What does it mean to successfully manage a transition during organisational change?
Many leaders focus on the change, the event.
They announce it once or twice, roll it out, and wonder why people aren’t on board six months later.
To answer that and discover how to manage transitions well, we need to look at transition management, instead of change management.
William Bridges made a distinction between change and transition.
Change is situational, external, while transition is the internal psychological process people go through as they adapt to that change.
You can implement a change relatively quickly. Transition takes much, much longer.
Every transition begins with an ending. Before people can embrace what’s new, they have to let go of what was.
If you want to lead transition well, your first job is to acknowledge what’s being lost, to name it. That gives people the chance to process the ending.
After the ending comes what Bridges called the “neutral zone”.
This is the in-between.
The old way is gone but the new way hasn’t taken hold yet.
In this phase productivity dips, people feel disoriented, even when the change itself was done well.
During the neutral zone people need structure, honest communication, and the psychological safety to say “I don’t have this figured out yet.”
As a leader, your job in this phase is to be calm in the chaos, not another source of pressure.
A new beginning sticks when people have gone through the first two phases.
In order to do that, they need to understand the purpose behind the change, they need to understand their place in the organisation after the change, and they need to feel they’re being treated with respect throughout the process.
Here are 4 concrete ideas you can start with, in order to you manage the transition:
- Figure out exactly how employees’ behaviour and attitudes will need to change: what needs to change in behaviour and how it needs to look.
- Talk about the problem that is the reason for the change, not just the new solution that will be adopted. Tell them why this change is happening repeatedly.
- Ask employees what problems they have working together. What problems are they having with this new way of doing things?
- Hold regular team meetings (for example every week).
Transition management is one of the leadership skills needed more and more these days.
If you’d like to talk about it, message me for a free 30 minute conversation.
