Healthcare Change ManagementCornell Certificate Program

Organizational culture is one of the most powerful assets in healthcare, influencing everything from day-to-day operations to long-term strategies. Leaders must take a proactive approach to implementing cultural initiatives that support their organization's vision and values. This course will empower you to rethink how you understand, measure, and lead cultural transformation within your organization.

You will begin by assessing your current culture, identifying strengths and gaps, and mapping out a vision for your ideal cultural state. You'll develop business strategies aligned with your organization's core values and implement the processes necessary to support and sustain cultural transformation. Along the way, you'll explore methods to measure progress, track outcomes, and communicate results to foster alignment across teams.

Healthcare organizations often approach management much like patient care: swiftly identifying symptoms, diagnosing problems, and developing a treatment plan or solution. While this technique works for day-to-day operations, it falls short when it comes to evaluating organizational well-being and planning for long-term growth. To create successful strategic plans, healthcare leaders must adopt a broader perspective — one that balances service delivery with sound business strategies.

This course introduces several proven frameworks to help you build a strategic plan that aligns with your organizational mission and vision. You will map your organization's position by evaluating internal strengths and weaknesses, analyzing external opportunities and threats, and categorizing products and services. By collecting and interpreting the right data, you'll be empowered to set organizational priorities, identify growth opportunities, and ensure your strategic plan drives both profitability and long-term success.

Strategic planning can set the course for organizational success, but many healthcare groups struggle to implement their plans effectively. Common issues, like unclear accountability, lack of measurable outcomes, or inadequate reporting, can stall even the best ideas. To overcome these barriers, leaders must create strategic plans that translate vision into action.

In this course, you will apply organizational insights to develop a comprehensive and actionable strategic plan. You'll begin the course by preparing for a strategic planning retreat, including identifying key stakeholders, collecting data, and crafting an agenda. From there, you'll establish clear organizational goals and strategies while determining the who, what, when, and how for achieving them. Finally, you'll explore how to monitor progress, report on outcomes, and refine strategies to keep your plan aligned with the organization's mission and values.

Change is inevitable in healthcare, bringing challenges that test a leader's ability to inspire teams and navigate transitions effectively. With the right strategies, leaders can turn these moments into opportunities for growth and long-term organizational success. By addressing change at the individual, departmental, and organizational levels, they can ensure alignment and momentum through even the most complex transitions.

In this course, you will approach change with a structured and strategic mindset. You'll begin by identifying the internal and external drivers of change and classifying their impact across individual roles, departmental workflows, and organizational systems. You'll also explore how to communicate effectively throughout the phases of change, reducing resistance and building trust at every step. Through the development of a comprehensive change management plan, you'll gain the tools to guide your team through transitions and embed lasting improvements into your organization's culture.

Symposium sessions feature two days of live, highly interactive virtual Zoom sessions that will explore today's most pressing topics. The Leadership Symposium offers you a unique opportunity to engage in real-time conversations with peers and experts from the Cornell community and beyond. Using the context of your own experiences, you will take part in reflections and small-group discussions to build on the skills and knowledge you have gained from your courses.

Join us for the next Symposium in which we'll discuss the ways that leaders across industries have continued engaging their teams over the past two years while pivoting in strategic ways. You will support your coursework by applying your knowledge and experiences to relevant topics for leaders. Throughout this Symposium, you will examine different areas of leadership, including the psychology of leadership; women in leadership; and leading in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. By participating in relevant and engaging discussions, you will discover a variety of perspectives and build connections with your fellow participants from various industries.

All sessions are held on Zoom.

Future dates are subject to change. You may participate in as many sessions as you wish. Attending Symposium sessions is not required to successfully complete any certificate program. Once enrolled in your courses, you will receive information about upcoming events. Accessibility accommodations will be available upon request. For future reference, download our Symposium course flyer.