Human Dimensions of Organizations hdo.utexas.edu

Professional Seminars

the university of texas at austin

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Human Dimensions of Organizations

Some of the most prestigious faculty at The University of Texas at Austin have come together to create a professional-education program unlike any other in the United States. Human Dimensions of Organizations (HDO) teaches individuals in business to think like leaders by explaining the people who drive today’s global marketplace. HDO, a brainchild of the College of Liberal Arts, brings together faculty specializing in diverse fields to provide converging perspective on how to use today’s knowledge to solve tomorrow’s problems. Students will learn to think like sociologists in order to influence the flow of information in an organization. They will learn to think like historians in order to uncover the real events underlying an organization’s past successes and failures. They will learn to think like psychologists in order to improve the quality of innovative thinking and the level of job satisfaction of employees. HDO’s mission is to help businesses and working professionals:

• Identify and implement organizational change. • Analyze how businesses are influenced by tradition, history, psychology,

language and new media. • Bridge their creative and professional lives and foster creativity in those

around them. • Build strong organizations by providing leaders with comprehensive

understanding of the global workplace. • Generate real-world skills that will improve the structure and function of

organizations.

All HDO programs are intended to deepen attendees’ enjoyment of their professions, leading to an increase in job satisfaction and higher levels of success.

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HDO Professional Seminars

Businesses and nonprofits often call on specialists to provide employees with information that will improve overall efficiency; HDO’s Professional Seminars can help employees become internal consultants. By exploring specific human, cultural, and communicatory aspects of business, attendees leave HDO Professional Seminars more well-rounded employees. Employees from your company who attend a Professional Seminar will return to work and put these distinct skills into practice.

HDO programs allow businesses and individuals the opportunity to train in a way often unavailable in an executive-friendly format. Our one-day classes explore issues and themes within the Liberal Arts and provide practical suggestions for employing this knowledge in organizational settings.

Though HDO’s seminars take place regularly on The University of Texas at Austin campus, we also offer customized programs for businesses to bring some of UT Austin’s most prestigious faculty directly to you.

The following provides an overview of the Professional Seminars currently available.

Please contact us for more details.

Arthur B. Markman, Ph.D. Director, Human Dimensions of Organizations Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts 512-232-4645 markman@mail.utexas.edu Amy M. Ware, Ph.D. Associate Director, Human Dimensions of Organizations 512-232-7338 a.ware@austin.utexas.edu

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Maximizing Mental Agility

Course Leader: Arthur Markman, Ph.D. Founding Director, Human Dimensions of Organizations; Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor, Departments of Psychology and Marketing Education: Ph.D., University of Illinois Research Interests: Dr. Markman has published over 125 scholarly articles on topics in thinking including analogical reasoning, categorization, decision-making, and motivation.

Maximizing Mental Agility is a one-day course, developed by Psychology Professor Dr. Art Markman. The course focuses on six areas of thinking that provide easy-to-learn strategies rooted in Cognitive Science that will help people to be more productive, efficient, creative, motivated, and satisfied in their working lives, and beyond.

The course highlights six facets of human thought that are simultaneously hidden and obvious. Most of us are unaware that these factors control the way that we think, and yet, when we are told about them, we recognize situations where they have affected our thinking. By making these characteristics explicit, Dr. Markman gives people more insight into the strengths and weaknesses of their own thinking. He provides specific techniques based on these insights that they can use to be more effective in the workplace and beyond. These techniques are presented in a fast-paced, interactive format, that combines presented material with situational team-based learning modules, designed to transition the concepts into the students everyday thinking.

