The third course in this Specialization introduces you to the factors that influence how effective boards of directors will be in carrying out their roles and responsibilities and hence the impact they have in shaping the success of the organization they govern. While this course has been developed with North American culture in mind, we do appreciate that, in other parts of the world, the nature of the factors that influence the effectiveness of nonprofit boards of directors may vary. Nevertheless,it is our hope that much of the course content will still be of value to those in other parts of the world. To learn more about this course, please watch the overview video by copying and pasting the following link into your web browser: https://goo.gl/aAMIfl. Keywords: Nonprofit; Nonprofit Sector; Voluntary Sector; Nonprofit Organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations, Volunteer Organizations, Leadership, Management, Governance, Board, Board of Directors, Performance, Effectiveness Course 3 Overview: Week 1: This week's questions: What factors influence the effectiveness of board meetings? What are the formal procedures and structures within the board that impact its performance? What can a board do to intentionally improve the way it structures itself and runs its decision making meetings? Week 2: This week's questions: What do we mean by board composition and development and why is it important? Why is it difficult to change the composition of the board? How do you design the ideal mix of board members? How do you locate, recruit and develop board members? Week 3: This week's questions: What do we mean by the "culture" of the board and why is it important? How do boards develop and pass along culture? Can board cultures be intentionally changed? What is the role of leadership in shaping board culture? What do effective nonprofit leaders involved in governance do? How can leadership be managed for higher performance? Week 4: At this stage, you are asked to review the course content, submit a written assignment (known lightheartedly as a BEAR (Board Effectiveness Readiness Assessment), and take two multiple choice Readiness Assurance Tests (known similarly as RATs). One RAT will assess knowledge and reading comprehension and the other will test application of knowledge within a practical case. Week 5: We will encourage you to discuss the RATs in the discussion forums and take them again should you wish to change any of your answers based on the information exchanged.

This course aims to inspire and empower women and men across the world to engage in purposeful career development and take on leadership for important causes---to lead change with more conviction and confidence---and improve our workplaces and communities for all. By offering more complex understandings of issues related to professional women and work, the course will help you increase self-knowledge about your own values and vision, as well as enhance your capabilities as a leader, manager, and team contributor. We will examine the opportunities, challenges, trade-offs, and organizational dynamics experienced by women in work organizations, as well as reflect on and practice effective individual behaviors. The course aims at answering questions such as: What are the valued attributes and behaviors of women in the workplace? How does the gendered nature of organizations impact women? What derails our career advancement and what propels us upward? What are your leadership goals and aspirations? How can you best integrate your multiple family and work life commitments? How do you define career success? What can organizations do to provide women with opportunities to excel? What opportunities could our global economy harness by advancing women to leadership? How can the full talents of the workforce be tapped into and developed? The course is about leadership and inspiring change, but at its core it is meant to inspire and empower women and men across the world to engage in purposeful career development and take on leadership for important causes, to lead change with more conviction and confidence, and improve our workplaces and communities for all. Your involvement in the course activities is essential to help you learn these concepts and develop the necessary skills to implement them. If you watch the videos and read the required articles you will be introduced to some intriguing ideas. If you do the personal reflective exercises and complete the final project you will convert those ideas into relevant experiences to enhance your life and work. Going beyond your personal relevance, your potential learning will expand to understanding and working with others more effectively through either the Discussion Forums in the course or through face-to-face discussions (some of you are taking the course in groups). Each week, we will post reminders, changes, and other relevant announcements.

The third course of the specialization CREATING INNOVATION will teach you what is at the core of all innovations that solve complex problems and how to foster methods to make big breakthroughs possible. It advances your knowledge of your own field by teaching you to look at it in new ways. CREATING INNOVATION is constructed in the following way: Week I. “What is Innovation?” – What lies at the core of all innovations. Week II. “The Evolution of Human Creativity” – How humans developed the ability to innovate and think creatively. Week III. “Innovation in a Complex Global Network” – How innovations emerge from human networks. Week IV. “Planning Innovation” – How organisations seek out and create the right conditions for new breakthroughs. Week V. “Market Innovation” – What makes innovations more likely to emerge in a market setting. Week VI. “Innovation in the Anthropocene” – How innovations are crucial to meet the problems of the 21st century.

This is a foundational course in the Agile Leadership Specialization. By the end of this course, you will build an understanding of key agile leadership concepts. You will begin building a toolbox that will give you an ability to evaluate and create a baseline for yourself as an agile leader. You will access your team’s readiness for change. You will also analyze to what degree an organization is agile, and evaluate its ability to respond to change triggers.

