Advance Your Skills: Operations

The next session starts in September 2023.

The Managing Operations to Advance Organizations Pathway in Alverno College’s Advance Your Skills Pathways Program offers a highly relevant and flexible learning track to equip professionals with the skills needed to effectively develop and lead operations that become a distinct competitive advantage necessary for long-term success.

How it works

• The program is fully online, and is designed to be completed in six months.
• Each unit is 4 weeks. There are 6 total units per pathway.
• Professionals may enroll in the entire pathway or individual units, based on career interest. Certain units will allow professionals to earn a digital badge upon completion.
• Classes meet once a week for 2 hours live on Zoom.
• There is asynchronous work (reading, videos, and projects).
• Those who successfully complete the pathway will earn a professional certificate.

Developed and taught by Alverno faculty and industry professionals, the Managing Operations to Advance Organizations Pathway blends synchronous and asynchronous learning and fits into your busy schedule. Professionals will benefit from Alverno’s well-regarded model of experiential learning and highly sought interpersonal skills, developing knowledge and abilities that are immediately applicable to the workplace.

Register here. Registration deadline: September 19, 2023. To learn more, or to discuss how our program can serve your organization, please contact us.

LEARNING CONTENT

Unit I: The Value of Operations – Function to Innovation (September 26-October 17, 2023)

In this unit, you will understand the core components needed to successfully manage operations within an organization. You will learn how to map operational processes to an organization’s strategy. You will break down the concept of process, explore different types of operational processes and learn methods on how to analyze them. You will learn models and techniques for building an innovative culture of continuous improvement that goes beyond workarounds to traditional obstacles and creates new dynamic thinking and practices.

Unit II: Breaking Silos and Building Teams to Achieve Goal Alignment* (October 24-November 14, 2023)

In this unit, you will understand how different functional teams impact each other across the organization. You will learn how to identify and break down silos among teams using process improvement as the mechanism. You will learn methodologies on how to build long-term constructive working relationships across teams to align goals and strengthen team cohesion. You will learn how to develop effective communication strategies to achieve transparency and effectively deliver improved results.

*Professionals who complete Unit II may earn a digital badge.

Unit III: Resource Planning and Financial Management (November 28-December 19, 2023)

In this unit, you will explore the different resources necessary to sustain effective operations, with people being the most important. You will understand the make-up of an operating budget and analyze the different types of costs. You will learn financial tools to perform forecasting and plan for the resources necessary to successfully deliver on strategic initiatives. You will learn how to optimize costs based on prior performance. You will explore tools to evaluate workload allocations and learn methods on how to appropriately allocate and align people with priorities.

Unit IV: Efficiency, Quality and Performance Measurement (January 2-23, 2023)

In this unit, you will learn how to perform systems thinking to identify and define operational efficiencies. You will explore what quality means and learn different models, tools and hybrid practices to achieve it. You will learn how to identify meaningful metrics and effectively track performance to ensure accountability across teams and throughout the organization. You will explore various methods on how to view, analyze and interpret performance data. You will learn effective methods on how to communicate performance expectations and results.

Unit V: Managing Priorities, Projects and Change (January 30-February 20, 2024)

In this unit, you will learn tools on how to prioritize and manage priorities given the challenges of meeting multiple demands with limited time and resources. You will explore the many challenges and pitfalls that can occur in managing projects. You will learn key project management principles to effectively manage and support projects that deliver superior outcomes. With change being the new norm, you will learn and apply change management methods to understand and manage change effectively to foster and deliver continued operational success.

Unit VI: Building a Learning Culture – The Competitive Advantage* (February 27-March 19, 2024)

In this unit, you will learn best practices for onboarding and what constitutes effective training and orientation. You will explore the important role of human resources in developing a learning culture. You will explore different leadership styles and learn how to lead from any role or position. You will strengthen self-awareness and learn emotional intelligence to build safe environments for sharing knowledge, lessons learned and leadership development. You will understand the difference between a fixed and growth mindset and how to develop a culture that fosters a growth mindset to achieve operational success that is a distinct competitive advantage.

*Professionals who complete Unit VI may earn a digital badge.

PRICING

The Advance Your Skills Pathways Program costs $3,000 for the entire pathway, while individual learning units cost $500 each.

For more information or to ask about a group rate, please contact adultlearning@alverno.edu.

Cancellation policy: A 50% refund will be issued upon withdrawal during the first unit. A 25% refund will be issued upon withdrawal during the second unit. There is no refund issued upon withdrawal during the third or later units.

The Annual Crime and Fire Safety Report for Alverno College, which includes crime statistics and annual fire safety statistics, can be found online. A hard copy of the report is available upon request. Please send your request to Jason Pilarski, director of Campus Safety.