Lewis's Change Model

Kurt Lewin developed a three-stage model of planned change explaining how to initiate, manage and stabilize the change process. The three stages are:

Unfreezing - This stage deals with motivating employees to replace their old behaviours and attitudes with those desired by management. The process starts with management disconfirming the usefulness or appropriateness of employees’ present behaviours or attitudes. The aim is to prepare employees to change by getting them to become dissatisfied with the old way of doing things.

Changing - This stage involves learning – providing employees with new information, new behavioural models, or new ways of looking at things. The purpose is to help employees learn new concepts or points of view. Role models, mentors, experts, benchmarking results and training are useful mechanisms to facilitate change.

Refreezing - Change is stabilised by helping employees integrate the changed behaviour or attitude into their normal way of doing things. Employees are first given the change to exhibit the new behaviours or attitudes, and thereafter positive reinforcement is used to reinforce the desired change.