About this course: Meet Jim Barton, the new CEO of Santa Monica Aerospace. Jim's job won't be easy: the company's hemorrhaging cash, struggling to regain investors' trust after an accounting scandal, and striving to transform its culture to become a more global competitor. In this course, you’ll travel with Jim as he takes on leadership challenges ranging from strategy execution, to inspiring people, to maintaining an ethical approach. Experts agree that twentieth-century leadership practices are inadequate for the stormy twenty-first-century present. This provocative course equips you with the insights you'll need to rise with the occasion of a rapidly shifting business landscape. The course is based on a book, Harder Than I Thought: Adventures of a 21st Century Leader, by Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan, and Shannon O'Donnell, published by Harvard Business Review Press. Purchase of the book is optional. If you want more information about the book or wish to buy it, see https://hbr.org/product/harder-than-i-thought-adventures-of-a-twenty-first/an/10332-HBK-ENG or http://www.amazon.com/Harder-Than-Thought-Adventures-Twenty-First/dp/1422162591 After taking the course, you'll be able to: o Enact your own personal leadership approach, derived from your ongoing evaluation of how Jim Barton has handled his leadership situation, as well as from established leadership concepts and frameworks; o Avoid leadership actions that might have worked in the past, but are not suited to a newly challenging 21st century world; o Navigate treacherous new 21st century leadership challenges, such as greater reliance on specialized workers or the need to respond to external scrutiny in an increasingly transparent world (and many more); o Avoid "slippery slope" ethical failures, and think more clearly about the separation between public and private life for a 21st century leader.
Created by: Copenhagen Business School
Taught by: Robert Austin, Professor, Management of Creativity and Innovation
Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy
Taught by: Shannon Hessel, Assistant Professor of Art, Leadership and Entrepreneurship
Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy
| Commitment | 2 to 4 hours/week |
| Language | English |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
Syllabus
WEEK 1
Course Preview and Intro
Join Jim Barton on a leadership journey...that quickly becomes tougher than expected!
3 videos, 4 readings
Taking on a New Leadership Role
So you've been presented with a new leadership "opportunity"...should you accept it? Should Jim Barton have taken this job? How would YOU decide?
2 videos, 4 readings
Graded: Choosing or Becoming a New Leader
WEEK 2
Getting Oriented and Assessing Your Team
As a new leader, the first order of business is to survey the landscape, get your bearings, and figure out what's really going on. Perhaps the most crucial part of that is assessing the team you've inherited. Who will be an ally in what you need to accomplish?...
4 videos, 6 readings, 1 practice quiz
Graded: Getting Started as a New Leader
Communication in an Age of Super Transparency
In an age of social media and super hackers, leaders have to worry more than ever about secrets getting out, making hard decisions under scrutiny, and people misinterpreting what the company and its leaders are doing. Thanks primarily to the advance of technol...
6 videos, 5 readings, 1 practice quiz
Graded: The Era of Super Transparency
WEEK 3
Leading Collaboration
When you're building something as complicated as an airplane, people have to work together. As a leader, it's a part of your job to populate teams, develop relationships, orchestrate process, and set up conducive environments to maximize the effectiveness of c...
6 videos, 7 readings, 2 practice quizzes
Graded: Collaborative Leadership
Motivating and Inspiring
A leader must be able to move other people -- potentially in directions those others do not wish to go. A very important part of a leader's role, then, is to motivate people -- to somehow provide the impulse to move others in a particular direction. Indeed, a ...
5 videos, 5 readings, 1 practice quiz
Graded: Motivating, Inspiring, and Leadership
WEEK 4
Effective Governance
A leader operates within a framework that outlines her or his responsibilities, range of authority, and access to resources -- we call such frameworks "governance." Governance empowers a leader but also looks over her or his shoulder. A precondition for effect...
7 videos, 5 readings
Graded: Effective Governance
Leading Change
Convincing people to change their ways might be THE hardest job a leader has to do. And if getting people to change is hard, getting groups -- who work together in the old ways and reinforce each other's sense of "the way it's always been" -- is even harder. B...
