What is Change Management?
Definition, Principles, and Process.
Change management is a term to describe the continuously evolving organizational discipline and processes for actively discovering, developing, introducing, implementing, and maintaining the myriad individual, group, and system-level changes that lead to a desired way of operating.
Note: there is a lot to unpack in that change management definition, including what isn’t said. You are in the right place if you’d like to go deeper.
Table of Contents
Finding a definition of change management can take you down all sorts of paths. Some define it based purely on the broad academic field of study. In contrast, others define it in the context of a particular implementation, such as a change management process involving subgroups within, say, a cardiology department undergoing a merger.
As you can likely guess, change management can be defined in various ways, from the general (as we did above) to the departmental, field-specific, and even methodology-based definitions as it relates to the proprietary models of academics and change management consultancies.
And it doesn’t end there. But before we go deeper in our definition, let’s take a step back.
Why is change management important?
You are here to learn, and understanding the why of change management will help you maintain the curiosity to learn. It’s critical to understand a few reasons why many change management thinkers and practitioners believe this field is increasingly important.
However, there’s an assumption you should first know about because it undergirds much of what we’ll cover: organizations are built and developed to endure.
Survivability and stability, after all, are hardwired into us as individuals. Most of us live a significant portion of our lives thinking about, working towards, and otherwise ensuring ourselves and our families have both. It makes sense that the organizations we create have those wants and needs woven into their fabric.
Holding that assumption, here are two interrelated but common reasons given for why change management is important:
1. External Environmental Factors
Government policy, capital markets, consumer preferences, global pandemics, and climate change. Responding quickly to these factors makes an organization resilient.
2. Shortening Company Lifespans
The pace and global scale of technological advancements mean that innovation (and disruption) happen faster than ever. Stagnancy is more dangerous than ever.
We (individual humans) often struggle with change.
Behavioral science literature routinely suggests that we are more prone to resist change than to embrace it. Very few of us wake up each morning with a sense of urgency and a desire for self-disruption — especially when things are going incredibly well in our lives.
A 2018 article by Dr. Elliot T. Berkman titled The neuroscience of goals and behavior change (Consulting Psychology Journal) frames why change is challenging in two dimensions:
The Way
Deals with the skills, capacities, and knowledge that are first required for a change effort. Think about how difficult those are to secure.
The Will
About desire and all of its complexities. For example, one may have plenty of desire, but there may be more desire associated with other goals.
Expand that individual human element to the organizational level, and it’s easy to see why, when companies are thriving and are doing exceptionally well, it’s hard to change.
We struggle with chaos, too.
We want formulas and frameworks, boxes to check and step-by-steps. Therefore, much of the field of change management is a mirror that reflects our want for linear simplicity rather than the complex, chaotic reality. It’s filled with frameworks, some of which are incredibly popular and even useful — in the way that a compass can be useful (we might not know where we’re going or how to get there, but at least we’re going North).
A classic 1992 article by Professor James O. Prochaska and Professor Carlo C. DiClemente titled Transtheoretical therapy: Toward a more integrative model of change suggests that individuals are always in one of five stages of change:
If you can simultaneously hold all of this, you’re well on your way to understanding why change management is so important and why it can be so challenging.
Further Reading & Research Interviews
Managing Change: From Theory to Effective Implementation
Change Management: On Embracing Stillness
Change Management Leadership: Embody the Planned Change
Transformational Leadership and Organizational Change
Organizational Change: An Exploration of Change Uncertainty and Employee Well-Being
Change Management and Software Engineering: The Intersections
The Model of Cascading Change: A Change Management Success Story
The Role of Diversity Intelligence in Change Management
Modeling Change Within Workplace Hierarchies
Viparinama-Dukkha: The Suffering of Change (Management)
From Organizational Development to Change Management
Change Management Definition Deep-Dive
Let’s get back into unpacking our definition. There’s planned change and unplanned change. There’s the antiquated way of splitting change management into two squeaky clean facets, hard and soft, with hard often representing the technical and business systems side and soft (also an antiquated term) representing the people side of change.
Evolutionary
Incremental, continuous change. Often referred to as transactional change.
