6 change management models that work

Managing change is hard. That’s not a secret.

There are countless obstacles you’ll hit - your own team rebelling, new business processes falling flat, or some wild card nobody predicted blowing the whole thing up.

Even if you get everything right, something can still go sideways.

So it shouldn’t shock anyone that over 70% of change initiatives fail.

What do you do about that? Stop innovating and stick with what works right now?

Not really.

Companies that fail to change tend to fail entirely. Where do you go for video rentals these days? Exactly.

What you can do is use one of these 6 change management models. Having a plan beats jumping in blind - and these models give you that plan.

There are 3 general types. You’ve got models for organization-wide change, bottom-up approaches (changing tasks and processes from the ground up), and employee-focused methods (winning buy-in from your people).

For the best results, use one model from each category.

Organization-wide change models

These are macro-level models. They’re focused on spotting improvements across the entire company and enforcing them. Essential for large organizations, less critical for small businesses.

McKinsey 7-S model

The McKinsey 7-S model helps you figure out the “why” before you start a change initiative. It’s an analytical tool - use it to determine what needs changing, then take those findings to get management support.

You’ll either use it for general introspection (how’s the company running overall?) or to analyze a specific strategy (we want to enter a new market - do we have what we need?).

The downside? It’s time-consuming. Unless you’re a small business, you’ll need interviews and meetings with department heads, employees, and executives to map how your organization actually works.

The model analyzes 7 elements split into two categories:

Hard elements are the concrete stuff - procedures, IT systems, company strategy.

Soft elements are trickier. They’re about culture and people - things that don’t show up neatly in a spreadsheet.

Hard Elements

Strategy - How you plan to beat the competition.

Structure - Who reports to whom. The hierarchy.

Systems - Daily tasks and processes. Business rules your team follows.

Soft Elements

Shared Values - Company culture. What the organization stands for.

Skills - Core competencies your people bring to the table.

Style - Leadership approach. Democratic, hands-off, something else?

Staff - Your people and their roles.

How to use the McKinsey 7-S model

For the company to succeed, these elements need to align with each other. If your strategy is penetrating a new market, you need the right skills to pull it off. You can’t enter a market you know nothing about.

Create two models - one describing every element as it is now, and another as it should be. The gap between them shows exactly what needs to change.

Here’s what to ask for each element:

Strategy - What are your short-term and long-term goals? Are you on track? Is there proof? How are you staying competitive?

Structure - What’s the hierarchy? How does decision-making work? How do departments coordinate? How often does everyone communicate?

Systems - What core systems keep things running? Are procedures enforced? Who monitors them, and how often?

Shared Values - What values does the company hold? Do teams align with them? Do employees reflect them?

Style - What leadership style dominates? Does it vary by department? Is it working?

Staff - What positions exist? Are you missing any? What competencies do you have, and which ones are gaps?

Skills - What’s your company known for? Are employees qualified? How do you assess skills? Are there gaps?

Lewin’s change management model

While 7-S helps you figure out what to change, Lewin’s model helps with how to execute it. This one’s specifically for large-scale change that’ll seriously impact operations.

For something smaller - team-level or process-specific - the Deming Cycle works better (more on that below).

Three stages:

• Unfreeze - Break down the status quo. Tell people what’s coming.
• Make Changes - Move in the new direction. Experiment with new tools, processes, methods.
• Refreeze - Lock in what worked. Apply successful experiments company-wide.

Unfreeze

Before pushing for change, you need to communicate the need for it. Your team loves the status quo. Change is uncertain and scary. Major changes might make positions feel threatened. Management might see it as pointless risk. So you start by convincing everyone the change has a reason - usually through hard evidence like declining sales, poor finances, or unhappy users. Questions you’ll need to address: Why is this change happening? What’s the risk of doing nothing? What’s the risk of making the change? What’s this mean for the average employee? Once you’ve got buy-in from employees and management, move on.

Make changes

Your team should now understand why change matters. Some might even become change champions who help drive the effort forward.

This phase involves a lot of experimentation. It’s much easier if your company documents processes or uses something like Tallyfy for process management. In that case, update the process and make everyone aware. If you don’t document anything, you’ll need to manually explain every change to every relevant person.

Always ask for feedback. Your team carries out these processes daily - if changes reflect their input, they’ll feel ownership over the initiative and cooperate.

Refreeze

Once you’ve identified all the changes, it’s time to make them permanent. Any experiments from the previous phase become the new way of doing things.

Incentivize people to stick with the changes. Reward those who embrace them. Once the company operates with new changes as the default, you can say the initiative succeeded. Celebrate it - let your team know their contribution mattered.

