Events that include:

Advancements in technology and the rapid proliferation of digital media, data analytics, and online collaboration require executives to lead their organizations with sophisticated communication skills, adapted for these new ways of working. To be a successful leader today, you must be able to effectively persuade and influence at all levels, in person and virtually, and with supporting data.

Edward Schiappa and Ben Shields draw on cutting-edge communication research, theories of persuasion, studies on parasocial interaction, and empirical studies on compelling storytelling to help participants solve problems, make quality decisions, and motivate people. Session topics include speaking persuasively, visual persuasion, communicating quantitative information clearly, and adapting messages to audiences.

The program will help you leverage new communication skills and harness the power of persuasion to:

• Influence attitudes and change behaviors in your organization
• Understand how new technology shapes the way we work and communicate
• Bring your message and your medium into alignment
• Support your message with data analytics
• Manage virtual communications with power and presence
• Apply the latest research to become a confident and inspiring public speaker
• Create a compelling story to galvanize and motivate people
• Adapt and deliver your message across different media channels and to diverse audiences
• Advance the level of discourse within your organization

Technical professionals' goals and incentives are often different from those of other employees, and so are the management challenges that arise. Drawing on the wealth of research and industry experience of faculty and leading practitioners, Managing Technical Professionals and Organizations explores proven, practical, and innovative strategies for maximizing the contribution of technical professionals. This intensive program focuses on the management and motivation of technical professionals in the innovative organization, and in particular:

• How creative individual contributors work together on risky projects, processing information under conditions of uncertainty;
• How to address critical problems and issues dealing with staff professionals and members of project teams, including cross-functional teams;
• How to work effectively with prima donnas and independent spirits.

The Learning Experience
Organizations that are designed and managed for doing the same things well repetitively, as in manufacturing and operations, are not particularly appropriate for doing something well once, as in R&D. Running a technical organization presents a unique set of management problems. How do you motivate and reward technical professionals to maximize their performance and creativity? How do you create an organizational structure that will contribute to success, not inhibit it? How do you deal with creative individual contributors, project teams, and innovative professionals? How do you build and sustain high motivation and vitality while preventing complacency? How do you utilize "marshaling" events for building more collaborative, innovative activities? And how do you move information and technology effectively across organizational structures?

This unique two-day program focuses on issues critical to the effective management of technical professionals and cross-functional teams. Its principles and strategies can be applied in any organization where research, development, engineering, or computer-related technology developments need to take place in a timely, effective, and successful manner.

Participants will learn principles and strategies of crucial importance to any organization where R&D, engineering, and/or computer-related technologies lie at the core of the business. Upon completing this program, participants will gain a thorough understanding of the following subjects:

• Managing risk taking and uncertainty in technical projects
• Managing and motivating your technical professionals
• Developing effective reward and incentive systems for technical professionals
• Creating a highly motivating work environment
• Managing and leading creative individual contributors
• Maximizing the technical productivity and vitality of teams
• Leading and managing more effectively across organizational structures
• Leading system change within established corporate cultures
• Transferring technology and information flows between and within organizations
• Organizing for innovative product development
• Managing the tensions among development efforts and cost/schedule pressures

"This was my fourth program and it was the very best by far. Professor Katz is Mel Brooks meets Yoda -- pearls of wisdom delivered in an extremely engaging manner. Highly recommended." ~ Past Participant Matthew K.

Game-changing organizations rewrite traditional playbooks. They stand out. They often create disproportionate value relative to their size and resources. They have big dreams but know how to get things done. These organizations have a palpable "buzz" to them. They have a breakaway business model, but they also have a breakaway spirit and organizational culture.

Leaders of these game-changing organizations understand the power and importance of telling their companies' compelling stories. They are hard-edged business leaders but they also embrace what others might consider to be the "soft side" of leading: purpose, vision and climate. They know how to integrate the hard and soft sides of leadership into a powerful formula that makes them game-changers. These leaders, and their organizations are: purpose-driven; performance-oriented; and principles-led. The weaving together of these three capabilities simultaneously is what helps them get and stay out in front.

Participants in this new program will learn what it takes to build game-changing organizations that make their teams and areas of responsibility world-class talent factories. They will also discuss the importance of building an authentic and energizing culture, and learn from the successes and challenges of various companies that have been on similar journeys of transformation.

