The COG Institute for Regional Excellence is pleased to offer the Regional Executive Development Program (REDP) designed to meet the requirements for graduates to be designated as Certified Public Managers® (CPMs).
The REDP combines leadership and management training to meet the CPM requirements with exposure to metropolitan wide issues. The COG program also includes a body of knowledge and CPM Core Competencies required to successfully meet the Certified Public Manager ®.
The program is a 12-month course with participants attending one module per month for a three-day period. It consists of the following courses:
Examines the normative, theoretical and practical aspects of public administration, management, leadership and organizational change from the vantage of a senior manager, executive, or public policy-maker. It places special emphasis on the complexity of executive leadership in the public sector, with a focus on local governments, as well as on the decisional dilemmas that often attend it. Role playing and case studies will be used to model leadership styles, strategies, and behaviors. It will stress the need for leaders to look outside their immediate organizational environment and take a broader view.
Exposes participants to metropolitan wide issues, which would require regional solutions. The focus will be on the four areas identified in the COG Strategic Plan: (a) growth; (b) transportation; (c) environment; and (d) human services and public safety. Participants will learn about the challenges facing the metropolitan area and actions taken or planned to tackle the problems. Local jurisdiction senior staff would be expected to participate as speakers and panelists to share their views and visions on the development of the Washington metropolitan area and the challenges that this poses to their jurisdictions and the area as a whole. At the conclusion of this module, the participants would form teams to conduct regional projects.
Examines the theoretical and practical need to understand and use the concept of teams in today's organizational settings. Examines how managers and leaders can use teams to increase productivity, creativity, and group satisfaction. Attention will be given to the techniques and skills required to build and direct teams within one's own unit, develop teamwork within a team of peers from outside one's organization, and resolve conflict within teams.
Provides an integrative approach to strategic management and policy, focusing on the formulating, implementing, evaluating, and overseeing strategy and policy development, particularly in public organizations. Using case studies, participants will learn the critical elements in developing a strategic plan, the process followed to have the plan adopted, and measures taken to implement the plan.
Examines analysis and evaluation as two complementary ways of assessing public policy. Typically, analysis is prospective in nature, anticipating the likely future consequences of a particular policy option, while evaluation is retrospective, focusing on whether the selected policy option has achieved its intended purpose. Participants learn why and how such assessments are conducted, as well as their appropriate uses and limitations in the American public policy process.
Examines the role of budgeting, auditing, and financial controls in the efficient and effective allocation of organizational resources, especially within the public sector. Specific public sector budgeting principles and techniques, financial and cost analysis tools, and control and cost accounting systems, with emphasis on auditing and cost comparison methodologies and quantitative techniques for deriving and evaluating cost data will be a major portion of the course.
Prepares the participant for developing and managing major projects in today's public sector environment. Focuses on building the discipline, skills, and techniques needed in project management, including customer identification, scheduling, performance measures, estimating costs and budgeting, human resource allocation, project tracking, and project evaluation. Case studies will include larger projects involving coordination across jurisdictions. Skills, and techniques needed in project management, including customer identification, scheduling, performance measures, estimating costs and budgeting, human resource allocation, project tracking, and project evaluation. Case studies will include larger projects involving coordination across jurisdictions.
Exposes the participant to competitive, economic, and political factors that influence technology innovation with particular attention to public organizations, and e-government trends. The course highlights managing technology issues and research and development projects (such as selecting projects, allocating resources, planning for technology, managing and evaluating development projects). It also focuses on the role of new technologies in driving social change.
Focuses on managing the public organization's human resources to execute public policies and programs. It features the theory of motivation and interpersonal relationships, current policies and issues regarding employee relations and reward systems, and labor relations. Practical exercises and examples illustrate allocating human resources efficiently in an organization, establishing relationships with unions, negotiating issues of appropriate interaction in the workplace, and the essentials for motivating and leading employees in the public sector.
Guides participants in understanding and practicing effective briefing and public speaking techniques and written presentation techniques. Part of the module is spent reviewing outlines and presentations of project reports to the COG.
Explores the legal, ethical, and moral dimensions of executive leadership in government, with an emphasis on the tensions that may arise among these dimensions in the exercise of managerial and executive power and authority. The various institutional, political, moral-ethical, social-psychological, and philosophical considerations that may bear on the constitutional, legal, administrative, and practical limits of authority are examined. Concepts and strategies are analyzed through extensive case studies, role-playing, and simulations.
In addition to attending monthly modules, the participants will form teams and carry out a regional project as part of the program. These could be a study or project focused on a specific regional challenge. Possible themes for the projects are developed together with COG staff, who may provide guidance to the teams. The projects are an opportunity for participants to work together and utilize some of the skills they have learned through the modules, while they tackle an issue of regional importance. The teams are expected to present their projects to the Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs) at the end of the program. Participants receive instruction on research and analytical methods at the start of each module. Participants apply what they have learned to refine regional project themes and develop the methodology to carry out their project.
The Capstone simulation course is an intensive three-day simulation exercise in municipal management and intergovernmental leadership. The simulation requires individuals and small teams to integrate and apply a broad range of quantitative and qualitative skills (financial management and budgeting, strategic and project/program planning, small group dynamics and organization behavior) under conditions of uncertainty, urgency, and complexity. In the exercise, the participants are given a list of possible regional action items in key areas such as transportation, environment, social development and public safety and tasked to narrow this down into a regional action program to fit within a pre-set budget envelope. Through this process, they will be required to reflect on their vision for the region, regional strategic objectives, and the implication of the choices they make for the region. The exercise will also be an opportunity to practice leadership, team work, communication, and other management skills. The simulation will culminate in a mock hearing before the COG Board of Directors or similar intergovernmental panel to present a consensus regional plan for the future of the Metropolitan Washington region.