Change Management Phases

There are numerous ways to structure and describe the phases an organization will go through in the course of a change management process or transformation program. I have written about one of these frameworks in an earlier blog post (link): the catchy “make it rational, make it essential, make it ready, make it happen, make it stick.”

Another one is the Seed, Scope, Solve, Sustain framework. Interestingly, a Google search does not yield an immediate source for this S alliteration – frankly I’m not quite sure anymore where I came across this four step approach.



A third way to describe change management phases is described in a recently published book called “Beyond Performance” by Scott Keller and Colin Price (Wiley & Sons, 2011, link). The key elements described y Keller and Price:


• Aspire: Where do we want to go? What is the change vision and overall objectives that are most meaningful to the organization?


• Assess: How ready is the organization to go there? What is the organization’s ability to achieve its vision and targets?


• Architect: What must we do to get there? How can we develop a concrete, balanced set of performance improvement initiatives.


• Act: How do we manage the journey? What needs to happen in each initiative of the change management portfolio? What resources need to be dedicated to the various initiatives to make them successful?


• Advance: How do we keep moving forward? How can we develop a continuous improvement infrastructure to make sure this is not just a one-time change?