Remember that during endings people crave information, although, ironically, they sometimes have trouble remembering it after you have given it to them. Stress can cause that. If people seem distracted, remember that mourning involves a very complicated inner sorting process by which they let go of things that are going away and shift their attention to things that are staying. That takes a surprising amount of energy.
Leaders play an important part in this process by being the ones who define what it is time to let go of and what people do not have to let go of. Some leaders shy away from that task, fearing that focusing on endings will depress people. But remember: it is the fact of an ending, not naming it, that depresses people. A leader who is unable to say what it is time to let go of later finds that people haven’t let go of the past and are stuck in the middle of transition long after they should have made a new beginning.
Leaders need to realize that they communicate more by actions than by words, but during a time of transition leaders may be relying too much on words. This often leads to missed opportunities to send a clear message through timely and symbolic actions. Visiting a remote site, providing timely support, allocating space or money in a new way, reassigning a leader who has been ambivalent about a change, putting on a ceremonial or celebratory event to mark the turning point in a process—any of these actions can help to dramatize an ending and send the message that it is time to let go of the old way of doing things.
ACT 3: IN THE NEUTRAL ZONE
In the neutral zone people feel lost and confused. What are the rules? Who’s in charge of what? What does the new strategy do to the old priorities? They’ve had to let go of some things that all human beings need, and they need help finding replacements. It will help you understand the issues here to remember the acronym CUSP: people need (but currently lack) Control, Understanding, Support, and a clear sense of Priorities. As you watch your people struggle to adjust to the changes, remember that they are searching for ways to do the following:
•Get more control of their situations: They need to feel more in control of their work, their futures, and their lives in general.
•Understand what is happening to them: People function better when they understand the organization’s actions and when they understand the transition process itself. Using transition terms (“ending,” “neutral zone,” “beginning”) helps people to see why they are feeling what they are feeling.
•Regain the feeling of support: Most people had some kind of a support system before the change came along, but change disrupts support systems. During this difficult time, you can offer emotional support, which requires empathy, and you can also make sure that the organization is providing people with the practical support they need.
•Clarify the new priorities: Reinforce them in practice with examples and rewards.
This is the time when it is particularly important for you to express whatever concern you feel for employees and managers. (We put it that way because leaders who really don’t care about their people usually send that message so clearly through their behavior that any words they say to the contrary only mark them as hypocrites.) One action that clearly expresses concern is listening; good communication during the neutral zone has less to do with what you say than with your ability to really hear what others are saying. The TMT is one way to hear, and informal meetings with employees is another.
The neutral zone is also a time to step back and take stock of your own situation. Nothing undermines your ability to lead so much as difficulty handling your own transition. No one leads an organization through a transition without discovering that their own role is changed in the process. Changes in organizational strategy, priorities, cultural values, or business processes may call into question personal plans that you had earlier taken for granted. These changes may also open up new opportunities, although that in turn may require that you make a change—and, of course, a transition. In such cases, you need to ask what it is time to let go of and then follow the path of transition yourself.
ACT 4: DURING THE NEW BEGINNING
It is important that leaders not be so enamored with the details of the changes they are launching that they sacrifice the spirit of the outcome that the changes were intended to produce. Leaders who become emotionally wedded to their “plans” sometimes fail to distinguish between incidentals and fundamentals, and end up establishing the former at the expense of the latter. This shows up when a TMT reports that some particular plan isn’t working as it was intended to and, instead of responding flexibly, the leader insists on following the letter of a law that is unworkable. Beginnings go better when there is enough flex in the system that people can customize situations to fit them. Leaders who understand that can bring people out into whatever Promised Land they’ve been heading for. Leaders who don’t understand that spend so much time looking for the intended entrance into the Promised Land that they never get in.
Good transition leaders automatically think of rewarding new behavior and attitudes. You need to remember that when people are trying out new behaviors that don’t yet feel normal or natural, rewards can be disproportionately effective.
You also need to remember that you are much further into the new beginning than your people are. You have known about the change for much longer, you have a bigger-picture view of the reasons for it, you may be more familiar with alternatives to the old way of doing things than others are, and your identity may well be less tied to the old way of doing things than other people’s are. It is also important not to take your advantages personally—that is, it is unlikely that you are further along in your transition than others because you are smarter or a better person. You are simply going to be able to make your new beginnings before your people are, and until they catch up, they are going to have different needs than you do. You must realize that not everyone has the same outlook or needs as you do.
ACT 5: AFTER THE TRANSITION
Most leaders just bounce from one change to the next, but every change represents a chance to take stock of how you and the organization actually fared during the transition that the change generated. Such stock-taking (and the improvements in style and method and resources that can come from it) is a critical element of organizational improvement efforts and needs to be part of any significant change. Few organizations are set up to make times of constant transition go smoothly. Many executives function as though transition were an occasional state rather than the way things are today.
