Organizations with the most effective leadership are those that identify, nurture, and develop leadership talent at all stages of their employees' careers. The IT Emerging Leader Series is aimed at providing IT professionals in the early stages of their careers with fundamental leadership skills - implementation, economic justification for IT projects, and IT performance management. Participants will embark on a comprehensive program addressing major tasks involved in formulating and implementing IT solutions and delivering value to an organization. Participants can learn how to:

- Assess and communicate the viability of IT projects

- Plan, manage, and deliver IT projects and programs

- Connect technology and the user more effectively

- Navigate and manage organizational politics, and influence key stake-holders

- Play the role of a change agent

- Demonstrate leadership behavior in the IT and business fields

The six course modules of the program focus on teaching the fundamental leadership skills required to succeed in the IT field, including strategic planning, project management, consultant and vendor management, IT implementation, IT project economic justification, and IT performance management.

A full-cycle solutions management framework is presented that takes into account the major tasks involved with formulating and implementing IT solutions and delivering value to the organization using IT.

This course provides the foundation needed to transform financial and accounting language and concepts into decision-making tools that the aspiring IT leader can use successfully every day. Course participants will return to their jobs ready to apply the fundamentals of business case development to assess the financial viability of projects, effectively present new ideas, and gain support needed for successful implementations. Participants in this course will learn how to:

- Develop and communicate effective business cases

- Incorporate financial concepts and policies into business cases and project justifications

- Evaluate projects from a business case standpoint

- Communicate effectively with financial executives and decision makers

- Use financial language and accounting concepts to convince others to buy into decisions

When technical professionals are given new leadership responsibility, their success depends to a great extent on how quickly they learn needed business fundamentals to complement their technical knowledge. Technically proficient information technology professionals who aspire to be leaders distinguish themselves and position themselves for leadership by demonstrating fundamental business acumen before they ever assume leadership positions. This unique course provides a foundation of practical business skills for new leaders or for IT professionals who are interested in assuming leadership responsibilities in the future. This course focuses on the skills needed to effectively lead teams of technical professionals. Participants in this course will learn how to:

- Construct and articulate an organizational IT value proposition

- Develop an organizational IT strategy that integrates functional business needs

- Identify functional stakeholders across the organization and their needs in relation to the overall organization

- Create an IT strategy that supports the organization’s business model and reflects an understanding of the organizational structure

- Describe organizational budgeting issues and processes

In today's changing business environment, project and program leaders must deliver under great pressure. Project and program management skills such as the abilities to manage tight budgets and deadlines, organize resources, and control change throughout projects are of vital importance. IT projects present some unique challenges because IT projects are often more visionary than traditional projects and often start with only vague ideas of what the stakeholders want to accomplish. In this course, you learn how to successfully plan, manage and deliver technical projects and programs Participants in this course will learn how to:

- Produce project and program plans with high rates of success

- Apply leadership skills needed to deliver projects on time and on budget

- Manage complex projects and programs by applying appropriate tools and techniques

- Identify stakeholders and effectively market projects within the organization

- Implement recruitment and retention strategies for project team success

In today's distributed environments, IT professionals are often accountable for projects in which they have no direct authority over many of the contributors, and the lines of authority may be unclear. In these instances, it is essential that IT professionals quickly develop a keen awareness of the unique ways in which work actually gets accomplished in a particular organization—in other words, knowing who wields power and authority, and how to influence and gain the respect of others in order to achieve results. Strong communication skills are needed to leverage interpersonal interactions into opportunities for building consensus and improving efficiency. In this course you will learn how to deal with organizational politics and challenging relationships, and learn how to influence and persuade your colleagues, and provide leadership in your organization. You’ll also learn to improve listening skills, deliver effective messages and bridge different communication styles. Participants in this course will learn how to:

- Explain the concepts of organizational power and organizational politics

- Identify five interpersonal sources of power

- Describe four major categories of structural and situational sources of power

- Discuss effective and ineffective uses of power

- Diagnose the personal and situational factors that contribute to the occurrence of political behavior

- Explain why political behavior is not necessarily undesirable

- Identify some personality dimensions that are related to political behavior

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, organizations are under pressure to effect fast systems implementation and effectively manage change. Technology change, in particular, presents unique change management issues that impact the entire organization. The IT leader, especially, plays a significant role as an organizational change agent In this course, you will develop an understanding of the role the IT professional plays in supporting, communicating, and leading technological change. You also gain the critical knowledge and skills needed to implement systems successfully within your organization and to effectively manage change. Participants in this course will learn how to:

- Select an implementation team

- Identify customer satisfiers

- Allocate responsibility/authority for business practices

- Identify symptoms of process dysfunction

- Develop a new business process

Leadership skills in today's dynamic technical business environment are more important than ever. The ability to work well with and direct others is critical to your success. Increasingly, IT leaders are called on to help determine IT's role in organizational strategy. To work with top executives, you must see the company as a whole and understand how IT impacts and adds value across the organization. IT, more so than any other organizational function, directly impacts the work of every other function. The decisions that IT leaders make more frequently have a broader impact on more functions than do the decisions that leaders make in other functions. This course is designed to teach new and emerging leaders in IT functions how to observe, practice and demonstrate leadership behaviors, even when not in a leadership role. This course is valuable for enabling IT professionals to begin to formulate their own personal leadership philosophies based on observation of successful leadership role models – in other words, what is it that good IT leaders do and how do they do it. This course will help you acquire the leadership perspectives that will prepare you to assume greater leadership responsibilities within your organization. Participants in this course will learn:

- Essential IT leadership techniques

- What makes IT organizations unique

- Leadership processes and approaches that are most effective in an IT environment

- To articulate the IT organizational value proposition

- To identify and address motivational issues in an IT organization