- 1 News
- American University Post Graduate Certification for Creative Leadership Forum Executive Education Programmes
- The Creative Leadership Forum CEO appointed as Inaugural Council Member of the Creativity Association of Asia
2. Events
- International Thought Leader Forum - Conversations That Create
International Master Class - The One Thing You Need To Know
3. The Creative Leadership Forum Executive Programmes Second Series 2008
4. Papers and Books
News
American University Post Graduate Certification for Creative Leadership Forum Programmes.
The Creative Leadership Forum is very pleased to be able to announce that it has secured certification by the University of Southern Maine, Portland, Maine, USA for its four initial programmes that will be launched in the later half of 2008.
Why the University of Southern Maine I hear people ask? For two reasons. Firstly, after 2 1/2 years of research into Australian universities and academic institutions, the Creative Leadership Forum has regrettably come to the conclusion there is no Australian university either offering or capable of assessing, assisting and properly accrediting executive education programmes on creative leadership and creativity, the prime component of our programmes.
Secondly our search for certification took us to Dr. Tara Grey Coste. Dr. Coste is a leadership and organizational studies professor at the University of Southern Maine. She is a Colleague of the US Creative Education Foundation, Leader at the US Creative Problem Solving Institute, Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Entrepreneurship of the University of Greenwich, United Kingdom, Co-Founder of the International Forum of Creativity Organizations, and Past-President and Director of Research of the American Creativity Association. She is known to the Creative Leadership Forum for her global leadership on refining the training processes that enhance team creativity. Her standing and experience particularly in creative leadership seemed the right match.
Through a series of discussions and the presentation of the Creative Leadership Forum programmes and course materials, all programmes completed through the Creative Leadership Forum will now be accompanied with a Certificate of Completion issued by the University of Southern Maine.
The CLF courses are designed at a post-graduate standard and we hope in the future that graduates will be able to convert their Certificates into points towards a more formal higher qualification such as a Masters Degree or a Professional Doctorate.
The Creative Leadership Forum CEO appointed as inaugural Council Member of the Creativity Association of Asia.
The Creativity Association of Asia held its inaugural meeting at the recent American Creativity Association Conference held in Singapore, February 2008.
This is an initiative led byYuan Zhang-du, a globally respected leader in the area of creativity and creative studies and President of the China Creativity Research Institute (CCRI), the China Creativity Studies Institute and a Research Fellow of the China Research Academy for Management Science. The Chinese Creativity Research Institute, based in Shanghai, is a Chinese Government initiative whose purpose is the research and development of creativity studies and skills. The Institute co-ordinates over 60 creativity chapters with 22,000 members within China and offers vital advice to the Chinese Government on the role creativity plays in its economy. .
The CCRI proposed the formation of the Creativity Association of Asia as a way of exchanging knowledge and practices in creativity and innovation across cultures and countries in thegreater Asian region. Membership is by invitation and members have been drawn from senior academics and practitioners representing their countries. India, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand have accepted invitations and global network, the Creative Skills Training Council, based in Sydney was offered and accepted observer status.Council members have been drawn from member countries and I was, as Founder of the Creative Skills Training Council, invited to be an inaugural member.
The American Creativity Association Conference in Singapore showcased the rise in importance governments in Asia, the Sub Continent and the Middle East are placing on the creative capacities and capabilities of their workforces and their leaders. I am honoured to have been invited to join the Council and very much look forward to being actively involved in this initiative.
Events
International Thought Leaders Forum
Conversations That Create,
May 7 - 9, 2008
Chowder Bay, Sydney. Australia
with International Thought Leaders
Shawn Callahan, Founder, Anecdote, Melbourne. Australia
Pavan Choudary, CEO, Vygon India, author and executive coach, Madras, India
Ralph Kerle, Chief Executive Officer, The Creative Leadership Forum, Sydney Australia
Professor Kirpal Singh Ph.D, Singapore Management University, Dean of Economics, Arts, and Humanities, novelist, poet, Singapore.
and Session Leaders
Tess De Quincey, Dr Louise Mahler and Diane Green.
In this International Thought Leaders Forum "Conversations that Create", delegates along with Thought and Session Leaders will explore how to create and maintain the necessary generative spaces and have the kinds of conversations needed to move individuals and teams into creative output. Participants will learn and practice practical ways of having conversations for possibility and opportunity, for engagement, commitment and creative action and for creating the necessary relationships for sustaining a generative space.
Click here for full forum preamble, details and to register and book.
International Master Class
The Creative Leadership Forum in association with the Chartered Accountants, Australian Institute of Management, Macquarie Graduate School of Management and Business Connect
present
The One Thing You Need To Know About Leading A Strength Revolution in Your Organization
A half day international master class
Brisbane June 3, Melbourne June 4 and Sydney June 5, 2008
with
Marcus Buckingham
Marcus Buckingham believes that a company's mission must be "to create a better marriage between the dreams of workers and the drive of companies to win." In this half day programme, Marcus Buckingham's explores how to
- Capitalise on your company's greatest asset - people
- Unlock and leverage the ambition and energy already inside the workers you rely on
- Drastically reduce employee attrition by tapping (and rewarding) dormant strengths that have gone unnoticed
- The transformation of raw talent into high-powered, lasting performances at your organization.
