Force Field Analysis: Lewin's Tool for Weighing Change

By Brian Tr · Updated Oct 10, 2026

Force field analysis is a decision and change tool from psychologist Kurt Lewin. You list the forces pushing a change forward (driving forces) and the forces holding it back (restraining forces), score each one, and compare the totals. The result tells you whether to proceed and which forces to strengthen or weaken first.

This guide covers where the tool comes from, how to score it, a worked template you can copy, and how it differs from SWOT, cost-benefit analysis and other decision tools.

Key Facts

• Originator: Kurt Lewin, social psychologist, working on group dynamics in the 1940s.
• Core idea: any current situation is a balance between forces for change and forces against it. Change the balance and the situation moves.
• Output: a one-page map of forces, each with a score, plus a decision on where to act.
• Typical scoring: each force rated from 1 (weak) to 5 (strong), then totaled per side.
• Best used for: a go or no-go decision on one specific change, and for spotting the blockers worth removing first.
• Closest relatives: Lewin's change management model, SWOT analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and the decision matrix.
• Common failure: treating the totals as a verdict instead of a conversation starter.

What is force field analysis?

Think of a company that has used the same quoting process for ten years. Nobody loves it, and nobody has changed it either. Lewin's insight was that this isn't inertia in the abstract. It's a balance. Some pressures push toward a new process (slow quotes, lost deals, a frustrated team). Others push to keep things as they are (habit, risk, the cost of retraining). The current state sits where those pressures cancel out.

Force field analysis makes that balance visible. You write the change you're considering in a box at the center of a page, put the driving forces on one side and the restraining forces on the other, and score each. The Scottish NHS education service describes the tool as a way to list the forces for and against a proposed change so a team can decide whether to proceed, especially when opinions in the room differ.

It's a planning tool, not a prediction. The scores reflect what your team believes today, and they'll shift as the situation does.

Where it comes from: Lewin and quasi-stationary equilibrium

Lewin borrowed the language of physics. In his field theory, behavior is the result of forces acting in a person's or group's environment. For groups and organizations, he described a state he called quasi-stationary equilibrium. An encyclopedia entry on force field analysis explains that opposing forces balance each other so the status quo holds, and that if one side grows stronger, change either happens or is resisted.

"Quasi" matters. The balance isn't frozen. Forces keep moving, which is why a situation can look stable for years and then tip quickly when something shifts, such as a new competitor or a new manager.

The tool is often presented alongside Lewin's three-stage model of unfreeze, change and refreeze. They're related, but they aren't the same thing. Our guide to Lewin's change management model covers the three stages. This article stays on the force field itself: the diagnostic you run to understand the balance before and during a change.

Driving forces vs restraining forces

Driving forces push toward the change. They can come from outside the team (customer complaints, regulation, a competitor's move) or inside it (a leader's priority, a recurring error, a new budget).

Restraining forces push against it. The same entry describes examples such as reluctance to leave familiar practice or hostility toward those promoting the change. In practice they also include cost, missing skills, tool limits, contracts, and fear of getting it wrong.

A few things to keep in mind when you sort forces into columns:

• A force is a pressure that exists now, not a wish. "We'd like better data" isn't a force. "Reps spend four hours a week re-keying data" is.
• The same fact can sit on both sides. A strong brand can drive a rebrand (we can afford the risk) and restrain it (customers know us as we are). Split it into two forces if you need to.
• Forces can be people, rules, money, time, technology or beliefs. Include the soft ones. Beliefs are often the strongest restraint in the room.

Strengthen drivers or reduce restrainers?

Once the map is on the page, you have two ways to move the balance: add push, or remove resistance.

The action research entry above reports that Lewin's central claim was that reducing restraining forces works better than increasing driving forces. Its example is a wartime study of attitudes toward meat: a group that received lectures (more push) changed little, while a group that discussed its own attitudes, which lowered resistance, changed far more. The entry notes that results are reported without sample sizes, so treat it as an illustration of the idea rather than hard proof. Lewin's reasoning was that added pressure tends to draw matching resistance.

