Transitions at Work

Twentieth-century psychologist Kurt Lewin developed an influential three-stage model of how organizational change occurs. Lewin’s model was based on his observations of group dynamics and organizational development. This “unfreezing-change-refreeze” model focuses on how people can be motivated to accept organizational change and reject and replace the status quo with a new approach.

COMMENTARY from D. Quinn Mills, professor emeritus, Harvard Business School, on Kurt Lewin’s Change Model:

Lewin’s change model continues to be useful. More recent management insights, however, have modified the way we look at organizational change.

Recent thinking about managing change stresses the importance of the Unfreezing stage. Far too often people identify a problem then spend time and effort figuring out a solution. Finally a solution is arrived at and the people involved, usually only one or two, become very excited. They jump to what Lewin labels the Change stage. They take their solution to a broader group in the company, only to have it rejected. Yet they’re sure that the solution was the right one.

What has gone wrong? The answer is that a person should never offer a solution before others accept that there is a problem. People don’t want to fix things that they don’t think are broken. When we insist that they do, they are most likely to reject our solution. Worse, once rejected a solution is likely to be discredited for the future, even when the problem becomes apparent to all and it was in fact the best solution.

Since Unfreezing is so important, how should we go about it? The first thing is to get people close to the situation. Let them discover for themselves what the situation actually is by coming face-to-face with the problem. To get police sergeants to recognize that traditional police tactics weren’t working, the police commissioner of a large city reassigned many for a period to high crime areas. It worked. Once the sergeants realized that there was a real problem in the field, they became open to solutions that the commissioner was prepared to offer.

In the financial services industry executives who are aware of the importance of the Unfreezing stage insist that managers in their companies “manage by the facts.” What they mean is that managers should not accept explanations for results that are based on assumptions rather than on actual data. When managers look at the facts, they often get a very different picture of what is happening than before and begin looking for solutions to the new problems they perceive.

Stage Two of Lewin’s model is insightful and correct, but sketchy. Modern thinking has elaborated the Change stage into multiple steps, adding depth to it.

Stage Three, Refreezing, is misguided.

A modern manager doesn’t want to freeze anything in a rapidly changing world. This stage is better rephrased as “Consolidation” of the new so that it becomes the culture of the moment. But we want to keep it flexible so that it can be more readily unfrozen when new problems arise and when change again becomes necessary.

For information on MindEdge’s online self-paced “Leading and Managing Change” course, please click here.

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