Managing Transitions Quotes

“the outlook, attitudes, values, self-images, and ways of thinking that were functional in the past have to “die” before people can be ready for life in the present.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“One of the most difficult aspects of the neutral zone is that most people don’t understand it. They expect to be able to move straight from the old to the new. But this isn’t a trip from one side of the street to the other. It’s a journey from one identity to another, and that kind of journey takes time.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“The task before you is therefore twofold: first, to get your people through this phase of transition in one piece; and second, to capitalize on all the confusion by encouraging them to be innovative.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“Lacking clear systems and signals, the neutral zone is a chaotic time, but this lack is also the reason the neutral zone is more hospitable to new ideas than settled times. Because the neutral zone automatically puts people into Bessemer’s situation, it is a time that is ripe with creative opportunity.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“It is for these reasons that managing the neutral zone is so essential during a period of enormous change. Neutral zone management isn’t just something that would be nice if you had more time. It’s the only way to ensure that the organization comes through the change intact and that the necessary changes actually work the way that they are supposed to.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“In the neutral zone, people are overloaded, they frequently get mixed signals, and systems are in flux and more unreliable. It is only natural that priorities get confused, information is miscommunicated, and important tasks go undone. It is also natural that with so much uncertainty and frustration, people lose confidence in the organization’s future and turnover begins to rise.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“Old weaknesses, previously patched over or compensated for, reemerge in full flower.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“What the neutral zone is and why it exists can be seen in figure 4.1. It is a time when all the old clarities break down and everything is in flux. Things are up in the air. Nothing is a given anymore, and anything could happen. No one knows the answers: one person says one thing and someone else says something completely different.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“you enter a state of affairs in which neither the old ways nor the new ways work satisfactorily. People are caught between the demands of conflicting systems and end up immobilized”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“The single biggest reason organizational changes fail is because no one has thought about endings or planned to manage their impact on people. Naturally concerned about the future, planners and implementers all too often forget that people have to let go of the present first. They forget that while the first task of change management is to understand the desired outcome and how to get there, the first task of transition management is to convince people to leave home.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“A corollary to this idea is that the past, which people are likely to idealize during an ending,”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“Be careful that in urging people to turn away from the past you don’t drive them away from you or from the new direction that the organization needs to take. Present innovations as developments that build on the past and help to realize its potential. Honor the past for what it has accomplished”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“Never denigrate the past. Many managers, in their enthusiasm for a future that is going to be better than the past, ridicule or demean the old way of doing things. In doing so they consolidate the resistance against the transition because people identify with the way things used to be and thus feel that their self-worth is at stake whenever the past is attacked.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“Don’t just talk about the endings—create actions or activities that dramatize them.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“One of the most important leadership roles during times of change is that of putting into words what it is time to leave behind. Because talking about making a break with the past can upset its defenders, some leaders shy away from articulating just what it is time to say good-bye to. But in their unwillingness to say what it is time to let go of, they are jeopardizing the very change that they believe they are leading.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“One of the biggest problems that endings cause in an organization is confusion. Things change, and obviously the organization won’t do some of the things it used to do.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“We don’t know all the details yet ourselves, so there’s no point in saying anything until everything has been decided.” In the meantime, people can get more and more frightened and resentful. It’s much better to say what you do know, say that you don’t know more, and provide a timetable for additional information. If information isn’t available later when it’s promised, don’t forget to say something to show that you haven’t forgotten your promise.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“They already know. We announced it.” Okay, you told them, but it didn’t sink in. Threatening information is absorbed remarkably slowly. Say it again. And find different ways to say it and different media (large meetings, one-on-ones, email, a story on the company website, Tweets) in which to say it.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“The question to ask yourself is this: What can I give back to balance what’s been taken away? Status, turf, team membership, recognition, roles? If people feel that the change has robbed them of control over their futures, can you find some way to give them back a feeling of control?”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“No pain, no gain,” they say. But many change efforts fail because the people affected experience only the pain. The company may gain, but for employees it seems to be all loss. Trying to talk them out of their feelings will get you nowhere.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“Do whatever you can to restore people’s sense of having some control over their situation.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“Depression—feelings of being down, flat, dead; feelings of hopelessness; being tired all the time. Like sadness and anger, depression is hard to be around. You can’t make it go away, however. People need to go through it, not around it.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“As for the rest of the emotions grieving people feel, treat them seriously, but don’t consider them as something you personally caused. Don’t get defensive or argumentative.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“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.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“it is not talking about a loss but rather pretending that it doesn’t exist that stirs up trouble.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“You need to bring losses out into the open—acknowledge them and express your concern for the affected people.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“Learn to look for the loss behind the loss and deal with that underlying issue. You’ll get much further if you can show people that Loss A is really unrelated to the dreaded, larger Loss B than if you simply try to talk them out of their reaction to Loss A.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“This same kind of overreaction occurs when an ending is viewed as symbolic of some larger loss. 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.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“Overreaction” also comes from the experience that people have had with loss in the past. When old losses haven’t been adequately dealt with, a sort of transition deficit is created—a readiness to grieve that needs only a new ending to set it off. We see this when people overreact to the dismissal of an obviously ineffective manager or leader or to some apparently insignificant change in policy or procedure. What they are actually reacting to is one or more losses in the past that have occurred”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

“ACCEPT THE REALITY AND IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECTIVE LOSSES 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. Finally, you’ll just make your task more difficult by convincing people that you don’t understand them—or, worse yet, that you don’t care what they feel and think.”
― William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change