ChangeSchool’s "Leading Change: The Behavioural Foundation" workshops

"Adaptability is not optional, it is essential." - Holiday Inn Yerevan workshop participant

Between February and April ChangeSchool ran Leading Change: The Behavioural Foundation with eight of the larger businesses operating in Armenia: Siemens Software Armenia, Ucom, Holiday Inn Yerevan, Digitain, BDO Armenia, EasyPay, Ovio, and Zvartnots International Airport. Six sectors, something close to a cross-section of the country's senior commercial life, and in nearly every room the same underlying question. How do you lead your people through change when the rules keep moving?

It is not a new question, and it is not one we have come to cold. ChangeSchool has been working in Armenia since 2016, and the rooms in which it was asked this quarter already knew us. They were a mix of senior operators, HR directors, heads of function, and board members. What the first half of 2026 made clear is that senior teams here are no longer asking whether they need a structured conversation about leading through uncertainty. They are asking who is going to have it with them, and with what.

The specifics differed from room to room. Some teams were working through the structure of internal communication during a change programme. Others were thinking about the influence of AI on their business and the behavioural shift required to make the most of it. The sessions covered the emotional responses to change, the behavioural economics of adoption, and the practical steps senior leaders and managers can take to support the people they lead. The conversations were lively, and the company-specific insights were often the most useful part of the day.

Across the series, participants returned a Net Promoter Score of +85, with 85 to 90 per cent of respondents rating the sessions 9 or 10 out of 10. Scores of that kind tell you less than their cheerleaders claim and more than their sceptics allow. What they tell you here, across eight quite different organisations, is that the rooms engaged seriously with the material.

Looking at the wider region

ChangeSchool received the EFMD Silver Award in 2025 for programme design and impact, a recognition EFMD reserves for providers whose work holds up under independent academic review. We are running the same methodology in Armenia, a market where commercial conversations tend to start once a relationship has had time to settle, not before.

What we have learned over a decade in this market is that the calibre of senior commercial leadership in Armenia is high, and the appetite for serious, evidence-led work is higher than the regional generalisations would suggest.

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Enquiries to narine@changeschool.org