Course Overview

Generally speaking we will address the area of Change Management - especially how to best lead change and innovation - by a "learning by doing approach" with first a simulation, played in teams, then some theory and, especially it application in business,and finally team presentations on student projects for adapting the EIS Simulation to French realities.

We will use the EIS Simulation Workshop as a foundation of our work together. It is intended to help develop competencies and skills in Change Management, Organizational Behavior, Technology Management, Innovation Diffusion, Strategy, Culture and the Knowing-Doing Gap, Network Dynamics, Teamwork, ...

That seems like a lot to cover BUT by approaching these learning objectives through a "serious game" approach the students will have the EXPERIENCE of living through realisticlly presented change and learning from their successes and failures.

Session 1 will last four hours. After a general introduction to change issues and how to play the EIS simulation (about 30 minutes) we will create teams (4 for the 17 students) and actually become change agents leading change.

The students, working in groups, are challenged to introduce an innovation in a division of the EuroComm corporation. They have up to 6 months of (simulated) time to convince as many of the 22 members of the division's management team as possible to adopt an important innovation, which in this case is an Executive Information System introduced corporate-wide to increase transparency and reporting. During the simulation, participants, operating as change agents, can choose among many different initiatives and change management tactics to meet their goal. They may gather information on the managers (the profiles, their relationships, etc.) or may take direct action to try to convince the managers and thus influence their willingness to adopt the proposed innovation.

Each time participants implement a tactic, they immediately receive feedback about the impact of their decisions. The objective is to get as many adopters as possible, overcoming different forms of individual and organizational resistance to change.

This "play" part of the session will last about 2 hours.

The remaining time (about 90 minutes) will be spent in a "debriefing" covering what was experienced and LEARNED by participants. Connections to theory and practice will be made.
Finally, a list of additional readings will be given.

Session 2 will last four hours and will take place early the following week. Students will have read the key documents given last time and will come ready to discuss the underlying models of the Change Management Simulation. As a group we will discuss and agree upon possible value and returns that business can achieve by using the EIS game (based on models used). This part will last about 90 minutes to 2 hours.

Next teams will brainstorm a specific scenario that they will chose to research, investigate and prepare as a model of HOW the EIS Workshop can be offered and marketed to French organizations. Each team will present their preliminary ideas for group feedback and instructor approval. This section will last about one hour.

Finally the teams will work out a fairly finalized workplan for accomplishng the research, task identification and allocation and overall project management to produce final reports and presentations for the last class. This last part will last about one hour.

Students will document all their work and their key output shall be posted to the group blog. teams will now have 14 days to finalize their work.

Finally, in Session 3 each team will have a group presentation of their project and will also deliver their interim reports. After each presentation each team will receive instructor feedback that will allow them to modify and improve their final reports (due no more than 2 weeks later).