Visiting Professor
Facoltà di Economia | Università di Trieste | Organizational Behavior and Design 2013 | with Professor Francesco Venier | Download Syllabus
Series Description
The definition of organizational success continues to evolve, and the “bar” is constantly raised. Leaders of modern organizations face many pressures, both external and internal. The key to addressing these pressures does not lie in allocating or reallocating scarce resources, although that is important. Achieving and sustaining high performance requires leaders to learn to design or redesign their organizations to create value for the workforce, customers, investors, suppliers, partners, the community, and the environment. In other words, “successful leaders in the future will have to become architects of enduring organizations by designing systems that create sustainable results for multiple stakeholders” (Latham, 2012).

The five sessions in this series at the University of Trieste, Italy, are based on the most recent research, executive education curricula, and application experience from the Monfort Institute at the University of Northern Colorado. The Monfort Institute is an integral part of the Monfort College of Business, a 2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Recipient. These sessions are designed for an undergraduate audience and emphasize the practical application of “leading-edge” practices and contemporary theories and concepts. Participants explore the impact of leadership, culture, and systems on organizational performance.
Seminars
1. Leadership + Design = Sustainable Excellence – An Overview
Most change initiatives fail! Yet, change is needed to compete in an ever-evolving and highly competitive environment. In this session, participants learn how high-performing leaders defied the odds and transformed their organizations to achieve sustainable excellence. | Read more
2. Designing Organizational Systems – A Design Framework
This session explores a flexible framework for designing organizations and management systems that create sustainable value for multiple stakeholders. It integrates systems theory, design thinking, appreciative inquiry, and sustainability. | Read more
3. The Leadership “System” – Systematic Approaches
This session focuses on the design of systematic approaches and activities for leading organizational transformation. Nine interrelated activities are explored, and world-class examples are used to help illustrate the key concepts. While the design of the individual activities is sometimes different for each level of leadership, the leadership systems concepts are applicable at all levels of leadership. | Read more
4. The Leadership “Style” – Behaviors
This session focuses on the nine leader behaviors for leading the transformation to sustainable excellence. The relationships among the nine behaviors, as well as the relationships to the nine leadership activities (system), are explored in detail and applied to the process of transforming an organization for high performance. | Read more
5. The “Habit” of Excellence + A Look “Below the Surface” – An Exploration of Culture and the Individual Leader
This session explores the process and role of culture change in creating and sustaining excellence. As Aristotle noted, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.” High-performance organizational culture is defined, and key concepts are explored, along with the transformation of culture to ensure the changes to achieve excellence become embedded habits in the organization. | Read more
Special Session: Global Excellence Models: Overview of Leadership Aspects – Rivalto Residenza Universitaria
Global mindset: be a citizen of the world. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, it becomes more necessary to expand our knowledge and attitudes to participate successfully in the emerging global community. In this context, it’s impossible to remain physically or conceptually inside our city or nation’s boundary without considering the world as the ordinary arena where we live and act as workers and citizens. Note – this session is not part of the Organizational Behavior and Design 2013 course. | Read more