Budget cuts can be a nightmare. They can also cause you to do some creative things when you scramble to adjust to them.
I created this presentation as part of a leadership development program for high-potential employees. This module was the fourth in the series, covering strategic thinking & negotiation. The Footloose reference in the middle was added to lighten the presentation while still staying on-topic—specifically, orienting your message to your audience—and gave the learners good laugh when it came up in the presentation.
Background
One of the initiatives the data literacy program manager (my manager) owned was an emerging-leaders development program for data professionals. The first cohort started the program, which ran over the course of a full year, in the fall of 2021. The program was well-received, so a second cohort was scheduled for the fall of 2022.
The first phase of the program involved a workshop facilitated by an outside vendor. My manager was well into planning for the second cohort when the budget for an external facilitator got eliminated. That made things really interesting, since the cohort was set to kick off in 6 weeks, but now with no workshop content!
Putting our heads together, we decided to leverage work I had done on a separate project—a skills-development curriculum for data professionals (the reason I was brought on-board in the first place). From that master catalog of curated content, we identified ~20 courses that we could leverage to build a replacement workshop for the second cohort.
The result was a series of modules covering some fundamental leadership development topics, such as coaching and mentoring, communicating effectively, leadership styles, negotiation, and strategic thinking. Working backward, using the calendar, we settled on four modules, which gave us ample time to start development on the workshop content and present it all by the end of the year, while working around breaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas/end-of-year.
- Crafting compelling communications
- Developing a leadership style
- Coaching and mentoring
- Strategy & negotiation
(Yeah, we never did figure out the right title for the last one, which wound up being “everything that we couldn’t put into a more appropriate module”.)
Implementation
Each module consisted of a 30-minute introductory session, followed by a 2-hour workshop a couple of days later. The intro session consisted of a PowerPoint presentation introducing the relevant concepts, pointers to reference material, and an outline of the workshop. The workshop consisted of group discussion and breakout sessions with facilitated exercises.
When by manager got slammed with meetings, I offered to draft the last two presentations. (I’d already worked on the syllabus and facilitator guides for each of the first two modules.) While creating the Strategy & Negotiation presentation, I explored a few of the candidate courses on LinkedIn Learning, including Leading Strategically, by Eric Zackrison and Madecraft. Zackrison explored the idea of audience orientation through the lens of the movie Footloose and the actions of Kevin Bacon’s character, Ren McCormack, in the film’s climax. (If you’re curious, you can watch the scene from Footloose that Zackrison references on YouTube.)
[addressing the town council, reading from his notes in the Bible]
“From the oldest of times, people danced for a number of reasons. They danced in prayer… or so that their crops would be plentiful… or so their hunt would be good. And they danced to stay physically fit… and show their community spirit. And they danced to celebrate.” And that is the dancing we’re talking about. Aren’t we told in Psalm 149, “Praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song. Let them praise His name in the dance”? And it was King David – King David, who we read about in Samuel – and what did David do? What did David do?
[paging frantically through Bible]
What *did* David do?
[audience laughs]
“David danced before the Lord with all his might… leaping and dancing before the Lord.”
[smacks table in front of Reverend Moore]
*Leaping* and *dancing*.
[stands up straight, turns to face the townfolk]
Ecclesiastes assures us… that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to laugh… and a time to weep. A time to mourn… and there is a time to dance.
[turns to face the town council]
And there was a time for this law, but not anymore. See, this is our time to dance. It is our way of celebrating life. It’s the way it was in the beginning. It’s the way it’s always been. It’s the way it should be now.
Scene transcript from IMDB.com, retrieved April 13, 2023.
Given that Footloose may (or may not) be the greatest movie in history, most of the audience would at least vaguely remember the scene (from either the original or the 2011 remake)…so into the presentation it went.
Aside from the pop-culture reference to Footloose, the workshop also included two activities for small groups. In the first breakout session, participants brainstormed ways to manage their personal transitions from individual contributors to leaders and how they could find ways to incorporate strategic thinking into their work. In the second breakout session, participants worked through one of three negotiation scenarios. Each team then came back to the main session to present their approach to the assigned scenario.
Instructional Design Portfolio 
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