Bud Baker

Evaluating outdoor experiential training for leadership and team building

Advocates of outdoor experiential training (OET) fervently believe in its efficacy, but often have difficulty mustering “hard data” on the business results attributable to OET. OET adherents tend to rely on testimonials of how it promotes leadership and team development. Return on investment (ROI) analysis is perhaps the best way to demonstrate the impact of OET. ROI calculations treat leadership and team development training expenditures as an investment and evaluate the financial returns to an organization relative to that investment. This paper outlines a model by which the ROI of OET can be calculated, and encourages research in this area.

Exploring Social Institutions Through the Films of Frederick Wiseman

Using film in the management classroom is a pedagogical technique that has been broadly employed to illustrate, for example, leadership, power, and influence tactics. The approach has the ability to provide stimuli to encourage observational learning by capturing the attention of students. The authors have developed an entire course on social institutions using the documentary films of noted cinematographer Frederick Wiseman to teach organizational theory concepts. The discussion focuses on the structure of the course, including course logistics and assignments. Whereas the course provides students with a foundation for understanding organizational principles and diagnosing organizational problems, the assignments provide opportunities to build critical thinking and oral and written communication skills.

Reel Leadership: Hollywood Takes the Leadership Challenge

Movies have mesmerized audiences for years, crossing boundaries of race, gender, age, culture, and nationality. They have also been used to teach people how to lead. One text that zeroes in on the essence of leadership is The Leadership Challenge, by Kouzes and Posner (2002). Through their research, they have highlighted five practices of effective leaders. It is our intent to share how we apply movies to teach the tenets of the groundbreaking leadership research of Kouzes and Posner, with proven ideas that work with students of leadership in any setting. Using movies to teach leadership is a winning strategy; however, diligent planning is required to incorporate them successfully into leadership education. Movies are entertaining, informative, energizing, and educational, if used skillfully. The more facilitators use film, the more skilled they will become and the more the participants will benefit.

The Fall of the Firefly: An Assessment of a Failed Project Strategy

Choices made early in a project determine future success. Missteps in early phases will cause trouble later in the projects life cycle. The U.S. Air Forces acquisition of the T-3A “Firefly” trainer was just such a troubled project. Rather than develop a new aircraft, the Air Force decided to save time and money by buying a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) trainer. But significant aircraft modifications undermined the integrity of the COTS strategy. This paper suggests four project lessons: Any project must be managed as a system of interrelated parts; a project strategy must be flexible to accommodate changing circumstances; testing must be done in realistic environments; and concurrency carries with it benefits and dangers.

Avoiding Disaster Through the “Reconsideration Trigger”: Preventing Runaway Nuclear Power Projects

This article offers a prescription that could help to prevent the runaway projects that have so often made headlines. This topic is of special importance in Asia, which is currently the world center of nuclear power plant construction, with more than 100 nuclear construction projects either under way or planned. Although we begin with lessons learned from past nuclear power projects, the lessons go beyond any one industry and indeed can be applied to all large projects. The article first examines the historical and contemporary contexts of the nuclear industry and then looks into psychosocial and organizational forces that permit large projects to go out of control. Building on this, we propose an improved tool we call the “reconsideration trigger”: a threshold set in the projects planning phase, which, when breached, allows a failing effort to be redirected before it reaches the status of runaway project.