3 videos, 2 readings, 1 practice quiz
Graded: Leading Change
WEEK 5
Managing Talent
In the 21st century, the biggest assets an organization has are its people what they can do. The evidence of this? Apple, Google, and Microsoft all have market values higher than Exxon (a company with vastly more physical assets). A very important job of a 21s...
8 videos, 5 readings
Graded: Managing Talent
Leading in Crisis
No matter how effective you are as a leader, sometimes things go wrong. In a crisis, a leader must make tough decision under the pressure of a ticking clock. That's really hard, partly because crises are (thankfully) rare and few people have a lot of experienc...
6 videos, 5 readings
Graded: Leading in Crisis
WEEK 6
Leading Innovation
Thanks to mature communications and transportation networks, it has never been easier for low cost producers to market low priced products and services all over the world. Because of this, companies -- especially those not located in low cost regions -- need t...
4 videos, 6 readings, 1 practice quiz
Graded: Fostering Innovation
Leading Execution
It's "where the rubber hits the road." Execution. If you can't execute, it doesn't matter how well you strategize or how visionary you are. Execution is the art and science of getting it done. But how should a leader do that? How would YOU?
3 videos, 2 readings
Graded: Execution
WEEK 7
Public Life, Private Life
You've seen it all too often in the newspaper headlines: a prominent leader called on to resign, not because of failure to perform on the job, but because of something troubling (at least to some) that has transpired in their so-called "private life" that has ...
6 videos, 3 readings, 2 practice quizzes
Graded: The Rights and Obligations of Leaders
Vision and the Role of Culture
The eminent management thinker Peter Drucker once said that "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Lou Gerstner, after he turned around IBM, often said that the importance of culture was the one thing he seriously underestimated. What is culture? According to ...
7 videos, 8 readings
Graded: The Importance of Corporate Culture
WEEK 8
Modern Theories of Leadership
Leadership is an active, if fragmented, field of management research. In this module, you'll encounter some of the ideas researchers have come up with to describe and improve the practice of leadership. Some of these theories have had more influence than other...
1 video, 3 readings
Graded: Testing Your Knowledge of Leadership Theories
A Study in Leadership Failure: The Financial Crisis (Part 1)
The early 21st century has seen some spectacular failures of leadership. From the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, to the 2008 financial crisis, we've seen a lot of major things go wrong with leadership. ...
1 video, 4 readings
Graded: How the Financial Crisis Unfolded
WEEK 9
A Study in Leadership Failure: The Financial Crisis (Part 2)
We continue our examination of the inner complexities of the 2008 financial crisis.
1 video, 3 readings
Graded: Avoiding the financial crisis...
Real Leadership Case Study: Lord John Browne, British Petroleum
We've met Jim Barton and followed him on his journey. In this module, we turn the ideas we've discussed and developed in the course so far to the case of a real leader. What is YOUR assessment of the leadership of Lord John Browne, former CEO of BP
1 video, 3 readings
Graded: The Case of Lord Browne
WEEK 10
Synthesis - Leadership in 21st Century Organizations
Putting it all together. Last thoughts and attempts to synthesize thoughts about 21st century leadership.
4 videos, 5 readings
Graded: Synthesizing Your Own Approach to Leadership
FAQs
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Coursework
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Creators
Copenhagen Business School
Centrally located in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, Copenhagen Business School (CBS) is one of the largest business schools in Europe with close to 23,000 students. CBS offers world-class research-based degree programs at undergraduate, graduate, and PhD levels as well as executive and other post experience programs.
Ratings and Reviews
Requires paid subscription to WSJ. This should be fixed.
A nice course that walks you through leadership and management theories using examples from real world as well as fictitious reading material and role plays. The situation used in the role plays are very close to reality - many of them are based on real events.
Being able to read through all the course material at one place is in itself a pleasure
I was very impressed by this course. It's composition and timeliness, and even the closing message was simply absolutely great. Wonderful job by prof. Austin (and his team).
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DH
Really enjoyed the course, the fictional story of Jim Barton is entertaining and educational. The course material is all really well thought out and the whole experience will stay with me for the rest of my career. Thank you to everyone that has contributed to this and I highly recommend it to anyone looking at becoming a better manager.