In fall 2020, the Office of Strategic Consulting offered its Showcase 2020 Lunch & Learn Series—in a webinar format. The series featured some of the topics that had been planned as breakout sessions for Showcase 2020 in the spring before the event was canceled due to COVID-19.
Session descriptions can be found below.
Session Descriptions
End the Meeting Madness (held Oct. 1, 2020)
Presented by Deb Gurke and Jeremy Kautza, Internal Consultants, Office of Strategic Consulting
Description: In this session, participants learned about meeting intentions, group agreements, agendas, and tips for virtual meetings to help end the meeting madness.
Leading a Team Through Change (held Oct. 15, 2020)
Presented by Jamie Gutkowski, Assistant Director, Web Platforms/Services, Division of Information Technology
Description: How can you be intentional about leading or influencing change? How do your actions and behaviors as a change leader connect to successful outcomes? This interactive session focused on connecting theories of change leadership to examples of real-world successes and failures. Participants learned about how to incorporate learning into the change process, the role and benefit of gaining commitment, and the importance of supporting people through change. Participants were also asked to bring examples of their actions, or those of others, that influenced an experience of going through change.
Essential Tools for Leading Change (held Nov. 5, 2020)
Presented by Keely Killpack, Change Strategy Consultant
Description: In this interactive session, participants learned all about change leadership knowledge, attitude, and actions—assessing the skills they already possess and receiving new tools to help them navigate the many changes on the horizon.
The session focused on how participants’ influence can make change easier or harder for them and their school, college, or unit. There were also fun activities to make the session relevant for participants’ own experience. Most importantly, participants left with personalized tools and techniques to help them lead and help their school, college or unit adapt to change more easily.
Is It a Change or an Improvement? Your Communications Should Make It Clear (held Nov. 12, 2020)
Presented by Kristin Polywacz, Director, Employee Learning & Organizational Development, Madison College
Description: We all know that a communications plan is important for a process improvement project, but how much time and effort do we really devote to it? In this session, participants spent some time discussing the important aspects of communicating. They went beyond the basics of a communications plan and dove deeper into creative ideas that could help spark end users to not only adopt an improvement, but maybe even get excited about it.
The Role of Race in the Workplace (held Dec. 3, 2020)
Presented by Binnu Palta Hill, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Wisconsin School of Business
Description: This session explored history, research, and lived experiences on the topic of race and its influence on people’s daily interactions, as well as social and political institutions. Through an examination of the history of racism and colorism beginning 5,000 years ago, participants discussed racial socialization, a process that provides meaning to people’s racial identity in the broader societal context. Participants also discussed tangible ways in which they can utilize the elasticity of their brain or “learning muscles” to develop a growth mindset and skills for building greater inclusion.