People-cent­ric Stra­tegic Change Man­age­ment

Course content

Kurt Lewin famously asserted that “nothing is as practical as a good theory.” Yet, theories often become codified into normative rules and prescriptive principles that dictate what consultants should or should not do. Such an approach tends to oversimplify the complexity of organizational change. Rather than rigid adherence to theoretical prescriptions or singular perspectives, effective change consulting requires the capacity to make qualified context-sensitive choices between many different ways of engaging with the host organization and its members.

In this course, we will therefore critically explore different perspectives on how to work strategically with the challenge of managing transformational organizational change in a modern context. A context often defined by complex uncertainty. This course will have as a focal point the actual change part - intended or not – in an overall strategic sense by centering its attention upon people-centric and sustainable changes along with organizational resilience. Furthermore, we will dive into the countless challenges and paradoxes that change agents, and organizational ecosystems face when trying to change strategies, organizations, and behaviors alike.

This course takes point in 3 basic levels of attention:

1. Developing a concrete toolbox to build and execute change processes (The What to do)  

2. Understanding the contextual settings that differentiate each change (The Where and the Why).

3. Supporting strategic and reflective competencies in understanding people and analyzing change initiatives, paradoxes, and different perspectives (How to do it).

These 3 levels are to be understood as interacting, shaping the actual outcomes and consequences of the change process in question by creating a link between methods and actual enacted strategy.

The structure of the course 

We will start out by understanding the original planned and experimental approaches to change, followed by its main successor the generic instrumental approach, where we focus on how each can benefit the management of change in a modern context. Furthermore, we will supplement this by exploring what cannot be captured in these classical and dominant views by bringing in multiple perspectives from e.g., organizational development & culture, middle & top management, neuroscience, emotions, temporality, sense-making & social psychology, power, and complexity theory among others to give a more nuanced picture of managing the multiple challenges of change – and durable workarounds.  

The overall aim is hence to raise the change management practice from a pure planning and project-oriented approach to an overall strategic discipline with a focus upon sustainable changes, people and organizational resilience, that goes beyond the success of the singular change project.

The course’s development of personal competences evolves from the 3 levels of attention to support the development of a reflective and context-sensitive change practitioner that focuses on both the change itself and the sustainability of the host organization. However, it also provides interpersonal competencies through its collaborative form and focus since most changes are performed in teams.