You've probably seen this at work. Announcing a bigger target for a new CRM habit adds push, and reps dig in. Fixing the clunky login that makes the tool painful to open removes a restraint, and usage rises without another speech.

A useful rule of thumb: start with the highest-scoring restraining force you can actually influence, and ask what removing it would take.

Force field analysis vs related tools

Used together, they cover different ground. Force field analysis tells you what is pushing and pulling. A decision matrix then helps you pick between ways to proceed, and cost-benefit analysis tests the money.

How to run a force field analysis, step by step

1. State the change in one sentence. "Move quoting from spreadsheets to a shared template by 31 March." If the change is vague, the forces will be vague.
2. Pick the group. Involve the people who work in the system. The NES guidance calls it vitally important to include those who work in the system, because they know the real forces.
3. List driving forces. Brainstorm quietly first (sticky notes or a shared document), then merge duplicates. Aim for 5 to 10.
4. List restraining forces. Do the same. Make it safe to say unpopular things, since this is where the useful surprises are.
5. Score each force. The NES page suggests scoring each from one (weak) to five (strong) according to how important the team feels it is. Agree on a score as a group rather than averaging silently, so disagreements get discussed.
6. Total each side. Add up driving and restraining scores. A wide gap in either direction is a signal, not a decision.
7. Choose actions. For each of the top two or three restraining forces, ask whether it can be reduced. For top drivers, ask whether they can be strengthened or made more visible.
8. Assign owners and a date. Then repeat the exercise after the first round of actions. Scores should move.

Scoring by importance is the simplest version. If you want a sharper tool, you can also score each force on how much you can influence it. A force that's strong but outside your control (a regulation, say) is something to plan around, not something to work on.

Force field analysis template

Copy this into a doc or spreadsheet. The worked example is a hypothetical 40-person services firm moving client reporting from manually built slide decks to a shared dashboard.

Change: Replace monthly slide-deck client reports with a live dashboard by the end of next quarter.

Reading the result: the sides are nearly level, so the change won't happen on its own, and pushing harder on the drivers is unlikely to help. The biggest restraint (scattered data, score 5) is also one the firm can influence. The plan: consolidate the data into one source first, name a dashboard owner, and keep a short summary note for account managers who want to tell the story.

After the actions, rescore. If the data restraint drops from 5 to 2, the balance is now tipped toward change.

Examples by business function

These are generic scenarios to show the pattern, not case studies.

In each case the useful part isn't the list itself. It's the conversation about which restraints are real, which are fears, and which can be removed cheaply.

Do's and don'ts

Do:

• Define the change precisely before listing any forces.
• Involve the people who'd live with the change, including skeptics.
• Score as a group and discuss big differences.
• Look for restraining forces you can reduce before adding more push.
• Rerun the analysis after your first actions to see what moved.
• Link actions to specific forces, with owners and dates.

Don't:

• Treat the total as a verdict. A 20 to 14 score doesn't mean "go."
• Pad one side to get the answer you want.
• Mix several changes into one chart. Run one analysis per change.
• Ignore feelings and beliefs because they're hard to measure.
• Do it alone. A single person's view of the forces is a guess.
• Stop at the diagram without an action list.

Common mistakes

Listing vague forces. "Culture" and "resistance" can't be scored or acted on. Name the specific behavior or fact behind them.

Scoring on opinion without evidence. Where you can, use something concrete: hours lost, error counts, customer complaints. It keeps the debate honest.

Ignoring who the force belongs to. A restraint held by the CFO and one held by a junior analyst call for different responses. Note who holds it.

Equating more driving forces with more progress. Piling on reasons to change often raises resistance. Lewin's point was that removing a barrier can do more than adding pressure.

Treating the balance as fixed. Forces move. A competitor's announcement or a budget cut can change the scores overnight, so revisit the chart at key milestones.

Skipping the people side. Technical blockers get listed easily. Worry, status and loss of control are real restraints, and they tend to be left off. If you want a structured way to address the individual side, the ADKAR model pairs well, and a gap analysis can help define the target state you're moving toward. For a leader-driven execution roadmap once the decision is made, see Kotter's 8-step change model.