Strategic Change Management
Online Program
Harness change management to create and sustain your competitive advantage.
8 weeks, excluding 1 week orientation.
4–6 hours of self-paced learning per week, entirely online.
Email: northwesternkellogg@getsmarter.com
Call: +1 847 440 3906
About This Program
Stability in the market is no longer the primary objective of senior management in an organization. Instead, technological advances, business innovation, and global competition have led to a shift in focus towards managing the complexities of change.
The success of a change strategy is largely dependent on the people within your company, and it’s the role of leaders and managers to help them navigate through it. This Strategic Change Management online program from Kellogg Executive Education at Northwestern University goes beyond common change management models to teach you how to successfully implement and manage change in an organization. Through each module, you’ll gain the tools needed to create a company that fosters creativity and executes on change plans effectively. You’ll also develop the insight to maintain strategic and organizational agility, effectively manage aversion to change, and ensure that change is sustainable.
What This Program Covers
The curriculum investigates various aspects of people-centric change management and provides evidence for why certain approaches and strategies work.
You’ll first cover the core concepts of strategy and organizational design, before exploring how to motivate for change through metrics. Next, you’ll discover how to organize for execution and innovation in the context of an organization’s competitive environment. From here, you’ll learn about the importance of strategic and organizational agility, and examine how to manage internal and external stakeholder resistance to change. The program will end on sustaining change, teaching you how to ensure that the effort put into a change management plan gets results.
A Powerful Collaboration
Northwestern University and the Kellogg School of Management are collaborating with GetSmarter, a 2U, Inc. brand, to create a best-in-class online education experience: from the design of programs that deliver verifiable competencies, to the personalized, people-mediated support learners receive.
About Kellogg Executive Education
Kellogg Executive Education empowers business leaders to foster growth in themselves, their teams and their organizations. Our renowned faculty, consisting of the world’s best researchers, educators and practitioners, provide practical insight that participants can apply as soon as they return to work. Providing a collaborative, immersive environment for our executive development programs, we serve a variety of businesses and executives from a myriad of industries and geographies.
About GetSmarter
GetSmarter, a 2U, Inc. brand, partners with the world's leading universities and institutions to select, design, and deliver premium online short courses with a data-driven focus on learning gain.
Technology meets academic rigor in GetSmarter’s people-mediated model, which enables lifelong learners across the globe to obtain industry-relevant skills that are certified by the world’s most reputable academic institutions.aGetSmarter, a 2U, Inc. brand, partners with the world's leading universities and institutions to select, design, and deliver premium online short courses with a data-driven focus on learning gain.
Technology meets academic rigor in GetSmarter’s people-mediated model, which enables lifelong learners across the globe to obtain industry-relevant skills that are certified by the world’s most reputable academic institutions.
As a student, you will also gain unlimited access to 2U’s Career Engagement Network at no extra cost. This platform will provide you with valuable career resources and events to support your professional journey. You can look forward to benefits including rich content, career templates, webinars, workshops, career fairs, networking events, panel discussions, and exclusive recruitment opportunities to connect you with potential employers.*
*Some of these events may be virtual due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
What You’ll Learn
You’ll be welcomed to the program and begin connecting with fellow students, while exploring the navigation and tools of your Online Campus. Be alerted to key milestones in the learning path, and review how your results will be calculated and distributed.
You’ll be required to complete your student profile, and submit a digital copy of your passport/identity document.
Please note that module titles and their contents are subject to change during program development.
Understand strategy and how to write an effective strategy statement.
- Summarize fundamental concepts relating to strategy and different definitions of strategy
- Identify the key elements of an effective strategy statement
- Practice writing a strategy statement
- Analyze an organization's strategy based on the strategic fit with the competitive environment and organizational structure
- Critique an organization's strategy statement
Explore the importance of designing an organization effectively to manage change.
- Indicate what an organization is
- Relate the importance of an organization’s design to its competitive advantage
- Articulate the best approach to change an organization’s design
Explore the use of metrics to motivate for change.
- Indicate the importance of metrics and measurement to motivate for change
- Use metrics and measurement to motivate for change
- Determine metrics that align with your strategic goal to appropriately impact behavior
- Analyze data to determine the alignment between an organization's strategy and structure
- Collaborate to determine how an organization should change to align its strategy and structure
Explore the use of social network structures to organize for execution and innovation.
- Indicate the importance of closure and brokerage for execution and innovation, respectively
- Articulate how to organize for closure versus brokerage
- Determine whether an organization is designed for closure or brokerage
- Analyze an organization's informal social networks and deduce whether it is organized for execution or innovation
- Recommend changes to an organization's informal social networks to foster execution and innovation
A how-to guide to make an organization learning-ready.
- Identify the core concepts of a learning-ready organization
- Determine the learning-readiness of an organization
- Apply the concept of learning-readiness to organizational alliances
- Deduce appropriate social networks to facilitate a learning-ready organization
Discover the importance of strategic and organizational agility.