Participants in this program will:

• Understand what it takes to build game-changing organizations
• Be provided with the resources and tools to articulate their company's powerful story--what we call their "collective ambition"
• Examine how to integrate the "soft" side of leading (purpose, vision, culture) with the hard side (strategy, operational priorities, brand) into a powerful formula
• Understand the importance of building an authentic and energizing culture
• Understand what it takes to make their companies world-class talent factories

This program is designed to help spark the breakthrough ideas business leaders need to create successful competitive products for the future. Drawing on the latest MIT Sloan research, the program will offer a set of strategies for growing companies in the face of changing markets, technologies, and consumer demand. Specifically, participants will be presented with:

• Tactics for dealing with the internal politics and resistance to change that can threaten innovation initiatives and early-stage developments
• Techniques for building innovation streams
• Processes for collecting competitive intelligence, forecasting technology change, and gathering information on user needs
• Methods for identifying better innovations more quickly, including the lead-user method for discovering breakthrough products, services, and strategies; and innovation toolkits that enable managers to design their own mass-customized products and services

• Get the right mix of people and skills to generate innovative ideas efficiently
• Develop the processes required to support these people
• Build cultures that encourage innovative behaviors
• Decide which ideas are right for investment, and which new business opportunities are worth pursuing

Negotiation is a daily practice within business organizations. We negotiate all the time--with clients and partners, vendors and suppliers, supervisors and colleagues, employees and recruits. Successful negotiation requires self-awareness, preparation, and practice. This program addresses all three requirements by providing extensive personalized feedback, tips for efficient pre-negotiation planning, and plenty of opportunities to practice and hone your negotiation skills. Drawing on fundamental negotiation principles based on scientific research as well as specific real-world examples, this program aims to enhance personal gains in negotiation, while simultaneously sustaining important relationships.

The MIT Edge

True to the deeply analytical and quantitative MIT style, the material in this program is based on extensive scientific research by Professor Curhan and his colleagues. Professor Curhan is renowned not only for his engaging interactive teaching style, but also for his pioneering research on the social and psychological components of negotiation. His research includes topics such as: conceptions of fairness, concern for personal integrity, lasting reputations, company loyalty, preference change during the course of a negotiation, norms for appropriate negotiating behavior, and relational dynamics among negotiators who interact multiple times

In this program, participants will learn how to:

* Leverage their own specific personality traits and abilities to boost negotiation outcomes
* Enhance bargaining power to claim a larger share of the pie
* Recognize and resolve different types of issues to create and claim value
* Develop strategies for efficient pre-negotiation preparation
* Build and maintain working relationships without forfeiting economic outcomes
* Deal with difficult tactics

Powerful negotiators are valued at all levels of an organization. If your responsibilities include interacting in some shape or form with others, then this program is for you. Typical participants' areas of expertise tend to include:

* sales and marketing
* planning and development
* operations management
* strategic partnerships
* supply-chain agreements
* recruitment and human resources

Course material is presented in a series of lectures, discussions, and engaging exercises that provide extensive personalized feedback and are designed to teach participants how to leverage their individual traits to achieve success and build lasting relationships at the bargaining table. Prior to the first day of sessions, participants are strongly encouraged to complete a detailed written questionnaire that will better customize the experience for each individual negotiator.

Faculty
Jared Curhan
Ford International Career Development Professor
Associate Professor of Organizations Studies

Professor Curhan specializes in the psychology of negotiation and conflict resolution. A recipient of support from the National Science Foundation, Curhan has pioneered a social psychological approach to the study of "subjective value" in negotiation (i.e., feelings and judgments concerning the instrumental outcome, the process, the self, and the relationship). His current research uses the Subjective Value Inventory (SVI; Curhan et al., 2006) to examine precursors, processes, and long-term consequences of subjective value in negotiation.

Deeply committed to education at all levels, Curhan received MIT's institute-wide teaching award presented annually by the graduate student council. Curhan is founder and president of the Program for Young Negotiators, Inc., an organization dedicated to the promotion of negotiation training in primary and secondary schools. His book, Young Negotiators (Houghton Mifflin, 1998), is acclaimed in the fields of negotiation and education and has been translated into Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic. The book has been used to train more than 35,000 children across the United States and abroad to achieve their goals without the use of violence.

Some organizations achieve such exceptional levels of performance?time to market, quality, safety, affordability, reliability, dependability and adaptability?that it puts their rivals to shame. Though few in overall number, they exist in manufacturing, high tech, heavy industry, product design and production, and services, such as health care delivery. The select few are capable of generating and sustaining such high-velocity, broad-based, relentless improvement and innovation, that they achieve unparalleled levels of excellence. Learn what drives the success of these companies.