Revolutionary
Deeper, more disruptive types of change. Often referred to as transformational change.
The “Rose-Colored” View
Frames the act(s) of implementing change as inherently positive and linear.
The Reality
Chaotic, messy, nonlinear, and fraught with unintended consequences.
We’ll get into all of this and far more, but keep in mind the working definition we’re using here is an attempt to concisely fuse aspects of the various change management definitions floating around. Let’s dig into its parts.
Continuously Evolving
The continuous optimization of how work gets done is as old as work itself. When we think about teams at work in the context of change, the research is clear: teams, more than individuals, generate more creative, innovative ways to change processes, cultures, and workflows for the better.
In today’s era of shortening S&P 500 lifespans, global interconnection, and disruptive innovation, many organizations are turning to find wisdom in the paraphrased quote often attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535 BC – 475 BC):
Several of the eight main points reportedly delivered in the Buddha’s last sermon, for example, provide lessons for today’s change agents. One deals primarily with the idea of impermanence — that everything we can comprehend only appears to be held in place; it’s all undergoing continuous change.
This need for organizations (and change management itself) to continuously evolve can give rise to various types of change resistance. Often, resistance to change is due to fear that the core will be lost in the process.
The Roots of Modern Management
While such evolution has always been in place, the actual field of change management is relatively new. It traces back to Frederick Winslow Taylor. In his classic text, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Peter Drucker wrote:
“It is fashionable today to look down on Taylor and to decry his outmoded psychology, but Taylor was the first man in the known history of mankind who did not take work for granted, but looked at it and studied it.”
The 5 Phases of the Lifecycle
There exists an assumption that change surfaces itself. This is a myth. Like creative writing and creativity in general, organizational change management demands dispelling such myths and strengthening our receptivity to the many signals.
Discovering
This is particularly true as it relates to discovering the most important change levers. There’s an infinite a la carte menu of planned change items from which to choose. Choosing them all is to choose failure.
Nothing builds trust, commitment, and gives organizational change a chance to succeed quite like co-ownership and collaboration at the beginning.
Developing
The transitional elements between discovery and introducing are arguably the most important. Developing is a fragile period. It is often missing from popular frameworks, yet there is a dangerous assumption that leaders simply know how to develop the change plan and can immediately move to implementation.
Introducing
Introducing is about developing a comprehensive change communications plan. It is also the time to recognize, honor, and even bring closure to elements of the past. Unresolved tension from past efforts can resurface here.
“The degree of ease and success with which an organization change is introduced is therefore directly proportional to the amount of choice people feel they have in determining and implementing the change.” — Dr. W. Warner Burke
Implementing
Implementation is erroneously seen as the primary action phase. It’s where most books focus. While there are many frameworks, John P. Kotter’s 8-step process currently holds the crown.
Kotter’s 8-Step Process
Click a step below to explore the action required.
1 Create a sense of urgency
2 Build a guiding coalition
3 Form a strategic vision
4 Enlist a volunteer army
5 Enable action by removing barriers
6 Generate short-term wins
7 Sustain acceleration
8 Institute change
Maintaining
Maintaining is perhaps just trailing discovery on the most neglected list. One dagger to this phase occurs when the adjustment period drags on too long.
Key to this is maintaining a sense of urgency. As Kotter put it: “If urgency drops sufficiently and momentum is lost, pushing complacency away a second time can be much more difficult than it was at first.”
Change leaders must continuously find and reward new short-term wins. Just because you did a great job of listening initially doesn’t mean those factors are preserved in amber.
The Three Levels of Change Management
Change management is often discussed in general, which can become confusing when the speaker is referring to one of several levels. For example, an IT leader may refer to the large project of upgrading their technology stack as change management. When you peel back the many levels involved in such a project — evaluating existing and future architectures, phasing departments from the old systems and onto the new, etc. — change management can serve as an adequate description to represent the totality of the pieces.
Still, though it’s essential for change leaders to keep their sights on the forest, it’s also important to see the trees (individuals) and the stands of trees (the groups and subgroups).
Note: to convey the fluid nature of change management, there are not arrows in this diagram. However, it may be helpful to imagine moving from right (the head) to left as organizational change at the larger system level is typically what inspires and guides the group and individual-level changes.
