Too often leaders are unsure of just how to unfreeze an organization and create change ready followers. Many leaders start by casting a grand vision of what the new organization looks like. However, followers, still frozen in their ways, do not receive this new vision because they have yet to see why change is necessary. John Kotter’s (1996) book leading change presents an eight-step model for facilitating change that closely follows Lewin’s (1951) three phases model. If we overlay these two models, we see the first three stages of Kotter’s model providing insight on how to unfreeze an organization. These steps are as follows:

1. Create urgency. Leaders to help the organization see that it can not continue down the same old road.
2. Form a powerful coalition. In order to lead change, leaders at the top must form a team of change champions who hold status from a variety of sources.
3. Create a vision for change. Once the organization has a sense of urgency, the coalition can begin to propose a solution to the organization that will inspire them to work toward change.

Notice that step three is create a vision, step four is to communicate that vision. How often do we hear of a new CEO who enters intensely sharing a vision and who is fired just as intensely. If we want successful change, we must make followers change ready by creating this sense of urgency, getting a powerful team of champions together and writing that vision as a team.

Kotter, J. P. (1996) Leading change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Lewin, K. (1951). Field Theory in Social Science. New York, NY: Harper & Row.