CHANGE LEADERSHIP AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT: CURRICULUM TRANSFORMATION BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER A PANDEMIC.

Washington University School of Medicine has not undergone substantive curricular change for 25 years. In 2018, we embarked on a curriculum transformation project informed by the change leadership principles of James Kotter and William Bridges. This included developing a structured process to create a sense of urgency for why we needed to change, building coalitions to support change, and developing a compelling vision across multiple stakeholder groups. Implementation work began in 2019 with a planned curriculum start of July 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted these plans. Employing the Cynefin framework for decision making and guided by our core principles, we were able to launch the new curriculum in September 2020. In this paper, I will describe the principles underpinning our curriculum transformation, how the Cynefin framework allowed us to move forward productively during the COVID-19 crisis, and the impact COVID-19 had, both positively and negatively, on the curriculum transformation process.