This course is best suited for individuals currently in the healthcare sector, as a provider, payer, or administrator. Individuals pursuing a career change to the healthcare sector may also be interested in this course. In this course, you will learn about the importance of successful execution and management of service innovation. The course focuses on the internal management of business processes necessary to deliver improved services to customers and patients, increased profitability, and build long-term customer loyalty and engagement. You will experience elements that are critical for the effective execution, implementation, and evaluation of the various strategic aspects of achieving organizational goals, with an emphasis on the initiatives and key organizational change elements. Through guided project work, you will have an opportunity to apply these concepts to services and internal business processes at your own organizations. Additionally, the course has been designed to help you become familiar with a framework of service and process redesign. 

Welcome to the capstone project course in the Coursera Inspirational Leadership Specialization! In the next 6 weeks you'll apply the skills you learned in the Specialization to tackle a real world leadership challenge. To better meet your own goals of taking this Specialization, we will provide one capstone project: -Personal leadership challenge; You'll select one project to implement and will receive assessments from your Capstone peers. No matter which option you choose, the capstone project will examine your skills, including self-awareness, developing quality relationships and trust, resilience, and how making decisions entails a strong sense of responsibility. For the personal challenge, you will work on your own question addressing your capacity to grow as a leader. A challenge can be a target objective (starting a company, running a project, designing a product, winning a competition, running a marathon…) you have for yourself which puts into question what you want to achieve and how. The Capstone will help you measure the challenge, establish a process and build the steps to meet your goals. Whatever personal challenge you choose, specific questions will attest to your capacity to analyze and criticize the the problem which is faced by by yourself. The process that will drive the Business plan will follow step by step the relational circuit model developed in MOOC2 “Giving Sense to your Leadership Experience” and MOOC3 “Leading Organizations” with its two phases of Exploration and Projection. In the EXPLORATION, you will engage in a first step of holistic perception of the problem using your sensible skills to give a sense of perspective and give voice to you subjective apprehension of the situation as a whole. The second stage of exploration will involve your analytical skills to understand each and every component (elements of data relevant to the challenge) that plays a role in defining the situation. And the third stage of exploration will apply your relational skills where you will make sense and connect your subjective perception with your analysis. You will share the exploration results with peers to receive feedback before your can move on. The second phase, the PROJECTION part of your business plan leading to recommendations for the personal challenge at stake. In the projection phase you will first look at what the situation might be when you decenter the problem in time and space. Using benchmark and competitive analysis, you will work on different scenarios for the projected outcomes. Finally, with a view to build sense out of the challenge you will come up with recommendations arguing for a preferred scenario.

Easil is a free, user-friendly platform which allows you to create informative and eye catching designs to market your products, events, or services. Known for their “drag-and-drop” features, Easil gives you the ability to truly customize each of your ads to meet your marketing needs. Easil has a library of free templates available to use, which makes creating ads and marketing campaigns a breeze. With social media’s heavy influence and presence in today’s society, it is important to create a strong social media presence when advertising your company. This will help to ensure target market engagement and keep your customers up to date on your current sales, projects, and events. In this project, we will use Easil to create social media posts to help boost online presence and increase customer interaction. In addition, we will design a customer loyalty punch card which our customers can use to keep track of their purchases and rewards. This project will teach you about some of the many features of Easil while also giving you the freedom to explore your own creativity. Note: This course works best for learners who are based in the North America region. We’re currently working on providing the same experience in other regions.

In this course, you will learn how to define your target market, create a scalable sales process, and build training, coaching, hiring, and onboarding programs to help your sales team grow better. Whether you're already managing a sales team, or aspire to manage one at some point in your career, this course will explain what's involved when it comes to setting up a sales process, coaching your team, hiring new team members, and getting those team members up to speed as fast as possible.

Digital transformation is a hot topic--but what exactly is it and what does it mean for companies? In this course, developed at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, and led by top-ranked Darden faculty and Boston Consulting Group global management experts, we talk about digital transformation in two ways. First we discuss the pace of change and the imperative it creates for businesses. Next we provide the context for this transformation and what it takes to win in the digital age. Then we walk through BCG's proprietary framework, which helps you identify key areas to digitize, including strategy, core processes, and technology. By the end of this course, you'll be able to: --describe the underlying economics of innovation, technology, and market disruptions --weigh the pros and cons of current digital technologies driving advancement --utilize BCG's digital transformation framework as a "how-to" for digitizing your organization

This course will cover Supplier Selection and Evaluation, Contract Management, Quality & Risk Management, and Ethics. One of the important decisions that a Procurement professional makes is selecting the right supplier.We will cover how to evaluate suppliers, using a very simple evaluation tool, to select the right suppliers. In contract management we will expose you to six different types of contracts that a procurement professional can consider for the contract. We will highlight 10 risk management strategies that will mitigate risks for your firm. Lastly, we will cover the very important topic of procurement ethics-what to do and not to do in ethically dealing with suppliers. In addition to the videos, there are reading materials, and two cases to support your learnings. Both cases will be assessed via a Peer Group.