The New Change Equation

We change best when we are strongest.

The most commonly held formula for managing change is broken. Over 70% of all organizational change efforts and personal change efforts (like dieting) fail. When we’re unable to act with agility, speed, and unity because we’ve gotten the “change equation” wrong—often from the outset of problem framing—opportunities are missed and revenue lost.

After three decades of research and thousands of interviews, it’s clear that we change best when we are strongest and most positive, not when we feel the weakest, most negative, or helpless.

Learning Objectives

Whether you’re discovering Appreciative Inquiry (AI) for the first time or you’re an experienced practitioner of this powerful methodology, this new program by David Cooperrider will define and implement a new model for change while harnessing three types of power:

Wholepower

Connecting and magnifying the strengths and resources across, inside, and outside an entire system to support our efforts.

Willpower

Finding ways to initiate and maintain your motivation, even in the face of obstacles, to achieve the desired change.

Waypower

Developing specific strategies to reach your goals and make the change a reality.

Together, wholepower, willpower, and waypower counteract the deficit of despair, empowering you and your organization for dramatic and positive change.

As a result of this program, participants will:

• Harness the ability to bring out the best in human systems—rapidly and naturally—to be able to rally people in change-resistant institutions to realize new and better futures.
• Realize that your ability and skill to mobilize change in your organization is decisive, not peripheral, and is core to individual, managerial and organizational success.
• Debunk the most common explanation for change failure—that people resist change.
• Learn to cultivate the appreciative mindset and apply the ten most powerful change management tools we’ve been able to codify across more than 3,000 interviews with industry leading stars from 57 different countries.
• Develop a coherent P.O.S.I.T.I.V.E change platform and roadmap to excel.

Program Structure

The New Change Equation is a seven-week digital course with online video assignments, supplemental materials, peer reviews, and discussion boards.

Designed with the flexibility and convenience working professionals need, participants can engage with their course content whenever it works for their schedules.

Participants should expect to spend approximately four hours per week dedicated to their course work: a mix of individual learning, collaborative group projects, and social learning.

Participants will have ongoing access to the program materials for one year after date of registration, plus, plus a comprehensive participant guide, complete with program notes and personal revelations discovered throughout the program, to reference in the months and years to come.

Program Schedule

Week One

Change Inspired by Strengths – An Introduction to the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Mindset and Change Inspired By Strengths

Week Two

Powered by Design Thinking and AI: What’s Inside the 8-Step Change Management Platform – P.O.S.I.T.I.V.E.

Let’s Get Started P Stands for Pre-Frame

Week Three

• Open-Inspire
• Strengthening Strengths – The Elevation of Strengths

Week Four

• Imagine a Heroic Future
• Translate

Week Five

• Improvise
• Value

Week Six

Establishing the New and Eclipsing the Old

Week Seven

• Building Your Positive Change Leadership Team – A Script for Success
• Teaching Others – A Customizable Slide Deck to Form your Own “Convening leadership Team”