When I present the work of culture change to organizations I often joke, “You thought your job was managing change . . . but it is actually grief counseling!” Of course, they laugh. But it is an important reminder about a serious consequences of change.

The textbook approaches to change deal with what I call the left-brain side, steps like:

1. Create the burning platform: If we don't change, we die!
2. Build an “A” team: Aligned, committed, and competent.
3. Provide a compelling positive vision of a better future: If we do change, we live!
4. Clear first steps, remove obstacles: The first steps are easy, just do it.
5. Go for quick wins: Tackle the low-hanging fruit to build confidence and momentum.
6. Recruit your champion: Find early adopters who are respected and can provide strong influence.
7. Repeat steps 1 and 2 often.
8. Let people have a voice and express their aspirations and fears.

These are all logical, linear, and left-brained.

However, deep change is a right-brain emotional experience. As those caught in profound change go through the process, they have to cope with a sense of loss, unbalance, insecurity, fear, and incompetence. Unless and until people see the positive potential of life on the other side of the disruption of change, they will resist.

Leaders make a great mistake when they rush from strategy to execution without factoring the right brain attempting to cope with the loss. The process of coping can often look like resistance. And if coping is read as defiance (as some of it will be) rather than loss, the reaction to the resistance will usually turn up the heat and pressure. That will turn vulnerability and grief into real defiance. That often leads to an unnecessary transition quagmire.

The boat analogy, used earlier in the book, may be helpful here. Remember there are three people in the front of the boat engaged and rowing, five in the middle watching and waiting for instruction, and two in the back drilling a hole in the bottom of the boat. The leverage point for leaders may be found in easing the transition for the five in the middle. That also more clearly exposes the toxic two in the back of the boat.