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Co-produce outcomes on your environmental projects by effectively engaging and motivating diverse communities to work towards a shared vision founded in environmental goals.
This course is a collaboration between the University of Maryland College Park’s Project Management Center for Excellence and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. While each course stands alone, the series works together to provide the knowledge, skills, and frameworks to lead projects that address Socio-Environmental problems.
In this course, we are building from the point of having successfully completed Stakeholder Outreach. This means that the major complex problem has been identified, measured, and distilled into a powerful narrative that can engage stakeholders to drive them to the next step: Stakeholder Collaboration.
To get started, we need to orient towards "why" we need to collaborate after collaboration. The answer? Problem complexity. Tackling complexity is a task no one person can do by its definition. Truly complex and wicked problems have no stopping point, no clarity of definition, and change as you try to improve the current state so you must reassess. Complex issues are also defined by a lack of complete information in any one party. The issues involve many standpoints, perspectives, and details partitioned among those involved. That’s why it’s “complex.” To solve this we need to tackle the problem which is termed “requisite variety,” a term coined by David Benjamin and David Komlos in their book “Cracking Complexity,” which is to say we need all the diverse representatives from those parts of the complex problem to bring their unique knowledge and perspective together.
In science when we do this it’s called “Transdisciplinary Approaches.” In Project Management we call this “cross-disciplinary” and “cross-organizational” problem solving. But what’s unique about Environmental Project Management is the often added problem of no organization existing among the rights holders that are impacted by the problems. So the added job of rallying and organizing these groups is added to the list of challenges for the Environmental Project Leader. Then the work of getting a first view of the complex problem can truly begin.
MODULE 1: COLLABORATING TO SOLVE SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS WITH A TRANSDISCIPLINARY APPROACH
Why Stakeholder Engagement?
Classifying Problems
Socio-Environmental Systems
Transdisciplinary Approaches
Planning and Implementing
Adaptive Governance
Adaptive governance
MODULE 2: MANAGING AND LEADING A TEAM TOWARDS A SHARED VISION
Agile Leader's Process
Framing Purpose
Adapting to Agile
Power of Play
Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose
MODULE 3: TOOLS FOR ENGAGEMENT
Enabling Conditions
Stakeholder Analysis
Collaborative Learning
Workshop Planning
Facilitation and Engagement
Casual Loop Diagrams
Social Network Analysis
Finding Stories that Resonate
MODULE 4: MANAGING CONFLICT
Emotional Intelligence
Cultural Intelligence
Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM)
CMM Tools
Dynamic Problem Solving
Negotiation Field Guides
Advanced Negotiation Techniques
MODULE 5: MOVING TO ACTION WITH RISK MANAGEMENT EVALUATION AND MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
Basics of Risk Management
Telling Risk Management Stories
Evaluating Transdisciplinary Research
Theory of Change
Adaptive Governance
Examples of Great Champions
Director of STEM Engagement • University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences
Vice President for Science Application • University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences
Professional Programs Manager, Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland • University of Maryland, College Park