Force Field Analysis

How to run it

1. Write the change as a movement from one state to another, and be honest about what happens if nothing changes at all.
2. Left column, everything pushing for it. Include the forces you did not create and do not control: a deadline, a rule, someone else’s decision. For each, say whose force it is.
3. Right column, everything holding it back. Be specific enough that somebody could go and do something about each one. Include the ones that are about you.
4. Weigh every force against the others: strong, moderate or weak. Words, not numbers, and relative, not absolute.
5. For each restraint, ask: could it be removed entirely, weakened, or neither? For anything removable or weakenable, write who would do it. A name.
6. Pick one restraint. Not the largest, the one where the effort you can actually spend produces the most movement. Say how it gets removed and what moves once it is gone. One restraint, one method, one name.

Where it falls down. The classic version scores each force out of five, and people add the columns up, get 15 against 16, and conclude the change is impossible by one point.