Change and Transition - Part II

(In Part I, I introduced William Bridges and his Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change.)

Years ago, I heard someone else speak about this (and for the life of me I can't remember who), and they compared the change/transition process with jumping out a one-story window. You know you can probably do so pretty safely. You're just not going to do it until you have good reason to leave the space you're in. And, as you teeter on the window sill, trying to take action, the hard part, the pain of change, is the leap itself. Once you're committed and airborne, you reach the ground in a few moments. And then ... everything is all right!

Bridges calls the period of the leap -- the time between deciding to end the "old" and the beginning of the "new" -- the "neutral zone." On this, I disagree with him. It's more like the "chaos zone," during which all the rules are unclear for the time being.

All organizations -- especially community benefit organizations -- are well served to compress major changes into as brief a period as possible. Sure, think it through before doing it. Make everything as clear as possible in announcing changes. But once you've decided, go.

Nothing's worse than the memo that reads: "Effective six months from today ...." As the leader, it will not serve you to hold on to the window sill with your fingertips, desperately hanging on to the old. For one thing, it serves as a bad example for all of your followers.

Take the leap. Then, not wanting to confuse the change with the transition, take a look around you to see if anyone else joined you.

Problem is, everyone responds to change differently. Not everyone jumps out the window at the same time. You need to make sure everyone else joins you in the leap.

Faced with the uncertainty of what it will be like "after the leap," some of your people will make up stuff -- especially if things are unclear and especially if they don't feel they had any control or part in the decision. If the future is unclear, they'll invent one to justify their behavior. They'll "grieve" -- with all the associated phases of denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and (finally) acceptance. At nearly every point, there are unproductive side effects.

Bridges would define the leader's work as making four things clear:

1. What’s the purpose of this change?

2. What’s the picture of how things will be when we achieve that purpose?

3. What’s the plan for creating the picture?

4. What’s my part and your part in the plan?

How clear are you on those questions? How clear is your organization? What can you do to raise the level of clarity that will move people through crazy time and onto the new beginning?

The failure to identify and prepare for the inevitable human psychological adjustments that change produces is the largest single problem that organizations encounter when they implement major change initiatives.

Unfortunately, many managers, when confronted with predictable change-induced resistance by those charged with implementing a change, respond in punitive and inappropriate ways that only serve to undermine the change effort. Due to their lack of understanding of transition, they do not possess the skills to facilitate it effectively.

Leaders and managers often assume that when necessary changes are decided upon and well planned, they will just happen. Unless the transition process is handled successfully by management, all that careful decision making and detailed planning will matter little. Instead, the President will publish the memo, and the staff won't actually alter their behavior.

Change and Transition - Part I

The biggest challenge facing community benefit leaders today is moving their organizations toward a new reality.

"It isn't the changes that do you in, it's the transitions."

That's the first line of Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change, first published in 1995 by William Bridges (he released a second edition in 2003). [I recommend getting a copy if you want to know more.]

Bridges is an expert in managing the human side of change. In the late 1970s, he introduced the notion of "transition" in his first book, Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes. During that "I'm OK/You're OK" era, he laid out how to cope with life changes of the personal kind.

In Managing Transitions, he applied the concept of transition within the context of organizational change.

Bridges asserts that transition is not synonymous with "change."

A change occurs when something in the external environment is altered. In an organizational setting this would include changes in leadership, structure, job description, systems, or processes. The process of deciding to do something different is pretty straight-forward. And then the "change" can be announced (usually with some fanfare in a memo from the President that starts with "Effective immediately ...")

It’s the transition that can do you in, and that’s the part that requires mindful and intentional leadership.

The changes you announced in your memo trigger an internal psychological reorientation process in those who are expected to carry out or respond to the change. Transition is this internal process that people must go through in order to come to terms with a new situation. Unless transition occurs, change won't work. And that's when the organization's President wonders, "Didn't they get the memo? Didn't they read it?"

Two things conspire to make this so: The Past and The Should Be.

The Past
Sometimes, people get stuck in the organizational "way we've done things around here." Often, no one can remember WHY we do things that way. But it's the way we do them. And so it literally hurts to change, even if everyone rationally understands why it's important to change. Organizational culture is profoundly persistent, so even newcomers to the organization get co-opted incredibly quickly.

The Should Be
Sometimes, people get stuck on what they feel their present reality "should be" instead of facing what is. For example, they "should" still have the net worth they had "before October 2008." And, even though they KNOW things have changed, they want to pretend and cling to the old mindset.

It's like those cars with bumper stickers: "I'D RATHER BE ... skiing, golfing, shopping, whatever." But the thing is, you're NOT (skiiing/golfing/shopping/whatever). You're driving a car on the freeway. And the sooner you deal with the reality of that fact, the better.

Next: How to provide the clarity that will move you through the transition ASAP.

Saying "No" to people you can't say "No" to

We seldom have the flexibility to bluntly say no to many people. Like a boss. Or a key client. Or a family member. Yesterday, I was on a call getting some advice from a guy named Michael Bungay Stanier; he runs a company called Box of Crayons that works with organizations to help them do less Good Work and more Great Work. I really like his philosophy and his stuff.

