Satir Change Model

The model follows a group's performance and feelings over time, from one stable state to the next.

1. Late status quo. Work is familiar and performance is predictable, even if not ideal.
2. Resistance. A foreign element arrives: a new system, a reorganization, a new leader. People first push it away by denying, avoiding or blaming.
3. Chaos. The old ways no longer work and the new ones are not yet in place. Feelings run high and performance becomes erratic, often dropping.
4. Integration. A transforming idea helps people see how the new element can work for them. They practice, and performance climbs.
5. New status quo. The change becomes the new normal, usually at a higher level than before.

Versions differ: some treat resistance as part of the reaction to the foreign element rather than as a separate stage.

The Satir change model therefore describes change as a passage through chaos, triggered from outside and resolved from inside.

Virginia Satir was an American family therapist. She used the model to help families and individuals understand why a change, even a welcome one, first makes things feel worse. It is described in *The Satir Model: Family Therapy and Beyond*, written with John Banmen, Jane Gerber and Maria Gomori.

Gerald M. Weinberg later applied it to software teams and their managers, and software consultants such as Steven M. Smith spread it in technology practice.

The Satir change model is therefore a therapy model that crossed into management, not a framework designed for organizations.

At Larchfield Logistics, a new warehouse management system goes live. A change manager uses the model to plan support for each stage.

• Before go-live: tell supervisors to expect a dip, so they do not read it as failure or punish it.
• Resistance: listen to objections and separate real defects from discomfort with the new.
• Chaos: protect people from extra pressure, keep targets realistic and avoid adding more change.
• Integration: surface the transforming idea, for example a picker showing how the scanner saves walking. Then give time to practice.
• New status quo: confirm the new routines and measure whether performance has settled above the old level.

Used this way, the Satir change model helps leaders tolerate chaos instead of cutting it short.

The model's strength is its plain message: a dip in performance is a normal part of change, and the way out comes from a new understanding, not from more pressure.

Its evidence base is clinical experience, not controlled research in organizations, and the shape of the curve is illustrative rather than measured.

It describes what people experience but gives no guidance on sponsorship, structure, communication planning or reinforcement. It also assumes one foreign element at a time, while many organizations run overlapping changes.

The Satir change model is therefore best used as a shared language for the human side of change, alongside a process model.