Change Management Certificate Program (CMCP)

In this course, participants learn the role of the consultant in the change management process. As a change leader, one of your most powerful strengths is your ability to understand how individuals and systems react to "change." This understanding will guide you towards developing and implementing strategies that will help you manage the change process more efficiently and effectively. In this course you will explore the key change theories, apply them to real life examples, and begin to create a framework for how you approach change management.

A major stumbling block for organizational change efforts is planning the change with people in mind. Through case studies and in class activities you will learn and practice how to design a plan and communicate with the people involved in the change effort.

Benefits:

Lead change management initiatives in organizations
Support senior leaders and their teams through the change process
Create sustainable change and learning for sucessful change
Guide organizations through strategic change

What you will learn:

Explore core research-based change theories that you may draw on as you manage change in the future
Understand Change and Adult "Willingness to Change/Learn"
Experience the difference between motivating and demotivating behavior as it applies to change in systems
Practice creating change management plans that incorporate predictable human reactions to change.
Refine your understanding of how change happens and your role in facilitating it.

Course Details – Program Overview:

Session 1: OD Consulting Skills – The Consultative Approach	Students deepen their knowledge of the consultative process of entry, contracting, and intervention. Students also learn how to work with clients during the feedback and action-planning phase of the consultation. This includes principles for interpreting data, planning and conducting feedback sessions, and helping the client move into action. Additionally, students explore the role of the self as consultant/helper, learning how personal values, self-awareness, and ethical principles are essential to any consultative process. This course is conducted off-site. Required.
Session 2: Change – Theory and Ethical Interventions	Students will explore contemporary organizational change models and theories to learn more about their strengths and limitations in creating real and sustainable change in organizations. Students will learn to distinguish between %uFB01rst and second order change and change that is planned and unplanned. Intervention is a “helping” process to intentionally “disturb” the system in order to improve the functioning and performance of the system. The principles of designing interventions will be explored, ranging from facilitation of, or participation in, a meeting to entering an organizational system with the intent of helping it effect systemic change. Ethical issues will be explored, particularly the importance of ascertaining and working at the appropriate depth of intervention.
Session 3: Leading Change – Creating Systemic Organizational Change	This course focuses on discernment of the adaptive challenge facing an organizational system as opposed to technical problems, advancing the purpose of the organization, orchestrating tension in service of systemic change, listening to and communicating the "song beneath the words," leveraging informal versus formal leadership, differentiating self from roles, thinking politically, and giving the work back to the group.
Session 4: Analyzing Org Change - Social Innovation in the World	While cultural perspectives are integrated throughout the program, by identifying demographic, climatic, environmental, political, cultural and economic trends, analyzing results and giving feedback.
Session 5: Action Planning - Organization Design - Creating the Future by Design	Participants develop an understanding of "futuring" and how it differs from conventional planning. Exploration of theory, models, and methods associated with futuring helps students understand how to apply this perspective at an organizational and individual level. Emphasis is placed on methods featuring a participatory and whole systems approach. Intercultural considerations are explored. Students will have an opportunity to experience aspects of futuring models and methods as a way to strengthen their application skills. Required.
Session 6: Implementation to Create Change – The Theory and Practice of Appreciative Inquiry	Appreciative Inquiry is a participative and powerful method for creating change in social systems. Rooted in social constructionism and the power of image, it involves a systematic discovery and mobilizing of what gives a social system life in human, ecological, and economic terms. Students will learn the theory and practice of this approach as it represents a major shift in how organizational development practitioners work with organizations.
Session 7: Transition, Renewal, and Life-long Learning	The focus is on group endings and managing transitions at the individual level. The learning is highly experiential and personal in that this course includes the adjournment of the learning community. Design considerations for group endings are examined. Engagement in renewal occurs with a continuance design for the cohort and individual next steps in life-long learning.