Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session
Description
The objective of this course is to show how decisions really get made by top management in high-tech businesses, and to enable you to create and lead teams of decision-making ninjas*.
SLaM (Systems Leadership and Management) Praxis is designed to expose students to how senior leadership teams in technology businesses make decisions, and to enable students to become highly effective at making strategic decisions in teams under time pressure, with incomplete and ambiguous information, and significant uncertainty.
The course achieves this through a combination of individual and team exercises, case studies, role playing and simulations. We will also have invited guest speakers from the industry who have lived through difficult management situations and leadership challenges, and who can thereby provide insights into the cases discussed in class.
The case studies and team exercises will introduce students to strategy choices in the high-tech sector. Although the primary focus is on the complex, dynamic and uncertain high-tech sector, the insights and learnings are just as valid in other sectors or in other circumstances characterized by either or both rapid change or significant uncertainty.
One of the later sessions is a computer-based simulation exercise in which participants play the role of the top management team of a high-tech business. The exercise is played out through multiple rounds, to enable reflection and learning, thereby improving individual and team performance as it progresses.
The finale of the course is a scenario based simulation exercise, a.k.a. "War games" in which students, working together in small teams, take on the real-world problems of today and the near future, in an interactive exercise with real-world business leaders, who observe and evaluate each of the team's problem-solving and decision-making skills.
Most of the learning in this class is in the team exercises and most of the assignments required for this course can be done during class time.
On completion of this course, we hope students will have a deeper understanding and improved skills in strategic and team based decision making which they will be able to utilize effectively in other class projects, and at work throughout the rest of their career.
*ninja: Noun—a person skilled in martial arts, characterized by stealthy movement.
Prerequisite
None.
Readings
Reading assignments are expected to be done at home after each class.
Assignments and Assessment
There are 10 assignments in total, a good mix of in-class assignments, written assignments, as well as in-class presentation. See Assignments section for more details.
Grading Policy
Grading for this class is on a Pass / Fail basis. All individual and team assignments are graded on a Complete / Incomplete scale.
There are, however, also significant prizes for competitive performance in the online simulation exercise, based on objective performance criteria, and for the finale "War games" exercise, adjudicated by the business leaders who participate in this exercise and evaluate the performance of each team.