Help with the freezing phase LO12589

Brock Vodden (brock.vodden@mur.odyssey.on.ca)
Tue, 18 Feb 1997 00:00:48 -0500

Replying to LO12571 --

Liandre, you describe a company that has been undegoing major changes over
the past four years.

Quote:==================
"They are presently experiencing major problems in that most employees are
under stress. It's as if they have been in the "unfreeze-change" phases
(using the classic change model) and did not reach the freeze phase. "
End Quote==================

It strikes me that the first problem here is with the "classic change
model" rather than with these employees. In the days when Kurt Lewin
developed his change model, organizations had the luxury of deciding when
it was time to shake things up by responding to environmental changes, and
when it was time to turn off the change process and get things
consolidated for another few years.

I am not suggesting that his model is totally useless in today's context,
in fact, I still make reference to it in some of my work. But in this
period of constant and multi-directional change, a freeze phase can mean
corporate death. The world doesn't alw ays allow such pauses.

My suggestion would be to try to help these folks cope with unrelenting
change, rather than trying to find a way to hold change at bay.

What do others think?

Brock Vodden
brock.vodden@odyssey.on.ca

-- 

Brock Vodden <brock.vodden@mur.odyssey.on.ca>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>