As a witty manager once said, “change is inevitable—except from a vending machine”. Yes, change is inevitable, but does that mean that organizations are condemned to live in a state of constant turmoil in which work gets done at low levels of efficiency? The answer is, no. In a well managed change process, institutionalizing the change should be a high priority so that the organization can settle into some kind of normalcy—at least until the need for more change arises.

One of the best know organizational change models was developed by Kurt Lewin in the 1950s. Lewin’s model describes organizational change as a three step process:

Step 1. “Unfreeze” the organization from its current behavior patterns (i.e. prepare people to move out of their comfort zones)

Step 2. Make the change as quickly and painlessly as possible

Step 3. “Refreeze” the organization by making the new way of doing things part of the culture and fabric of the organization

Well managed change initiatives put a lot of emphasis on Step 3 because there is a high likelihood that people will slip back into the old ways of doing things. That is unless behavioral changes are made a permanent part of the “way we do things around here”. For behavioral changes to be accepted and made permanent, new organizational norms of behavior need to be established.

Lewin showed how this works in a classic experiment he conducted with a group of housewives. In the experiment, Lewin attempted to change the eating habits of the housewives by using an educational program to teach them how to use meats such as liver and kidneys in their food preparation. After the training program, Lewin sent the housewives back to into a community where the norm was that only the poor would use liver and kidneys in their diet. Lewin attempted to show that it was only when housewives groups met, were educated, and then encouraged to reveal their implicit norms that change was possible. Only by changing the norms themselves (i.e. – introducing a new set of standards for judging what was meat “OK” to use in food preparation), did they feel comfortable with making the change.

The implications for change programs are clear. For refreezing to occur and the changes to become the accepted new way of doing things, the old organizational norms have to be made explicit and challenged. This process requires leadership and some patients from managers at all levels. With conscious encouragement from the organizational leadership, new norms will emerge, become part of the culture, and be accepted as the new standards for acceptable behavior.

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