Change management assignments usually offer a free choice of model. That freedom is the trap: most submissions pick Kotter because it has eight memorable steps, then narrate the case through those steps without ever asking whether the model fits. The justification of your choice is assessable content.
Lewin: Best for Analysing Forces
Lewin's unfreeze–change–refreeze is often dismissed as simplistic, but its companion tool — force field analysis — remains one of the most useful diagnostic instruments available to you. List driving forces and restraining forces, weight them, and show that change happens by weakening restraints rather than only adding pressure.
Use Lewin when: the assignment asks you to diagnose resistance, or the case is a discrete, bounded change with a clear before and after.
Its limits: "refreeze" sits awkwardly with organisations in continuous change. Acknowledge this — several authors argue stability is no longer a realistic end state.
Kotter: Best for Sequencing a Large Programme
Kotter's eight steps run from establishing urgency through to anchoring change in the culture. Its strength is sequence and leadership emphasis — particularly the guiding coalition and short-term wins, which most failed change programmes lack.
Use Kotter when: the case is a large, top-down transformation and the question concerns leadership and implementation order.
Its limits: it is prescriptive, largely linear, and derived from Kotter's consulting observation rather than controlled study. It also assumes a degree of top-down authority that does not exist in partnerships, universities or federated organisations.
ADKAR: Best for the Individual Level
Prosci's ADKAR — Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement — works at the level of the individual employee rather than the organisation. Its practical value is diagnostic: if adoption stalls, you can identify which element is missing. Someone who lacks Ability needs coaching; someone who lacks Desire needs a different conversation entirely.
Use ADKAR when: the assignment focuses on adoption, training, or why staff are not using a new system.
Its limits: it is proprietary, has a thin independent evidence base, and says little about structural or political barriers outside the individual's control.
Avoid the Narration Trap
Weak submissions read: "Step 1: create urgency. The company created urgency by holding a town hall." That is description dressed as analysis. Strong submissions evaluate: was urgency genuinely created, or announced? What evidence would tell the difference? Which step was skipped, and what did that cost?
Bring in Resistance Theory
Resistance is not simply an obstacle to overcome. A substantial literature treats it as information — a signal about legitimate concerns, competing commitments, or poor design. Submissions that treat employees as barriers to be managed read as naive; those that treat resistance as data read as mature.
Structuring the Assignment
- Case context and the nature of the change (scale, pace, imposed or negotiated).
- Justified selection of model(s), with explicit criteria.
- Diagnosis using the model — force field, stakeholder map, or ADKAR gap.
- Evaluation of what was done well and badly against the model.
- Critique of the model itself as applied to this case.
- Recommendations with sequencing and measures of success.