Models of Planned

Change
Chapter # 07

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 The Nature of Planned Change
Recall the OD definition: OD is directed at bringing about
planned change to increase an organization's effectiveness.
It is generally initiated and implemented by managers, often
with the help of an OD practitioner (Consultant) either from
inside or outside of the organization.

Organizations can use planned change to:

– solve problems,
– learn from experience,
– adapt to external environmental changes,
– improve performance, and
– to influence future changes.

All approaches to OD rely on some theory about planned

change.
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 Lewin’s Change Model
• Organizational change can occur at three levels
and, since the patterns of resistance to change are different
for each level, hence each level require different change
strategies and techniques
1. Changing the individuals who work in the organization
that is, their skills, values, attitudes, and eventually behavior
but making sure that such individual change is always
regarded as instrumental to organizational change.
2. Changing various organizational structure and systems
reward systems, reporting relationships, work design, and
so on.
3. Directly changing the organizational climate or
interpersonal style – how open people are with each other,
how conflict is managed, how decisions are made, and so
on.
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 Lewin’s Change Model
According to Lewin, the first step of any change
process is to unfreeze the present behavior
as a way of managing resistance to change.
Three ways of unfreezing an organization:
• Disconfirmation
• Induction of guilt or anxiety
• Creation of psychological safety

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 Lewin’s Change Model
Stage 1: Unfreezing:
Disconfirmation: Organizational members are not likely
to embrace change unless they experience some
need for it. Embracing change typically means that
people are dissatisfied with the way things are –
quality is below standard, costs are too high, morale
is too low, or direction is unclear, For example:
• Unfreezing involves reducing those forces maintain
ing the organization's behavior at its present level.
• Unfreezing is sometimes accomplished through a pro
cess of "psychological disconfirmation”

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 Lewin’s Change Model
Stage 1: Unfreezing
Induction (trigger) of guilt or anxiety:
This is a matter of establishing a gap between
what is current but not working well and some
future goal that would make things work
better. When people recognize a gap between
what is and what would be better and more
desirable, they will be motivated via guilt or
anxiety to reduce the gap. But disconfirmation and
induction of guilt are not enough to accomplish the
unfreezing stage. One more process is necessary.
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 Lewin’s Change Model
Stage 1: Unfreezing:
Creation of psychological safety: To face
disconfirmation, experience guilt or anxiety, and
be able to act or move, people must believe that
moving will not bring them humiliation or loss of
self-esteem. People must still feel worthy,
psychologically safe. The consultant must be
concerned with people not losing face and must
take care that when people admit that something
is wrong they will not be punished or humiliated.

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 Lewin’s Change Model
Stage 2: Moving (Changing):
- On the individual level, we would expect to
see people behaving differently, perhaps
demonstrating new skills or new supervisory
practices.
- On the structural level, we would expect to see
changes in actual organizational structures,
reporting relationships, and reward systems that
affect the way people do their work.
- On the climate or interpersonal level, we
would expect to see behavior patterns that
indicate greater interpersonal trust and openness
and fewer dysfunctional (unfit, broken)
interactions. 9
 Lewin’s Change Model
Stage 2: Moving (Changing):
Two main processes for accomplishing this
stage:
1 Identification with a new role model,
mentor, boss, or consultant: To “begin to
see things from that other person’s point of
view. If we see another point of view to
whom we pay attention and respect, we
can begin to imagine that person’s point of
view as something to consider for
ourselves”. 10
 Lewin’s Change Model
Stage 2: Moving (Changing):
2. Scanning the environment for new, relevant
information.
In working with the chairman of a company and the
president or CEO, the consultant explored many reasons
for their conflict with one another. For reducing some of
this conflict, the consultant worked on clarifying roles
and responsibilities. He quotes other chairman-
president/CEO models from other client organizations,
some that worked very well and some that did not. This
process was an activity of bringing to the two of them new,
relevant information that might help them move forward
with the changes needed in the relationship.