The Six Strategies are:

The Role of 3: Our thought and memory capacity is organized around 3 items at a time. How we can use this to our advantage? Autopilot and Creativity: How the mind tries NOT to think as much as possible, and how we can turn this knowledge to our advantage. Making Connections: Our best thinking comes from understanding causes, but we often fail to do this. How can we turn this knowledge into more powerful thinking? Using Analogy and Similarity: The mind is constantly re-using old ideas in new situations. How can we train ourselves to use this natural skill to be more creative? Active Memory: Improving the quality of what we remember by actively managing the quality of what we learn. Defining Your Goals: Most people fail to reach their goals because they fail to take a “productive pause” to think about how they will achieve them.

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Maximizing Mental Agility

Seminar Schedule and Methods The day is divided into six units with breaks in between. Each unit has a similar structure, beginning with a brief overview of the science related to an aspect of effective thinking. This science is then illustrated with one or more exercises. The exercises are done individually and then discussed as a group. After that, specific recommendations are given for using these insights to develop new thinking habits in order to improve learning and problem solving. Students are given packets that contain the exercises as well as sheets that can be used to start implementing the recommendations at work. Students receive copies of all slides, exercises, and worksheets.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

• Learn the central formula for more effective thinking, consisting of developing smarter habits, learning causal knowledge, and using analogy to apply that knowledge.

• Learn how habits are constructed and changed. • Develop new skills to learn new information more effectively by minimizing

multitasking, creating good summaries, and generating self-explanations. • Explore methods for redescribing situations to allow them to apply knowledge

from one domain to solve problems in another. • Learn techniques for effective goal-satisfaction by developing implementation

intentions.

Attendee Comments

“All the units were presented clearly and concisely with just enough information to motivate me to learn a lot MORE about all of this.”

“Very stimulating! Increased my understanding for better organizing my life.”

“Thank you! Great information all around. Can’t wait to implement!”

“Good order of presenting information within each section, many questions I was thinking of were answered in the lecture itself. Also, great presentation style, good balance of formal and entertaining.”

“Great! One of the best courses I have taken; well-structured, great use of time.”

“Very practical insight into how the mind works!”

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Creativity and Leadership

Course Leader: Raj Raghunathan, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Marketing Education: Ph.D., New York University Research Interests: Dr. Ragunathan’s work juxtaposes theories from psychology, behavioral sciences, decision theory, and marketing to document and explain interrelationships between affect and consumption behavior. His work has been cited in mass media outlets, such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Austin American Statesman, The Houston Chronicle, and Self magazine.

Conventional notions of leadership hold that leaders are powerful, famous, and charismatic persons who not only present grand visions of change for their organizations, but can also persuade or subjugate others to follow these visions. This course takes an alternative perspective, according to which a true leader is someone who: 1) has identified inherent interests and strengths and devotes considerable time, attention, and resources in pursuing them, and 2) has taken, or is willing to take, personal responsibility for manifesting the traits that he/she would like to see in others. From the perspective of this course, therefore, true leadership is not something one strives toward for the sake of the power, fame, and money, but is a natural by-product of leading an already fulfilling and authentic life. Class-discussions and exercises will include such topics as: (1) why identifying inherent interests is a prerequisite for being a true leader and (2) tips for transcending the derailing influence of social factors in finding and then following one’s calling. The course material draws from several fields, including psychology, economics, and philosophy. Mid- to top-level executives at for-profit or non-profit firms will benefit most from this class. Further, those who feel like they are no longer satisfied with their careers as well as those working for organizations that emphasize the “triple bottom-line” (profits, customer welfare and employee welfare) will be most receptive to the course content.

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Creativity and Leadership

Seminar Schedule and Methods

The course adopts what might be termed an “inside out” perspective on creativity and leadership. The broad idea is that connecting with what one truly loves to do and being authentic to one’s “inherent intelligence” are necessary steps towards developing expertise, and such expertise is a pre-requisite for becoming an authentic leader. The course content is based on findings from a wide variety of disciplines, including psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, philosophy, welfare economics, behavioral economics, and environmental economics. A combination of in-class discussions, exercises that encourage introspection, exposure to videos and perspectives from the word’s leading thought leaders, and group activities will be used to inform the “inside out” perspective of creativity and leadership.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

• Explore new ways of approaching happiness at work and beyond. • Visualize their “ideal life” and articulate it in detail. • Consider the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. • Enhance their ability to think in a calm and collected manner at work.

