There are dozens of different models that provide a mental map for organizing organizational change processes. It is impossible within the framework of this module to give a comprehensive overview even of the more commonly used ones, but if your are interested in the issue, we recommend to start your exploratory journey with this article:

We will also not touch upon certain distinctions that have emerged in the expert community  in the last two decades, like the one between ordinary planned change and transformative change or between planned change and emergent change. Mastering the basics of the body of knowledge that has formed in the planned change practitioners community will create a solid base for understanding those expert debates.

To provide some orientation we will present in the following paragraphs

1. a sociopsychological model of change processes, the 3-phases-model of Lewin,
2. the workflow-oriented model proposed by Beckhard/Harris,
3. a macro-model highlighting the spheres of intervention that have to be taken into account in managing change, proposed by Königswieser et al.

The “mother of all change models” – Lewin’s 3 Phases model

Although Lewin himself never formulated the three phase model of social change in exactly the form that is generally ascribed to him (and that will be presented here), the reflections on the basic patterns of social change processes published (partly posthumous) in his articles “Frontiers in Group Dynamics” are considered the starting point of conceptualizing managed change in social systems.

Lewin

Lewin’s model combines a social psychology perspective with a functional perspective. This becomes particularly obvious when regarding the first phase, the unfreezing:

• A basic tendency of people is to seek a context in which they have relative safety and feel a sense of control. In establishing themselves, they attach their sense of identity to their environment. This creates a comfortable stasis from which any alternatives, even those which may offer significant benefit, will cause discomfort, hence the spontaneous resistance.
• However, there is also a more rational and from the perspective of organization performance definitely positive aspect to that resistance: the “frozen” state means a state where the organization functions with well established routines, little stress and few mistakes. In other words, it’s in a state of stability. 

In the second phase, the transform phase, the organization has to cope with a double burden:

• keeping the routine functions running which is more energy consuming than before the change process started as the unfreezing has disturbed the stability, thereby lowering efficiency,
• organizing the quest for the new – analyzing, developing, testing of new ways of doing things – until a viable solution has been found and validated.

This is why planning for a quick win – an improvement of self-evident usefulness, (relatively) easy to achieve in a short term perspective, with little risk of failure – in order to inject motivation into a stressed system is of such paramount importance.

The last phase, the refreeze, is arguably the most challenging one. To understand this, a brief look at the idea of organizational culture, in the display below represented metaphorically by an iceberg, is helpful.

In order to  properly stabilize the system having undergone change at a higher level of performance (that’s what the idea of “refreeze” is all about, avoiding to slide back to the pre-change state of affairs), we need to work both on the visible and the invisible (submerged) part of the iceberg:

• The new ways of working first of all need to be anchored in the formal structures of the organization having undergone the change process. Structures (units etc.) need to be modified or newly put in place, business processes adjusted, normative texts (strategies, vision/mission statements, leadership principles, value statements etc.) revised/drawn up, etc.
• However, often it will turn out that there are unconscious habits, tacit assumptions or values not explicitely stated (in other words: the elements forming the submerged part of the iceberg) that are not compatible with the new way of doing things defined in the change process. Frequent examples are strategies for achieving a more diverse workforce that are undermined by HR business processes carrying an unconscious bias favouring privileged sections of society or changes for more citizen orientation in public administration that after some time find themselves eroded by tacit assumptions about the role of government units in society. Working on these cultural issues usually is a medium to long term challenge and demands perseverance, but it’s vital for making change stick.

There is another interesting aspect of Lewin’s model that helps to understand part of the resistance that occurs in most change projects. The display below shows a generic model of learning processes for adult learners. 

At the beginning of the process of acquiring new skills often stands the necessity to unlearn skills that have been used so far to cope with certain tasks. It means – and that is indicated also in the presentation of the Lewin model above  – that for a certain period the capcity for solving problems/getting things done/achieving results actually gets down. The unfreezing corresponds to the unlearning, at the very bottom of the curve the learning individual as well as the learning organization (and every change process can be perceived as a learning process) find itself in the position of the “experienced beginner”. Only when this regression phase has been succcessfully concluded, the new can be acquired and finally stabilized to bring the subject of learning (individual, organization) to a new level of mastery (which has to be stabilized = refreezed).

Beckhard/Harris’ model  for change processes: a map for the workflow

While Lewin’s model helps to understand the fundamental dynamics of change processes, it provides little detail concerning the “how to” of the actual change work. For this purpose the presentation below introduces the model proposed by Beckhard/Harris. It should be noted that the strength of this model, arguably even its “unique selling point” that distinguishes it from the bulk of other common process models, are the guiding questions proposed. As the sequence of figures is largely self-explaining, it is suggested you just scroll through the presentation.

Delineating the spheres of intervention – Königswieser’s change model

Sometimes jokingly referred to as the “Toblerone model”, this model is rather used to sensitize professionals who already master their change management tools about

• the necessity to work simultaneously or alternatingly on the three dimensions of structures (that will be considered a no brainer by most of them), strategies (which at least some will neglect as they consider strategy as being fixed, guiding the change process, while not taking into account the retroactive effect of the changes introduced on strategizing) and culture (which is often only taken into account when it comes to difficulties with the “refreeze” efforts),
• the paramount importance of a guiding vision (the “polar star”  in the model, see display below),
• iterative (rather than linear) nature of change processes (symbolizes by the loops in the model).