadership that Professor Roberto answers here.
12.
Power—Getting It and Keeping It
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24.
Developing Leaders
Great leaders don't just lead—they develop tomorrow's leaders. Why is it important for organizations to grow their own leaders? What does effective leadership development entail? How have great companies used deliberate practice—practicing toward specific performance improvement goals—to mold future leaders? How can you do the same?
24.
Developing Leaders
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