Mini-MBA for Leading Change and Innovation

Date: Friday, January 31, 2025

Location: Gene Rainbolt Graduate School of Business, Downtown OKC

Description: How can we gain clarity on who we are as leads and accelerate our growth to reach out full potential? The program kicks off with providing a space for leaders to deepen their self-awareness, identify their unique leadership goals and foster connections with other participants in the program

Key Outcomes: Discover your individual leadership strengths and how to harness these capabilities as an agent of change in your firm. Deepen your self awareness and learn tools to help you regulate emotions and build better relationships at work. Foster connections with peers in your class to enhance your professional network and sustain growth post-program.

Facilitator: Dr. Troy Smith
Email: troy.smith@ou.edu

Link to Bio

Date: Friday, February 7, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: Why is it important to understand your organization’s strategy when leading change and innovation? This session will prepare you with frameworks to understand how strategic decisions are made and demystify the “big picture” of business. To get your organization to move towards a future state, you will need to be able to understand how to translate your business strategy into influential communication as you lead change and innovation down, up and across your organization.

Outcome: You will learn how to translate your organization’s strategy that drives alignment and creates meaning for the people and teams you lead. Understand the basics of strategic decision-making to ensure your decisions and actions are aligned with the strategy of your business.

Facilitator: Dr. Brandi McManus
Phone: (405) 325-2651
Email: brandimcmanus@ou.edu

Link to Bio

Date: Friday, February 14, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: Our brains perceive work as a social system, a network of interactions among the people. This session sharpens your ability to understand the political and social systems that we operate in as leaders to drive more influence and change.

Outcome: Understand the social and power dynamics of your organization and provide tools for you to help identify and foster relationships with the key power players driving innovation to your business.

Facilitator:  Dr. Christina Li
Email: christina.s.li@ou.edu

Link to Bio

Date: Friday, February 21, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: How can we design and manage projects that are as adaptable and agile as our business needs? As businesses compete with disruptive forces in the market, developing a capability to lead agile projects at scale will be a critical factor in organizational performance. Leaders of change and innovation will need to be able to bring diverse stakeholders together, align their work towards a common goal and navigate challenges along the way.  

Outcome: Learn the foundations of agile project management and apply frameworks to bring immediate application to your current project-based work. Understand how to identify when a project is at risk and tools to bring your team back into alignment.

Facilitator:  Matt Singleton
Email: matt.singleton@ou.edu

Date: Friday, February 28, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: How can you leverage corporate finance knowledge to drive change and innovation? Your organization’s financial performance will play a major factor in the types of strategic decisions made and influence your company’s ability to invest in innovation and support the change process. Having a clear picture of your organization’s financial health will help you navigate change and influence innovative ideas with the key power stakeholders in your company.  

Outcome: Develop fluency and confidence in the language of corporate finance basis to shift your team to focus on profits over just revenue, leverage financial data to influence up and across the organization (i.e. defending budget requests), and understand and apply cost/benefit analysis to influence senior leadership.

Facilitator: Lubomir Litov
Email: litov@ou.edu

Link to Bio

Date: Friday, March 7, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: How can we make more effective financial decisions that align to your company’s business strategy, improve operational performance and ultimately drive innovation? This practical session will allow learners to apply foundational accounting skills to become more effective agents of change at their organization.    

Outcome: Develop fluency in accounting terms to lead more effective communication with key business stakeholders. Understand and apply cost analysis techniques alongside budgeting and forecasting. Enhance your ability to contribute to your organization’s financial health.

Facilitator:  Joe Dulin
Email: joe.dulin@ou.edu

Link to Bio

Date: Friday, March 14, 2025

Location: Gene Rainbolt Graduate School of Business, Downtown OKC

Description: ExperienceChange™ helps leaders and managers tackle a realistic change project. More than 75% of their time is spent on team-based project work, leading a change from analysis through to planning and implementation. The experience delivers the essentials of a year-long change journey in a one-day workshop, enabling people to engage with the behaviours, tools and skill sets that make change happen. They leave with the confidence, process and practice to immediately start leading change and making an impact.

Outcome: Quickly turn powerful ideas and solutions into reality. Speak and act with a common language. Align and engage stakeholders around new ways of doing things. Build a highly engaged culture of execution.

Facilitator:  Tom Merrill

Date: Friday, March 21, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: How is artificial intelligence affecting how a business creates and delivers value? This application-focused session will implore the current landscape of common AI tools and expose how you can harness this emerging technology to be more effective in your ability to lead change and innovation in your current role.

Outcome: Develop confidence and fluency in AI applications and how this technology can positively impact your business. Learn and practice with common AI tools available for working professionals.

Facilitator:  Dr. Laku Chidambaram
Email: laku@ou.edu

Link to Bio

Date: Friday, March 28, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: How can we draw more meaningful conclusions from the vast amount of data that we create and collect? This practical session will provide bases for harnessing your data to determine and validate innovative ideas and understand how to be more effective at navigating team and organization-wide change efforts.

Outcome: Learn the basics and gain tools for sourcing and analyzing data to drive better decisions. Build confidence and fluency in data science basics to become more effective with business analysts inside your organization. 

Facilitator:  Dr. Naveen Kumar
Phone: (405) 325-3565
Email: naveen.kumar@ou.edu

Link to Bio

Date: Friday, April 4, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: What are the central factors that impact high performing teams in the workplace? This session will prepare leaders to assess their team’s performance and develop strategies for moving their team from good to exceptional. 

Outcome: Distinguish between groups and teams. Evaluate teamwork experiences and processes that lead to high performance and determine when teams make better decisions than individuals.

Facilitator: Dr. Troy Smith
Email: troy.smith@ou.edu

Date: Friday, April 11, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: How can we influence our teams, key stakeholders and senior executives to lean towards the change we are seeking? Establishing win-win scenarios with various groups and leaders in our organization is critical for innovation to flourish across stakeholder groups. This session will allow learners to apply influential communication foundations to ensure their teams and organizations are adaptable and open to new ways of thinking.   

Outcome: Learn and apply the fundamentals of influential communication to drive change at the individual and team level. Understand how to navigate resistance to change and mitigate the resistance to innovation with your key stakeholders.   

Facilitator: Dr. Bret Bradley
Email: bret-bradley@ou.edu

Link to Bio

Date: Friday, April 18, 2025

Location: Virtual

Description: How can effective communication impact your ability to influence change up, down and across the organization? This session will prepare learners to create shared meaning through your approach to communication regarding change and innovation.  

Outcome: Participants will learn and apply evidence-based tools to improve their ability to communicate as a leader and improve their ability to capture the attention of their stakeholders and influence change.  

Facilitator: Dr. Kylie Harrison
Email: kylie.j.harrison-1@ou.edu

Link to Bio

Date: Friday, April 25, 2025

Location: Gene Rainbolt Graduate School of Business, Downtown OKC

Description: Learners will present their capstone projects, utilizing all the skills gained throughout the program. A networking reception dinner will be held to celebrate the completion of the program and further build professional relationships.   

Outcome: Participants will apply all the knowledge gained throughout the program while practicing business communication skills.

Facilitator:  Nick Tobey, MSOD
Email: nick.tobey@ou.edu

Link to Bio