Leading Organizational Change
Learn powerful methods to revitalize your organization, gain cooperation, improve strategic thinking and creative problem solving, boost performance, and extract maximum benefit from new opportunities.
Today’s senior leaders must guide the successful implementation of new, more effective strategies while promoting the drive, morale, commitment, agility, initiative, and vision of their people. This program for change leadership equips you to create the future of your organization.
Through lectures, discussions, small group interaction, and numerous hands-on activities, we connect state-of-the-art, research-based concepts and principles to best practices in leading change and innovation. The atmosphere is active and open—sometimes even playful. The program attracts participants from a wide array of functions, industries, and countries. We draw on the group’s collective experiences as well as on case studies from a variety of sources and media, covering a broad range of leadership challenges. Each day of the program, you apply the tools and concepts learned in the program to a real organizational change case of your own and consult with fellow participants to prepare for the challenges ahead.
By attending this program, you will:
- Build organizational agility
- Manage up, down, and sideways
- Move from competing agendas to organizational alignment
- Win hearts and minds to the efforts ahead
- Drive creativity and flexibility in problem solving
- Guide people through the complexities of change
- Leverage dilemmas to strengthen organizational strategy
- Lead your organization to seize new opportunities
- Anchor your plan of action to the real-world business challenges you are facing
- Benefit from post-program consultation with the program faculty
Location
Chicago Booth, Gleacher Center, Chicago IL
This program will be held in-person if deemed safe to do so at the time.
This program is targeted to senior executives endeavoring to guide and catalyze significant and sustainable change. If you are in the midst of, or about to initiate important changes to processes, strategies, structures, or culture, this program is for you.
The program is especially recommended for leaders who are looking for new ideas, eager to engage with fellow participants in discussion, and committed to implementing an action plan for change in their business, nonprofit, or governmental organization.
Joshua Klayman
Joshua Klayman is an internationally-known expert in managerial psychology. He has been a member of the faculty at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business since 1980. He is also co-owner, with Jackie Gnepp, of Humanly Possible, Inc., a boutique firm offering organizational consulting, leadership education, and executive coaching.
Professor Klayman has taught MBA and Executive Education courses in Chicago, Singapore, Barcelona, and Melbourne for Chicago Booth; in Fontainebleau, France for INSEAD; in Durham, North Carolina for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business; and, in Melbourne, Australia for the Melbourne Business School. He has taught for client companies including Johnson & Johnson, Airbus, Underwriters’ Laboratories, and Bridgestone-Firestone in the US, France, and Germany.
Professor Klayman’s primary research, teaching, and consulting interests are in understanding and improving people’s ability to make sound decisions, to learn and improve, to think creatively, and to embrace change, especially in the context of organizations. His research on these topics has been published in Psychological Review, the flagship journal of psychological research, and in other top-tier journals in psychology and management including Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Review of Organizational Behavior, Psychology of Learning and Motivation, and Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Professor Klayman has served as director of Chicago Booth’s Decision Research Laboratory and as president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making. He was a visiting professor at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and at the Fuqua School of Business. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where he was also a professorial fellow at the Melbourne Business School from 2008-2013.
Professor Klayman is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. He earned his PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Minnesota. He received an SB in psychology and social inquiry from MIT.
Jackie Gnepp
Jackie Gnepp is president of Humanly Possible, Inc., a boutique firm offering organizational consulting, leadership education, and executive coaching. Dr. Gnepp enjoys sharing her knowledge of management psychology, organizational change, decision making, gender issues, and leadership with executives worldwide. She has taught internationally for the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Accenture, the Corporate Leadership Center, and Fortune 100 companies. Her leadership presentations have been highly acclaimed in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Dr. Gnepp is a licensed consulting psychologist, who specializes in making leaders more effective. Serving clients of all sizes from individual entrepreneurs to large multinational corporations, she consults with leaders to revitalize organizations, increase diversity and inclusion, create high-performance teams, resolve conflicts, facilitate innovation, and promote active participation in change. Among her specialties is the use of psychological science to provide highly motivated women with greater career success.
Dr. Gnepp has authored or co-authored over 60 articles, book chapters, and presentations on people management, emotional intelligence, and performance improvement. She is currently completing research in three areas: more effective approaches to constructive managerial feedback, interventions that enable organizations to promote qualified women into leadership roles, and advantages of embracing dilemmas to improve organizational strategy.