Attendee Comments

“Best aspects of the program included pitfalls and ‘watch out for points’ in addition to the ‘do this’ points.”

“Concepts of positive (vs. negative), acceptance, tolerance, happiness focus: all applicable to work.”

“Extremely well organized, interesting topic, excellent presenter. Don’t change a thing!”

“The overall topic was most useful. It is new, innovative, and has both personal and professional applications.”

“I’m going to work on taking the ego out of my goals and focus on what makes me content/happy.”

“Best aspects of program were videos, stories, personal experiences: they all added context and opportunities to discuss material.”

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Ethical Choices/Leadership Challenges: Understanding and Balancing Motivations on the Stage and in Life

Course Leader: Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, Ph.D. Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor, Department of English; Director, Program in Comparative Literature Education: Ph.D., Columbia University Research Interests: Dr. Richmond-Garza writes on Orientalism, Cleopatra, Oscar Wilde, Renaissance drama, the Gothic, and literary theory. She is currently finishing a study of decadent culture at the end of the nineteenth century. She teaches theatre, aesthetics and the fine arts and works actively in eight foreign languages. Richmond-Garza’s multi-media approach to teaching has been honored by a dozen teaching awards.

How can the subject of moral and ethical behavior be taught and understood?

Literature, especially drama, provides concrete and practical cases that help us to understand how ethical decisions are made and to see how ethics and leadership intersect. This course will use dramatic texts to ask the questions: “What is the nature of an ethical challenge?” “How can people reason ethically?” and “How is ethical leadership different from any other kind?” Drawing upon specific examples, participants will shape their own emotional and personal responses as they face difficult fictional decisions into workable definitions of ethical leadership through a systematic approach to assessing competing motivations in context. Gaining a business advantage is one good reason to read literature, but understanding your coworkers is even more important.

Through careful analysis of the motivations and identities at play in the selected scenes, participants will develop strategies for asking themselves productive questions which lead to positive outcomes from conflict situations in which competing ethical and personal agendas might otherwise lead to negative, or even tragic, consequences. The goal is to develop attentiveness to patterns of motivational conflict which might jeopardize the health and productivity of the organization. Hands-on experience analyzing fictional conflicts will allow participants to develop their own strategies for responding to real-life tensions and pressures in a self-aware and constructive manner.

This course is especially useful for managers, who face daily decisions about personnel and information management, decisions that rely upon balancing personal convictions, identity politics, and institutional exigencies. Nevertheless, the challenge of making ethical decisions is part of all varieties of professional experience.

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Ethical Choices/Leadership Challenges: Understanding and Balancing Motivations on the Stage and in Life

Seminar Schedule and Methods The course materials for this course include excerpts from literary texts (usually 2-3 pages or 5-7 minutes of playing time). Each will be accompanied by an online multi-media exploration of the text and of the issues it raises. The class will focus on the following six bases for competing motivations: race and cultural identity, gender and sexuality, authority, honesty, pragmatism, and loyalty. Excerpts of the texts will be brief and manageable and accompanied by filmic versions. After brief introductory remarks about the texts and method, the course will be based upon directed discussion and individual and group work on the six issues and excerpts. Activities will range from individual characterizations to paired work on the scenes as written and in revised variants. Participants will engage in role-playing characters/actors, and in reversing those roles.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

• Cultivate an awareness of motivational conflicts that might jeopardize the health of an organization.

• Develop strategies for responding to real-life tensions and pressures in a constructive manner.

• Connect the fictional work of plays to real-world situations. • Reflect on particular dramatic actions to consider and create alternative

outcomes and possibilities. • Better understand the experiences of co-workers through role-play.

