Hands-on World Seminar Applying Harvard University Global System^TM Tools
Strategy, Risk, Principled Negotiation & Leadership
Advanced Skills, Competencies and Cutting-Edge Tools

Ottawa-Gatineau Campus (Canada)
September 8-11,   December 1-4, 2008
Located near the scenic Gatineau Park,
our campus is 15-minute drive from downtown Ottawa
and about an hour direct flight from LaGuardia Airport, New York.


Boston
October 6-9, 2008

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• Outline
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• Locations & tuition fees
• How to register

Today’s complex change - be it strategic or technological - requires talented professionals with competencies in strategic thinking and risk management to plan a bold vision of change with the best portfolio of objectives and outcomes, sound negotiation skills to secure commitment and exemplary leadership behavior to put it all together and deliver expected value with minimum friction and adverse consequences. This seminar addresses each of these four topics as described below, focusing on real-life applications with proven and exceptional practical value.

• Strategic Thinking is about promptly accomplishing your mission by maximizing opportunities, pushing the envelope, mastering risks and widening your lead. Great strategies result from novel ideas and foreknowledge (intelligence). They are frequently counter-intuitive and hard to imitate.
• Exemplary Leadership is not about adopting the flavor of the year. It is the persistent drive and commitment to excel, innovate and mobilize, inspire and retain talent, customers and allies.
• Managers and team leaders negotiate daily. Principled Negotiation is about understanding and reaching out to the players and building durable bridges based on mutual interests. Its focus is on the creative ways and business acumen to enlarge the pie and secure lasting value that is superior to what can be gained by compromise, mediation, arbitration, courts, coercion and other means of dispute resolution.
• Risks are omnipresent and inherent in the pursuit of every objective and mission. Today, there is more at risk than ever with the combined effect of the pace of change, the shortage of skilled resources, the might of technology and communication, pollutants (chemical, radiological and biological), stress in the workplace, intolerance, and greed. Risk is a complex subject. Without cutting-edge skills and constant attention to it, solid progress is elusive. The seminar focuses on continuous risk-management tools to identify, assess and mitigate neglected and serious risks.

This intensive workshop provides you with the skills, competencies, and proven tools to lead teams, build allies, negotiate important deals, manage risk, maintain peak performance over the long term, and orchestrate complex change under tight deadlines and shifting priorities.

The specific objectives of the course are to:

• learn proven tools to understand the players - their perceptions, hidden agendas and underlying interests;
• apply new business intelligence tools;
• scan for emerging issues and uncover emerging opportunities and threats;
• assess the interest and degrees of freedom of each party before contemplating a strategy;
• learn to build a balanced portfolio of 5 types of mission-critical goals that are essential regardless of your vision;
• Practice strategy formulation;
• identify threats and hazards;
• assess, characterize, and communicate risk;
• mitigate risk and secure reasonable contingencies or a walk-away alternative (BATNA) at each major milestone;
• learn to negotiate ethically without the benefit of authority;
• learn to allocate responsibility and avoid role conflict which impairs performance;
• seek the ingredients essential to the creation of lasting agreements;
• identify the various tactics used by difficult people and coercive and hostile negotiators;
• develop constructive ways to prevent and manage hostility and deadlocks;
• practice face-to-face negotiations under increasingly complex situations, and with demanding negotiators who may need assistance vis-à-vis their own constituencies;
• detect how to call for a recess or a graceful exit when the face-to-face atmosphere is neither adding substantive nor relational value;
• act as a proactive leader and never forget the common good and the needs of each legitimate constituency, be it at the negotiation table or not.

1. Introduction: Practical Framework, Proven Tools
    and Management Road Maps

• Instruments to visualize the complete management cycle: Harvard University Global System^™ as a complement to PMI Body of Knowledge
• Intelligent and continuous risk management
• Four practical and essential instruments for a clear mandate

• Pre-issue incubation intelligence: Detecting embryonic signals below management radar to anticipate issues (threats, risks and opportunities) and future projects early
• How to validate and interpret intelligence: from mapping perceptions and context to extracting facts, identifying the full spectrum of stakeholders, their genuine interests and hidden agendas, if any
• Four tests to discard goals and projects with questionable value
• How to balance multi-purpose multi-tasking portfolios: Key thresholds to differentiate pilot experiments, projects, operations, and strategic and operational policies
• Project-scope and change-definition tool: Project Charter
• The progress/performance section: A balanced scorecard linking all project elements
• How to define and validate priority and urgency