The Learning Experience

Creating High Velocity Organizations employs several teaching techniques: presentations, case discussions, video dramatizations, and an in-class simulation emphasizing a participatory style to maximize the opportunities for "learning by doing." The program material is organized into thematic modules designed around the four key principles of building the discovery capability in an organization?smart work design, creative problem solving, continuous knowledge sharing, and developing of discovery skills among employees. Each module consists of several sessions, which demonstrate, first, the positive impact through successful application of those key principles, and then provides examples of negative results when those principles were clearly needed but not applied. Each session is punctuated by facilitated small-group exercises, in which participants can actively apply the ideas and examples offered in class to their own specific, real-life situations.

Assignment Required Before Arrival

This program will provide multiple opportunities for participants to explore their own processes. Participants should come prepared to work on an important challenge in their organization.

This program will enable participants to:

• Create an organization where work is done by harnessing the best-known approaches available and signaling the need for new knowledge.
• Solve problems as they arise and to develop new understanding that prevents the problems from recurring.
• Multiply the impact of local discoveries by making them useful systemically throughout the organization.
• Lead an organization where discovery is encouraged, supported, and promoted at all times. 

The MIT Edge

Traditional business-school curricula tend to focus on teaching decision-making skills as a way to success. However, many companies today?especially those in relatively new industries?find themselves lacking the information or the experience needed to make the decisions that could determine their future. That is where the leaders' ability not only to think, but also to behave like innovators, becomes vital to the success of the organization. Known for its commitment to innovation, with this program MIT Sloan offers a rare opportunity for participants to learn how to channel their curiosity into innovators' behavior.

New digital technologies have fundamentally reshaped marketing theory and practice the last decade alone. Technology has changed the modes of communication through which firms engage with consumers. Moore's law has made the storage and analysis of consumer data scalable, creating opportunities for fine-grained behavioral analytics. New monitoring tools have fostered precise and personalized customer relationship management practices. The rise of mobile phones and tablets has enabled location based messaging and reciprocal communication. The ubiquity of video content has promulgated rich, native advertising programs. The global emergence of social networking has enabled networked based predictive modeling and new forms of targeting and referral strategies based on the preferences of consumers' peers. And finally, new social media have brought all of this onto the public stage, with word-of-mouth conversations driving brand awareness and brand loyalty, and user-generated content on review and ratings sites making or breaking demand for products or services.

This two-day course provides a detailed, applied perspective on the theory and practice of digital marketing and social media analytics in the 21^st century. We will cover concepts such as the difference between earned and paid media, predictive modeling for ad targeting and customer relationship management, measuring and managing product virality, viral product design, native advertising, and engaging the multichannel experience. Throughout the course we will specifically stress the theory and practice of randomized experimentation, AB testing and the importance of causal inference for marketing strategy.

Topics covered in this course include:

• Search marketing
• Social network marketing
• Social media analytics
• User generated content management and marketing
• Mobile advertising and commerce
• CRM strategy in the age of big data and digital advertising
• Earned vs paid media
• Predictive modeling for ad targeting
• Viral product design
• The multichannel experience
• Randomized experimentation
• A/B testing

Upon completion of this course you should have a fundamental understanding of:

• The digital advertising ecosystem and attribution and pricing models for digital advertising
• The fundamentals of web and app analytics and KPIs for web traffic and commerce
• Search engine marketing, search engine advertising, ad auctions, and strategies for optimizing search engine advertising
• Social network marketing and social network targeting
• Predictive analytics using social network data, peer-to-peer marketing and personalized social advertising
• Targeting and segmentation, specifically demographic targeting and segmentation, behavioral targeting and segmentation, social targeting and segmentation
• Social listening?analysis of user generated content, reviews, ratings and their effects on consumer demand
• Mobile commerce and analytics

This program is based on a new view of the world and how business at all levels must work in the context of a globalized world. The globalized world is no longer simply a source of new markets or cost factor savings; it is a source of innovation. Companies must develop a global business strategy that encompasses all aspects of being an organization capable of developing and delivering a proposition that takes advantage of global integration to create value from and for the world.

Why did global integration turn into a strategic imperative for so many industries and companies over the last couple of decades? Why is global integration so challenging for otherwise established multinational companies?

This program addresses how the current world makes a big difference for internationalization and a global strategy, and why incumbent multinationals and emergent multinationals have fared so differently in the dire straits of the new, globalized world. Strategy in a Global World provides a systemic approach to global business strategy and the relentless quest for discovering "why and how," not just "what."

Many participants attend this program along with Understanding Global Markets.