Author: z617322

Force Field Analysis

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT TOOLKIT

Purpose
A Force Field Analysis is a method for assessing the various forces for and against a proposed change. Through completing a Force Field Analysis, your team will list all of the factors or pressures that are driving change, and those that are resisting it, in order for a team to be able to manage change and successfully implement a change idea.

How to use the tool
Identifying the change idea: Firstly, ensure you all have a shared and clear understanding of what the change idea you’re assessing is. This change idea may be one you’ve developed after completing another continuous improvement tool, such as a driver diagram or a cause and effect diagram.
Forces for change: Consider which forces or factors are driving the change—i.e what would benefit from this change idea? This could include factors such as increased team morale, better user needs/outcomes, reduced costs, quicker processes or any benefits that those delivering services or those receiving services may see if this change idea were to be implemented.
Forces against change: Similarly to the above, you should then consider which forces or factors are resisting change—i.e what factors could prevent this change idea from having a positive impact on services if it were implemented. This could include factors such as regulations/legislation, organisational resources, high risks, high costs, inertia or insufficient of buy in.
Assign Scores: Once you have listed all of the factors driving or resisting change, you will then need to assign scores to these factors, allowing the team to rate how much influence they feel the forces will have on whether or not the change idea can be successfully implemented. Factors should be scored from one (little influence) to five (big influence). These should then be added up to determine the overall scores for and against change.
Analyse: Completing this exercise will allow teams to determine whether or not they feel implementing a change idea would be successful at that point in time. If the score for forces for change is higher than forces resisting change, then the change idea should be implemented. However if the scores are equal or the score for forces resisting change is higher than the forces driving change, the team must then consider how it can strengthen the driving forces or weaken the resisting forces, in order to create the right conditions for that change idea to be successfully implemented. For example, if lack of partner buy in was a significant force resisting change, teams should look at how they can increase partner buy in order to reduce the influence of this factor.

2-3.. Consider which forces or factors are driving or resisting the change. As yourselves questions such as: What benefits will the change deliver? Who will benefit from this change? Who support the change (and why?)? Who is against the change (and why?)? Do we have the resources to make the change work? What costs and risks are involved? Which existing processes will be affected by this change?

1. Ensure there is a clear and shared understanding of what change idea you’re assessing is, and write it in the middle of the Force Field Analysis.

4. Once you have listed all of the factors driving or resisting change, you will then need to assign scores to these factors, allowing the team to rate how much influence they feel the forces will have on whether or not the change idea can be successfully implemented. Factors should be scored from one (little influence) to five (big influence). These should then be added up to determine the overall scores for and against change. You can amend the length of the arrows to correlate with scores you have allocated, to visualise the forces for and against change. This is demonstrated in the example on the next page.

General Example
The example below shows how a force field analysis has been used to determine whether or not upgrading a factory with new manufacturing equipment could be successfully implemented as a change idea.

In this example, the team who have completed the analysis have considered all of the potential factors that could either drive or resist a change. This includes the impact of the change on their customers (customers want new products), their staff (loss of staff overtime and staff fearful of new technology), their costs (initial cost of the equipment and lower maintenance costs), and processes (improved production speed and reduced training time). They’ve also considered the impact of the change idea on the environment, which may also be linked to wider organisational environmental commitments or strategies.
Taking all of these factors into consideration has allowed this team to take a holistic view on whether or not this change would have an overall positive impact on their organisations, rather than focusing solely on one issue such as costs.

In this instance, the forces resisting change are higher than the forces for change, therefore, at this stage, implementing this change idea would be unlikely to have an overall positive impact on this factory. The team who completed this analysis could then consider how they could either strengthen the driving forces or weaken the resisting forces to create the right condition for this change idea. In this example, the forces resisting change could be weakened through reducing staff fears/concerns about the new technology (e.g through offering training) and/or by decreasing the impact on the environment (e.g through using solar panels to power the equipment).

Blank Template
This blank template can be used to complete your own force field analysis. Feel free to input information on this document or print this off to complete it on paper. Click on an arrow to input text. The length of the arrows can be amended to correlate with scores you have allocated, to visualise the forces for and against change.

Forces for Change

Forces Against Change

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