OM 539 - Organizational Strategies and Design

Organizational Strategies and Design supports aspiring principals as they integrate the year’s learning and develop an entry plan for their first leadership position.  Assignments in this course are designed to ensure that candidates, in the words of one noted organizational development specialist, “hit the ground learning rather than running.”  Using tools and methods largely developed by Barry Jentz and his associates, the course highlights a process approach that a newly-appointed school leader can employ to illumine many facets of an unfamiliar school organization-the power dynamics, network of relationships, cultural assumptions that account for patterns of behavior but may differ from espoused values, the field of perceptions about the outgoing and incoming leaders, the history behind the organization’s performance, structure, process, communication flow, change efforts, and conflict management.  Use of the entry plan process also ensures substantive interpersonal learning between the new leader and people in the organization and, in many instances, can result in collective new thinking and behavior across the organization. 

(Cr: 3