Currently working at the National Gallery of Australia, Ian RT Colless leads, directs, and designs the National Gallery's Indigenous Arts Leadership Program, supported by Wesfarmers Arts as the Coordinator of the Program. Of Aboriginal Irish descent, Ian notes that "Indigenous culture is constantly adapting, but Eurocentric structures of leadership are less likely to adapt unless they're fostered." Looking for new ways to move things forward in a crisis, he attended Harvard Business School's Strategic Agility—Virtual program.
A good friend from Harvard recommended the program to me because he thought I'd be interested in what the strategic agility of leadership is, and I was interested in studying it at HBS. As the program was delivered online while we were in lockdown, this allowed me to balance my work commitments through the day while studying and attending the program in the evening. I loved that I could still work while doing the program.
You learn about strategic agility as an individual, in group settings, and then from all your classmates. And then you synthesize strategic agility through case study analyses, discussions, and workshops centered on unpacking how you would respond strategically to a matter and how that will allow you to be agile.
The program not only allows personal reflection on strategic agility but also provides, through group work, the opportunity to enact responses and transferable skills in different industries—or consider how one might use strategic agility in multiple settings.
I often use the program's CARD framework, which centers on being creative, adaptable, responsive, and divergent. It's a methodological approach that allows people to understand behavioral science, crisis response, and themselves.
This program taught me that change is about making change. When you invest in people, you also have a return in yourself. Strategic agility is a muscle, and it needs to be flexed. The more you learn how to be strategically agile, the stronger you're making your muscles so that you can be creative, adaptable, responsive, and divergent.
Collectively, we are more and more involved in digital work and working across cultures and time zones. So, people's lived experiences in their own countries or homes were informing the content in a unique way that wouldn’t have occurred if it were happening on the HBS campus. That was the richness of this particular program.
I also think the length of the virtual course was very sensible. The modules, group work, tutorials, and optional classes were very helpful for people who have full-time jobs in different time zones. And it didn't offer too much Zoom fatigue.
If I had to write it in an email, I'd say: Please do not prepare for this program. In fact, unlearn everything you know, and come in with a desire to have a constant curiosity and to unpack things from different and diverse opinions, to inform a new knowing.
The better we are prepared to come into this program with no perceived ideas on what strategic agility is, the better we're able to understand diverse ways of applying strategic agilities in our personal and professional worlds.