But enhancing an organization’s transition-ability, or that of its leaders, is one of those ideas that gets put aside unless some senior leader gets behind them. Part of leading an organization through transition is assessing and enhancing its ability to deal with transition. The urgency and pace of change is such that many leaders feel too rushed to do this. They are like an organization we consulted with that was so concerned with opening new sites and closing old ones that it never developed a standard way to do either. Every time, the process had to be invented from scratch—at least until somebody said, “Hey, we’ve done this before. We must know how to do it.” Actually, it was one of their leaders who said it.
aThat Moses did not enter the Promised Land symbolizes the fact that the style of leadership has to change as a new beginning is being launched. The transformation of the people is finished at that point, and a more “transactional” sort of leader is needed. That was Joshua—a much more conventional figure than Moses. In modern organizational settings, the same leader can perform both functions, but it is still true that the heavy lifting of transition is done in the endings and the neutral zone and that a shift occurs as the new beginning takes place. That new beginning simply makes manifest the identity and purpose that were discovered and created in the wilderness—changes that were made possible by the letting go of the old ways that launched the transition and that is symbolized in Exodus by “leaving Egypt.”
Index
Actions, consistency in, 78–79
Ada
ms, Henry, 49
Adizes, Ichak, 87, 106n4
“Adopt a Customer” program, 18
Adulthood, in organizational life cycle, 91
Albertsons, 39
Allen, Agnes, 27
Allen, Woody, 29
Almaden Winery, 40
Andrus Family Fund (AFF), 155–57
Anger, 33, 142, 152
Anxiety, 33, 46, 153
Arnaz, Desi, 124
Athens, 123–124
Authoritarian style, 123
Bacon, Francis, 10
Bagehot, Walter, 68
Baggage, unloading old, 121–122
Ball, Lucille, 124
Bankruptcy, 93
Bargaining, 33
Beginning(s)
ambivalence toward, 66–67
checklist for managing new, 83–84
clarifying and communicating purpose of, 69–72
and creating plan, 75–76
launching new, 65–66
leader’s role in, 181–82
and organizational picture, 72–75
and path of renewal, 103
reinforcing new, 78–82
timing of, 68–69
Behavior
anger and, 33
changing, 6–7, 18, 79, 97–98
forecasting and, 115
modeling, 20, 57, 78–79
rewarding new, 165, 181
rewarding old, 19
Benetton, 4–5, 6
Bergson, Henry, 58
Bessemer, Henry, 48
Bonuses, 21, 22
Brother, 57
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 8
Budget cuts, 71, 145
Burke, Edmund, 41
Career center, 143
CEO
dispersing information through, 140, 141, 146
firing, 146
redefined as “team coordinator,” 147
selling problem to, 140
Challenge and response, cycle of, 123–125
Change management plan, 75–76
“Change managers,” 21, 141
Change(s). See also Nonstop change, dealing with
and accepting reality and importance of losses, 30
acknowledging loss accompanying, 31–32
adjusting to, 112–113
in behavior, 6–7
communicating, 36–37
and dealing with endings and losses, 29–30
defining, 37–38
discomfort in, 8
explaining, to employees, 142, 148, 178
introducing, 22, 42
and letting go, 27–28
opportunities created by, 173
overreaction to, 31
postponing “extra,” 113
simultaneous, 110–111
strategy for, 111–112
success or failure of, 6
survivors of, 151–153
taking advantage of, 173–176
test cases for managing, 13–23, 133–149
training on emotional impact of, 142
versus transition, 3, 7, 23, 160, 163
Chapter 11 bankruptcy, 93
Chekhov, Anton, 69
Chesterfield, Philip Stanhope, Earl of, 33
Chesterton, G. K., 51
Clark, Septima Poinsette, 88
Client visits, 18
Closing In phase, 92, 97–98
Closure ceremonies, 143
Communication, 36–37. See also Information; Transition Monitoring Teams
and announcing transitions, 140–141
in installments, 148
in institutional phase, 97
letting go and, 179
in neutral zone, 53–54, 180–181
regarding purpose of new beginning, 69–72
sensitivity in, 139
and transition monitoring team, 54–56
Compensation
for losses, 34–36
as reward, 19
structure, 147–148
Competition, 123–24, 147
Conflicting messages, 78
Consistency, 37, 78–79
Continuous-aim firing, 97–98
Continuous improvement, 117