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Company Talk: The Language of Power and Deception

Course Leader: James Pennebaker, Ph.D. Regents Centennial Liberal Arts Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology Education: Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin Research Interests: Dr. Pennebaker’s current research asks how the words we use in everyday life reflect who we are. Trained as a social psychologist with interests in physiology, language, social media, and human relationships, his work addresses how people cope with emotional upheavals, work together in groups, and love, lie, and lead one another. His recent book, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us, has received top reviews in the Wall Street Journal,

New York Times, and elsewhere.

Course Leader: David I. Beaver, Ph.D. Professor, Departments of Linguistics and Philosophy; Director, Cognitive Science Program Education: Ph.D., University of Edinburgh Research Interests: Dr. Beaver has over twenty years of experience as a teacher and public speaker. In addition to leading regular university classes from freshmen to advanced graduate students, he has taught a 10-week Continuing Studies class at Stanford University on metaphor as well as distance-learning courses over the internet. He frequently gives presentations and consults with

groups outside of his areas of specialization, ranging from high schoolers to military, legal, and commercial groups. He is the Graduate Studies Advisor of the new HDO Master’s Program.

Do you want to know how language is used to motivate, to persuade, and to get along? Whether you are interested in advertising, customer and client interactions, or in organization-internal work teams and meetings, this seminar can equip you with useful insights, tools and techniques. These include tools to monitor your own language and the language of those around you, and techniques to improve your communication skills. In short, this course is not about what you say, it's about the way that you say it. The material covered is based on a large body of published experimental and observational research which has revealed many of the subtle ways in which language reflects who we are, our social status, and our psychological states. The two course leaders have published on these issues in a range of academic areas, notably psychology, linguistics, and computer science. They have also given presentations for diverse groups, including companies, military groups, and in legal settings.

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Company Talk: The Language of Power and Deception

Seminar Schedule and Methods

The seminar has three modules:

1. The language of leadership. We show how the language of business and political leaders differs from that of followers, and relate that to the language participants actually use when talking to those they work with.

2. The language of persuasion. We discuss how language can be used to engage people, and how proper framing can people onto your side.

3. The language of deception. We introduce a number of ‘tells’ in people’s language, which indicate whether the speaker is being sincere or deceptive, and show how these ‘tells’ vary across domains.

The methods introduced will help participants identify and understand crucial distinctions between what is said, what is meant, and what is said but never meant to be noticed. These methods range from informal reasoning about the pragmatics of a situation to computational analysis using tools we have developed and will make available to the participants. Each method will be applied to practical situations that might arise in an organizational setting.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will learn techniques and insights drawn from social psychology, linguistic pragmatics, and natural language processing. In particular, participants will: • Explore how normally invisible features of language can reveal deception,

confidence, and engagement • Acquire practical methods for evaluating the language of those around you, and

what your own language says about you • Consider and practice ways that modifying your spoken and written language

might increase your effectiveness.

Attendee Comments

“This is a fabulous concept course!” “Thank you for bringing together these disciplines in a thoughtful, robust program.”

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Flourishing in the Workplace: Strengths, Flow, and Effective Thinking

Course Leader: Caryn Carlson, Ph.D. Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Psychology Education: Ph.D., University of Georgia Research Interests: For most of her career, Dr. Carlson’s research program, funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, examined a number of aspects of the functioning of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Dr. Carlson has recently changed the focus of her work to the field of Positive Psychology and well-being.

Course Leader: Michael Starbird, Ph.D. University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Education: Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison Research Interests: Dr. Starbird strives to distill effective strategies of thinking and creativity and present them in such a way that people can become more creative and insightful than they thought possible.

This course presents practical strategies for optimizing personal and employee performance via identifying and utilizing character strengths, regularly achieving a state of immersed involvement or flow, and creatively conceptualizing issues and solving problems. Participants will identify personally relevant areas for improvement or growth and work individually and in small groups to apply practical strategies presented in the course to enhance satisfaction and success both professionally and personally.

