Force Field Factors

Team A : Case situation analysis (Force Field Analysis “Lewin”)

Force Field Analysis is a tool that facilitates decision making by evaluating the forces for and against a change. Force Field Analysis helps assess situations by communicating the rationale behind decisions. The tool can help decision makers decide whether or not to go through with a change and it increases the chances of success by “strengthening the forces supporting change and weakening those against it” (Hill, 2015). Force Field Analysis is used in making business and communications go/no-go decisions (Hill, 2015). To assess what is going on in a scenario, participants list all of the factors, or forces, for and against a matter; each factor is then scored based on its influence (Jackson, 2006). Decision makers then “look at strengthening the forces that support the change and managing the forces against the change” to produce the most successful outcome (Hill, 2015). According to Jackson (2006) “the problem solving process includes two dimensions of problem analysis and decision making. Problem analysis is the identification of those factors or forces that prevent goal attainment.

Decision making is the process of determining goal and action strategies for reaching those goals. Organizational and strategic planning depends upon the process of identifying significant problem, setting realistic goals and objectives, diagnosing the forces and influences that impact the problem, and suggesting how a specific set of interventions can solve or lessen the problem” (p.149). However, these steps can be successful, if force field analysis is properly applied and weights to driving and restraining forces are precisely measured. Force Field analysis lends itself toward facilitating change by determining whether or not a proposed change can attain support, identifying obstacles to successful solutions, and recommending actions to reduce the impact of obstacles (Nash & Young, 2008).

Current State:

The current state of the Nelson Digital Scale is that the company had a very good customer service reputation in the last couple years. But currently the company is facing challenges in the market and strives to improve its productivity. The company office staff successfully re-organized and received a lot of improvement in office related tasks. In addition, the company replaced some workers with robots, but these changes failed and did not lead to increase in the productivity and the company founder assumes that plant managers are not educated properly to manage increased automation on the shop floor.

Desired State:

The desired state for the company is to improve productivity, increase profits, diversification of products, improve employees’ performance/ satisfaction, and improve customer satisfaction. Also