TABLE OF CONTENTS The period in which you prepare people for change is often referred to as the unfreezing stage. Of course, you can't embark on this until you yourself know what form the change is going to take. There is nothing more likely to cause mounting levels of anxiety than making an announcement that there is going to be change and then not saying anything more about it. So the first thing you need to do in any major change is to define its scope that is, produce a broad outline of what it will involve.
When considering a major change, it is useful to think of it as a project, or even as a number of projects. Doing this will help you to define the scope of the change, as in the following example.
Stella was the manager of a long-established health club which was beginning to lose clients to a new club that had opened up a couple of miles away. From talking to the reception staff about various comments made by clients, she knew there had been several causes for complaint, including:
changing and shower facilities not always as clean as they might be;
pieces of equipment in the gym often faulty or broken down completely;
general lack of interest among staff in client progress with exercise regimes in the gym;
bottlenecks for various items of apparatus at most popular times;
reception and cafe areas not very inviting;