Lasting improvements in an individual or organization stem largely from using personal assets effectively. Dr. Carlson and Dr. Starbird will describe the classification of strengths and the relationship between strengths and outcomes in various life domains. Participants will attain a more refined understanding of their personal profile of strengths by taking an online questionnaire, discussing their strengths, and exploring methods to develop and apply them. Elements of flow will be identified, along with interventions for increasing flow—and thereby productivity—in the workplace.

This seminar will be helpful for people at all organizational levels and positions: from those in leadership positions who need to make broad decisions about the trajectory of the company to individuals working on focused issues in a specific area. The tools provided to attendees will enhance performance and life satisfaction in any domain.

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Flourishing in the Workplace: Strengths, Flow, and Effective Thinking

Seminar Schedule and Methods

This course will teach participants to identify and use personal strengths, to create productive flow in the workplace, and to use strategies of effective thinking to promote innovation and creativity. Each participant will receive a copy of The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking by Edward Burger and course co-leader Michael Starbird. The morning session will discuss the results of an online or in-class Personal and Professional strengths assessment. Participants will then explore concepts of success, strength, and effective thinking as they relate to innovation challenges in their work and life. In the afternoon, the course leaders will teach participants what methods of personal development and effective thinking can lead to their own habitual practice of optimal performance. Participants will do exercises aimed at utilizing strengths and generating habits of flow and effective thinking.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

• Identify personal strengths. • Identify the flow activities in which they are currently engaged and develop

methods for bringing increased flow to their current work activities. • Improve their effective thinking strategies, especially to augment innovation. • Learn to identify the real questions which they should work to answer. • Learn how to find the essential issues from among the clutter. • Learn to use mistakes to guide discovery and reveal issues at the heart of work

challenges. • Generate specific action plans to improve ongoing challenges faced by the

participants and their organizations.

Attendee Comments

“Carlson and Starbird’s presentations would be very beneficial to my office.”

“I’ve heard great things about the positive psych class at UT! It’s so exciting to get a taste of it firsthand.”

“A widely applicable topic; most interesting.”

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Working Successfully with Your Client: Effective Techniques from Psychoanalysis

Course Leader: Elizabeth Danze, M. Arch. Associate Professor, School of Architecture, and Fellow of the American Institute for Architects Education: M. Arch., Yale University Research Interests: Professor Danze’s work integrates practice and theory across disciplines by examining the convergence of sociology and psychology with the tangibles of space and construction. Danze is also a principal with Danze Blood Architects. She is the recipient of the University of Texas System Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers.

Course Leader: Steven Sonnenberg, MD Fellow-in-Residence, Humanities Institute; Adjunct Professor, School of Architecture Education: M.D., Albert Einstein College of Medicine; A.B., Princeton Research Interests: Dr. Sonnenberg’s research interests focus on the points of intersection between psychoanalysis as both a clinical and humanities discipline. Other areas of scholarly inquiry include war, decision-making, architecture and design, psychic trauma and post traumatic psychological disorders, and education and effective teaching methods.

Successful communication can make or break provider-client relationships in the worlds of business, government, and non-profits. This seminar will examine in detail Danze’s and Sonnenberg’s experiences leading a design project of a unique facility providing arts education for troubled teens and vocational training for unskilled young adults. They ensure client satisfaction by employing communication skills derived from the psychoanalytic relationship between therapist and patient.

The seminar will focus on the illustration, examination, and training of participants in six areas: (1) listening effectively to clients and understanding their interests and needs; (2) helping clients define and redefine what they want to accomplish and what they expect from you; (3) negotiating goals and expectations with clients; (4) putting themselves in the shoes of clients to better understand their histories, goals, and expectations; (5) examining their personal roles in these relationships, including difficult roles such as when the client feels you have erred; and (6) conveying confidence that you can get the job done and meet the client’s expectations.

