Unfreeze, Change, and Refreeze: It’s no more a child’s game

Most organizations today are in a constant state of flux as they respond to the fast-moving external business environment, local and global economies, and technological advancement. This means that workplace processes, systems, and strategies must continuously change and evolve for an organization to remain competitive.

For your business to survive, it will need to evolve. For it to evolve, you need to make changes. Without a change management process, the success of those changes is up to nothing more than hope and dumb luck.

One of the popular approaches is unfreezing, changing, refreezing. This approach represents a very simple and practical model for understanding the change process. The approach entails creating the perception that a change is needed, then moving towards the new desired level of behavior and finally, solidifying the new behavior as the norm.

 Unfreezing

Before you can cook a meal that has been frozen, you need to defrost or thaw it out. Before a change can be implemented, it must go through the initial step of unfreezing. Because many people will naturally resist change, the goal during the unfreezing stage is to create an awareness of how the status quo, or current level of acceptability, is hindering the organization in various ways. Old behaviors, ways of thinking, processes, people and organizational structures must all be carefully examined to show employees how necessary a change is for the organization to create or maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. When explaining that the first phase of the change effort is to unfreeze the organization, you need to explain to senior leadership that they will need to sponsor four critical activities in this first phase:

1.     Establish a sense of urgency;

2.     Create the guiding coalition;

3.     Develop a vision and strategy; and

4.     Communicate the change vision.

Communication is especially important during the unfreezing stage so that employees can become informed about the imminent change, the logic behind it and how it will benefit each employee and the organization as a whole.

Unfreezing is the first where people are taken from a state of being unready to change to being ready and willing to make the first step.

Here are some ways to make it happen:

·      Burning platform: Expose or create a crisis.

·      Challenge: Inspire them to achieve remarkable things.

·      Command: Just tell them to move!

·       Evidence: Cold, hard data is difficult to ignore

·      Destabilizing: Shaking people of their comfort zone

·      Education: Learn them to change

·      Management by Objectives (MBO): Tell people what to do, but not how.

·      Restructuring: Redesign the organization to force behavior change

·      Rites of passage: Hold a wake to help let go of the past.

·      Setting goals: Give them a formal objective

·      Visioning: Done well, visions work to create change.

·      Whole-system planning: Everyone planning together

 Changing

Now that the people are 'unfrozen' and “out of their comfort zone” they can begin to move. During the changing step people begin to learn the new behaviors, processes and ways of thinking. The more prepared they are for this step, the easier it is to complete. For this reason, training, communication, support and time are critical for employees as they become familiar with the change. Employees need to develop adequate expertise to adapt to changes: organizational, behavioral and technological. Again, change is a process that must be carefully planned and executed. Throughout this process, employees should be reminded of the reasons for the change and how it will benefit them once fully implemented. Communication is also very important in this phase.

Here are some ways to make it happen:

·      Challenge: Inspire them to achieve remarkable things

·      Coaching: Psychological support for executives

·      Education: Teach them, one step at a time

·      Facilitation: Use a facilitator to guide team meetings.

·      First step: Make it easy to get going.

·      Involvement: Give them an important role.

·      Open space: People talking about what concerns them

·      Re-education: Train the people you have in new knowledge/skills

·      Restructuring: Redesign the organization to force behavior change

·      Shift and Sync: Change a bit then pause restabilize

·      Spill and fill; Incremental movement to a new organization.

·      Stepwise change: breaking things down into smaller packages.

·      Whole system planning: Everyone planning together.

 Refreezing

Refreezing symbolizes the act of stabilizing and solidifying the new state after the change. The changes made to organizational processes, goals, structure, offerings or people are accepted and refrozen as the new norm or status quo. The refreezing step is to be especially important to ensure that people do not revert back to their old ways of thinking or doing prior to the implementation of the change. Efforts must be made to guarantee the change is not lost; rather, it needs to be cemented into the organization's culture and maintained as the acceptable way of thinking or doing. Positive rewards and acknowledgment of individualized efforts are often used to reinforce the new state because it is believed that positively reinforced behavior will likely be repeated.

Here are some ways to make it happen:

·      Burning bridges: Ensure there is no way back.

·      Evidence stream: Show them time and again that the change is real.

·      Golden handcuffs: Put rewards in their middle-term future

·      Institutionalization: Building change into the formal systems and structures

·      New Challenge: Get them looking to the future

·      Rationalization trap: Get them into action then help them explain their actions.

·      Reward alignment: Align rewards with desired behaviors

·      Rites of passage: Use formal rituals to confirm change

·      Socializing: Build it into the social fabric

Refreeze the new status quo

Once your changes have been deployed, measured, and tweaked according to feedback, you need to “refreeze” your new status quo. This is vital to any change management model – everything you’ve done is pointless if old habits resurface. Regular reviews need to be carried out to check that the new methods are being followed. Rewards should also be given to those who consistently keep to the new method, and those who make a large effort to support and uphold the changes. If you’ve listened to (and applied) feedback then this stage will be a little easier, since your employees will be more invested in the changes. They helped to shape them after all, so it’s natural that they would want them to succeed.