Overview

Class Central Tips

The most effective leaders in complex technical organizations are successful leading the performance of large-scale technical endeavors. These leaders have generally established a network of professional relationships, supporting them throughout their career. This third Leading Technical Organizations course, "Value Creation and Building Enduring Relationships", explores techniques for building relationships that have a multiplicative impact on business success. The course provides insight into how authentic leadership yields employee engagement that is critical to strategizing, planning and performing large scale technical endeavors. This course can be taken for academic credit as part of CU Boulder’s Master of Engineering in Engineering Management (ME-EM) degree offered on the Coursera platform. The ME-EM is designed to help engineers, scientists, and technical professionals move into leadership and management roles in the engineering and technical sectors. With performance-based admissions and no application process, the ME-EM is ideal for individuals with a broad range of undergraduate education and/or professional experience. Learn more about the ME-EM program at https://www.coursera.org/degrees/me-engineering-management-boulder.

Syllabus

Stakeholder Perspectives

This first module of Leading Technical Organizations examines stakeholders and how meeting the needs of stakeholders is important to business. You will take an in-depth look at the stakeholders for your fictional aerospace corporation, LTO, and identify the specific relationships that exist between each group of stakeholders and the company. Stakeholder mapping will be introduced as a way to make a project or initiative at a company more successful.

Value Creation

This module will focus on how to create value for the stakeholders that were identified and mapped in module #1. We will investigate how value creation has changed over the past couple decades and explore shared value creation where all stakeholders' needs are addressed, creating win – win situations. We’ll see how companies are looking to address the future of value creation by internally disrupting themselves using intrapreneurship.

Building a Competitive Strategy

This module covers different types of strategies that companies have and explorers what a leader’s role is in developing those different types of strategies. It will investigate a very interesting differentiation in strategy, that of a "red ocean" strategy and a "blue ocean" strategy. The importance of well-conceived vision and mission statements and how they can motivate and empower your team will also be discussed. As a conclusion to the module, the idea of building your own personal strategic plan will be introduced.

Establishing Enduring Relationships

There is nothing more important in your career than the professional relationships that you develop. This module features guest speaker Tom Galambos, Global Chief Operating Officer and President of Hitachi Solutions America. He shares how his team partners with their customers to develop win-win outcomes. Developing a mentor-mentee relationship is often one of the most valuable relationships you will develop during your career and at the heart of all relationships is the ability to communicate effectively. This module is designed to help you build enduring professional relationships.

You as an Organizational Leader

This final module of the Leading Technical Organizations specialization brings the core concepts of what we have learned together to give a six-step framework for succeeding as a leader. The module also includes a presentation by Mike Gazarik, the Vice President of Engineering at Ball Aerospace. He tells his career story and highlights the leadership skills that served him best on his journey. Hope you enjoyed Leading Technical Organizations and thank you for investing your time in this specialization.