Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

by William Bridges

“This changes everything.”

change and transition are very different animals.

Change and transition are two different animals. why?

They finally come to grips with the fact that the human element, the wonderfully unpredictable part of business and leadership and life that academics and experts so often overlook, is the difference between success and failure, between transformational growth and painful decline.

they must be able to move their organizations from an initial idea to full-scale implementation with little to no time for employees to adjust to the new way of doing things.

People must be allowed to think for themselves, work both independently and collaboratively with greater flexibility, be creative, take risks, and go the extra mile for the customer for optimal results.

People must be allowed to think for themselves and act independently. This includes taking risks.

During such times, a leader might be tempted to take short cuts, or to focus on new tactics for accomplishing quick results.

We caution against that.

“Chaos is not a mess, but rather it is the primal state of pure energy to which the person returns for every true new beginning. . . .”

Chaos is the sign of a new beginning

First, it is still true, as we wrote in 1991, that the results you are seeking depend on getting people to stop doing things the old way and getting them to start doing things a new way. And since people have a personal connection with how they work, there is just no way to do that impersonally.

And, second, transition management is based on some abilities you already have and some techniques you can easily learn.

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.

It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead—and find no one there.

It isn’t the changes that will do you in; it’s the transitions.

Transition, on the other hand, is psychological; it is a three-phase process that people go through as they internalize and come to terms with the details of the new situation that the change brings about.

Managing transition involves not just whopping financial deals but the simple process of helping people through three phases:

Letting go of the old ways and the old identity people had. This first phase of transition is an ending and the time when you need to help people to deal with their losses. 2. Going through an in-between time when the old is gone but the new isn’t fully operational. We call this time the “neutral zone”: it’s when the critical psychological realignments and repatternings take place. 3. Coming out of the transition and making a new beginning. This is when people develop the new identity, experience the new energy, and discover the new sense of purpose that makes the change begin to work.

The 3 pahaases of transitions

transition begins with an ending and finishes with a beginning.

Transitions begin with an ending and end with a beginning! A great title for a sermon!

Transition starts with an ending.

The failure to identify and get ready for endings and losses is the largest difficulty for people in transition. And the failure to provide help with endings and losses leads to more problems for organizations in transition than anything else.

Biggest problem in transitions is acknowledging endings and providing help

Once you understand that transition begins with letting go of something, you have taken the first step in the task of transition management. The second step is understanding what comes after the letting go: the neutral zone. This is the psychological no-man’s-land between the old reality and the new one. It is the limbo between the old sense of identity and the new. It is the time when the old way of doing things is gone, but the new way doesn’t feel comfortable yet.

Painful though it is, the neutral zone is the individual’s and the organization’s best chance to be creative, to develop into what they need to become,

and to renew themselves.

the gap between the old and the new is the time when innovation is most possible and when the organization can most easily be revitalized. The neutral zone is thus both a dangerous and an opportune place, and it is the very core of the transition process. It is the time when repatterning takes place: old and maladaptive habits are replaced with new ones that are better adapted to the world in which the organization now finds itself. It is the winter in which the roots begin to prepare themselves for spring’s renewal. It is the night during which we are disengaged from yesterday’s concerns and preparing for tomorrow’s. It is the chaos into which the old form dissolves and from which the new form emerges. It is the seedbed of the new beginnings that you seek. 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, AMERICAN ECONOMIST Ending—neutral zone—new beginning. You need all three phases, and in that order, for a transition to work. The phases don’t happen separately; they often go on at the same time. Endings are going on in one place, in another everything is in neutral zone chaos, and in yet another place the new beginning is already palpable. Calling them “phases” makes it sound as though they are lined up like cubicles. 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 take...

The problem is, people don’t like endings.

change causes transition, and transition starts with an ending.

I’m not afraid of death. It’s just that I don’t want to be there when it happens.

Describe the change in as much detail as you can. What is actually going to change? Be specific.

Imagine that the change is a cue ball rolling across the surface of a pool table. There are lots of other balls on the table, and it’s going to hit a few of them—some because you planned it that way and some unintentionally.

You have now started a chain of cause-and-effect collisions. Think of the people whose familiar way of being and doing will be affected. In each case, who is going to have to let go of something? What exactly must they let go of? Is it their peer group? Is it the roles that gave them a sense of competence? Is it their chances for promotion? Is it the strategies that fit with their values? Is it their old expectations?

Notice that many of these losses aren’t concrete. They are part of the inner complex of attitudes and assumptions and expectations that we all carry around in our heads.

Beyond these specific losses, is there something that is over for everyone?

Don’t argue with what you hear. In the first place, it will stop the conversation, and you won’t learn any more. In the second place, loss is a subjective experience, and your “objective” view (which is really just another subjective view) is irrelevant.

Don't argue with what you hear!

You need everyone’s commitment because only with commitment will people give 100 percent.

we overlook two things: first, that changes cause transitions, which cause losses, and it is the losses, not the changes, that they’re reacting to; and second, that it’s a piece of their world

that is being lost, not a piece of ours, and we often react that way ourselves when it’s part of our own world that is being lost.

The minor layoff in a company that has never had layoffs before is an example. It isn’t the loss of the particular individuals—it’s the loss of the safety people felt from the no-layoff policy.

ACKNOWLEDGE THE LOSSES OPENLY AND EMPATHICALLY

Acknowledge the losses openly and empathically

When endings take place, people get angry, sad, frightened, depressed, and confused. These emotional states can be mistaken for bad morale, but they aren’t. They are the signs of grieving, the natural sequence of emotions people go through when they lose something that matters to them.

Denial is a natural first stage in the grieving process,

Anger—

Distinguish between the acceptable feelings and unacceptable acting-out behavior:

Bargaining—

Anxiety—

Just keep feeding them the information as it comes and empathize with them when it doesn’t.

Sadness—

Sympathize.

Disorientation—

Depression—

What can I give back to balance what’s been taken away?

This principle of compensating for losses is basic to all kinds of change, and even the most important or beneficial changes often fail because this principle is overlooked.