- Where
- In-person,
Queenstown - When
- Tuesday, 3 November 2026
- What
- Small senior cohort
(limit 20 places) - Cost
- $1,950 + GST
The unit of AI transformation is the organisation, not the individual
Two-thirds of whether AI changes how an organisation works, lives in the system around the person — manager climate, incentives, workflow design, psychological safety — not in the person.
You cannot upskill your way there one person at a time.
Leading through change means moving the organisation and its people at the same time, and choosing, deliberately, to expand people rather than replace them.
AI fitness is a collective pursuit, not an individual one.
Join us and learn to lead the change
One day in Queenstown with senior NZ leaders who are in the middle of this, and with the research that explains what they are running into.
Who should attend?
Leading through change is for senior executives and people‑leaders responsible for taking an organisation through AI transformation – those who shape culture, redesign workflows, and build the systems that enable people to adapt.
Senior leaders and C-suite
You are driving overall organisational performance and strategy.
People and culture leaders
You lead the functions where organisational change is won or lost.
Transformation and operations executives
You design how work actually gets done.
About the programme
Most organisations are somewhere on a route out of silos and spaghetti, whether or not anyone has named it that. MIT CISR has tracked that journey across thousands of companies and found something useful: there are only four routes through, and whichever one you take, you hit the same four disruptions on the way. They are big enough that the companies living through them call them explosions.
- Decision rights
Who makes the call, who is accountable for it, and the moment that formally changes. - New ways of working
Cross-functional teams, evidence over opinion, test and learn, co-creation with customers and partners. - Platform mindset
Building a capability once, as a service you reuse, instead of rebuilding it every time. - Organisational surgery
Redesigning who reports to whom, because the structure you have was not built for this.
The course takes you through this research and we do a diagnostic on your organisation so you can see which explosion is coming for you. We bookend this with conversations with NZ leaders who are living this change in 2026.
What to expect on the day
Programme schedule and flow
The night before
Welcome dinner
You arrive on the day as colleagues rather than strangers.
Morning
The opening panel
CE’s and CPO’s on what is actually happening inside their organisations under this remit of change.
Mid-morning
The four
explosions
Professor Kristine Dery on the four disruptions, how to see which one is coming, and what it takes to get through it. You use her diagnostic to work out which route your own organisation is on and how far through you are.
Afternoon
Same panel, at the frontier
The same leaders, the same four explosions, taken somewhere none of them has an answer for yet.
Close
What you take back
You work out what you are taking into your own organisation.
Who's in the room
Prof. Kristine Dery
Professor of Work, Technology and Innovation, MQBS | MIT CISR Research Fellow
Kristine researches what it takes for large organisations to transform how their workforce operates in a digital world. Based at Macquarie Business School and MIT's Center for Information Systems Research, she works with senior leadership teams and boards on workforce readiness, digital operating models, and the organisational design decisions that determine whether transformation actually holds.
Rachel McBride
Course Director, Leading through Change
Rachel designs and leads AI programmes with Otago Business School across executive education and undergraduate teaching. Her programmes span senior leadership, organisational change and business decision-making, grounded in what NZ organisations are doing now. She also works alongside NZ businesses and brings current practice into the room. Her position is intelligence at the core, built around people. She does not teach tools.
Cohort details and registration
Leading through change is exclusively offered in Queenstown.
Tuesday, 3 November 2026
$1,950 + GST per participant
- In-person at QRC, Queenstown
- Small senior cohort (max 20 participants)
- One-day intensive + follow-through path
The panels are not recorded. What senior leaders will say about what has not worked is the part with no substitute, and it is only said in the room.
Programme fee includes tuition, materials, and catering for the one-day intensive.
Accommodation and travel are not included.
Join us and learn to lead the change
Registration is open now for the Otago Business School's Leading through change in Queenstown, 3 November 2026. Places are limited, registration will close once the cohort is full.
Contact us
If you have any questions about the Leading through change course, please get in touch with us:
Email execeducation@otago.ac.nz