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Working Successfully with Your Client: Effective Techniques from Psychoanalysis

Seminar Schedule and Methods

Prior to the seminar, course leaders will communicate with participants to recruit a few to present case studies from their own work. These stories will explore scenarios in which enhanced communication with a client would have improved the working relationship and likelihood of successful completion of a project or consultation. Participants will also be recruited for role-play exercises. The day will include lectures, case studies, and role-play exercises that will teach students specific techniques to satisfy client goals.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will learn to:

• Listen effectively.

• Meet and interpret client expectation.

• Clarify client needs.

• Understand client history.

• Renegotiate relationships with clients.

Attendee Comments:

“Good points and very intuitive.” “I am interested in following the Center they are working on.”

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Thinking about Right and Wrong

Course Leader: John Traphagan, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Departments of Religious Studies and Asian Studies Education: Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh; M.A.R., Yale University; B.A., University of Massachusetts Research Interests: Dr. Traphangan’s research interests focus on healthcare systems and practices as they relate to older people and how ideas about health and illness intersect with religion. Much of this research has been conducted in Japan. He is the author of Taming Oblivion: Aging Bodies and the Fear of Senility in Japan and The Practice of Concern: Ritual, Well-Being, and Aging in Rural Japan.

How do we determine the moral value of actions? How does culture influence the ways in which people decide about right and wrong? Is there a universal or common morality shared by people in all cultures? This course explores moral decision-making in different cultures by examining the ways in which humans vary in their concepts of right and wrong and how human nature influences moral decision-making.

This course will focus on understanding core concepts that shape moral thinking by comparing examples from the US with examples from other societies. Among other topics, attendees will explore: (1) the nature of autonomy; (2) the influence of religion on moral ideas; and (3) how different moral ideas can influence practice within institutions such as governmental offices and businesses. Seminar leader Dr. John Traphagan will emphasize the practical use of these ideas.

The goal of this seminar is for professionals to step into the shoes of their international counterparts who define right and wrong quite differently than most Americans. They also will develop a context in which they can think about their own assumptions about how moral decisions are made. The course would benefit any professional interested in international business, as well as those who travel internationally on a regular basis or work with individuals from cultures outside of the US. In addition, teachers specializing in world history may benefit from the lessons taught in this course.

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Thinking about Right and Wrong

Seminar Schedule and Methods Students will review key points at the start of the seminar and then work through case studies to see these ideas put into practice. Later in the day, leader and attendees will develop role-play scenarios in which students take positions based upon what they have learned about ethics from these three new perspectives. Individual decision-making exercises will explore processes by which cultural patterns shape how decisions are made and group work will include reflection experiences related to our interactions in institutional contexts.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

• Understand that beliefs about right and wrong are a reflection of social construction and categorization.

• Compare and contrast different cultural belief systems. • Relate these differences to issues of globalization, cultural identity, religious

systems, gender, class, etc. • Understand the relevance of anthropology and religious studies to everyday

workplace challenges. • Analyze problems from multiple perspectives.

Attendee Comments:

“Using examples of other cultures is necessary in today’s world. I love this subject matter.”

“This presentation was great!”

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Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: Presenting and Evaluating Quantitative Information

Course Leader: Pamela Paxton, Ph.D. Professor, Departments of Sociology and Government; Christine and Stanley E. Adams, Jr. Centennial Professor in the Liberal Arts Education: Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Research Interests: Dr. Paxton has taught at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Summer Training Program in Advanced Statistical Techniques and has consulted for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). She is the author of articles and books on prosocial behavior, women in politics, and quantitative methodology.