We discussed earlier how discovering, developing, introducing, implementing, and maintaining all bleed into each other. Well, so do our three levels here.
I begin at the individual level because it humanizes the field of change management and builds from there. Many change management initiatives fail because change leaders become so enthralled with the mechanics of it all that they lose touch with the human element and the accompanying empathy.
1. The Individual Level
Unfortunately, many consultants use the term change management when they are actually describing architecting change purely at the individual level. Change at this level can of course be complex, but that doesn’t make it organizational change. For our purposes here, we are referring to individual change that is tied to the larger systems-level change.
Example: The Hardware Pivot
Consider a long-standing hardware company pivoting towards software. They may need to downsize certain departments and re-skill others. Yes, there is focus at the group level, but the key is a deep focus at the individual level. Individuals are being assessed, trained, and hired — all to serve the organization’s desire to operate in a new way.
The Kübler-Ross stages of grief model, created by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, is often used as a frame to show how individuals process such change. The parts, often referred to by the DABDA acronym, act as an emotional curve:
Denial
An attempt to maintain equilibrium by clinging to the status quo.
Anger
Occurs after denial and is characterized by frustration and blame.
Bargaining
Recognition that change is happening, but wanting to negotiate.
Depression
A “what’s the point?” response when compromise isn’t likely.
Acceptance
Understanding that change is happening, and that acceptance is advantageous.
Figure 2: The classic Change Curve visualization.
2. The Group Level
The group level is where work gets done; it’s the arena most employees place themselves in when asked to share a sense of their work. This encompasses all subgroups, from the top management team (TMT) to the regional internal public relations firm.
Can make teams productive but also susceptible to losing sight of the larger organizational purpose.
Can mean they consistently ship solid work but are resistant to new ideas or new members.
Note: Check out Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter’s classic article titled Dilemmas of managing participation.
The Tennis Metaphor
Like a tennis student learning a new but better way to deliver a backhand, the initial change may appear like a step in the wrong direction. Performance, for a period, may decrease. It’s essential to bring awareness to and hold patience for this learning curve.
The majority of today’s successful change management initiatives are co-created. For an example, see A Model of Cascading Change or our interview with lead researcher Dr. Kasper Edwards.
3. The Total System Level
Despite what some of the literature suggests, the complex changes at the total system level rarely begin at the total system level. The seed of change typically occurs at the individual or group level.
It’s an article from 1975 by Professor John R. Kimberly and Warren R. Nielsen titled Organization Development and Change in Organizational Performance that helps us make sense of this.
(Also see my interview with Dr. Karl Moore and Dr. Nicolay Worren).
The Three Orders of Change
Who do you directly want to impact? Typically at the group level involving only those explicitly meant to change.
Who else between the groups may be impacted? Changes in other parts of the organization as a consequence of interdependencies.
Change in indices of the performance of the organization as a whole, reflecting aggregated individual behaviors.
Figure 3: Visualizing the Three Orders of Change.
Change Management Basics
What pressures led to the need for a change management strategy? How do you implement change management processes at the individual, group, and system levels? What’s the relationship between the markets and the organization?
These are the type of questions you can begin to answer when you have an understanding of the basics. Consider the following visualization. We’ll break each piece down.
The External Environment Factors
Take a look at the External Environment Factors box. This includes changes that occur outside of the organization but that both push towards the Change Management box and have a back-and-forth (although not equal) dynamic between the Organizational System box. Let’s break these down.
Consider a new government regulation, which is one type of external environment factor. Depending on what it entails, this could significantly impact how an organization operates (this is the fundamental reason why large companies employ government lobbyists).
Phased regulatory requirements involving consumer data collection and emissions force organizations to think about what aspects of their current operations must change.
Other factors include demographic changes, public health pandemics, climate change, the impact of capital markets, and changing consumer preferences.
Microsoft: While climate change impacts Microsoft, capital markets often have a more significant day-to-day impact. How is their stock performing? Moves in the capital markets will directly inform their change management strategy.
Levi Strauss & Co: They went from public (1971) to private (1985) and back to public (2019). These shifts show the relationship between the external and the organizational. Market dynamics changed Levi Strauss, and Levi Strauss changed the markets.
