By William Bridges with Susan Bridges
As organizational health specialist Pat Lencioni says, "change and transition are very different animals." In Managing Transitions: Making The Most Of Change, Bill and Susan Bridges are going to help you tame the transitional beast. As they say, "If you want to know where--and how--to start charting your way through chaos, this book is for you." (p. xv)
Transition can be chaos. The author's note, "It isn't the changes that will do you in; it's the transitions." Why? Because change is situational, transition is psychological. For example, moving out an old CEO and bringing in a new CEO in is simple; helping the organization walk through that shift is hard. Connections to the old leader can be difficult to release. Trust in the new leader can only come with time. Normalcy has been uprooted; it will take time to re-root.
For me, the heart of the Managing Transitions is their diagram, The Three Phases of Transition found on page 5.
1. Ending, Losing, Letting Go: Letting go of the old ways and the old identity people had. You can't experience a new beginning unless you have a successful ending.
2. The Neutral Zone: Going through in-between time when the old is gone but the new is not fully operational. Critical psychological realignments and repatternings take place here. This can be an emotional wilderness as letting go and new connections takes place. It takes time!
3. The New Beginning: All the good things that happen as the organization comes out of the transition to make the new beginning. New identify and energy is found here.
It is important to note that while these are sequential stages, the stages of the transition process overlap. Moving from one to the next is less about walking through a doorway and more like slowing merging from one lane to the next. Bridges and Bridges write:
Perhaps it would be more accurate to think of them as three processes and to say that the transition cannot be completed until all three have taken place.
Understanding the basic concept behind managing transitions (the three phases) is easy, but actually managing all that transition is hard. That's why the authors devote the balance of the book to explaining how to do it.
Managing Transitions is such a helpful tool. It has served me well as I transitioned to the presidency of Lancaster Bible College | Capital Seminary and Graduate School. Here are a few of my takeaways:
1. Transition: Transition takes longer than change. 160
2. Transition: Transition takes massive amounts of energy. 179
3. Ending: People are not in the market for solutions to problems they do not see. Sell the problem that is the reason for the change. (p. 18)
4. Letting go: It is the losses, not the change that people are reacting to . . . "that it's a piece of their world that is being lost, not a piece of ours." Work to determine what people are losing (p. 30-31). It helps when we parade the past (celebrate it) not denigrate it.
5. Letting go: People will get depressed over the change . . . "People need to go through it, not around it." People need to experience their sadness. It's okay. It's necessary.
6. The Neutral Zone: The task here is two-fold: (1) to get your people through this phase in one piece, (2) to capitalize on the confusion by encouraging them to innovate. (p. 49) Set short-range goals (p. 53).
7. The Neutral Zone: Use a Transition Monitoring Team (TMT). (1) This team must have a clear purpose (not decision-making or managing). (2) Don't give it to ae VP. (3) The TMT must have the leader's ear. (4) The team has a limited life-span. (5) Report back what you hear from the TMT. Makes sure you turn every setback into an opportunity to improve (p. 55-58). See also page 170
8. The New Beginning: People must make a new beginning and these beginnings should be nurtured like a plant. (p. 66) "You need to explain the purpose behind the new beginning clearly." Help people understand the purpose of the new beginning for the organization and for them. (p. 69) IF YOU DON'T HAVE THIS, IT WILL BE VERY HARD TO GET OUT THE NEUTRAL ZONE. You need to give people a picture of the new future (p. 72-73)
9. The New Beginning: It is 7 parts communication and 3 parts strategy. Here are four rules: (1) Be consistent in your messaging; (2) Ensure quick successes (short-term wins); (3) Symbolize the new identity - what symbolic gestures can help here? (4) Celebrate the success! (p. 78-82)
10. Transition, Development, and Renewal: There are seven stages of organizational life: (1) Dreaming the dream; (2) Launching the venture; (3) Getting organized; (4) Making it; (5) Becoming an institution; (6) Closing in (becoming an unresponsive bureaucracy); (7) Dying.
IMPORTANT: Transitions are the dynamic interludes between one of the seven stages of organizational life and the next.
11. All the other stuff: Listen. People are most resistant when they are most at home.
Lessons from "How to Deal with Nonstop Change:
1. Change-addicted leaders are dangerous leaders. (p. 113)
2. When you have too many changes to manage effectively "you simply have to cut some out." (p. 113)
3. Change requires knowing clearly what you are trying to do. (p. 117)
4. Rebuilding truth: See pages 119 -120 for eleven insights.
5. SELL PROBLEMS, NOT SOLUTIONS. People will let go of "outlived arrangements and by-gone values more readily if they are convinced that there is a serious problem that demands a solution.
Until someone buys the problem, they won't buy the solution (p. 122, 140)
Quotes to ponder:
1. Change: Diseases always attack men when they are exposed to change. Herodotus
2. Change: Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof. John Kenneth Galbraith
3. Transition: We think in generalities, but we live in detail. Alfred North Whitehead
4. Letting Go: Almost anything is easier to get into than out of. Agnes Allen, American Writer
5. Letting Go: The past is to be respected and acknowledged but not worshiped; it is our future in which we will find our greatness. Pierre Trudeau, Former Canadian Prime Minister
6. Neutral Zone: An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly understood. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly understood. G.K. Chesterton
7. New Beginnings: "Beginnings are always messy." John Galsworthy, British Novelist
8. New Beginnings: One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea. Walter Bagehot, British Political Scientist
9. Non-stop change: "On the whole the great ages have been unstable ages." Alfred North Whitehead
10. Management by objectives works if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't. Peter Drucker
If you are walking through change and transition, Managing Transitions: Making The Most Of Change is a must-have tool for your leadership toolbox.