Force field analysis

Tool Notes How to use

How to use

Force field analysis is a management technique for diagnosing situations and supporting sound decision making. It is based on ideas developed by Kurt Lewin, a pioneer in the field of social psychology, in the 1940s (Lewin, 1951; Burnes, 2004). The tool is frequently used today in a range of health and social care environments, particularly when identifying strategies for change and exploring the wider environment affecting a situation (see, for example, Bulcomb, 2003).

The tool will help you to consider two sets of forces: those that are driving the change and those that are against it. ‘Driving forces’ help you to achieve the change, and ‘restraining forces’ work against the change. Therefore, it is a powerful tool for developing contextual awareness and can be used to help develop an action plan to assess the value of making a change or to actually implement that change.

To carry out a force field analysis you need to:

identify and list the forces motivating the change (‘driving forces’)
identify and list the forces preventing or blocking the change (‘restraining forces’)
decide how significant each force is.

The next stage is to consider how you can reduce or eliminate the restraining forces and strengthen the driving forces, the aim being to understand how to reach your desired end-state.

Force field analysis is often just the beginning of planning a change. Once you have worked out which forces are helping or hindering your desired change, you need to look at what you are going to do about them and develop an action plan. You can use a range of other techniques to help you here, such as brainstorming. You may also want to use other tools to explore particular aspects of the situation, such as SWOT analysis.

Using the interactive tool

Input a title for your force field analysis and click ‘create’. Click on the plus signs to add the ‘motivating’ or ‘blocking’ forces that you foresee affecting your situation. For each force, you will need to add a label and select the weight (how significant the force is) and probability (how likely it is to be a factor).

There are two icons on the top right of the tool – a wrench and a window. Click on the wrench to edit an existing force field analysis – you can rename it or delete the forces. Click on the window icon to add a new force field analysis – you will also see a drop-down list where you can access all your previously saved analyses.

References

Bulcomb, J.S. (2003) ‘Management of change through force field analysis’, Journal of Nursing Management, vol.11, pp.275–80.

Burnes, B. (2004) ‘Kurt Lewin and complexity theories: back to the future’, Journal of Change Management, vol.4, no. 4, pp.309–25.

Lewin, K. (1951) Field Theory in Social Science, London, Harper & Row.

Tip How you introduce change will influence your team members’ perception of its impact and can determine whether they act as a negative or a positive force for change. Careful planning that focuses on the benefits of the proposed change should be clearly communicated, to increase your chance of success and diminish the impact of negative forces.