Dr. Gnepp's career also includes full-time positions as executive coach and corporate training manager for Accenture, as regional manager for Medco Behavioral Care Services, and as tenured associate professor of psychology at Northern Illinois University. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Bryn Mawr College and her doctorate in psychology from the University of Minnesota.
Building Organizational Agility
- Establish trust and credibility as a leader
- Create a change-ready climate
- Build and maintain a shared vision
Exploiting Dilemmas
- Uncover crucial managerial and strategic dilemmas
- Recognize and manage "natural tensions"
- Use dilemmas to create better strategies and tactics
Winning Hearts and Minds
- Recognize the mental blocks to accepting new ideas
- Win over skeptics and naysayers
- Overcome resistance to change
Leading Diverse Stakeholders to a Common Future
- Uncover conflicting goals, beliefs, and expectations within your organization
- Manage differences and rivalries
- Understand your organizational culture and subcultures
Encouraging Creativity and Flexibility in Problem Solving
- Frame problems for optimal solutions
- Foster innovative thinking
- Build top-notch teams for recognizing and seizing new opportunities
Seeing and Communicating the Big Picture
- Understand the sources of unintended consequences
- Use "Systems Thinking" to reduce chaos
- Improve coordination while avoiding "working at cross purposes"
Developing New Skills and Behaviors
- Motivate people in times of transition
- Provide feedback that people will accept and use
- Manage performance
Developing Action Plans
- Create concrete strategies for leading organizational change
- Get everyone on board for the trip
- Lead up: Upward change management
I have implemented many of the tools and techniques acquired in the Booth program into my everyday work life. They are relevant, adaptable, and scalable. I highly recommend it.
—Rich Haluschak, Senior VP & CFAO, Art Center College of Design
This class, without a doubt, was the most beneficial of any I’ve taken. The balance of theory and application was tremendous. The entire class was engaging and informative. This is a must take for any leader!
—Amy Ohde, Sr. Director, Field Development, Chick-fil-A
The whole course content is excellent. Content was well supported with numerous and insightful resources and very practical and easy to apply tools. This course gave me concrete tools to take back home and apply immediately, and substantial new knowledge.
—Ana Maria Moreno de Arias, Senior Vice President—Organizational Performance & Development, Bladex (Panama)
Dr. Klayman and Dr. Gnepp bring passion and energy to their presentation of the material. My experience in the class and the knowledge I’ve gained is outstanding.
- William Mairson, Deputy Principal Associate Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Excellent and practical program blending theory and practice and enabling the participant to be ready to implement a change program next day.
—Antonio Ferreira, Vice President, Procurement
Now I have the car and the keys. I just need to turn them on to start the journey of change in my company.
—Mathieu Halgand, COO–Learning & Development Group, AXA (France)
The course was extremely helpful for the upcoming challenges in my new job. The tactics and tools supplied plus the group discussion made this an incredibly valuable and interactive week.
—Florian Hoffmann, Senior Manager, R&D, Brainlab AG (Germany)
What I liked best was the innovation and variety within the class schedule combined with a very coherent program that built on itself day by day all week.
—Jack Meyer, Chief Marketing Officer, The Doctors Company
This course was an exceptional experience that provided tangible takeaways to implement change.
-Christine Sparks, Sr. VP – COO, Attorneys’ Title Guaranty Fund
I came with [an] authentic change case. The course helped me to find the right keys and tools to tackle this dilemma.
- Adel Al-Suhaimi, Assistant Director-General, Saudi Industrial Development
Excellent program by all standards. I recommend to every executive to attend.
—C.K. James, Manager—Health, Safety, Security and Environment, Petroleum Commission, Ghana
I found the course very useful in helping me to gain a better understanding of the issues that must be considered and addressed when implementing change and innovation. I feel I now have the skills needed to go back and implement my own change project in a way that will have the greatest chance to succeed.
—Dimulak Mwanmut, Chief Operating Officer, Le Pan Health & Wellness Initiatives (Nigeria)
I was very impressed with the content of the program and the openness of the training. There was a good mix of hands-on vs. classroom. The interaction between participants made it very enjoyable.
—Rex Martin, Vice President of Government Relations, States Strategies & Chief Executive Officer, Alpha Gamma Rho Fraternity