Free lesson · Module 0 · 50 minutes
Free change management lesson: tell which advice is backed by evidence
For managers leading a change from the middle. Free, no credit card, and it opens right away when you sign up.
What's in the free lesson
In 50 minutes, self-paced, learn to grade a study's evidence High, Medium or Low and apply it to your own change. You leave with:
- Your change in one sentence: who changes what, by when.
- A way to grade any change study High, Medium or Low, with three questions: design, execution and clarity.
- Your own plan, labeled: each step marked a tested finding or practice.
In this module:
- How this course works (5 minutes)
- Choose your live change (1 minute)
- What a grade means (7 minutes)
- How far it was read, and how strongly you can say it (6 minutes)
- Finding versus practice (5 minutes)
- The Unfrozen Loop at a glance (4 minutes)
- Module quiz (12 minutes)
- Applied assignment, the evidence lens on your own plan (10 minutes)
All 7 learning objectives
By the end of this module you will be able to:
- Describe the structure of the course, its pass mark and what the certificate of completion does and does not mean.
- Select one live change you are leading or carrying, and state it in one sentence that names who changes what by when.
- Classify a study's evidence grade as High, Medium or Low by applying the three questions of design, execution and clarity.
- Distinguish a full-text read from an abstract-only read and label each correctly when you cite it.
- Rewrite a claim about a correlational finding so that it uses no causal verbs.
- Label each step of a change plan as a tested finding or as practice.
- Name the week-0 step, the five parts and the culture ring of the Unfrozen Loop, and state that the Loop as a whole is not yet proven.
A look inside Module 0
From Lesson 0.3: What a grade means
The grade asks three questions.
- Design. Did the researchers test the idea against a comparison they controlled, such as a randomized trial? If not, did they study real organizations systematically, through a survey, a comparison of organizations or long fieldwork in one? Or is it an argument, a practitioner article or an account of one manager or one program?
- Execution. Is the sample big enough for the design, and does no more than one serious limit apply? The five limits are: data from a single organization, accounts gathered years later, causes and results reported by the same people at the same time, researchers who ran the change they studied, and students standing in for managers.
- Clarity. Does the study show a specific link between a condition and an outcome, and is its main result clear rather than marginal?
The answers combine into a grade:
| Grade | What it takes |
|---|---|
| High | A controlled test that passes both execution and clarity, or a meta-analysis that pools many controlled tests and shows a clear main result. |
| Medium | A controlled test that fails execution or clarity, or a systematic study of real organizations that passes at least one of the two. |
| Low | An argument, a practitioner account or a single account, or a systematic study that fails both execution and clarity. |
From the module quiz, question 3
A made-up study randomly assigns 40 teams (a big enough sample) to a weekly huddle or a comparison group. All 40 teams are in one company, and the researchers ran the huddles themselves. The main result is clear. What grade does the rubric give it?
- A. High, because it is a controlled test with a clear main result
- B. Medium: two of the five limits apply, so it fails execution
- C. Low, because data from a single company counts as a single account of events
- D. Not gradable until someone has read the full text of the paper
Show the answer
B. A controlled test must pass execution to be High, and execution allows no more than one serious limit. Here two apply (one organization, researchers ran the change), so Medium. Grade and read level are separate (Lesson 0.3).
Your instructor
Gabriel Lopez, MBA, doctoral coursework in Organizational Development (Benedictine University), with Accenture transformation and Gartner research experience.
Eight years in the U.S. Army, including two deployments to Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom). Lead instructor at the NCO Academy at Fort Carson, Colorado, and named the installation's Instructor of the Year. He writes Unfrozen, a newsletter on how change moves through organizations. More about Gabriel
Certificate and credit
You receive a certificate of completion stating instructional hours. This is not a certification. Applications for HRCI recertification credit and ACMP Qualified Education Provider status are planned; credit is not yet approved.
The full course
Module 0 is the first of 11 modules in Leading Change with Evidence: 23 instructional hours, with the Change Toolkit templates included.
A course from one person's practice and published research. It is not legal, HR or medical advice.