Catalyst Leadership Academy

This proposal is a collaborative offering by Bridge Builders and the Catalyst School.

General:

The challenge:

As Catalyst and the community grows, we need world-class leaders to provide guidance, direction, and empowerment to unleash our collective intent to change the world. It is critically important to develop these leaders from within the community, retain our culture, and provide rewarding avenues for growth and self-development for the emerging leaders in our midst.

Failing to do this, an external "professional" class will enter this space who will not understand our culture and create ideological friction. We will lose opportunities for growth for those who are core community contributors to those that are not as familiar or sympathetic to existing community culture.

A solution:

The Catalyst Leadership Academy will create open-source educational materials, presentations, and seminars for those looking to improve and expand their leadership skills. A collaboration between Bridge Builders and the Catalyst School, the Catalyst Leadership Academy creates a space where leaders and those passionate about teaching leadership skills can offer their services to the community. All courses, seminars, materials, and templates will be open-source and available to the community at no cost.

The Team:

This proposal is a collaborative offering by Bridge Builders and the Catalyst School.

The Bridge Builders are an aligned group of highly engaged and committed Catalyst Community members coming together as a community-driven Assembly to provide value to their environment. We problem-sense challenges and identify gaps within the Cardano and Catalyst ecosystem. In collaboration with well-established community projects, we co-build and design "tailor-made" solutions in line with the Cardano & Catalyst philosophy of "from the community, with the community, for the community."

The Catalyst School is a place created to enhance the impact of Catalyst as a whole by improving the contribution of all its different players and roles. We onboard new members and help improve their skills in areas they decide to engage with Catalyst.

The Curriculum

These are some envisioned initial offerings, evolving based on community needs and offerings:

Bridge Builders Strategic Planning:

Uniting individuals with diverse skills around strategic vision, goals, and priorities is vital for creating effective business models. Below are some components of essential strategic planning. Understanding these components and guiding others to define them through a template and online seminars will help these organizations begin defining both short and long-term objectives that can assist in united efforts in building a company.

Mission Statement

• Defining why the company exists and inspires employees to a common purpose
• Concise statement

Core Values

• Values your company stands for and guides decisions
• Typically, 5-7 values that define action

Vision Statement

• Creates an image of what success looks like within a time frame
• Provides direction where the company should be headed

Competitive Advantages

• Unique strengths versus other companies
• The value proposition in the market and differentiation

Long-Term Objectives

• Broad strategic goals the company will work on to accomplish or maintain
• Typically 4-6: Include items such as financial positioning, shareholder value, social impact, and external considerations (non-profit activities)

Reporting Metrics

• Tools and methods
• Timelines, success, roadblocks, etc.

Other Items

• S.W.O.T Analysis--Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats
• Software tools

Leadership School:

Leadership covers a wide range of competencies and areas, most of which involve deep reflection and change within the leaders themselves. Leaders that understand their values, motivations, and passions can align their internal and external worlds and be more effective. This section of the curriculum is about the four following broad categories:

Character (know and manage self)

• Emotional Intelligence, self-awareness in leadership
• Personality types and personal values assessment

Communication (lead through influence)

• Communication
• Influence and negotiation

Connection (navigate community systems)

• Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
• Community development
• Developing and coaching others
• Shaping organizational culture

Completion (make things happen)

• Collaboration
• Resilience
• Change management
• Conflict management

Other proposal goals:

• Discord or Slack space for creating community and discussing leadership topics
• New educator intake mechanism so community members with appropriate skills can teach and be reimbursed for their contribution.

Existing and Future direction

There are also existing or planned future offerings of the Catalyst Leadership Academy (not part of this proposal) that we're launching or brainstorming at the moment:

• Leadership Book Club (new book per month exploring leadership books - already funded, launching soon!) and first official offering of Catalyst Leadership Academy)
• Tools for Change Makers like Theory U and u.lab
• Productivity and systems for greater impact
• Effective writing and communication

Impact.

Training leaders inside Catalyst will increase our organizational capacity, develop trust to assume more and more responsibility for governance, and accelerate our evolution into Voltaire and full decentralized governance. Creating solid leaders will elevate our community to world-class impact and effectiveness.

Feasibility.

