There is no shortage of change management models. A Google Scholar search returns thousands of papers on the subject. McKinsey, Prosci, Kotter, Lewin, and ADKAR are among the most cited, each with its own framework, certification programme, and community of practitioners. And yet organisational change continues to fail at a remarkably consistent rate: a frequently cited figure suggests that around 70% of change initiatives fail to achieve their objectives.
The existence of multiple sophisticated change models and a high failure rate raises an important question: what is going wrong? The answer is not that the models are wrong — most of the widely used frameworks capture something real about how change works. The answer is that models are often applied as if they were recipes, when they are actually tools: useful in specific contexts, requiring judgment in their application, and insufficient on their own.
Lewin's Three-Stage Model
Kurt Lewin's change model, developed in the 1940s, remains influential because of its elegant simplicity. Lewin proposed that change involves three stages: unfreezing (creating the motivation to change by challenging the current state), changing (the transition period where new behaviours are developed), and refreezing (embedding and stabilising new behaviours so they become the new norm).
Lewin's model captures something essential: effective change requires both creating dissatisfaction with the status quo and providing a sufficiently compelling vision of the alternative. Change that skips the unfreezing phase — that launches into new ways of working without first building the shared understanding that change is needed — almost always stalls. People revert to what they know.
The limitation of Lewin's model is its linearity. Real organisational change is rarely a clean three-stage sequence. Resistance emerges throughout, not just at the beginning. New information arrives mid-process that requires adaptation. Individuals move through change at different rates. Lewin gives us a useful frame for thinking about the overall arc of change, but not sufficient guidance for the messy reality of implementation.
Kotter's Eight-Stage Process
John Kotter's eight-stage model, developed from his study of large-scale organisational transformations, provides considerably more implementation detail. The stages are: creating urgency; forming a powerful coalition; developing a vision and strategy; communicating the vision; empowering employees to act; generating short-term wins; consolidating gains; and anchoring changes in the culture.
Kotter's research finding — that change initiatives commonly fail because they skip stages — remains one of the most practically useful insights in the change management literature. Specifically, he found that insufficient urgency (stage one) and insufficient coalition building (stage two) were the most common reasons that change programmes stalled before gaining traction.
The model's strength is its attention to the political and relational dimensions of change: the importance of visible, credible senior sponsorship; the value of early wins in sustaining momentum; and the necessity of cultural embedding if change is to be sustained. Its limitation is that it assumes a relatively stable, planned change context. It is less useful for adaptive change — where the destination is not clear at the outset and must emerge through experimentation — and for contexts where the organisation lacks the senior alignment that the model presupposes.
ADKAR: The Individual Change Framework
Prosci's ADKAR model (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) is distinctive in focusing on the individual rather than the organisational level. The model proposes that change succeeds when each individual in scope moves through five stages: they are aware of the need to change, they have the desire to support and participate in it, they have the knowledge of how to change, they have the ability to implement new skills and behaviours, and they receive the reinforcement to sustain the change.
The practical value of ADKAR is that it provides a diagnostic tool for change interventions. If change is stalling, the model gives you a structured way to diagnose where: is the problem awareness (people don't understand why), desire (they understand but aren't motivated), knowledge (they're willing but don't know how), or ability (they know how but lack the skills or resources)? Each gap requires a different intervention.
ADKAR's limitation is that it can underestimate systemic and political factors. Individual readiness is necessary but not sufficient if structural, cultural, or leadership conditions work against the change.
Choosing the Right Approach
The most useful framing for choosing a change management approach comes from Ralph Stacey's complexity matrix, which distinguishes between technical and adaptive challenges. Technical challenges are those where the problem is clear and the solution is known — they require good planning and execution. Adaptive challenges are those where neither the problem nor the solution is fully understood — they require experimentation, learning, and the development of new ways of thinking.
Most change initiatives combine both. The mistake is to treat adaptive challenges as if they were technical ones — to plan comprehensively up front and execute the plan, when what is actually required is a more iterative, learning-oriented approach. The change models described above are all, to varying degrees, designed for technical change. They are less suited to adaptive challenges, which require something closer to an action learning approach: small experiments, rapid feedback, adjustment, and the gradual emergence of a new way of working.
The practical implication is that effective change management in complex organisations requires both: the discipline of a structured approach for the technical dimensions and the flexibility of an adaptive approach for the dimensions where the answers aren't yet known.
Try This
For a change initiative you are currently leading or planning, map the stakeholders who need to move. For each significant group, use ADKAR to diagnose where they currently are: Do they understand why the change is needed? Do they want it? Do they know how to operate in the new way? Can they do it? Will it be reinforced? For whichever stage shows the biggest gap, design a specific intervention. This mapping exercise will tell you more about where to invest your change energy than a comprehensive communications plan.
References
CIPD (2024) Organisation Development and Design: Factsheet. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Hiatt, J.M. (2006) ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and our Community. Fort Collins, CO: Prosci Learning Center.
Kotter, J.P. (1996) Leading Change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Lewin, K. (1947) 'Frontiers in group dynamics', Human Relations, 1(1), pp. 5–41.
Stacey, R.D. (2010) Complexity and Organizational Reality, 2nd edn. Abingdon: Routledge.