Change Management Leadership
New Program: Coming in 2025
From Leader to Change Agent: Redefine What's Possible
In an era of constant disruption, effective leadership requires more than just managing change—it demands driving it. This program equips you with the tools, insights, and strategies to transition from a leader to a true change agent, capable of inspiring innovation, overcoming resistance, and delivering meaningful results. Through cutting-edge frameworks, behavioral science insights, and practical applications, you’ll gain the confidence to navigate complexity and redefine what’s possible for your organization.
Change is both inevitable and essential for sustained success. Yet, most change initiatives fail to achieve their objectives, leaving organizations struggling to adapt and grow. Navigating change effectively has become a critical skill for leaders at all levels.
This program equips participants with the tools, frameworks, and strategies to lead transformational efforts, overcome resistance, and inspire their organizations to thrive in the face of uncertainty. By addressing the human, systemic, and strategic dimensions of change—and incorporating Nobel Prize-winning research in Behavioral Economics—participants will gain a deeper understanding of the psychological drivers behind decision-making and resistance.
Through cutting-edge frameworks, practical applications, and hands-on experiences, this program empowers leaders to foster innovation, build adaptability, and transform change from a disruption into a powerful driver of competitive advantage.
By attending, you will:
- Gain a comprehensive understanding of why change initiatives succeed or fail.
- Examine the specific challenges of initiating a change process.
- Analyze both the rational and emotional components of successful change.
- Learn practical tools and frameworks for leading systemic change, including behavioral economic insights.
- Enhance your interpersonal influence and techniques for gaining buy-in.
- Gain insights into the evolving nature of organizations and leadership.
- Participate in hands-on simulations and real-world applications to solidify your learning.
- Explore the interactive exhibits at Chicago Booth Mindworks to discover how behavioral science insights can drive impactful change.
- Senior Executives and Managers: Leaders tasked with navigating complex challenges, managing organizational transformation, and inspiring teams to achieve strategic objectives.
- Change Leaders and Project Managers: Professionals leading change initiatives, implementing new processes, or driving innovation within their organizations.
- HR and People Leaders: Those responsible for cultivating a culture of adaptability, motivating teams, and managing resistance to change.
- Entrepreneurs and Business Owners: Visionaries looking to implement scalable changes and align their organizations for sustained growth.
- Emerging Leaders and High-Potential Professionals: Individuals preparing to take on greater leadership responsibilities and wanting to enhance their skills in managing and leading change effectively.
Tanya Menon
Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Management Science, and Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes among others. Papers include "Culture and the construal of agency: Attribution to individual versus group dispositions," with M. W. Morris, C. Chiu, and Y. Hong; "Cultural Theories: The Role of Implicit Social Theories in Cultural Differences in Social Judgment" with D. R. Ames and M. W. Morris; The Messenger Bias: How Social Relationships Affect the Valuation of Knowledge" with S. Blount; "Valuing Internal versus External Knowledge: Explaining the Preference for Outsiders," with J. Pfeffer, and "Tainted Knowledge versus Tempting Knowledge: Why People Avoid Knowledge from Internal Rivals and Seek Knowledge from External Rivals, with L. Thompson and H. Choi.
Menon earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Harvard University in 1995. Her advisor Chris Winship encouraged her to pursue a career in research, and she studied college-educated African Americans who worked in inner-city communities under his direction. This research received the Thomas Templeton Hoopes Prize as one of the best senior theses at Harvard. Menon earned a PhD in organizational behavior in 2000 from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She was also the recipient of an American Marshall Memorial Fellowship, a Kaufman Foundation Grant for research on Entrepreneurship, and a Stanford Center for Conflict and Negotiation Fellowship.
Prior to graduate school, Menon was a research assistant in INCAE Business School in Costa Rica and an intern in Morgan Stanley's London office.
Menon joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2000. She was the winner of the 2006 Faculty Excellence Award for exceptional commitment to teaching as voted by students in the Evening MBA and Weekend MBA programs, and the 2007 Phoenix Award, voted by the class of 2007 for enriching the experience of students inside and outside the classroom.
Adam Bowen
He’s led a wide range of client engagements, from growth strategies, commercial diligence, and sales transformation efforts to brand revitalization, NPD / innovation strategies, and digital marketing transformations for a range of global industry leaders. His work lives at the intersection of commerce and culture, developing corporate growth strategies that unlocked new revenue streams from rapidly emerging customer segments across APAC/LATAM/EMEA/Americas regions and turned DEI/ESG laggards into global decarbonized leaders.
This program includes an exclusive site visit to Mindworks, located in downtown Chicago.
Contribute to the Advancement of Science
Mindworks is a hub for behavioral science research led by some of the world’s foremost experts, including Nicholas Epley and Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler. Supported by the Roman Family Center for Decision Research and PIMCO, these researchers continue to push the boundaries of behavioral science, uncovering new truths about human judgment and decision-making.
Through interactive exhibits and innovative research, participants will:
- Discover Predictable Patterns: Examine common errors in human judgment and decision-making to better understand how they impact behavior.
- Apply Behavioral Science Principles: Learn how to translate groundbreaking insights into practical strategies for success in organizational and personal contexts.
- Gain Techniques to Motivate Teams: Gain actionable techniques to inspire and guide teams by leveraging decision-making frameworks that drive success.
Participants will not only observe but also contribute to this groundbreaking work, gaining valuable insights to apply in both professional and personal contexts.
*Mindworks is operated by the Roman Family Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and serves as the home for the center’s PIMCO Decision Research Laboratories.
- Why Change Is So Difficult: Explore why most change initiatives fail and analyze examples of success and failure.
- Taking Charge: Learn what to do—and avoid—in the early stages of change to build a strong foundation for transformation.
- Formal and Informal Dynamics: Understand how organizational culture and hidden power structures influence change.
- Levers of Systemic Change: Use a systems approach to align organizational elements for success and diagnose past failures.
- Getting Buy-In: Transform disengaged employees into change agents using proven strategies and case studies.
- Rational and Emotional Drivers: Master interpersonal influence techniques to gain support from skeptics and opponents.
- Bottom-Up Change Agents: Identify and empower grassroots change agents within your organization.
- The Changing Nature of Great Organizations: Understand transformative trends and how leaders can adapt to modern business challenges.
- Global Tech Simulation: Apply change management concepts in a real-time, immersive simulation.
- The Personal Side of Change: Reflect on program insights, revisit key challenges, and create a personal action plan to lead change effectively.