I have posted here some very old slides we used in the Netherlands when talking about change - I will put up a more recent version of this in a few weeks.

Attached Files

ToolKit_Change.ppt (191.0 KB, 44 views)

Thanks for this Roy, very interesting.

Do you think that organizations these days can aim for Lewin's refreezing steady state?

Or does it depend on what you are trying to change?

How long do these processes take?

How long a change takes is an important topic - in Schein's model of culture for example it is a pattern of shared assumptions developed by the group as a reaction to external pressure that have worked well enough in practice to be internalised as the correct way to respond - and for newcomers to the organisation to be inducted into (Schein, 1990). An important distinction in Schein's argument is that culture should be reserved for only the deeper basic assumptions and beliefs. (not the surface artefacts/symbols or espoused values). This would mean that culture change involves quite a deep intervention over an extended period of time -a point well understood in his model of process consulting (Uttal 1983 thought 15 years would be necessary for a culture change). What does this mean for culture change interventions in a fast moving environment? If we assume Lewins model of unfreezing, move then re-freezing what chance is there for example in doing this in any sort of reasonable timescale? Furthermore what if there are many changes going on at once - I am not sure what state of matter we would be talking about but this simple model losses its meaning with organisations constantly in a state of flux.

This runs to the heart of using models such as Lewin and forgetting some of the underpinning assumptions - to some extent Lewins approach assumes stabilitity (at least at the beginning and end) and when we forget this as consultants it is little wonder that we generate confusion in our clients with a multitude of different and constantly changing initiatives.

cheers

Roy

thank you for this

Dear Roy,
Is there any updates available on these Change Management Slides?

Dear Marthe,

Roy is away at the moment and apologises for the delay as he thought he had replied (but clearly not!)

We are updating the slides and are hoping to add in some voice recording to help bring them alive.

If you have subscribed to this thread you should get an email when the update comes through.

kind regards
Stephanie

__________________
Dr Stephanie Morgan
Crosslight Management
www.crosslight.co.uk