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Workshop Exercises: Understand

Force Field Analysis

Analyze the pressures for and against change

Illustration of Force Field Analysis
Run a Force Field Analysis play

Why: Help teams understand factors that support or hinder change and inform strategies to strengthen or mitigate them

When: Useful for evaluating forces for and against change, identifying barriers and enablers, and making informed decisions

Instructions for running this play

  1. Settle on the proposed change you want to explore before the meeting.
  2. Draw the following on a large surface:
  3. Write the Proposed Change on a sticky note placed in the center box of the map. Kick off the workshop by discussing it in plenum.
  4. Conduct a Silent Storm exercise on the Forces For Change (the pros of the decision) with a Timebox of 10 minutes. Playback the results by placing produced sticky notes on the left side of the center box.
  5. Repeat step 4 in regards to the Forces Against Change (the cons of the decision).
  6. Identify duplicate and irrelevant post-its on both sides and remove them
  7. Go through each force and assign a score of 1-5 where 1 means it is not important in regards to change and 5 means it is very important.
  8. Prioritize the top 5 forces on each side and add up their scores in each column. The total sum of points for each side will indicate whether it makes sense to go forward with the decision.

Tips to perfect this play

Master and adapt the play to fit your context and needs.

Tip: Connect

Connect identified forces to potential solutions or interventions, creating a roadmap for addressing barriers and leveraging enablers

Run better workshops with Learning Loop card decks.

Every card deck includes workshop patterns, so your team can put the methods to work in your next session.

Running behavioral design workshops? The Persuasive Patterns Workshop Playbook (PDF) shows you how to design and run them.

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