Understanding Change Management Processes: 3 Models of Change
Last Updated November 22, 2021
The ability to manage and adapt to organizational change has never been more important. Change has become today’s norm, not the exception, and those businesses that recognize change drivers and disruptors and adopt clear methodologies and processes to respond efficiently and effectively, will emerge ahead of the game.
Getting there is where challenge lies. It starts with understanding the more common processes and models of change management so the organization and its people are best equipped and prepared to respond. Three of the most common models include the evolutionary, revolutionary and Lewin’s three-step models.
The Evolutionary Model
As the name implies, the evolutionary model involves incremental change. An example would be change in an organization’s pay structure or schedule to stay market competitive. It would not be a wide, sweeping change, but one that is still very important to the organization and its employees.
The Revolutionary Change Model
This model involves all or many parts of an organization with changes that are more strategic in nature. One such change would be to take a business from brick and mortar to online sales, which would certainly involve tremendous change across many areas of an organization.
Lewin’s Three-Step Model
This model was developed by Kurt Lewin, a physicist and psychologist who is considered the founder of modern social psychology and important contributor to organizational and applied psychology. Lewin saw change as a three-stage process and used the analogy of the changing shape of a block of ice to define the three steps—Unfreeze, Change, Refreeze.
1. Unfreeze
This starts with the “unfreezing” of an organization’s culture. To change an organization, one of the ways to start, and is critically important in Lewin’s model, is to thaw what has been frozen into the company culture. The first step toward unfreezing is to overcome areas of individual and group resistance to change. It’s important to understand the pressures and kinds of resistance that will be met in terms of group reformity, conformity and individual conformity.
Unfreezing can sometimes create dissatisfaction with the current state. It involves activating top management support, as this group of change sponsors is critically important to the process.
2. Change
The second step of “change” is to get employees involved in the change process. While organizational change is often initiated from the top down, change is best when it bubbles up from the bottom. Individual participation in decision-making creates buy-in for organizational change, so successful change often involves participative decision making versus just top-down decision making, where management attempts to force and coerce people to change.
During this phase, some vision of change must be established and shared. That includes setting clear goals and creating a support structure that reinforces the organization’s change process and bolsters people’s willingness to change. Communications are critical, as well. It is important to establish an open and two-way flow that explains the need for change and where it will take people and why.
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3. Refreeze
The third step is “refreezing” and stabilizing the change. The goal is to balance the process of driving and restraining forces to get the organization where it feels comfortable operating, resolve uncertainties and then refreeze and stabilize.
This stage also needs to help individuals and the organization as a whole institutionalize the changes. It’s important that people see that change is actually working and once it does, that the systems, structures and policies that institutionalize the change are well-adopted. Once the organization has successfully undergone change, the change needs to remain.
Make Change Permanent
This is how change can be effectively implemented, preventing people from reverting back to previous behaviors. People need to see what success from making the change looks like and how those who are successful in this environment are rewarded.
Whatever model is used or the extent of the change needed, the ultimate challenge is to unite people at all levels in the organization around a new mission, vision and goals that will lead to success in challenging times.
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