Bottom-up approaches

These focus on process-level and goal-oriented changes. Instead of top-down transformation, you create change from the ground up - starting with individual processes and tasks that eventually affect the whole organization.

Here’s where something important clicks into place: If your bottom-up change effort starts with a broken process and you automate it, you’ve just automated a mess. Fix the process first, then think about automation.

The ADKAR model

The ADKAR model focuses on the individuals behind the change rather than the change itself. Developed by Jeffrey Hiatt (founder of Prosci), it’s a set of 5 goals you need to hit:

1. Awareness - Convince your team there’s a real need for change.
2. Desire - Get them personally invested and supporting the initiative.
3. Knowledge - Give them the tools and information to carry out the change.
4. Ability - Help them apply that knowledge in practice.
5. Reinforcement - Build systems that make the new routine stick.

Awareness

Unless your employees understand why changes are happening, they’ll react in one of three ways:

• Stay passive - They think everything’s fine. If they’re not convinced, they won’t help.
• Stick to old habits - Even if you make the right changes, unconvinced people will quietly revert to the old way when nobody’s watching.
• Create resistance - Worst case, they’ll actively campaign to kill the initiative.

To avoid this, talk to each person who’s relevant to the initiative. Not a mass email saying “hey, we’re switching from Method X to Method Y, good luck!” Speak their language. How does this affect them specifically, and why should they care?

Desire

Even aware employees might not care personally. If they’re critical to the change, their indifference becomes a real problem.

Win them over through reason or emotion. Appeal to reason - the company needs this to survive. If sales are down, it’s either fix things or face layoffs. Appeal to emotion - someone might have an irrational fear of losing their job. Find that fear and address it directly.

Knowledge

At this point, your team should be on board. They might not know how to execute the change, though. Teach them their role and the exact tasks they need to carry out.

Ability

Knowing how something works doesn’t mean you can do it well the first time. Knowledge needs to be backed by skill. If you’re rolling out new software, people need hands-on training - workshops, practice sessions, anything experiential.

Reinforcement

Changes that work today won’t necessarily stick tomorrow. Once you stop watching, people revert to old habits - sometimes not even consciously. They just forget a step and do it the familiar way.

At Tallyfy, we’ve seen that having documented, trackable processes makes reinforcement far easier because everyone can see the expected workflow and any deviation shows up immediately.

Looking for a deeper dive? Check out our full ADKAR guide.

The Deming Cycle (PDCA)

The PDCA cycle is a methodology for improving a single process to the point where it runs as well as it possibly can. It’s not a one-time thing - you loop through it repeatedly until the process is performing at its best.

Four phases:

• Plan - Spot process inefficiencies. Brainstorm improvements.
• Do - Test changes on a small scale. Don’t risk company-wide rollout until you’re confident.
• Check - Benchmark the new process against the old. Is it better? Will it hold up long-term?
• Act - If improvements flopped, go back to planning. If they worked, scale them up.

For change management, use PDCA to optimize a frequently used process, then scale it company-wide once it’s proven.

If you’re planning a major organizational overhaul rather than process-level improvement, Lewin’s model or McKinsey’s 7-S will serve you better.

Plan

Find inefficiencies. Before you can improve a process, you need to understand it well. If you’re not the one running the process daily, do research. An easy starting point is creating a process flowchart.

Then identify what to improve. Usually it’s one of two things: solving a problem (something broke) or making things more efficient. For problem-solving, try a Root Cause Analysis like the 5 Whys - keep asking “why” until you find the source.

For efficiency improvements, ask: Are any steps unreasonably expensive? Are deadlines frequently missed? What part of the process has the biggest impact on the end result, and can it be improved?

Do

Test your improvements on a small scale. Everything’s experimental at this stage. Keeping it small - one team, one line - reduces risk significantly.

Check

Benchmark new against old. If the new process is better, move to the final step. If not, restart the cycle.

Account for risk too. Short-term gains don’t guarantee long-term stability. You might boost output now but discover defect rates spiked later.

Act

The improvement worked. Scale it up. Make it the standard.

One thing to keep in mind: PDCA isn’t a one-time effort. You can keep running the cycle until your processes are as good as they can get. That philosophy of continuous improvement is what separates organizations that stay competitive from those that stagnate.

