MMHA 6111 Week 3 Change Model Contrast Post Example

Week 3 Discussion: Initial Post and Replies

Kotter Is a Leader's Agenda, Lewin Describes What the Group Lives Through: The Consolidation Needs Each at a Different Moment

Kotter's eight steps are a list of things a leader does. Lewin's unfreeze, change and refreeze describe what happens to the people receiving the change, which is why an imaging consolidation needs Kotter in the months before the move and Lewin in the months after it.

Before the satellite imaging center closes, the work is the leader's. Kotter's first steps, creating a sense of urgency and building a guiding coalition, have to exist before any scanner is relocated (Kotter, 2012). The team has to see the reason for the move in terms it can check for itself, and a small group with credibility at both sites has to be committed to making it work. If the manager skips to scheduling the move, the plan will run into people who were never convinced and a coalition that does not exist. Kotter's sequence is useful here precisely because it is an agenda: it tells the manager what to do next.

After the move, the work belongs to the group. Lewin described change as unfreezing an existing equilibrium, moving to a new one and refreezing it so that it holds (Lewin, 1947). Refreezing is where the satellite team's old routines either settle at the new site or quietly re-form. A team that booked by phone and knew its patients by name will either find ways to keep those practices in the hospital department or recreate the old site's habits in a corner of the new one, alongside the hospital team rather than with it. Lewin's model says nothing about what the leader should do on a given Monday, but it describes what the leader should watch for.

Kotter's later steps, such as anchoring new approaches in the culture, address the same period, but as an instruction to the leader rather than a description of the group. A review of evidence on Kotter's model found broad support for the steps as a guide, but limited empirical testing of the model as a whole (Appelbaum et al., 2012), which supports using it as an agenda rather than as a prediction. My claim is that the consolidation plan should use Kotter's steps to sequence the leader's work and Lewin's refreezing to define what success looks like six months after the move.

Reply to Simone

Simone, your summary of both models is accurate, but I could not tell which you would use for your clinic's move to a new electronic record. If you had to pick one to guide the first three months, which would it be, and why? Choosing would tell us what you think the hardest part of the change is.

Reply to Kevin

Kevin, you use Lewin to plan the announcement of your unit's new staffing model. I wonder whether unfreezing is really a step a leader can schedule, or whether it describes a state the group reaches, sometimes long after the announcement. If your staff are still unconvinced on the day the new model starts, what would Lewin suggest you watch for?

References

Appelbaum, S. H., Habashy, S., Malo, J.-L., & Shafiq, H. (2012). Back to the future: Revisiting Kotter's 1996 change model. Journal of Management Development, 31(8), 764-782. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621711211253231

Kotter, J. P. (2012). Leading change. Harvard Business Review Press.

Lewin, K. (1947). Frontiers in group dynamics: Concept, method and reality in social science; social equilibria and social change. Human Relations, 1(1), 5-41. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872674700100103