Diagnosing & Designing Organizational Change
This certificate program consists of three required courses (listed below) and one elective course option.
This certificate is comprised of four single-day courses.
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Despite the abundance of change tools and models, organizational change often unravels when leaders misdiagnose the problem and underestimate the communicative, human-centered work required to enact solutions intentionally designed for local contexts.
Grounded in the fields of communication and rhetoric and informed by leadership research, the course emphasizes change diagnosis before change design—helping leaders assess whether proposed solutions truly address underlying organizational problems. Rather than relying on a single prescriptive model, the course emphasizes adaptive judgment in responding to varied organizational contexts, including misalignment, capacity limits, timing constraints, uncertainty and change impact. Communication is treated not as messaging or “selling ideas,” but as a core mechanism for sense-making and alignment – helping people understand what is happening, why it is happening and what is required of them.
Through applied examples, facilitated discussion and reflection on participants’ own organizational challenges, the course focuses on designing change initiatives that are feasible, communicable and sustainable. Participants leave with practical tools to diagnose real problems, design context-sensitive change strategies and communication strategies to carry their ideas forward.
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- Diagnose organizational change by distinguishing between symptoms and root causes, and assess whether proposed solutions address underlying problems.
- Apply inquiry-based diagnostic tools—including design thinking principles, purpose-driven questioning and root-cause analysis (e.g., the Five Whys)—to clarify the purpose and scope of change initiatives.
- Evaluate key design considerations for change, including stakeholder willingness and barriers, uncertainty and unknowns, organizational capacity, timing and the breadth of impact across roles and levels.
- Interpret resistance and hesitation as predictable human and structural responses to change rather than personal opposition, and use that understanding to inform design and communication choices.
- Design communication strategies for change that support sensemaking, alignment and engagement across diverse audiences and phases of the change process.
- Assess ongoing change efforts and exercise adaptive judgment, making informed decisions about when to persist, modify or redirect initiatives as organizational conditions evolve.
How This Course Fits the Certificate
Designed as part of HDO’s change management certificate, this course equips working professionals to lead change efforts that solve the right problems—and to adapt course when conditions shift. The course focuses on sensemaking and judgment before and during action, complementing other offerings in the certificate that address influence, persuasion and productive conflict more directly.
Details & Registration
Time: 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Continuing Education Units (CEUs): 0.6 CEUs will be awarded upon completion of this program (six hours of instruction)
One-Day Seminar Pricing:
Registration fee includes all course materials, catering (lunch and refreshments), WiFi access, and parking.
- Standard Registration: $1,000
- UT System Staff/Alumni Registration: $750
- Educator, Nonprofit, Government, Military Registration: $750
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If you have questions prior to registering, please see our Professional Training FAQ or contact HDO’s Enrollment & Success Coordinator at hdo-pro@austin.utexas.edu.
Course Leader(s)
Robert Carroll is an associate professor of instruction in the Department of Communication Studies in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches courses on Disaster and Crisis Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Conflict Mediation and Intercultural Communication. His commitment to innovative teaching has been recognized with the Dad’s Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship (2026), the UT Tower Award for Best Community Engagement Course (2024), and the Provost’s Teaching Fellowship (2023). Additionally, Dr. Carroll teaches in the McCombs School of Business as an affiliated faculty with the Center for Global Business as well as in the Cockrell School of Engineering.
Megan Poole is an assistant professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin whose community-engaged research and teaching examines how persuasion and knowledge-making occur through more-than-discursive, sensory modes. Her work amplifies the importance of valuing ways of knowing that derive from bodily, lived experience and considers how coalitional spaces provide diverse approaches to solving problems in local communities. Her interests include: Rhetorics of Science; Sensory Rhetorics; Environmental Communication; Science and Technical Writing; Public Writing.
Who Should Participate
This course is designed for professionals who find themselves asking:
- What problem are we actually trying to solve?
- Is change warranted, feasible, and timely?
- What kind of change is this—and what kind is it not?
- Who and what will this change impact, and in what ways?
- How do we design, execute, and sustain change given structural and organizational realities?
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