Change is the only constant. You’ll face more changes in the next year than you have in the last three years. You read that there is and will be lots of change. You don’t need me to tell you about it. However, this does create a management challenge, because many managers struggle to manage change well. This is important because when you and your team members fail to transition, lots of problems get worse. Stack more changes on top of that situation, and the work environment will begin to look and feel very chaotic. This is when people start to burn out and leave. Forget everything regarding pull, because all that goes out the window if employees are too stressed and frazzled to engage.

You should not implement a change without considering the process people go through to transition. Transition is the inner process through which people come to terms with a change. It is the path people have to take to react to and get comfortable with change. The process includes letting go of the way things used to be and growing more at ease with the way things are now. Transition is personal. Each individual will transition at a different speed and in a different way when they’re reacting to various changes. In an organization, managing transition means helping people make this process less painful and troublesome. Changes are external; transitions are internal.

Change is very important, but most companies—and most managers—don’t invest the time and attention required to ensure that employees transition well. That’s a shame because managing transitions isn’t rocket science. In fact, when you understand the nature of transition, it’s relatively easy to do.

Learning How People Transition

In 1991, William Bridges published an important book, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change, which addressed how people respond to change. According to Bridges, change and transition are not the same thing. Change is a situation where something transforms: Jobs are added or eliminated, the company merges with a competitor, health benefits decrease or increase, new software is loaded, regulatory requirements increase, or the company reorganizes. Transition is a process of coming to terms with change. To manage a change successfully, managers need to understand and take into account how people transition. Bridges created a transition model describing three phases: ending, the neutral zone, and new beginning, which are outlined in the next sections. Figure 9-1 shows how these phases flow and overlap. There are other models of personal transition, but the Bridges Transition Model is the most comprehensive and has stood the test of time. If you’re familiar with my previous books, this is the model I always use and refer to. It’s my favorite change management model.

Phase 1: Ending

Every transition begins with an ending, a loss. When things change, employees leave behind the way things used to be. They are left searching for a new way to define their reality. Even if the change is perceived as positive, there is some loss and something that is ending. Before you can transition to the new beginning, you must let go of the way that things used to be.

Sometimes people resist giving up ways and practices that have made them successful in the past. They are reluctant to give up what feels comfortable.

Phase 2: Neutral Zone

The neutral zone is a confusing in-between state, when people are on their way to the new beginning. They are no longer in the past, but not yet to the new beginning, either. It’s that ambiguous place in the middle that feels murky. They might feel lost. For some, the neutral zone is so full of confusion that getting through it drains their energies. People are driven to get out of the neutral zone, and some rush ahead while others retreat into the past. But neither of these approaches is advisable because the neutral zone has a purpose.

While the neutral zone can be confusing or even distressing, it also can be a very creative place. Time in the neutral zone is not wasted; this is where the real transformation takes place. The change can continue forward on something close to its own schedule while the transition is being attended to, but if the transition is not dealt with, the change may collapse. People cannot do the things that the new situation requires until they come to grips with what is being asked of them.

Phase 3: New Beginning

The new beginning can happen only after people have let go of the past and spent some time in the neutral zone. In this phase, people accept the reality of the change and start to identify with their new situation.

Some people fail to get through the transition because they do not let go of the old ways and make an ending; others fail because they become frightened and confused by the neutral zone and don’t stay in it long enough. Some, get through these first two phases of transition, but then freeze when they face the third phase. The new beginning requires people to behave in a new way, and that can be concerning because it tests one’s competence and sense of value. Employees will hang back during the final phase of transition if the organization has been known to punish people for mistakes. They will wait to see how others handle the new beginning before jumping in.

Tool 9-1 describes possible behaviors that you might see in each transition phase. A person may display one, more than one, or none of the behaviors, but these are the most common.

Managing Your Ability to Transition

You’ve probably seen the safety video on airplane flights—the one in which they tell you, in the event of a loss of cabin pressure, to put your oxygen mask on first before trying to help a child or someone else. I know many parents whose first impulse would be to help their children first. But when it comes to organizational transition, it is important that you put your oxygen mask on first, and then help your team members. You’re going to be a lousy leader of change if you’re struggling to transition. We can’t be stuck and helping others move forward at the same time.

