A tool to help you uncover the forces that resist change

This month I'd like to touch on forcefield analysis, which is one of the tools I find very handy when putting together key messages for change. There are a few versions of forcefield analysis around, but most say pretty much the same thing – when assessing change we need to understand those forces that either resist change or support it. It's not always the people themselves, but what they see ahead of them, that stops them from moving with change.

Let's break down our change
Firstly we need to understand the desired state or "goal", then understand the current state – "where we are now". Let’s take a personal example: let’s say you want to improve your fitness and your goal is to do some form of exercise every day. That would be your desired state. You then need to identify your current state, which might be exercising when you have a chance, maybe twice a week if you have time.

Now let’s identify those forces resisting the change and those supporting the change using the tool below.

Now that you've identified the resisting and supporting forces you should be able to put plans in place, particularly in your messaging, to move the supporting forces up towards your desired state. Working actively to combat or remove the resisting forces will mean that change will take much less effort to reach a desired state.

This may be a personal example, but you can use this tool to help brainstorm and identify resistance and support for all types of change initiatives. Just give it a go and see how this affects your change effort.

Until next time, happy communicating.

Adrian Cropley Cropley Communications
adrian@cropleycomms.com

And finally...
As we're all dealing with the problem of information overload we know that you probably are too. So, as part of Melcrum's efforts to cut down on the number of emails we send out, we will now publish this monthly instalment of expertise on Change Communication on our website. But don't worry, we'll still alert you to each new issue by including a link in our weekly newsletter The Source for Communicators. If you choose to unsubscribe from that, simply visit the newsletter archive on the Melcrum website to find the latest issue of this and other free Melcrum newsletters.

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