‘Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.’ — W.B. Yeats. You already have the knowledge necessary to manage change in your head, your heart and your hands. This knowledge is embedded in the cultural images and counter-images of what managing change involves. This week, you will develop reflective capacity by stepping back from dominant images of change, questioning mechanistic views, and critically and creatively applying the iceberg and death valley as alternative ways to re-imagine change.

‘The Map is not the territory.’ — Alfred Korzybski. If change is a journey, what type of journey is it? And what do we need to guide us along the way? This week, you will learn to define a change journey using gap analysis, examine the forces that may support or resist change through forcefield analysis, and create a route map that helps guide progress through the beginning, middle, and end stages of change.

‘All the world’s a stage, and we are but players on it.’ — William Shakespeare. Knowing what to do to manage change is one thing. Knowing how to do it is another. While the route map outlines what you need to do, you have to decide how to do it, in context and with other people. How change plans are executed is always a performance, the artful exercise of influence in time, in space and in conditions that are often not of our choosing. This week, you will examine the frontstage and backstage performances involved in managing change, compare management and leadership as approaches to influence, and assess strategies such as planning, improvisation, participation, and coercion.

‘Life is lived forwards but understood backwards.’ — Soren Kierkegaard. Leaders of change initiatives are not only faced with known unknowns but also unknown unknowns. Uncertainty is endemic, complexity is unavoidable, and denial is widespread. In such contexts, how do you evaluate your progress, and adjust your course, before it is too late? How do you create early warning signals? This week, you will explore how experimentation, reflection, and agile learning support change initiatives, while assessing ways to monitor intellectual, emotional, and practical capabilities and create learning spaces during change.

‘There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ — Leonard Cohen. While the principles underlying the change cycle are widely recognised, they are often not applied and put into place. There is never enough knowledge and never enough resources to do what individuals and organisations know needs to be done. This week, you will analyze the leadership, practice, and power gaps that affect change efforts and explore strategies for minding these gaps while mobilising the energy, knowledge, and resources needed to lead change effectively.