- Identify what agility is and discuss it in the context of organizational strategy
- Indicate ways to become more agile
- Apply tools to increase strategic and organizational agility
Explore different hurdles to change.
- Identify different types of innovation and how innovation leads to resistance
- Determine risks associated with disruptive innovation
- Determine the risks associated with stakeholder perception to disruptive innovation
- Analyze a change management plan and deduce the associated resistance
- Recommend ideas to manage resistance to change
Ensuring the survival of your change management plan.
- Identify the difference between installing change and implementing change
- Determine whether an organization is able to sustain change
- Investigate an organization's ability to sustain change
- Predict whether a change management plan is likely to be sustained or not
Who Should Take This Program
This online program is designed for professionals looking to support their organization in maintaining a competitive edge. It will therefore be beneficial to senior and middle management who want to better understand how to manage and foster change in their company. While this program is suited for those in medium to large organizations, it will also be highly relevant for leaders of small organizations who want to effectively manage growth and scaling. The program will also be valuable for change management and HR professionals looking for more strategic insight into change management beyond their current knowledge.
This Program Is for You If You Want To:
Stay Relevant Through Change
Gain the ability to remain agile and competitive in a fast-changing environment.
Lead Effectively Through Disruption
Ensure you’ve got the tools to implement and manage change across different teams.
Protect Your Business
Build a strategy to navigate disruption, expansion, or restructuring in your company.
About The Certificate
Get recognized for your knowledge when you earn an official digital certificate of completion from Kellogg Executive Education — and use it to set yourself apart as a leader in change management.
Assessment is continuous and based on a series of practical assignments completed online. In order to be issued with a certificate, you’ll need to meet the requirements outlined in the program handbook. The handbook will be made available to you as soon as you begin the program.
Your certificate will be issued in your legal name and sent to you digitally upon successful completion of the program, as per the stipulated requirements.
Who You’ll Learn From
These subject matter experts from the Kellogg School of Management guide the program design and appear in a number of program videos, along with a variety of industry professionals.
Your Academic Director
Edward Smith
The late Academic Director and former Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
In addition to being an associate professor at the Kellogg School of Management, Smith was also a core faculty member of the Northwestern Institute for Complexity (NICO), and faculty associate at Northwestern Institute for Policy Research. Prior to joining Northwestern, Smith was the NBD Bancorp Assistant Professor of Strategy at the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2010 (specializing in sociology and economics).
Smith focused his studies on the effects of social structure on the behavior and decision-making of individuals and organizations. He also researched collective intelligence and the ‘wisdom of crowds’, and worked to connect research on cognitive processes and network theories of social capital to better understand how people utilize the resources available to them in their social networks. Professor Smith passed away in 2021 and is thanked for his contribution to his academic field.
Guest Lecturers
Sally Blount
Michael L. Nemmers Professor of Strategy, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
Loran Nordgren
Associate Professor of Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
Julie Duty
Founder and Executive Director, United Sound, Inc.
Steve King
Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), Chief Learning Officer (CLO), Global Talent Management Leader and most recently Executive Director of the University of Wisconsin’s Business School’s Center for Professional and Executive Development
How You’ll Learn
Every program is broken down into manageable, weekly modules, designed to accelerate your learning process through diverse learning activities:
- Interact with your peers and learning facilitators through weekly class-wide forums and reviewed small group discussions
- Enjoy a wide range of interactive content, including video lectures, infographics, live polls, and more
- Investigate rich, real-world case studies
- Apply what you learn each week to quizzes and ongoing project submissions
Your Success Team
GetSmarter, with whom Kellogg School of Management is collaborating to deliver this online program, provides a personalized approach to online education that ensures you’re supported throughout your learning journey.
Head Facilitator
A subject expert who’ll guide you through content-related challenges.
Success Adviser
Your one-on-one support available during university hours (8a.m.–5p.m. CDT) to resolve technical and administrative challenges.
Global Success Team
Available 24/7 to solve your tech-related and administrative queries and concerns.
Nearly 75% of organizations expect to increase the types of change initiatives they undertake over the next three years — yet half of all change initiatives fail.*
*Gartner (Nd). Accessed November 9, 2021.
Technical Requirements
Basic Requirements
In order to complete this program, you’ll need a current email account and access to a computer and the internet, as well as a PDF Reader. You may need to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, and read and create documents in Microsoft Word or Excel.
Browser Requirements
We recommend that you use Google Chrome as your internet browser when accessing the Online Campus. Although this is not a requirement, we have found that this browser performs best for ease of access to program material. This browser can be downloaded here.
Additional Requirements
Certain programs may require additional software and resources. These additional software and resource requirements will be communicated to you upon registration and/or at the beginning of the program. Please note that Google, Vimeo, and YouTube may be used in our program delivery, and if these services are blocked in your jurisdiction, you may have difficulty in accessing program content. Please check with an Enrolment Advisor before registering for this program if you have any concerns about this affecting your experience with the Online Campus.