Notice how the main box funnels down into a more focused circle. This circle represents those external factors the company has deemed necessary. A company focused on building and shipping products, but without a sound strategy for absorbing outside information, will eventually find itself building and shipping far less.
The Organizational System
Let’s take a closer look at the Organizational System box. The main box represents what many organizational development leaders refer to as the total systems level. The two rectangles represent the individual level and the team/group level.
Note that unlike the External Environment Factors box, which pushes from the circle down to the Change Management box, the Organizational System box is receiving a push (and itself helping to pull) from the Change Management box.
The Circle = The Filter. Change leaders often want to undertake wide-reaching changes. The circle represents the filtering process: What will they implement? Who will it impact?
The Change Management Box
Though change management is an integrated approach, this box represents the space needed between the external environment and the organization for sound decision-making.
Change is frequently thought about purely from within the system by people who either haven’t studied change management or aren’t fully plugged into the external environment.
Organizational change should be continuous. While there’s often C-suite excitement around radical transformation overhauls, such moves are often the result of not continuously changing. When the “drip irrigation” of change has been shut off for a long time, it leads to a situation where a radical move (flooding the field) feels like the only way to survive.
Salesforce: Listeners are Leaders
In his book Trailblazer, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff wrote about how built-in listeners allow the company to keep a pulse on critical external factors (like the 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana).
These insights flow down, like water, until they reach Benioff. This equips the leadership team to quickly assess situations and often be the first company to take a public stand.
The Result: The listeners created change but likely weren’t part of an official change management department. They acted as the connected conduit—without which change happens in unsuccessful spurts rather than steady drips.
Feedback is at the heart of change management.
Get Cameron’s free guide here. It includes the complete breakdown of feedback definitions, types, and examples in one easy-to-navigate PDF. Perfect for printing, sharing with your team, or keeping as a quick reference.
↓ Download the PDFFrameworks & Models
Below you will find the most influential change management models in the field. Depending on your goals, I’d recommend pulling elements from each of these to create your own bespoke process.
Research Corner: A Brief History
Tracing the lineage of Change Management from 1879 to present.
Wilhelm Wundt
At the University of Leipzig, Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory. In 1881, he founded Philosophische Studien, the first academic journal dedicated to psychology.
In a 1991 analysis of eminence among psychologists in American Psychologist, Wundt ranked first among the most important psychologists of all-time.
— From Principles of Physiological Psychology
Arnold van Gennep
Anthropologist Arnold van Gennep coins the term “rites of passage.”
He describes change as a three-step process that informs many modern thinkers:
- 1. Separation
- 2. Transition
- 3. Reincorporation
Frederick Winslow Taylor
Often considered the first management consultant, Taylor ushered in a new way of thinking about work. His concept of framing business processes as “a machine” originated here.
Read Excerpt: The 4 Duties of Management
1. They develop a science for each element of a man’s work.
2. They scientifically select and then train, teach, and develop the workman.
3. They heartily cooperate with the men so as to insure work is done in accordance with principles.
4. There is an almost equal division of the work and responsibility between management and workmen.
The Hawthorne Studies
A fascinating series of workplace productivity experiments by Western Electric Company. They were the first to show that when workers feel seen, respected, and cared for, productivity improves.
- The Illumination Experiment: Productivity improved when lights were brightened AND when dimmed. Why? Because researchers showed interest.
- Relay Assembly: Productivity skyrocketed 30% over 2.5 years when variables like personal well-being were considered.
Kurt Koffka
Koffka helped put Gestalt psychology on the map. Just as the individual is part of and contributing to a complex network, so is an organization.
In a 2013 article on Gestalt and Organizational Change, Dr. Marie-Anne Chidiac wrote that Gestalt offers a framework “more relational and constructionist than objectivist.”
B.F. Skinner
Besides machinery, the organism is often used as a metaphor for how businesses operate. Much of this is inspired by The Behavior of Organisms, Skinner’s classic work that introduced operant conditioning (learning based on reward and punishment).