Take a look at the techniques in the next section for helping others. You can apply those same techniques to help yourself transition. Here are some examples:

• Define what’s changing for you. What is ending and what are you losing? Mark the ending.

• Make sure you’re clear about your part in the transition. Talk to your manager and share your questions and concerns.

• Be patient with yourself; expect that you might have a range of emotions and reactions. This is fine; we all transition in different ways and at differing speeds.

• Set realistic goals for yourself and celebrate successes—even small ones!

If you find that you’re struggling with a change, talk to your manager or a trusted peer. Do whatever it takes to make the transition, and then help your team members.

Helping Others Transition

You have a huge opportunity to help your team members, peers, and even your manager (coaching up! help your manager help you and others) transition to changes.

Planning Strategies (Before the Change Is Implemented)

Here are a few strategies to use when planning the transition:

• Talk about transition with your employees. Share the Bridges model so they can help you help others transition and be more aware of their personal reactions.

• Be clear with people about what is ending—from your perspective and their points of view. Identify what they’ll lose and how behaviors and attitudes will need to change.

• Plan and schedule communications. Be sure you plan for lots of communication carried on in a variety of ways, including announcement meetings, smaller discussion meetings, daily briefings, handouts, and managing by walking around.

• Learn as much as you can about the change from your manager and peers. Use the structure of the 4 Ps (picture, purpose, plan, and part) to create a shared understanding that will help everyone leading and involved in the change. What’s the picture? What’s the purpose? What’s the plan? What’s my part?

Ending Strategies

Here are a few strategies to use when planning to help your team through the ending phase of transition:

• Communicate, communicate, and communicate. Err on the side of too much communication. Explain the need for the change and why the change makes sense now. Communicate the 4Ps. Define and communicate what is and is not changing.

• Mark the ending. One of the reasons people get stuck in the ending phase is that they don’t acknowledge what’s ending; they hang on to the old ways. Mark the ending in a respectful and clear way. Openly acknowledge losses.

• Don’t be blindsided by people who seem to overreact. Everyone’s transition is different, so ensure that you’re ready to experience a wide variety of responses.

• Regularly check in with your manager to update them and reinforce what you’re doing to mark the ending and help those moving into the fuzzy neutral zone.

Neutral Zone Strategies

Consider these strategies so you can help team members through the neutral zone:

• Continue to communicate the 4Ps.

• Create temporary systems, roles, policies, and processes to help normalize the neutral zone.

• Set realistic productivity targets; expect some slowdowns.

• Provide training and development to help raise competence and maintain confidence.

• Encourage people to share ideas and participate in refining the details of the change. The neutral zone can be a very creative time, and you want to take advantage of that. Encourage experimentation and idea brainstorming.

• Get people involved in the change plan and working together to make the change seem less isolating.

• Partner with your manager to plan for and agree on temporary practices, roles, and opportunities.

New Beginning Strategies

Here are a few strategies that will help you plan for your team’s transition to the new beginning:

• Continue to communicate the 4Ps. Ensure that you communicate often and with consistency. Be open about setbacks and challenges and enlist people to be part of the solution.

• Celebrate successes, even small ones. Reward people for making the transition.

• Ensure that temporary policies and structures are replaced with ones that are consistent with the new situation.

• Reflect on the change and the transitions that people have made. Measure the effectiveness of the change process and identify any outstanding action items.

When in doubt, share the model and communicate the 4Ps! If people don’t transition successfully, they can’t perform well. Transition is a team competency that, once developed, will serve you and your team through the many changes to come.

Improve Departmental Agility

Helping employees transition well is critical and goes a long way toward ensuring that your team responds well to change. In addition to managing transition, there are things you can do to build team agility and change readiness.