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 Lewin’s Change Model
Stage 3: Refreezing:
– redesigning the organization’s recruitment
process to increase the likelihood (chance) of hiring
applicants who share the organization’s new
management style and value system.(you start to
hire only those people who are compatible with your new
management style & their value system is according to organization`s
value system)
– The organization may also ensure that the new
behaviors have become the operating norms
(routine) at work, that the reward system actually
reinforces those behaviors, or that a new, more
participative management style predominates.
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 Lewin’s Change Model
Stage 3: Refreezing:
This stage can be divided in two parts:
1. Personal refreezing is the process of
taking the new, changed way of doing
things and making it fit comfortably into
one’s total self-concept. This process
involves a lot of practice – trying out new
roles and behaviors, getting feedback, and
making adjustments until the new way of
doing things feels reasonably
comfortable. 13
 Lewin’s Change Model
Stage 3: Refreezing:
2. Relational refreezing is the process of assuring
that the client’s new behavior will fit with
significant others. In a system, when one begins
to do things differently, will this difference quickly
affect others with whom the person interacts.
If I change to maintain the relationship you will
have to change as well, at least to some extent to
maintain the relationship. This process involves
openly engaging with others about the new way
of doing things, to help them see why the
change is better than the old way.
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Action Research
Model

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 Action Research Model
1. Entry
2. Contracting (with client members)
3. Diagnosis
4. Feedback
5. Planning Change
6. Intervention
7. Evaluation (ECDFPIE)
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 Action Research Model
1. Entry:
Contact between the consultant and the client
Process of exploring with one another the possibilities
of a working relationship.
- The probability of relating with the client
– The motivation and values of the client
– The client’s readiness for change(how much he
is ready for change)
– The extent of resources available(enough
changes available or not)
– Potential leverage ‫ ب ی ع انہ‬points of change (imp
areas where change is needed) 19
 Action Research Model
2. Contracting:
An explicit exchange of expectations...
which clarifies for consultant and client three
critical areas:
1. What each expects to get from the
relationship.
2. How much time each will invest, when, and at
what cost.
3. The ground rules under which the parties will
operate. (way of doing things)
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3. Diagnosis:
1. Data gathering – interviews, questionnaires,
observations, and summaries of organizational
documents;
• It involves gathering appropriate information
and analyzing it
to determine the underlying causes of
organizational problems. The four basic methods 
ofgathering data are interviews, process observ
ation, questionnaires, and organizational perf
ormance data. OD
practitioners may influence members from
whom they are collecting data.
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 Action Research Model
4. Feedback:
The consultant provides a summary of the data collected
and some preliminary analysis.
• Because action research is a
collaborative activity, the
• diagnostic data are fed back to the client, usually in
a group or work-team meeting. The feedback step, in
• which members are given the information gathered by
the OD practitioner, helps them determine the
• strengths and weaknesses of the organization or the
department under study. The consultant provides the
• client with all relevant and useful data
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• 1. What are the strengths?
•  Senior management is highly experienced in bu
siness 
•  Commitment of work force 
• Good people throughout 
•  Last four years we experienced success in man
y areas 
•  Technological superior & a market leader 
•  Creativity
•  Managers think entrepreneurially 

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•  What are the weaknesses?
• Marketing & Servicing System 
• Do not establish priorities 
• Organizational priorities are always secondary to individu
al managers 
• Lack of management depth 
• Little planning
• Structure 
• High Costs 
• Overly change-oriented
• Poor reward system 
• Low morale 
• Internal competition 
• High degree of mistrust  24
 Action Research Model
5. Planning Change:
Once the diagnosis is understood and deemed accurate ,action
steps are planned.
Good diagnosis determines the intervention.
The OD practitioner and the client members jointly
• agree on further actions to be taken. At
• this stage, the specific action to be taken depends on the
culture, technology, and environment of the
• organization; the diagnosis of the problem; and the
time and expense of the intervention. Once the
• diagnosis is
understood and deemed accurate, action steps are planned.
• Good diagnosis determines the intervention. 
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6. Intervention:

