Presenting A Force Field Analysis To An Executive Audience
A Force Field Analysis is a principle, which was developed by an American psychologist, Kurt Lewin. It looks at opposite forces influencing a situation to help assess the best course of action. At an organizational level, a Force Field Analysis might be used for making essential decisions.
Understanding the Force Field Analysis & Its Importance for Organizations
A Force Field Analysis offers a framework to assess factors, which might influence a situation. These factors (forces) are divided into two segments. One segment assesses the forces which can help achieve a goal, while the other includes factors which might make it difficult to achieve it. These positive and negative aspects affecting a situation can help organizations make critical decisions. For example, you might be a CEO looking to upgrade your factory to increase output and reduce unit costs, however, in such a case the new machinery might lead to job losses, employee resentment and ultimately even a strike by the workforce. A Force Field Analysis in such a case can help identify hurdles and benefits associated with the decision and help the senior management take the best course of action.
Presenting a Force Field Analysis Before an Executive Audience
Whether you’re at the lower tier of your organization looking to present a Force Field Analysis before the senior management; or a CEO looking to get the nod from your shareholders; you will need to be meticulous in creating the visual assets to support your message. This is because presenting just a single slide with opposing forces listed in PowerPoint can be a bit confusing for an audience. Also, in this case you will be setting the mindset on the conclusion and not the force field analysis process you followed. This is why we have prepared a step by step guide which can help you create and present a Force Field Analysis before an executive audience.
1. Identify the Forces Influencing Change
As is obvious, you will require identifying the two opposing forces. You can start with the forces influencing change or are in favor of pursuing the goal; by listing them on the left, followed by the opposing forces listed on the right. To do this, you can seek the help of your peers and subordinates in a brainstorming session. If you are someone who works up the hierarchy, it might be a good idea to consult someone from the bottom. However, if the decision can potentially lead to an adverse effect on the lower tier of your workforce, you might want to keep the content limited to a few trustworthy individuals.
When making your presentation, you might want to list down the forces influencing change and pick the most significant ones. Look into your stakeholders to understand who might be the most affected by your decision.
2. Forces For and Against Change
Consulting someone lower down the hierarchy can help you get the true feel of how people down the organizational ladder might feel about your decisions, and even assess if you can somehow allay their fears to make this a win-win situation. For example, increased mechanization might lead to loss of overtime pay but it might be possible to reward the workforce with fewer stressful hours and a pay raise due to increased output and lower unit cost, ensuring that the workforce remains motivated and the new process can be successfully implemented.
A good way to understand the sentiments of your workforce can be to use ‘grapevine’. This is commonly used by senior management to understand the feelings of the workforce by spreading rumors through informal channels to assess workforce sentiment regarding a potential decision. This can also help you better assess the forces for and against change.
Once you have identified the forces for and against change, you can list them separately on two different slides. When presenting before your audience, start with a brief introduction of the situation, followed by forces for and against change in separate slides. This can help you get ample time for presenting your analysis in a systematic manner.
3. Score Each Force
To make your analysis more meaningful, you need to score the forces listed in your slides. You can score them from weak to strong, in order to identify which of the forces are the strongest and weakest in terms of influencing the outcome. Say there are 5 forces on each side but 4 out of 5 of the negative forces are strong and 2 out of 5 of the positive forces are strong, in such a case, you might end up with an outcome which is unfavorable for the decision you are about to take. If you still intend to move on with your decision, you will first have to remove the ‘hurdles’.
A good way to highlight the significance of each force can be to use a 1–5 scale, with one being the least and 5 being the most influencing force. You can use arrows to represent each force in a column chart manner,, with bigger arrows depicting more force and smaller arrows showing a weaker influence.
When presenting before an executive audience, you might be in a situation where you are actually seeking the advice or decision of your bosses in order to take the best course of action. Being truthful and blunt might just help you get the best possible feedback.
4. Present an Analysis of the Decision
So far, we have discussed a Force Field Analysis presentation format, which entails presenting a brief overview of the situation, followed by slides listing the positive and negative forces influencing the situation, including a score given to each force. For the latter, you can even create a separate slide to discuss the strength of each force in detail. You can conclude your presentation with an analysis of the decision and if you think, it is worth pursuing.
In case a single section for your presentation entails a discussion and the discussion takes too long, it might not be a bad idea to add short breaks to let your audience relax and discuss out the findings during the break. For example, you can present your slide with positive forces influencing the goal and initiate a discussion with your audience.
Final Words
A Force Field Analysis aims to help understand if a decision can have a positive or negative impact on an organization. Many organizations often suffer from employee resentment due to the lack of consideration of the individuals up the hierarchy for the well-being of the workforce at the bottom of the organizational ladder. Many organizations in recent years have invested heavily in their workforce to keep them motivated and satisfied. From company stock options to recreational facilities, organizations today are looking at satisfying their workforce and to allay the fears of key stakeholders. Similarly, many organizations, for instance, are moving towards greener energy to reduce the environmental impact their production processes are generating, hence, getting a nod of approval from key stakeholders such as environmental activists and consumers.
When presenting your force Field Analysis, it is advised to be open to acquiring feedback to better understand what might be the best course of action. You can also opt for various feedback and polling tools online for this purpose.
When creating a Force Field Analysis, it is best to try to understand the perspective of all your key stakeholders and deliberate upon the pros and cons of your decision. Sometimes, such an analysis might help identify and rectify issues, which might have badly hampered the progress of your organization in the wake of an essential policy decision.
Force Field Analysis PowerPoint Templates
To help you implement the aforementioned Force Field Analysis format we have a number of useful templates that you can use. These templates are flexible enough to allow you to create a robust Force Field Analysis based on not only the format we have discussed but also in a custom format you might have in mind. These PowerPoint templates provide slides for making single and individual diagrams depicting the pros and cons associated with a goal or decision under discussion. You can move around the slide objects, recolor and resize them to create the slides which best suit your needs.
Originally published at https://slidemodel.com on October 25, 2018.
