Upon realizing that your company needs to change, the first step is to “unfreeze” your current process and take a look at how things are done. This means analyzing every step and human interaction for potential improvements, no matter how in-depth you have to go and how much you need to unearth.

By doing this you’re helping to eliminate any existing bias and commonly accepted mistakes. This gives you the perspective you need to change the cause of your problems, rather than just the symptoms.

Unfreezing also applies to your company’s perception of the upcoming change and its natural resistance to it. Forcing sudden change only breeds resentment, so you need to prepare your team for the new elements in order to let them take hold when deployed.

Everyone needs to know what’s wrong with the current pro

I think that this seminal paper might be interesting for you! Koontz, H. (1961). The management theory jungle. Academy of Management journal, 4(3), 174-188.

The commonsensical essence of Kurt Lewin’s three-stage model of change (i.e., unfreeze-change-refreeze) would suggest a minimum of three organic components to any change management theory (and much else): after all, such transitions as birth, growth, and death/rebirth (or, say, introduction, development, and conclusion) characterize much. And so, other stage-based models of change could probably all be restructured into three basic components. That said, organizations that manage to live in “perpetual beta“ (and so embody continuous change) would not need to experience the typical three-fold recurring travails.

Article A Taxonomy of Management Theories

The only constant in the modern world is changing, as K. Weick says. Therefore organizations must become accustomed to existing and increasing their competitiveness in a highly uncertain business environment. In the context of this, there is no need for three stages of change management models. Even the final stage of Levin's model is not partial freezing but partial freezing. Organizations exist on the edge of chaos and must find a successful balance.

Article Corporate Culture Change Management

We need clarity here. Stages if the change process are different from factors causing change. Therefore, we can have threw stages of the change process using Lewin’s typology ((unfreeze-change-refreeze) and another typology of factors (PESTLE: political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental) so that a theoretical framework can be developed?

The less stages you have, the less control over the process you get. PROCI's Change model (also known as ADKAR model) has 5 stages, Kotter's has 8. I personally prefer to work with a minimum of 5 stages instead of Lewin's 3.