Grant’s Fly-by-night Leadership Course – The Plan

1. Get a better name
2. Define my personal goals for the course

I won’t be sharing these with you. I may share them with my Inner Circle (defined below). I’m thinking this is a 2-3 year commitment I’m making. I need to have my own set of measurements to ensure that this will be worth the time and effort that I’m putting into it.

3. Define a set of principles and goals for the course

I want this course to have meaningful aim. It’s not, absolutely not, about management. Management and Leadership are two different things. This is about being a leader. It must have a purpose. The goals defined here, and like everything else, subject to change over time, will set the tone for each of the other choices. Here’s another place where I may lean heavily on the Inner Circle

4. Create a first draft course agenda

At least initially, I’m just going to sketch out some topics that I want to cover. These include things like: setting goals (SMART goals), setting up methods of review, problem solving, institutional vs. personal power, coaching & mentoring, setting a vision, running a user group/meetup/?, other stuff. I’ll break them into a series of classes and/or articles and/or readings (yeah, this will be work for the people who take it on, tough). The classroom material will have to be generated. Some articles may have to be generated. I’m going to try to find some subject matter experts for some of this, just to get started.

This agenda, as I stated in my initial ramble, will include two very distinct and important points. First, it is going to be oriented towards volunteering. I believe that a very substantial aspect of leadership is helping people, leadership through service. With that in mind, even if this never gets associated with an organization such as PASS, we’re going to be bringing in some subjects that are, at the very least, PASS related. It’s an excellent structure in which to perform volunteer work within a technical sphere. I’m going to use it. Second, there will be tasks that must be completed. You will define these tasks based on the principles and goals of the course

5. Get volunteers

Four sets of volunteers needed:

Set 1: Inner-Circle
These will be people that I’m going to contact directly that I know have a background in teaching about leadership, mentoring and volunteering. I’ll be using them to help me vet the agenda and the classes I hope to teach as well as support me through the process of picking the mentors who will guide the first group of people doing this.

Set 2: Subject Matter Experts
There are people out there that know more than I do about, well, everything. So for the classroom material and written material that we need to generate, I’m going to call for volunteers. It will be based on the agenda of the course, and I’m going to exercise editorial control (no biggie since I’m a marshmallow of an editor, I made need to take lessons from Tony). But it’s an opportunity for people to share their knowledge. Developed courses are going to become the property of this entity, whatever it is, because it’s the course that has to be the focus, not any one class. With permission, I think I’ll let classes be taught in other venues. I want to share this knowledge, plus the full experience is from the next set of volunteers.

Set 3: Mentors
Ideally, this group will only ever be drawn from attendees of this course (similar to how Wood Badge works). However, we find ourselves in a chicken/egg situation. So, I’m going to try to get 3-6 people who are prepped to be mentors, but who will also be taking the course at the same time (and possibly giving it in part, nothing to say there’s no cross-over between the first three groups of volunteers)

Set 4: Attendees
AKA, rhesus monkeys. We need someone to experiment on. I’m imagining between 9 and 18 people, three for each mentor. Each class will be the same, a group of three for each mentor and only a few mentors. Many more than that and we’re going to spending way too much time sweating personnel management and this is going to be hard enough as it is. These are people who want to step up. They want to become better leaders in their community, their company, or, best of all, both. Also, this first set have to be people who are going to commit to two things. First, they’ll do the course. I’m assuming that’s a requirement for everyone going forward. Second, they’ll help us build the course. We need volunteers who, right out of the gate, are going to be willing to provide actionable feedback (another thing we’ll teach) so that Class #2 is better.

With the exception of the Inner-Circle, I’m going to call for volunteers in a separate blog post, a little farther down the track. I’m not ready at this point to start the process of evaluating people’s CV to determine if they’re a fit for Sets 2-4. So, adding it up, 2-3 in the Inner Circle, 3-4 SMEs, 3-6 Mentors, and 9-18 monkeys, uh, I mean attendees (and yeah, my humor will have to be turned WAY down for this), we’re looking at, assuming zero overlap, 31 people. Woof! I hope there’s lots of overlap. But each course will only be this big. I want it to be a intimate experience.

6. Pick the tools

Powerpoint. There, done.

OK, slightly more complicated. We’ll need to set up a place for discussions to take place, lots of discussions. I’m leaning towards Slack for the discussions. I’ll probably set up a task list in Trello. I’ll also need to beg borrow or steal a place to host the meetings online, but only for, max, 31 people. I’m not sure about this one. Suggestions are welcome. I think we’ll also need to have a permanent presence on the web. It’ll be a place to describe the course, but also to advertise those who accomplished everything to arrive at their… award? certificate? tramp stamp? (I know, my humor…)

7. Legal?

I’m serious about the copyright. For this course to be something people will put on their resume, and yeah, that’s one of my own goals, there I leaked, it needs to be a Thing. For it to be a Thing, the information and delivery needs to be regulated through a pretty rigidly defined method with little deviation. Other than that, do I need legal to set up a general course? I’m not sure. This will be non-profit, so maybe a structure will have to be established once any kind of cash transactions get involved (and at least for the first course, it’s going to be free). Any advice here would be useful.

There. That’s the initial outline. Please, don’t start volunteering for anything yet. However, if you see any glaring holes in the start of this, please let me know. I will continue to post back here regularly as things progress.