Bridge Builders brings decades of collective executive and tactical business experience. This experience includes managing teams, running companies, raising capital, building partnerships and successfully launching products, projects and communities.

The Catalyst School brings successful models and methods of teaching and engaging with the community with a proven track record of on-boarding people to the community, and various roles like CA and proposer.

Initial Instructors:

Dean Taylor - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdeantaylor/

Dean has more than 25 years of experience in the technology industry, including 15+ years at the executive management level—including startup and established organizations. His primary expertise is in moving companies or offerings through the "pre-chasm" marketing and partnering activities, bridging the business gap that exists as technology moves through stages of innovation into business acceptance and adoption.

As a Linux pioneer during the '90s, he was there at the inception of the open-source movement, working for Caldera Systems as the Vice President of Marketing and Channel Sales. He played a crucial role in growing the company's market presence and creating Caldera's Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Nori Nishigaya - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishigaya/

Founder of the Salmon Nation Decentralized Alliance (SANADA), Bridge Builders, and SAMON pool. Member of the Catalyst Circle Admin Team, Cardano4Climate, and Rapid Funding Challenge Team. Cardano Ambassador, CA, and Funded proposer. Passionate about radical inclusivity and community and devoted to making Cardano the best community on the planet. Nori brings over 30 years of experience in software development, agile methodologies, leadership & managing teams, and founding & running technology startups.

Other Instructors and Advisors:

We will also have an active recruitment campaign to bring in qualified instructors from the community in order to hold courses and seminars on topical subjects based on community sentiment and need.

In addition to the initial instructors mentioned above, Bridge Builders will bring, as advisors, other industry experts and executives to assist in building reach, marketing presence and establishing relationships outside of the current Cardano ecosystem.

Auditability.

All course materials and offerings will be made open-source and shared with the community. All our offerings will be recorded and shared on YouTube and Github. We will keep track of hours worked by our instructors and room hosts and publish details on all fund usage and disbursements to ensure we are effectively deploying funds for return on intent. We will follow up each offering with a student survey on the effectiveness of the material, suitability for Catalyst projects and collect feedback and suggestions to improve our offerings over time.

Adjustability.

We will keep in touch with the community on the suitability and appropriateness of our materials. We may change the curriculum or teaching materials to suit new developments better, incorporate feedback, and offer the best and most up-to-date material available.

Roadmap:

Month 1 (Feb)

• Weekly course offerings in the Leadership School core curriculum (4 offerings)
• Bi-Weekly course offerings in the Strategic Planning curriculum (2 offerings)

Month 2 (Mar)

• Weekly course offerings in the Leadership School core curriculum (4 offerings)
• Bi-Weekly course offerings in the Strategic Planning curriculum (2 offerings)
• Update course curriculum based on feedback and community need-sensing

Month 3 (Apr)

• Weekly course offerings in the Leadership School core curriculum (4 offerings)
• Bi-Weekly course offerings in the Strategic Planning curriculum (2 offerings)
• Update course curriculum based on feedback and community need-sensing
• Present v2 curriculum for Fund 9

KPIs / OKRS

• Within the first two months, recruit at least two experienced business executives that will act as Bridge Builder advisors. These advisors will have extensive backgrounds in marketing, entrepreneurial or funding experience in the technology industry and will come from outside of the current Cardano business ecosystem.
• Create a repository that will contain all curriculum, surveys and templates that will enable the community to adapt and internationalize the documents.
• Track participant course feedback and scores on course

• Relevance (applicability)
• Delivery (instructor)
• Value (relevance)

Budget breakdown

Instructors and staff

• 12 x Leadership school core curriculum x $60/hour * 8 hours preparation / 2 hours classroom / 4 hours open-source documentation = $10800
• 6 x Strategic Planning core curriculum x $60/hour * 8 hours preparation / 2 hours classroom / 4 hours open-source documentation = $5040
• Classroom Hosts - 18 x $30/hour * 2 hr room hosting and moderation = $1080
• Catalyst Leadership Academy management - 8 hrs/mo x $30/hr x 3 mo = $720

Documentation

• Update Catalyst School website with Leadership Academy = $500
• Set up github and gitbook for open-source sharing of course recordings and educational materials = $150