This stage involves the actual change from o
ne organizational state to another.
• It may include
installing new methods and procedures, reorg
anizing structures and work designs, and
• reinforcing new behaviors. Such actions typic
ally cannot be implemented
immediately but require a
• transition period as the
organization moves from the present to
a desired future state. 26
• Examples of interventions at
the individual level are: job redesign and 
enrichment, training and
management development, changes in
the quality of working life, management by 
objectives (MB0), and career
development. 
• Examples of interventions at
the group level are: team building, the ins
tallation of
autonomous work groups or quality control
 circles
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7. Evaluation:
It is usually best for someone other than the
consultant to conduct an evaluation of an OD
effort. The consultant cannot be totally objective.
•  Because action research is
a cyclical process, data must also
• be gathered after the
action has been taken to measure and dete
rmine the effects of the action and to feed
• the results back to the organization. This,
in turn, may lead to re-
diagnosis and new action. 28
 Action Research Model
Termination of the OD Effort:
• Termination is not an applicable phase for internal OD
practitioners.
• An organization has a constant need for periodic,
objective diagnostic check-ups by external consultants – a
need that exists, incidentally, whether or not the
organization’s managers see it.
• When OD practitioners follow the action research model,
they generate new data for further diagnosis and action.
The process is cyclical, and since an organization is both
dynamic and naturally follows the entropic process,
there is always a great deal of consultative work to be
done.

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 Action Research Model
Phases not Steps:
Steps implies discrete actions, while phases
connotes a cycle of changes.
In actual practice, however, phases blend,
overlap, and do not follow one from the
other.
• Phases are a more appropriate
term than steps for describing the flow of ev
ents in OD work. Steps imply
• discrete actions, while phases connote
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a cycle of changes.
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 Contemporary Adaptations of Action Research
Action research has undergone two key adaptations:
First: That contrasts with traditional approaches to planned
change, whereby consultants carry out most of the change
activities, with the agreement and collaboration of
management.
Second: The integration (combination) of an "interpretive or
"social constructionist" approach to planned change.
– Social constructionist called "appreciative inquiry," this
model proposes that words and conversations determine
what is important and meaningful in organizational life.
- Take, for example, the work group whose daily
conversations are dominated by management feedback
that its costs are too high. Even if the group performs well
on quality and customer satisfaction, the focus on cost
problems can lead group members to believe that the group
is a poor performer. Accordingly, this approach to change
involves starting new conversations that drive new shared
meanings of key goals, processes, and achievements . 32
 Contemporary Adaptations of Action
Research
Most organizational conversations are focused on:
– poor financial results
– how the organization could be better
– the gap between where the organization is and where it wants to be,
and
– on the problems it faces.
Appreciative inquiry  challenges that assumption. It
suggests that the most important change an organization
can make is to begin conversations about what the
organization is doing right.
Appreciative inquiry helps organization members to
understand and describe their organization when it is
working at its best. That knowledge is then applied to
creating a powerful and guiding image of what the
organization could be.
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 Contemporary Adaptations of Action Research

Modification of action research:

– the role of OD consultants is to work with
members to facilitate the learning process.
– Both parties are "co-learners" in diagnosing the
organization, designing changes, and
implementing and assessing them.
– Neither party dominates the change process.
– Each participant learns from the change process.
Organization members learn how to change
their organization and how to refine and
improve it.
– OD consultants learn how to facilitate complex
organizational change and learning. 34
 Contemporary Adaptations of Action Research

First step is planned change starts with which

organization features to examine.
The second step involves gathering data about the
"best of what is" in the organization.
In the third step, members examine the data to find
stories.
In step four, relevant stakeholders are brought
together to construct a vision of the future and to
devise action plans for moving in that direction.
Finally, implementation of those plans proceeds
similarly to the action and assessment phases of
action research described previously.
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