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Popular change management approaches

Many technical and professional disciplines (eg medicine, law, engineering, information technology) have developed standard approaches to formally controlling the process of making changes to environments. The following table summarises some of the more widely known Change Management specialists.

Popular change management systems

Kurt Lewin (1951)

Lewin described change as the following three-stage process:

1. Unfreezing

	involved overcoming inertia and dismantling the existing "mind set"
	defense mechanisms have to be bypassed.

2. Change occurs:

	a period of confusion
	your people are aware that the old ways are being challenged but do not have a clear picture to replace them with yet

3. Refreezing

new mind set is crystallising and your people’s comfort level is returning to previous levels.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s book "On Death and Dying"

Kubler-Ross believed that an individual's attitude toward a change tends to evolve as they become more familiar with it.

The stages a person goes through can consist of:

	apprehension
	denial
	anger
	resentment
	depression
	cognitive dissonance
	compliance
	acceptance and
	internalisation.

Jeff Hiatt (1998, 2006]

ADKAR model

The ADKAR model presents the following five building blocks that a person must obtain to realise change successfully:

	awareness
	desire
	knowledge
	ability and
	reinforcement.

Hiatt believes it is management's job to create an environment in which their people can go through these stages as quickly as possible, including:

	building awareness of why the change is needed
	creating desire to support and participate in the change
	developing knowledge of how to change
	fostering ability to implement new skills and behaviours and
	providing reinforcements to sustain the change.

The following table summarises some of the popular on-line change management resources.

Change Management Toolbook	A broad annotated collection of tools and principles that are applied for Change Management. www.change-management-toolbook.com
Businessballs	www.businessballs.com/changemanagement.htm
The Change Management Directory	www.change-management-directory.com
Management first	Articles, interviews, reviews and journals on change management. www.managementfirst.com/change_management/index.htm
BPubs.com	A collection of business articles and publications related to organisational change and Change Management. www.bpubs.com/Management_Science/Change_Management/
Change Management Learning Center - Proscian	Online reference for change management, managing change books, articles, benchmarking, business process re-engineering, training, human resources, project management, etc. www.change-management.com
The Manager	Information on change management on management portal. www.themanager.org/Knowledgebase/Management/Change