What do I mean by agility? Agility is our capacity to be consistently adaptable without having to change. It is the efficiency with which we can respond to nonstop change. Let’s break down this definition, because I know it might be a new way to think about change:

• Consistently adaptable. When we are consistently adaptable, we can modify how, when, and where something is completed with the same confidence and efficiency that we use to run a routine report. Zigging and zagging is second nature and being adaptable does not cause great stress or worry.

• Without having to change. Returning to our definition of agility, what does without having to change mean? What would this look like in action? Imagine a professional tennis player named Bjorn. In between tournaments, Bjorn practices dozens of shots with a variety of practice partners on hard, grass, and clay courts. Each tennis match is unique, but he will be better able to respond to each new challenge because he has trained himself to adapt quickly. As business professionals, we can train in the same way and increase our ability to respond to new situations without having to change our overall approach.

• Efficient responses. When individuals resist change, the efficiency with which they can adapt is reduced because a part of their attention and time is spent moving away from the direction of progress. When we do not resist and, in fact, are highly adaptable, we can progress toward our goals faster and with fewer diversions. Resistance creates organizational mental garbage that can build up and contribute to a culture that will be hard to combat or change.

Sounds great, right? And daunting to think about? Well don’t worry, building agility is straightforward and can be done during the normal course of your current daily practices. That said, agility is a systems-based capacity, not a singular trait. It takes more than will, or an open mind, to be flexible. Agility will allow team members to build into everyday practices an ability to nimbly respond to changing circumstances and take advantage of emerging opportunities. When your team is agile, changes do not stress members as much because this is a normal way of working.

What can managers do to build team agility? You can improve nimbleness in three systemic (systemic, as in systems thinking, not computer/IT systems) components including focus, resources, and performance:

• Focus (direction of the work): What people are doing. This includes how you define goals and priorities and your planning practices. We’ve explored these areas quite a bit in this book. The more inclusive and flexible your planning processes, the better they will support team agility.

• Resources (speed of outputs): How you spend financial, time, and people assets and whether you have regular mechanisms to reassess and realign your resource allocations. This is not just about how many people you employ or how many hours they each work, but also how you define roles and whether you regularly realign roles and responsibilities. Management of costs and opportunity costs (loss of potential gain when one alternative is chosen over another) also fall into this category.

• Performance (efficiency of the work): How success is measured and reinforced, and how capability is created. This element focuses on metrics of all kinds and the formal and informal ways we ensure we know how things are going. If you have a good pulse on current strengths and barriers, you and your team members can comfortably respond and adjust to keep performance humming and on track.

These bullet points might seem more philosophical than practical, but I wanted to explain the concept of agility in a way that might give you ideas for how you can increase agility in your department. Tool 9-2 offers several simple practices that can help.

Many of the management techniques we’ve explored in the first eight steps help improve agility. That’s by design because as a manager, your job is to bring out the best in others and agility is an enabling factor.

If you help employees transition and “bake in” organizational agility practices, you and your team members will be able and prepared to respond to continuous change and say, bring it on.

Building ACCEL Skills

The management techniques we’ve explored in step 9, “Manage Change and Transition,” will help you build the following ACCEL skills:

• Communication: Many of the techniques we explored in this step will help you practice effective communication skills that are specific, open, and helpful for enabling transition.

• Listening and assessing: Since transition is the process for how we, as humans, react to changes, listening plays a significant role. Managers who practice communicating the 4Ps, for example, will hone their ability to listen fully and assess the meaning of what employees say, even when their concerns are not initially obvious or clear.

Your Turn

Here are a few ways you can build your skills at managing change and transition.

• Use the Bridges Transition Model to help you plan for and manage your next change.

• Share the model with your team and create communication strategies that will help you facilitate transition.

• Talk openly with your team members about the phases of transition and remember that each person may transition differently.

• Read William Bridges’s book, Managing Transitions. It includes a case study exercise that management teams should do together before implementing any large change initiative.

• Brainstorm ways to improve departmental agility regarding focus, resources, and performance systemic components.

The Next Step

This step helped you learn about agility and how to help employees transition. In the next and final step, you’ll tap into your reasons for managing and the ways you can define the legacy you want to leave.