Templates to support your change initiatives

Example Procedure

Employee Onboarding

1HR - Set up payroll and send welcome email

2IT - Order equipment and set up workstation

3Office Manager - Prepare physical workspace

4IT - Create accounts and system access

5HR - Welcome meeting and company orientation

+3 more steps

View template

Example Procedure

Quarterly Strategic Planning & Goal Setting Workflow

1Revisit annual plan goals

2Break down goals into smaller chunks

3Review budget and benchmarks

4Create action steps and benchmarks

5Set expectations and timelines

+2 more steps

View template

Example Procedure

Employee Performance Review & Evaluation Workflow

1Schedule performance review meeting

2Define employee goals and development plan

3Create training and development plan

4Executive approval for senior manager evaluations

5Collect performance data and 360 feedback

+4 more steps

View template

Employee-focused change

Your employees will make or break any change initiative. These models focus on winning people over rather than designing the change itself.

Kotter’s 8-step change model

Kotter’s model puts employees first, but it’s more top-down than ADKAR. Instead of winning over individuals, it focuses on getting buy-in at scale.

The 8 steps:

• Creating urgency
• Building the change team
• Formulating your vision
• Communicating the vision
• Removing barriers
• Creating short-term wins
• Maintaining momentum
• Establishing the new status quo

According to Kotter, you need more than 75% buy-in from management for the initiative to succeed.

Creating urgency - Use evidence. Declining sales, competition adopting new tech, market shifts. Make the whole organization feel responsible, not just leadership.

Building the team - You need people from different departments, key decision-makers, and specialists who can execute practical changes.

Formulating the vision - Get specific. Where’s the company now? Where should it be after? What’s the step-by-step strategy? What could go wrong?

Communicating the vision - Don’t just send a mass email. Schedule a presentation. Make it a dialogue, not a one-way announcement. Then keep advocating in your daily work - whenever someone has questions, don’t dismiss them. Turn skeptics into advocates.

Removing barriers - Maybe your team lacks skills. Maybe the new tech is hard to use without training. Hire leaders, offer training, incentivize effort, and identify people who are resisting.

Creating short-term wins - Motivation doesn’t last. Start with cheaper, sure-fire projects that demonstrate progress. Spread wins over time to keep everyone energized.

Maintaining momentum - A few quick wins don’t mean you’re done. For each success, push further. Ask what you did right, what risks remain, and whether continuous improvement should become part of the culture.

Establishing the new status quo - Make changes stick. Announce the success. Update all process documentation. Use workflow software like Tallyfy to create trackable processes that prevent people from reverting to old habits.

Full guide: Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model.

Bridges’ transition model

Unlike the other models, Bridges’ approach deals specifically with the emotional response to change. It’s a “transition” model because “change” implies something that’s happening regardless of how people feel, while “transition” is what your people actually go through.

Use it alongside your main change methodology as a way to manage the human side. Three stages:

Ending, losing, and letting go - When change starts, people aren’t happy. They’ll question whether their skills are still relevant, whether their jobs are at risk, whether the change will hurt the company. Fear, panic, confusion - you’ll see all of it. The only response is communication. Most fears are unfounded. Address concerns directly. Build a group of change advocates to spread the message further.

The neutral zone - People are “neutral” rather than fearful, but nothing’s settled yet. New processes are being tested, roles aren’t clear, experimentation is everywhere. Skepticism can grow here. Keep showing short-term wins, build confidence, keep people motivated.

The new beginning - People start seeing how things fall into place. They understand how the initiative helps the company and where they fit in the new direction. Motivation peaks. Reward and recognize the people putting in effort - set the example.

Agents are getting smarter, but nobody’s building the workflows they need to follow. If you’re going through organizational change and thinking about automation, the transition model reminds you: get the people side right first. Technology comes second.

Full guide: Bridges’ Transition Model.

How to pick the right model

Don’t overthink this. After watching hundreds of teams try this, here’s the practical decision framework that works.

Start with the scope. If you’re changing the whole organization, McKinsey 7-S helps you figure out what to change, and Lewin’s model helps you execute it. If you’re improving a specific process, PDCA gets you there. If you need people on board, Kotter handles scale and ADKAR handles individuals. Bridges’ model adds the emotional layer on top of whatever else you’re using.

Combine models. The best results come from picking one from each category - an organization-wide model for direction, a bottom-up model for execution, and an employee-focused model for buy-in. In our experience with workflow automation, the organizations that struggle most are the ones trying to do everything with a single model that doesn’t cover the full picture.

The models give you direction. They don’t guarantee success. But going in with a plan makes you significantly more likely to come out the other side with something that sticks.

Whatever model you choose, document your processes in a system that tracks execution - not in a binder that collects dust. That’s the whole reason we built Tallyfy the way we did.