A completed force field diagram has driving forces on one side, restraining forces on the other, and arrows suggesting what to strengthen and weaken. The step most teams skip is testing whether the forces on the diagram are observations or assumptions. Skip it, and the change plan invests resources in weakening forces that were never measured.
I watched a project team at a government agency complete a force field analysis before rolling out a new case management system. The diagram showed five driving forces and four restraining forces. "Employee resistance to change" was scored as the strongest restraining force, a thick arrow stretching across the whiteboard. The project sponsor approved six months of change communications: town halls, newsletters, training roadshows.
Eighteen months later, the system sat at thirty per cent adoption. Post-implementation interviews found that staff were not resisting the change. They were unable to use the new system because it could not exchange data with three legacy databases they relied on every day. The strongest restraining force had been system incompatibility, not employee resistance. But nobody had tested whether "employee resistance" was an observation or a feeling, because the diagram did not require that distinction.
The tool produced a picture that looked analytical. The picture was built on opinions scored in a meeting room, and the action plan treated those opinions as measured facts.
- Rewrite each force as a testable claim. "Employee resistance" becomes "We believe employees will resist this change because they prefer the current workflow."
- Score each claim on influence and confidence. High influence + low confidence = the force that needs investigation before the change plan addresses it.
- Investigate the high-risk entries. One conversation with affected staff or one data check per claim.
- Redesign the force field with only verified forces. The Walk guides you through separating observed forces from assumed ones, before the action plan commits resources to addressing them.
- Assign ownership and a review trigger. Each action gets a named owner and the condition under which the force should be reassessed.
After a force field analysis, the standard next step is to strengthen driving forces and weaken restraining forces. The step worth taking first is to test whether each force is an observation or an assumption.
The standard next step: strengthen and weaken
Lewin's original field theory described behaviour as an equilibrium between driving and restraining forces. His 1947 paper in Human Relations presented the concept as a way of analysing the constellation of forces in a social situation. The practical version taught in change management courses simplifies this: draw the forces, score them, then work on strengthening drivers and weakening restraints.
Thomas extended the application in 1985, proposing force field analysis as a framework for strategic thinking beyond its original social-psychology context. The tool migrated from group dynamics into project management, healthcare, and organisational change management. In each setting, the next step after drawing the diagram is assumed to be the same: act on the forces.
What the action plan adds
The action plan is the contribution. A force field analysis without an action plan is a poster. Once the driving and restraining forces are visible, the team can discuss where to intervene. Strengthening a driving force might mean securing executive sponsorship or allocating budget. Weakening a restraining force might mean redesigning a process or removing a policy barrier. The conversation moves from "what are the forces" to "what do we do about them." If you have completed a force field analysis for a resistant change, the action plan is where most guides tell you to go next.
The value is real. A team that has named and scored the forces in a situation is better prepared than one working from a vague sense of difficulty. The diagram creates a shared picture and the action plan creates shared commitments. When the forces are accurately identified, the sequence works.
The gap is in the word "accurately." The scores on a force field diagram are typically assigned by the people in the room, in the moment, without evidence. A restraining force gets a score of four out of five because a senior person said so. A driving force gets a three because nobody objected. The action plan then treats those scores as if they were measurements.
Rewrite the strongest restraining force as a claim and test it before the change plan commits resources to weakening a feeling. Start the Walk →
Where the standard playbook breaks down
The playbook breaks down when the forces are feelings labelled as facts. Lewin's own field theory was meant to be empirical. As Burnes noted in his 2004 reappraisal, Lewin insisted that theory must be grounded in observable behaviour, not conjecture. But the classroom version of force field analysis invites a room full of managers to brainstorm forces and assign scores, which is closer to conjecture than observation.
The gap shows up in practice. The UK's National Program for IT in the NHS committed over six billion pounds to centrally designed clinical systems. When adoption stalled, the program framed the problem as clinician resistance. The response was change management communications, training, and engagement campaigns. A post-mortem analysis found that the actual restraining forces were system incompatibility with local workflows, lack of end-user involvement in design, and contractual rigidity that prevented adaptation. The program had invested years weakening a perceived force while the real ones went unaddressed.
This pattern recurs wherever the diagram replaces investigation. A change management plan built on unverified forces inherits every assumption in the diagram. If "lack of training" is scored as a strong restraining force but the real barrier is that the new process takes twice as long, no amount of training budget will shift the equilibrium. The action plan looks responsive. The change still fails.
I have seen this across nearly fifty years of working with organisations navigating change. The diagram produces a picture that feels rigorous because it has arrows and scores. Teams stop asking whether the scores are right because the tool itself appears analytical. Whether the organisation is following ADKAR or another change management framework, force field analysis without assumption testing will reproduce this problem every time. The question is not whether the forces have been identified. The question is whether they have been verified.
Baulcomb's study of force field analysis in NHS nursing settings demonstrated that the tool works well at small scale when the people scoring the forces are the same people who experience them daily. At that scale, the scores approximate evidence because the scorers have direct knowledge. The tool breaks down when it scales to boardrooms and steering committees, where the people scoring the forces are not the people facing them.
The step to take first
The action plan is not the problem. The problem is acting before testing. Before a force on the diagram enters the change plan, it needs to survive a simple question: is this something we have observed, or something we believe?
Take each force and rewrite it as a claim. "Employee resistance to change" becomes "We believe employees will resist this change because they prefer the current workflow." Then ask two things about that claim: how much influence does it have on the change, and how confident are we that it is true? A force with high influence and low confidence is the one that needs investigation before it enters the action plan.
A restraining force you are confident about and that matters to the change can enter the plan. A restraining force you are guessing at and that carries the whole intervention should not. The same test applies to driving forces. A driving force scored as strong because management assumes executive support is firm, without anyone having confirmed it, is an assumption wearing the label of a fact.
The project team from the opening would have listed "employee resistance" as a strong restraining force. Rewritten as a claim: "We believe employees will resist adopting the new case management system." Influence on the change: high, because the entire communications budget was allocated against it. Confidence: low, because nobody had spoken to the staff who would use the system. That force needed verification before it entered the action plan, not after the action plan had spent its budget.
When I work with teams after a force field analysis, the first thing I do is separate forces they have evidence for from forces they are assuming. The separation takes ten minutes, and it changes which actions survive into the plan. Most teams have never been asked to make that distinction, because the diagram does not require it.
This is the step between completing a force field analysis and committing resources to the actions it generates. Separate observations from assumptions. Test the ones that carry the change. The Universal Decision-Making Method calls this "recognise assumptions" and places it before any commitment, because an action plan built on an untested force is a guess with arrows on it.
You could draw every arrow and still strengthen a force that was never measured.
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Grant Purdy is the co-author, with Roger Estall, of Deciding (2020), and the architect of the Universal Decision-Making Method.