      A. How to Identify, Assess and Characterize Hidden Risks,
           Blind Spots and Gray Areas

• Value-chain risks
• Risk incubators and pre-project tipping-point risks
• Anticipating stakeholder-related risks (SRR): Visualization of complex relationships integrating SRI Business Intelligence VALS (Psychographics), Martin's Factional Analysis and three power-asymetric dimensions to assess the capability and readiness for change
• Responsibility-accountability risks
• Execution, transition and commissioning risks
• Hygea Case study: Value-chain and stakeholder risks

• Risk tolerance: The precautionary principle
• Risk response: Progress tracking and control
• Crafting solid plans to deal with residual risks
• Risk communication from threat identification to mitigation and impact evaluation
• Complex Case study: Instrument to manage transition risk (Wakefield)

• How to invent a wide range of counterintuitive options with Harvard^® Strategy Grid: Free and guided out-of-the-box brainstorming
• From strategy to work plan: Demonstration and practice
• How to translate strategy into tactics and clear deliverables
• How to build lasting alliances for high commitment
• Ten acid tests of an effective strategy for projects, policies and daily operations
• How to get team synergy in strategy formulation

• Proven ways to empower talent and build allies
• New tools for deciphering vested interests and perceptions
• How to extract value from psychographics
• How to get high performance with limited authority and restraints on rewards
• Proven ways to empower talent and build allies

• How to assign the responsibility of each team member
  • Harvard^® Responsibility Chart
• Workshop demonstration and group exercise
• How to prevent hidden vetoes and costly delays
• How to reduce usual delays in getting approvals
• How to get results as a project leader without the benefit of hierarchical authority
• How to build collaborative and charismatic power
• Sources, applications and limits of personal power
• Understanding accountability practices and risks for team leaders
  • Individual accountability
  • Professional accountability
  • Managerial accountability
  • Collective accountability
• Group exercise integrating responsibility, accountability, power and authority into a managerial balance sheet

• Personal blind-spot awareness: Roger-Fisher wrestling exercise
• Interest-based negotiation:
  Preparation checklist and detailed road map for flawless negotiations
• Principled Negotiation Framework
• Differentiating between each party's position and vested interests
• How to move from positional bargaining to joint problem solving
• Negotiation-Mandate Tool (Harvard University Global System^™):
  Demo and practice
• Structuring surprise-free ethical deals: Critical success factors
• Identify creative options and crafting mutual-gain opportunities
  • Harvard^® Strategy Grid
• Ground rules for inventing options without commitment
• Case Study: Teamwork on inventing counter-intuitive options
• Differentiating substantive from people issues
• Crafting the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)

• Bidding, auctioning, counter-offers and last-minute demands
• Proven tips to deal with objections, framing, escalation, soft money and other tactics
• How and when to make necessary concessions in a strategic way
• Revelations from the pattern of concessions
• Practical tips for buying or selling homes and capital goods

• The time to secure future success is never too early
• Strategic negotiations: Why being on time is too late? Tips to gain early-bird gains; clues to connect the dots
• BATNA exercise: Job interview
• How to build the trust and forge lasting agreements
• How to avoid discord on your side of the table
• Subtle elements that can make or break deals

• Harvard case: High-stake negotiations between and within six groups comprising federal and state/provincial government jurisdictions, environmentalists, labor unions and companies on opposite sides
• Dealing with conflicting groups and fleeting coalitions risks: Harborco
• How to read people signals, validate your perceptions and anticipate tactics
• Real-life video Case: Behind the scene of a major negotiation

• Practical template for conflict diagnosis
• Managing conflict and hostility
• How to ethically deal with harsh 'negotiators' who resort to systematic obstruction

