Release the brake instead of pressing the accelerator – force field analysis

This article was created with the AI assistant Claude and published by Peter Hoenig.

When an initiative is not making progress, the first reflex is almost always the same: explain once more why it matters. More arguments, more promotion, more insistence. Kurt Lewin described eighty years ago why that so rarely helps – and the new force field tool lets you work it out in figures.

Why more persuasion rarely helps

Arithmetically it makes no difference whether you raise a driving force by 2 or lower a restraining one by 2 – the upper hand shifts by 2 either way.

The tension, however, behaves the other way round. In the first case it rises, in the second it falls. That is exactly what Lewin pointed out: more pressure creates more counter-pressure. What comes with it appears in no table – resistance, overtime, working to rule, and a setback as soon as the pressure eases.

That is why the tool shows the tension as a figure of its own. Switch on “What if …”, turn a driving force up and watch the tension grow with it. Then do the opposite and lower a restraining one. The upper hand shifts by just as much – the tension falls. That is the whole difference, and you can experience it in ten seconds.

An example you will recognise

In the built-in example a business wants to digitise time recording on its building sites. Driving: billing would be two weeks faster, there would be fewer queries, two colleagues expressly want it, and working time has to be recorded anyway. Restraining: the fear of monitoring and surveillance (strength 5), two employees without a smartphone, mobile dead spots on two sites, and the quiet “paper has always worked”.

The restraining forces have the upper hand. And here is the point: more promotion of the benefits would change nothing about that. The strongest brake is the fear of monitoring – no argument about benefits helps there, only a works agreement drafted together before the introduction that limits analyses to project level. Two company phones cost less than one week of delayed billing. And four weeks of running both systems in parallel take the edge off “paper has always worked” without belittling it.

Better many small forces than three large ones

A practical recommendation from working with the tool: enter eight nameable forces rather than three general ones. “Resistance in the team” cannot be removed. “Two employees have no smartphone” can – that costs two company phones.

What you can name, you can change. That is why the tool asks for a measure for each force and names, in the analysis, the strong brakes that still have no measure against them.

Related, but deeper

Force field analysis already exists among my tools – as one of two templates in the Change Editor, alongside the change curve in seven phases. If you need both in one tool, that is the right place.

The new force field tool is the deeper version: with the view “What if …”, with the look at tension, and with a measure for each force. Both tools save into their own files and do not interfere with each other.

Your data stays with you

The tool transmits nothing; it saves as a file *.kraftfeld.json. Merely opening the tool stores nothing in the browser. Exports: PDF, PowerPoint, LibreOffice Impress, Visio, SVG, PNG, a record and CSV.

The strengths are explicitly assessments by those involved, not measurements – a reflection and conversation model, not a diagnostic instrument.

The force field tool is free of charge: open the force field. If you are planning a change in your company and do not know where it is sticking, I am happy to support you – get in touch for a free initial consultation.