The process of change

Lewin (1947) identified change as a three-stage process. The first stage (‘unfreezing’) involves helping people to identify and accept the reasons for change. This often involves people recognising that their current behaviour is ineffective or inappropriate, in effect creating dissatisfaction with things as they are. Once behaviours are ‘unfrozen’, then the second stage (‘implementing change’) can take place. There are many different ways in which change can be implemented. Strategies for change can usually be grouped into three categories (Chin and Benne 1976):

• strategies that emphasise the factual evidence base and rationale for change (empirical-rational);

• strategies that involve re-education and the agreement of new norms (normative-re-educative);

• strategies that coerce people to change (power-coercive).