Designing, leading and growing organisations

25-27 January 2024 | Executive seminar

This course is about building, running and growing organisations in the public and social sectors. For many leaders of new organisations, the most pressing questions (aside from financing) are about how to locate and recruit talented people and how to manage and keep them and how to put the organisation on a path that will sustain it for the long-term. This course will address these questions and will provide you with a number of critical concepts and competencies that will be useful in both the short and long term. The course also serves as a general discussion about organisations and organising so it will be of interest even to those who don’t plan to found or grow a new organisation. Throughout the course there will be a dual emphasis on thinking systematically and strategically about aspects of managing and growing an organisation from its early stages until maturity and on the actual implementation challenges associated with management and leadership.

The course is organised into three day-long modules: (1) How leaders, especially founders, draw on networks and persuasion to establish organisations and how doing so shapes an organisation's culture well into the future; (2) how to think analytically about designing organisational systems, and; (3) what needs to be done to lead and grow an organisation for the long term.

The primary course material will be a series of cases illustrating both successes and failures. You will also be provided with supplementary readings and lectures that will unpack concepts and analytical frameworks.

Questions discussed in the course include (1) the role of leaders, especially founders, (2) systematic and strategic thinking about the design of organisational systems, and (3) the transition from an organisation’s often chaotic early phase to taking on challenges in the long term. By the end of the course, participants will have engaged with key debates in the field, learned critical concepts in the study of organisations and acquired competences to succeed in designing, leading and growing organisations.

The primary teaching method in this class is the in-depth discussion of real-world cases illustrating both successes and failures. Instructor-provided lectures and summaries complement class discussion. A simulation will help to unpack group dynamics.

This seminar is offered as part of the Executive MPA programme and in the open enrolment programme.