Cortés, Hernando, 38–39
Cost-saving suggestions, 144
Creativity, encouraging, 56–59
Credibility, of management, 140
Cubicles, 20, 21
CUSP acronym, 180
Customer service, test case regarding, 13–23
Cycle of challenge and response, 123–125
Dana Corporation, 38
Death, in organizational life cycle, 93
Deception, 71
Deffand, Marquise du, 114
Demotions, 28, 34–35
Denial, 33
Depression, 34, 142
Desks, rearranging, 20, 21
Di Lampedusa, Giuseppe, 93
DiPietro, Joe, 81–82
Disciplinary action, 23
Discomfort
in change, 8
in sharing information, 37
Disorientation, 34
“Downsizing suggestion plan,” 146
Draghi, Mario, 53
Dream
innovation and, 93–94
in organizational life cycle, 89
and organizational renewal, 100
Drucker, Peter, 59, 119
Du Bos, Charles, 96
DuPont, 18
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 20
Emotions, 33–34, 180
Employees
assessing trust level of, 178
career advice for, of organizations in transition, 173–176
retained, 151–153
Employee suggestions, 144, 146, 148
Endings/letting go
accepting reality and importance of, 30
and ambivalence toward beginnings, 67
anticipating, 164
checklist for managing, 43–44
closure ceremonies, 143
communicating, 36–37
dealing with, 29–30
defining, 37–38
getting people to let go, 27–29
grieving at, 32–33
leader’s role in, 179
marking, 38–39
and mementos, 40–41, 81
overreaction to, 31
and path of renewal, 102
as protection of continuity of bigger things, 41–42
and talking about past, 39–40
and transition readiness, 160
transitions beginning with, 8–9, 18
Example, serving as, 20, 57, 78–79
Executive team
reorganization of, 147
salary cuts for, 145
Experimentation, encouraging, 57–58
Extra changes, postponing, 113
Exxon, 152
Family Day, 53
Feedback, 120. See also Transition Monitoring Teams
Ferguson, Marilyn, 45
Five JobShift Steps, 174–176
Forecasting, 114–115
Forest Service, 35
France, Anatole, 28
Free agents, 174
Future, preparing for, 114–116
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 10
Galsworthy, John, 66
Getting Organized stage, 90–91, 100–101
Gide, André, 45
Goals, short-range, 52
Goethe, Wolfgang von, 92
Golde, Roger, 59–60
Gramsci, Antonio, 46
GRASS acronym, 152–153
Grieving, 32–33, 179
Group spaces, 20, 21
Guilt, 152, 153
Haldane, J. B. S., 99
Hays, Gary, 170
Hemingway, Ernest, 30
Heracleitus, 109
Herodotus, 47
Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr., 37
Howells, William Dean, 113
Identification badges, 80
Identity
change and letting go of old, 27, 28
&nb
sp; and new beginnings, 66
symbolizing new, 80–81
and team meetings, 19
I Love Lucy show, 124
Immune systems, 56
Information. See also Communication
gathering, 128, 163
in neutral zone, 47
sharing, 22, 33, 36–37, 53–54, 142, 179
Innovation, 20, 93–94
Institution, becoming, 92, 96–97, 102
Intragroup connections, strengthening, 53–54
Irving, Washington, 70
Israelites, 49, 69, 73, 76, 177
Jobs, Steve, 49, 57
Julius Caesar, 112
Kettering, Charles, 56
La Bruyère, Jean de, 114
“Last voyage,” 50–51, 144
Lawrence, D. H., 65
Leaders
change-addicted, 113
role in times of transition, 177–182
“Lean and mean,” 146
Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre, 68
Letting go. See Endings/letting go
Life cycles. See Organizational life cycles
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, 104
Lippmann, Walter, 36, 59
Losses. See also Endings/letting go
accepting reality and importance of, 30
acknowledging, 31–32
analysis of, 142
compensation for, 34–36
dealing with, 29–30
overreaction to, 31
Louisiana Pacific Corporation, 57–58
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 42
Macrae, Walter, 114–115
Making-It stage, 91, 96
Managers
challenge and response and, 125
“change managers,” 21
and communicating information, 36–37
training, 53, 142, 147
Manufacturing restructuring task force, 143
Marathon Effect, 74
Megatrends, 114
Mementos, 40–41, 81
Memos, 22
Metaphors, changing, 50–51
Miller, Henry, 50
Minimills, 93
Mistakes, and transition readiness, 160
Mistrust, 168
Model teams, 22–23
Montagu, Charles, 74
Montaigne, Michel de, 116
Morison, Elting, 98
Morley, Christopher, 48
Moses, 49, 69, 73, 76, 177
Motivational speaker, 21
Mottos, 149
Mourning, 32–33, 179
Naisbitt, John, 114
Nash, Ogden, 109
Neutral zone, 9–10
Managing Transitions Page 19
