Course Organization, Objectives, Outcomes

The activities presented so far in this module have been designed to give you a good sense of the topics that will be addressed throughout the course and the vital importance of being prepared to manage them. The environment in which we live and work is becoming progressively more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Yet, the evidence tells us that leaders are often surprised and unprepared when things go horribly wrong and an organizational crisis erupts. Over the next several weeks, you have an opportunity to greatly enhance your skills as a high stakes leader–to become better prepared for the crises that inevitably lie ahead. As you have heard several times already, the question for leaders is simply no longer “if” a significant crisis will appear at some point in the future, but “when” it will appear. Because it will. When it does, will you be ready to lead? Your stakeholders and your organization will be depending on you.

Before continuing with the course, let’s pause briefly and review the objectives that this learning journey has been created to achieve. As presented in the opening video, this course has been designed to help leaders, like you, learn how to effectively navigate the challenges of significant organizational disruptions. As a participant in this course, you’ll develop a robust and satisfying collection of skills that will inform and dramatically improve your ability to prevent and, if necessary, respond to and recover from events that threaten your organization’s very survival.

Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Describe the critical importance of developing exceptional stakeholder relationships and, through these relationships, implement evidence-based practices that increase organizational resilience;
• Craft and deploy personalized and tailored actions that will dramatically improve efforts to effectively engage stakeholders before, during, and after a crisis; and
• Understand, customize, and have at the ready proven practices for navigating the fundamental challenges of leading in times of crisis;
• Develop a crisis preparation framework that can reduce the impact of future crises and improve future crisis leadership performance.

To help you accomplish these objectives, this course has been divided into eight modules, which are distributed over four weeks at the rate of two per week. Each module has been created with a unique focus as follows:

Module 1: In Our Increasingly VUCA Business Environment, Major Disruptions Will Happen

Module 2: Crisis Leadership Demands a Focus on Stakeholders

Module 3: Building Organizational Capacity for Resilience

Module 4: Stakeholder Reactions to Crisis

Module 5: Crisis Varieties and Responses

Module 6: The Nature of the Crisis Environment

Module 7: Crisis Leadership

Module 8: Crisis Preparation

Each of these modules will build on those that precede it. Early in the course, you will develop an understanding of stakeholder relationships, organizational resilience, and some foundational elements of the crisis environment. Later in the course, you will build a collection of tools that will help you become a more effective high stakes leader and help your organization become better prepared for the future.

As you proceed through this course, recognize that it was designed to give you an optimum mix of foundational theory and practical value. At some points, you may feel as though there is a little more theory than you would like. At others, you may feel as though a little more evidence would have been helpful. Unfortunately, while there are volumes more to share on the topic of crisis leadership, the reality is that we’ve got four weeks together to tackle an incredibly complex subject that experienced crisis leaders have spent a lifetime trying to master. That said, if you are able to make a commitment to the materials provided in this course and if you do your best to complete the exercises as they are presented, you will find these next four weeks to be some of the most useful and impactful professional development that you have ever experienced.

Before you move on the module summary (in the next activity), please take a moment to re-read the course objectives. Do these make sense to you? Do they sound interesting and valuable? Are you willing to make a commitment to your development as a high stakes leader given the objectives that have been set forth?

Take a few minutes to ponder these questions and ask yourself if achieving these objectives is really worth your time. If you think it will be, then game on! You should really like what you’ll find in the modules to come.