B-AGILE for Government—Solve Problems with Government Leadership Programs

Two examples of seven-module programs designed to enhance leadership skills and communication through entrepreneurship and inclusivity. There are many possibilities available.

Week 1: Entrepreneurial Leadership & Innovation
Week 2: Design Thinking
Week 3: Leading Through Relationships
Week 4: Systems Thinking
Week 5: Executing S.M.A.R.T.
Week 6: Advancing Ideas
Week 7: Presentations: Entrepreneurial Thought & Action Plans

Week 1: Managing in a Diverse Workforce
Week 2: “Entrepreneuring” Inclusivity
Week 3: Actionable Allyship: Part 1
Week 4: Actionable Allyship: Part 2
Week 5: Leading through Influence
Week 6: Entrepreneurial Inclusion
Week 7: Presentations: Entrepreneurial Thought & Action Inclusion Plans

Without entrepreneurial leadership, there is no innovation. Unfortunately, innovation is a highly abused and misused term. Entrepreneurial leaders impact change. They lead change. However, all change is cultural. Learn the techniques and frameworks that great innovators, inventors, and entrepreneurs use to become creative and lead change.

Design thinking is a powerful, human-centric way to approach problem solving and innovation. Drawn from the world of design and designers, design thinking has been successfully applied to a wide range of contexts and challenges across sectors. It provides an accessible, intuitive tool kit that individuals, teams, and organizations can utilize to frame and reframe problems, deeply understand the needs of people, generate ideas, and prototype potential solutions. We will equip you with the fundamental tools of design thinking to help you approach challenges and problem solving differently.

Learn the importance of high-quality relationships to a leader’s success. Better understand how relationships affect leadership. Reflect on how you can improve your leadership and teamwork skills. Learn and apply evidence-based approaches to building effective relationships.

Entrepreneurial leaders succeed when they mobilize support from their stakeholder networks for their individual initiatives. In this session, we leverage principles of systems thinking to help you harness support from key advocates, build coalitions, and construct win-win outcomes with others within your organization.

You need the right innovation and execution processes to achieve organizational impact; the process is the strategy. In this module, we look into two popular approaches to process design and execution: Lean and agile. Lean is a management framework of efficient planning and execution. Agile is a collaborative team approach to project management and strategy execution with analysis and execution working together.

Just because you discover a breakthrough idea doesn’t guarantee others will see as much value in it as you do. We will review principles for how to advance novel ideas through your organization and stakeholder network.

Your organization’s Cohort Teams will discuss their challenge and the solutions they propose using the tools they have gained in this program. For example, addressing constituent involvement, utilizing media resources across silos, and building communication across departments to fully utilize resources.

This module focuses on the topic of “implicit bias” as it affects perceptions, behavior, and relationships. We will address how to lead in ways that leverage the diversity of our colleagues, employees, and other stakeholders, and how to be allies and amplify the voices of others. We will review key terminology, uncover unconscious biases, and explore how to create a new paradigm for an effective and inclusive workplace.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core components of 21st century organizational success. Yet, many of us experience challenges identifying and implementing talent management strategies that will enable and propel our desired goals. First, we will explore talent acquisition processes that inhibit our goals, and how our individual diversities influence the decisions we make, while examining the historical and present-day factors that impact our employees. Other factors we’ll examine include inhibitors and enablers of our collective success, and what role legacy practices, perceptions, and protocols have in our actions. We will conclude by examining our diverse experiences and the impact they have on our own identities. We will create a common understanding of DE&I and the goal of “belonging” in our workplaces.

Although conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion have been going on for much longer, a particular awareness has emerged during the past few years that has caused many companies and individuals to pause. How might we have been complicit in perpetuating inequality? What can we actually do to impact change? What does it mean to be an ally? While this module will offer some conceptual reminders of key terms for having these conversations—such as bias and identity—the focus will be on what we can do with this knowledge specifically within the client organization.

• Part One will focus on developing shared language and examples that focus on us as individuals and our workplace roles. We will support participants through an allyship activity that will ask them to make observations about their immediate workplace surroundings through an inventory and reflection.
• Part Two will define allyship more concretely, delving deeper into various facets of allyship and tangible ways of being an ally. Through continuing to look inward and outward, we will explore actionable steps and allyship approaches specific to the workplace culture.

This module builds on the foundations set in the Managing in a Diverse Workforce and Actionable Allyship module by offering a mindset and method for entrepreneuring inclusion from wherever you are within the company. We will engage in an interactive experience that distinguishes a prediction versus creation mindset and then dive into Babson’s Entrepreneurial Thought & Action® (ET&A™) methodology for advancing change. We then brainstorm your ideas for using ET&A™ to advance inclusion within your sphere of influence. The ET&A™ framework for entrepreneuring inclusion will be the foundation of your group presentations in the final module of the B-Agile program.

B-AGILE Blue Sky is customizable to each organization’s needs and objectives. This is one of many possible examples. We work with each public safety organization to shape its own program.

Week 1: Taking care of yourself – How can managers in a stressful profession develop their skills as leaders and decision makers? How does this influence their ability to lead and develop others?

Week 2: The best-self – What does science say about the processes that help us transform ourselves into better professionals and better leaders capable of advancement to levels of higher responsibility? What can you learn about yourself from data that will be collected from your colleagues and others who know you?

Week 3: Performance management – How should we use strengths-based coaching and development to improve the performance of our people and accelerate their growth? How does this work?

Week 4: Change – Why is it so hard to make and sustain changes in how we think and act? What has to happen for us to make sustainable changes in ourselves and lead others to make changes?

Week 5: Decision making under stress – What are the factors that we need to understand in order to make good decisions and lead our people to make good decisions? How do leaders make decisions that their organizations will actually implement?

Week 6: Innovation – What have we learned about how innovation actually works? What are the practices of entrepreneurs who imagine new ways of doing things and actually bring these practices to life? Why do we fail to understand this? Can we even think this way in law enforcement?

Week 7: What can we do now for ourselves, our people, and our community? – How should we use what we have learned in this course to take the first steps toward better lives for ourselves and our people?