How do we know that statistics are reliable? What methods do we use to present and evaluate data accurately? Dr. Pamela Paxton will explore the ways quantitative information can be deceiving; she will also share various methods of presenting data accurately. This course provides students with the basic tools needed to evaluate and create presentations and proposals that include quantitative information. Attendees will leave the course better producers and consumers of data and information. Dr. Paxton will (1) introduce students to the best ways to present quantitative data graphically, in tables, and with simple visualizations, (2) alert them to the ways in which quantitative data can be used to mislead, and (3) provide them with the keys to evaluate the statistical presentations and proposals of others. Any professionals who need to produce, present, or evaluate data will benefit from this course.

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Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: Presenting and Evaluating Quantitative Information

Seminar Schedule and Methods

The course includes 6 modules:

1. An introduction to the ways that graphics, tables, and other presentations of quantitative data can be manipulated to mislead.

2. Best practices in the graphical and tabular presentation of data. 3. The importance of variation and clustered data in making evaluations. 4. Techniques for evaluating presentations and proposals, including a discussion of

classic techniques versus current fads in analysis. 5. A brief introduction to experimental design and proper matching between data

and research questions. 6. A presentation of some of newly available visualization techniques.

Course participants will be asked to evaluate graphs, tables, presentations, and proposals drawn from the media, advertising, social movements, and business.

Learning Outcomes

Participants will:

• Understand basic statistical concepts. • Learn about the role of statistics in society and the workplace. • Identify the strengths and flaws of visually displayed data. • Consider appropriate organization and accurate visual display of statistical

information. • Become better consumers of quantitative data and information.

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Writing Persuasive Business Proposals

Course Leader: Clay Spinuzzi, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Rhetoric and Writing Education: Ph.D., Iowa State University Research Interests: Dr. Spinuzzi studies how people organize, communicate, collaborate, and innovate at work, especially in loose, digitally connected organizations that perform knowledge work. He has published several articles and two books based on his studies: Tracing Genres through Organizations (MIT Press, 2003) and Network (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Currently, he’s conducting research for a new book on coworking and other forms of loose organizations in Austin.

How do business proposals work, and how can they work better? In this seminar, attendees will examine business proposals as persuasive arguments: they will take these proposals apart, examine their underlying components, and learn how to put them back together in ways that make them more effective. Using a proven methodology for developing these types of documents, attendees will generate basic proposal arguments to address a case study. This case study will allow students, working in small groups, to identify the problem presented in the case study; generate components of the proposal; analyze stakeholder dynamics; tie these complex elements together into a coherent, easily comprehensible argument; and outline a proposal based on this groundwork. Finally, the class will workshop applications to actual cases that attendees bring to the seminar. The proposal-writing methodology used in this seminar was developed for large consulting agencies, but it can also apply to other sorts of proposals and reports in a variety of organizations. Any professionals who need to produce, present, or evaluate data will benefit from this course.

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Writing Persuasive Business Proposals

Seminar Schedule and Methods Participants will examine business proposals as persuasive arguments: they will take these proposals apart, examine their underlying components, and learn how to put them back together in ways that make them more effective. Using a proven methodology for developing these types of documents, participants will generate basic proposal arguments to address a case study chosen and presented by the course leader, then apply lessons to their own cases. Participants will primarily work in small groups to facilitate detailed discussions and brainstorming.

Learning Outcomes

After this seminar, attendees will be able to:

• Understand basic proposal structure and logic. • Identify basic proposal sections and understand how they work together. • Clarify and identify objectives. • Develop a methodology for reaching the objective. • Perform audience analysis by identifying stakeholders, investigating their

concerns, and weighting criteria accordingly. • Connect your team’s qualifications with the specific requirements implied in the

situation and methodology. • Develop structured benefits that address the situation. • Tie these complex elements into a coherent argument. • Learn how to rework an ill-defined problem into an effective proposal. • Pour all this information into a basic proposal format.

Attendee Comments

“He’s a fantastic speaker! I thoroughly enjoyed his sparkling personality.”

“Very organized. Lots of info and great substance.”

“Clay was great at making the class very interactive and engaging for everyone.”