Marcus Buckingham is a Cambridge educated Social and Political Scientist and a member of the US Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Leadership and Management, who began his career as a researcher with the Gallup Organization. Over two decades of research practice, he honed his ideas and theories on achievement and as a result has established as a global authority on it.
Click here to download full details and to book.
The Creative Leadership Forum Executive Programmes Second Half Series 2008
The Creative Leadership Forum announces its Second Half Series 2008 commencing in July. The programmes are being run as one and two day programmes. In addition, there will be a special offer available for those who wish to participate in all four programmes. Exact date and venue will be released by the end of May. Click on the programmes for full details.
July
Developing Corporate Creative Capabilities
A one day programme
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane
August
Facilitating Creatively To Produce Ideas of Value
A one day programme
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane
September
Communities of Practice: Their Vital Roles in Producing Value in Organisations
A one day programme
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane
October
Leaders as Designers of Organisations
A two day programme
Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane
Click here to register your or your organization's interest.
Papers and Books.
Papers
The Value of A Problem Minded v Solution Minded Organisational Strategy
As the Creative Leadership Forum explores with senior executives the value of creativity within organisations, it becomes clear leaders generally have little or no knowledge around the importance of creativity and innovation strategically. Our research is suggesting that there is a clear disconnect between the way leaders construct business plans and how they think about them strategically, particularly in regard to creativity and innovation. Leader's training and education around strategy comes from two sources - a traditional business education such as an MBA or an entrepreneurial spirit driven by commercial practice rather than any formal education. The common myth is that ideation or brainstorming sessions will provide the insights to the organisation's planning and strategy needs - at least to commence.
Professor Arthur Van Gundy, one of the most underrated writers and thinkers around creativity has written a paper The Care and Framing of Strategic Innovation Challenges in which he argues that it is not ideas that are important in strategic thinking. Indeed, he says ideas are easy to produce and agrees with the myth they are a dime a dozen. Van Gundy proposes that business leaders are traditionally solution minded, whereas he argues the real breakthroughs in strategic business planning occur through adopting a problem-minded approach to strategic thinking. In this thought provoking paper, he argues by framing an organisation as a series of problems that need to be solved, it is much easier to obtain creative and innovation breakthroughs both strategically and organisationally. His Q-Bank methodology is a broad process that allows organisations to take a hard look at themselves and what they do and don't do, as well as what they should do. The outcome is a sense of the potential strategic direction they should pursue.
Young Managers Already Know Where The Future Business Opportunities Are
The initial series of Creating Your Future in the Digital World programme has revealed how managers understand the important role the new generation of digital technology in the Web 2.0 world will play in the future success of their organisations. There is deep frustration though amongst these employees because they perceive senior leaders within organisations are slow to understand the opportunities these new technologies offer and as a result opportunities are lost. Information technologies are stilled viewed as operational, as a cost to their organisations and new technologies suffer poor word-of-mouth amongst senior leaders because of the many bad experiences organisations have had in implementing new systems in the past.
One delegate to one of the CLF sessions, the Chairman and Managing Director of a major Australian financial services operation spoke frankly about how he had spent hundred of thousands of dollars attempting to implement a new business system that was nowhere near completion and still required further funding. His senior information team had failed him and he was seeking either a way forward or a way to mitigate his losses. He was shocked to learn how the new digital technologies offered a prototype solution that would enable him to fully test his business hypothesis for a cost of around $30 per month initially. His CIO and his team are now on a very fasttrack to understand Web 2.0!!
Younger managers born into the digital world or those working permanently in the area know digital technologies facilitate powerful new inexpensive ways of thinking strategically and creatively about business. Senior managements challenge is to listen to their younger charges and to absorb and apply this emerging knowledge.
The Practical Visionary (Spring 2008 edition of strategy+business) is an excellent background article to this dilemma.
Books
The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady - Sue Woolfe. This award winning Australian novelist's book is based on her search to overcome writer's block. In the process of defining and working through this problem, she explores the theory and dynamics of creativity from a neuroscience perspective. One of the most entertaining and best researched books on the practice of creativity I have read.
The Culture for the New Capitalism - Richard Sennett. A transcript of the Castle Lecture in Ethics, Politics and Economics, Yale University 2004, Sennet, a sociologist at both MIT and the London School of Economics argues that changes in work ethics, downsizing, "re-orging" and outsourcing, changes in our attitudes to merit and talent, in public and private institutions have all contributed to a life at work that is incomprehensible to the individual. He describes the phenomenon as "the spectre of uselessness". His call for us to re-examine our own lives and way we approach work is a compelling read!!
Better - A Surgeon's Notes on Performance - Atul Gawande. The struggle to perform well is universal: each of us faces fatigue, limited resources and imperfect abilities in whatever we do. Assistant Professor, Harvard School of Medical Health, Atul Gawande's stories from the importance of hand washing in hospitals in first world countries, the invention of operating systems on the Iraqi battlefields and the life saving ingenuity of Indian general surgeons with limited or no medical resources offer a rare insight into the world of medical professionals and how they progress from good to great. They also illuminate and confirm the power of practice through committed and caring human endeavour!! Best read this month.
Thank you for taking the time to read this! Any comments and thoughts can be posted on the Creativity Matters blog.Until next time,
Ralph Kerle
Editor
Creativity Matters.