Removing Barriers to Change in Organizations

What constitutes true change? How do you convince others to change? How do you minimize and overcome barriers to change?

In the Removing Barriers to Change in Organizations course, you’ll learn about barriers to change and how to overcome them by being a catalyst for the success of your organization. Professor Jonah Berger, author and word-of-mouth marketing expert, designed this change-management course to help you enhance your persuasion and influence skills so you can inspire change within others. He’ll explain how to overcome inertia and reframe change using the REDUCE framework.

By the end of this course, you’ll know the strengths and weaknesses of multiple change strategies that you can apply in business and life.

Module 1: This module begins by addressing the challenge of change and defining the status quo bias. You’ll understand the importance of weighing and framing the potential advantages and disadvantages of change to overcome loss aversion. You’ll also learn about the REDUCE framework and why people tend to ignore us or rebel when we push them to change. By the end of this module, you’ll better understand how to be a catalyst for change by identifying barriers to organizational change and implementing change agents that inspire minds and affect behavior.

Module Overview:

Module 2: In this module, you’ll examine case studies about Procter & Gamble’s Tide Pods and the Arden House Experiments to understand why warnings backfire. You’ll learn change strategies that empower people’s desire for freedom and autonomy, like providing choices. You’ll also study the endowment effect, how it deters people from changing, and how you can ease its impact. By the end of this module, you’ll know effective ways to surface the cost of inaction and frame new things as old so you can help others embrace change.

Module Overview:

Module 3: This module delves into how distance and uncertainty contribute to barriers to change. You’ll learn examples of confirmation bias and political polarization so you can identify the moving middle and unsticking points where people agree rather than disagree. You’ll also analyze examples from Zappos, Acura, and Kia to understand how you can harness freemium and lower upfront costs to facilitate organizational change. By the end of this module, you’ll have multiple strategies that ease uncertainty and help people experience the value of change.

Module Overview:

Module 4: This module distinguishes between weakly and strongly held attitudes to demonstrate why some behaviors require more information, evidence, or proof before changing. You’ll learn about the translation problem and importance of corroborating evidence that reinforces change. By analyzing many examples, you’ll understand how much evidence, and thus resources, a change requires. By the end of this module and change-management course, you’ll have a grasp on the elements of barriers to change and be able to enact strategies that enable change within your organization and self.

Module Overview:

This course is designed for managers, leaders, and change agents seeking practical strategies to overcome resistance and drive effective transformation. It is ideal for professionals looking to address organizational challenges, involve stakeholders, and implement manageable, sustainable change initiatives using proven frameworks and techniques. Those who may benefit include:

To further leverage the value and impact of this program, we encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to Wharton. We offer group-enrollment benefits to companies sending four or more participants.