Learning Program for Managers to Effectively Plan, Lead and Communicate Reforms

We will be offering a rich Leadership Program in the forthcoming autumn. Our learning initiatives “Communicating Reforms” and “Planning and Leading Organizational Change” will bring together managers and leaders from ministries of finance, revenue administrations, line ministries, budget and finance departments, and central banks from the SEE region. The aim is to help them build the skills needed to effectively manage and monitor the reform processes, and to better communicate these reforms internally in the government sector and to the public.

We understand that it takes more than just technical skills to introduce and implement reforms. Based on our experience, reforms are successful in countries where there is a firm political ownership of the reform agenda and the key staff members have strong leadership and management skills to convene members of a team, generate cross-team cooperation and act as role models for other staff members. As a regional knowledge hub, the CEF’s aim is to encourage flexibility and creativity of the staff in the region on individual and institutional level. We have been paying special attention to identifying and empowering finance officials in the region who we have recognized as change agents or individuals with motivation to bring about change, share their knowledge and influence others.

To this end we will start offering a practical learning program on Communicating Reforms. It will teach managers about the most effective methods for communicating reforms, tackling and managing underperformance, increasing motivation, managing conflicts and improving communication skills. Only properly communicated reforms can create a buy-in that helps achieve goals. It will take place as a face-to-face event on October 12-13, 2015.

The Planning and Leading Organizational Change program will give managers and technical specialists the knowledge and tools for systematically planning and managing large change initiatives. Through exercises based on a case study participants will acquire valuable knowledge, skills and confidence for engaging in changes and capacity development in their own organizations. We delivered this program for the first time in April 2015 and received very good feedback. As one of the participants said, “It was good to have a course based on practical examples, not only theory, delivered by a charismatic lecturer with enormous knowledge.” We are now preparing for the second delivery of the program on November 17–19, 2015.

For more information please turn to Ms Maja Tomšič, Leadership Program Coordinator.