• Ten steps to reach a viable deal and avoid deadlock or flawed closure

• The characteristics of high-performing team leaders
• Leadership practical competencies: Knowledge and skills
• Exemplary-leadership values and attitudes for high commitment
• Governing principles for ethics and conscience issues
• Practical ways to use power ethically
• Leadership courage: Taking responsible opportunity and conscience risks with careful management
• How to manage, negotiate and lead without confrontation, coercion or manipulation
• Four exemplary project leaders selected from both the business and non-profit sectors
• Kendal: Repeating near miracles with shoe-string budgets in the toughest risk-plagued social-enterprise projects
• Mulally: the young engineer and long admired team builder who led  “killer” projects that propelled Boeing to global aerospace leader
• Strong: The project “conductor” who, without a college degree, excels in working behind the scene, in complex international geopolitical assignments with inelastic deadlines
• Wakefield: The project champion who turns fence-sitters and staunch competitive foes into allies from Alcan, Spar and Lockheed-Martin to Silicon Valley companies and a Russian satellite-launch consortium

14. Synthesis, Conclusion and 90-Day Personal Action Plan

As a participant, you will receive cutting-edge practical course materials, most of which are not available elsewhere. These include:

• A. P. Martin's latest book: Harnessing the Power of intelligence
  
• A. P. Martin's book: A 2005 advanced essay on risk management
• Alan Wakefield's 2005 essay on the multipartite negotiations "that led to the implementation of the first widespread curbside recycling program in the world. This model captured the public’s imagination and rapidly spread across North America and into parts of Europe, significantly increasing the recycling of consumer waste."
• A comprehensive workbook with extensive chapters on the topics discussed in the class including the paper "Profession Team Leader With Competence, Commitment and a Conscience"
• The Complete Harvard Road Map on strategy featuring both ongoing and sequential tasks that no manager can ignore;
• A step-by-step Risk Management Road Map
• A step-by-step Time Management Road Map to plan your year, month, week and day;
• A Professional Template to formulate strategy and manage resistance to change;
• Martin's Change Management Template used to define projects and manage complex change
• A Practical Responsibility-Charting Tool to clarify your various roles in all projects and assignments;
• An advanced Harvard case study on multi-issue multi-partite negotiation
• The latest Harvard Planner

• Duration: 4 days Monday to Thursday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Value in Continuing Education Units: 3 CEU
• Locations:
  • Canada: PDI Conference Center in Ottawa-Gatineau National Capital area. Free parking. Note: Our Ottawa-Gatineau campus is located about an hour direct flight from LaGuardia Airport (New York). Directions available at www.executive.org/directions
  • Call us for U.S. locations in Cambridge (MA) and New York (NY).
• Tuition Fees:
  • Fees include hand-outs, road maps and course materials of exceptional value, a daily continental breakfast, a light luncheon plus hot and soft drinks twice a day.
  • Regular fees: $1695 per participant, Government: $1620. Add taxes for non tax-exempted participants.
  • Groups of three or more delegates: $1545 per participant. Add taxes for non tax-exempted participants.

For overnight accommodation, several hotels are located within 10 to 20-minute drive including Hilton, Ramada Inn, Westin, Fairmont Chateau Laurier, Marriott, Sheraton, Delta, Holiday Inn, Days Inn, Best Western, Cartier Place Suite Hotel, Lord Elgin Hotel, and Minto Place Suite Hotel. Click here for detailed information about hotels.

How to Register: Please register by phone or fax and pay in advance by cheque or credit card.
Send your cheque payable to: The Professional Development Institute PDI Inc.
Fees include hand-outs, road maps and course materials of exceptional value (see above), a daily continental breakfast, light luncheon plus hot and soft drinks during the morning and afternoon pauses, but exclude hotel accommodation (if required).

Cancellation Policy: Participants registering as a group must send substitutes in lieu of cancelling. For other clients, cancellations are accepted if made at least 10 working days prior to the course, and are subject to a $100 service charge per person. Full fees are payable by anyone who fails to attend or cancels less than 10 working days prior to the session. One substitution or transfer to a later course of the same duration is allowed.

The dress code is business casual at your discretion. Trust your judgment. When unsure, err on the side of caution. If overdressed, you can remove a tie or a jacket and roll up your sleeves. Members of the Canadian Forces and the U.S. defense community can, at their discretion, either dress casually or keep the uniform.

You will be reminded the first day to dress the way you feel most comfortable for a photo session the next morning.

Although every effort will be made to ensure a pleasant learning environment including a suitable temperature, we recommend you bring a sweater or a jacket to the classroom as individual comfort zones differ and sudden variations in the weather can temporarily affect air conditioning.

Also please kindly refrain from using strong fragrances during the session in order to accommodate your fellow participants who suffer from asthma.