When dealing with people you can't say "No" to, Michael's advice which I'm broadly paraphrasing here, is: Say "yes" more slowly.

What gets us in trouble is how quickly we relent and say yes. That often means we say yes to something that's not aligned with our own plans, leaving no time for us to say yes to things that are aligned. We deprive ourselves of giving ourselves the time, space, and focus to do what matters for us. And then we're angry that we said yes (or felt like we couldn't say no).

So, you might ask: How do you do say yes more slowly? Basically, it's by asking lots of questions.

"Thanks for asking me to do that, but ...

"Can I ask why you asked me?"

"When you say it's urgent, what does that mean for you?"

"What does success look like for this?"

"If I had to do this at an adequate level instead of an excellent level, what would that be?"

"If I could only do part of this, and not the whole of it, what part would you want me to focus on?"

"If I were take this on, what other things that I've agreed to do for you could be stopped, so that I have the time and space to do what you're asking me now?"

Of course, you can't do this all the time. But when you go through questioning like this, one of several things happens:

1. When you do actually say yes, you've said yes to something more clear, defined, and specific. So, you don't have to overwork it or do the wrong thing or do it faster than necessary.

2. Sometimes, the questioning results in negotiation, so you end up doing something far different than what was originally asked.

3. Sometimes, the person asking says, "You know what? I don't know the answers to those questions. Let me go away and figure that out. And then I'll come back to you." And then, often as not, they don't come back.

4. Sometimes, they say, to them selves, "This questioning is too much like hard work. I'm going to go find someone who will say yes more quickly."

5. Sometimes, in future, the person will be more careful about asking you to do things, and will come better prepared to articulate what they really want.

It won't work all the time, of course, but it's worth a try! Isn't that great advice? Thanks Michael.

Optimism, Competence, and Call Reluctance: 5 Suggestions

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. -- Winston Churchill


Optimism is the belief that things will work out for the best, that we'll generally experience good outcomes in life. I find that most people involved in community benefit work are, at their core, optimists.

I just finished doing some research on procrastination. (Been trying to get around to it for awhile now - ha ha.) Consulted an article from Psychology Today which talks about self-regulation as it relates to an optimistic outlook.

Point is: those who are generally optimistic are deterred less by implementation challenges over which there's a strong amount of personal control.

Stated another way: When the problem is "you," you can better overcome "you" if you are in an optimistic frame of mind.

During my consultation and coaching sessions -- whether one-on-one or in a group -- we always get to the planning of next steps. This generally translates to "Get out from behind my desk and make some visits with donors." And the issue of obstacles almost always arises.

Sometimes -- in anticipation that self-defeating behaviors will arise to block implementation of the plan -- I'll ask the client: "What's your typical defense that seems to defeat your pursuit of goals through procrastination?"

First responses include: my boss throws another urgent priority at me, my co-workers interrupt me, my phone rings.

If I dig deeper, and when the client is in a forthright mood, I'll hear: "I answer my email, check Facebook and Twitter, work on assignments that I enjoy more, chat with others in the office."

So, when led to reflect on it, the otherwise-well-intended staff person admits, at least to self, sometimes to the coach, "I know I said I was going to make this visit. But I just can't get started. I'm worried how it will turn out. Since this stuff is still new to me, I'm not sure I'm very good at it. And so, even though I KNOW I should, I don't complete the task."

That's the odd thing: most people know they are engaging in self-defeating behavior when they're doing it.

Five suggestions when you find yourself in that space:

1. Remind yourself that you are an optimist at heart; that you see the glass as half full, not half empty. (Research shows that optimistic mindsets help overcome implementation challenges.)

2. Break the task into piece-parts. "Make a visit" can become "call to arrange a time," "prepare for the visit," "go on the visit itself," and "follow-up on the visit." Then, rather than procrastinate on the whole, re-frame the task so that your accountability is to do just the first step.

3. Change how you state your implementation intention on your To Do list. Instead of "Call Mrs. Jones to arrange a time to visit," write "Do not check email until I've called Mrs. Jones."

4. Remember that practice is required before you'll feel more competent. In the meantime, write an affirmation about your competence at this task: "I am getting better and better at making donor visits. I already know WHAT to do, and can do WHAT IT TAKES to be successful. I love my time spent one-on-one with donors. I have every reason to believe I can effectively interact with our donor, who is, after all, a friend of our organization. I can expect this to go well."

5. Ahead of time, plan your response to the emotional anxiety that you know you'll encounter sometime during the task. "When I begin to feel overwhelmed, which I expect to feel just as I'm picking up the phone, I will simply take it one step at a time and keep my focus on the very first step of getting started."

Many of us are self-reflective and self-examining enough to be able to predict with some accuracy what avoidance techniques we'll use to postpone a task we don't feel comfortable with. Knowing this, it becomes a matter of building our own personal plan of attack in anticipation of the obstacles (rather than wait for them to arise).

Now, stop reading this blog and go do what you've been procrastinating about!