1946: Kurt Lewin & T-Groups
Pivotal MomentKurt Lewin established T-Groups (Training Groups) to combat racial and religious prejudice through psychologically safe dialogue. He believed that an exploration of self and others could lead to awareness critical for change.
From The Practical Theorist: Six months after Lewin’s initial workshop, 72% of participants reported using the skills they learned.
Goals: Individual Level
Participants develop an awareness of how they are perceived by others. From here, inquiry can begin. This practice develops deep self-awareness.
Goals: Organizational Level
The lens zooms out to hierarchy, communications, and collective culture. Lewin wanted to see change occur at the total community level.
Rensis Likert
Likert and Daniel Katz started the Organizational Behavior Program. The Likert Scale (which you have likely used) allowed for scientific feedback collection, moving beyond simple gut feelings.
Dr. Edwin A. Fleishman
Fleishman illustrated a critical point: individual change strategies fail unless the context (group norms/culture) also changes. This marked the rise of Industrial-Organizational Psychology.
Organizational Development (OD)
The various disciplines—psychology, managerial research, and T-Groups—merge to form the modern field of Organizational Development and Change Management.
Quotes About Change
Ready to create change? Below you will find the quotes about change that consistently top the various internet lists. May you find what you are looking for.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions answered using the frameworks, history, and research covered in this guide.
What is change management in simple terms?
Change management is the structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, or organizations from a current state to a desired future state. It is a continuously evolving discipline for discovering, developing, introducing, implementing, and maintaining changes that lead to a better way of operating.
Why is change management important?
Beyond minimizing resistance, change management is an organizational necessity due to two primary factors: external environmental pressures (like government policy, climate change, and consumer preferences) and shortening company lifespans. Organizations are built to endure, but stagnancy is dangerous. Survival depends on the ability to manage the continuous and chaotic nature of change.
What are the 3 stages of change management?
While models vary, the classic process mirrors Kurt Lewin’s model: 1) Unfreeze (Preparing for change), 2) Change (Managing the transition), and 3) Refreeze (Reinforcing the change). In our detailed definition, we expand this to a 5-stage lifecycle: Discovering, Developing, Introducing, Implementing, and Maintaining.
What are the three levels of change?
Change occurs at three interconnecting levels:
- Individual Level: Addressing skills (“The Way”) and desire (“The Will”).
- Group Level: Where work gets done, silos form, and culture is reinforced.
- Total System Level: Strategy, structure, and high-level policy.
What are common barriers to change?
Common barriers include a lack of communication, fear of the unknown, and insufficient training. At the individual level, humans naturally crave linear simplicity and stability. At the group level, high-functioning teams may resist change because it disrupts their “flow” or operational efficiency (the Tennis Metaphor).
What is the ADKAR model?
Prosci’s ADKAR model is a goal-oriented change management framework that guides individual and organizational change. The acronym stands for: Awareness of the need for change, Desire to support the change, Knowledge of how to change, Ability to demonstrate skills and behaviors, and Reinforcement to make the change stick.
What is the “Tennis Metaphor” in change management?
Like a tennis student learning a new but better way to deliver a backhand, initial organizational change may appear like a step in the wrong direction. Performance often decreases temporarily as teams unlearn old efficiencies to master new systems. Patience for this learning curve is essential to success.
How often should an organization change?
Change should be continuous. Many leaders wait for radical transformations (flooding the field), which can be destructive. A better approach is “drip irrigation”—continuous, smaller changes driven by organizational listening. This prevents the buildup of pressure that makes radical, desperate overhauls necessary.
What is the difference between change management and project management?
While they often overlap, project management focuses on the technical side of the change (tasks, timelines, budget, and deliverables). Change management focuses on the people side of change (adoption, utilization, resistance management, and cultural integration).
How do you measure success in change management?
Success is measured by the speed of adoption, ultimate utilization (participation), and proficiency. It can be tracked through employee feedback surveys, performance metrics, and whether the change achieved the desired “Third-Order” system-level outcomes.
In my life, change has been 0/4
“The path to change is often lined with feedback signals. Learning to be attune to them is a lifelong practice, but worth it to those wanting to wring every last drop of growth out of this wild and precious life.”
Explore the Feedback Guide