One of the main points that William Bridges makes in his book "The Way of Transition" is that transition is not the same as change. Change is what happens to you. Transition is what you experience. And transition involves loss and letting go - typically of old familiar routines and ways of doing things, social identity, role identity, status, money and relationships.
"To cross over the line into the transition, you need to ask yourself what inner relinquishments you'll need to make because of the change. What needs will you have to find other ways to get met? Because of your change, what parts of yourself are now out of date?"
Transition Coaching
Bridges sees the transition passing through 3 distinct phases:
(1) Ending, Losing, Letting Go - helping people come to terms with what they have lost and helping them prepare to move on
(2) The Neutral Zone - helping people through the readjustment and realignments - helping them find the path to follow
(3) The New Beginning - helping people develop the new identity, and their new role in the new order and energising them to new growth
Personally I take the view that at root, change management is about process and people. But even process is just about people doing stuff... so ultimately it's all about people - and processes that work for people.
Any organisational initiative that creates change - or has a significant change element to it - has a 70% chance of not achieving what was originally envisaged. In my experience, of the 3 main reasons for failure, the underlying cause is nearly always to do with senior management's failure to take full account of the impact of the changes on those people who are most affected by them i.e. the absence of good strategies for managing change.
Many thought leaders in the world of change management and change leadership are now speaking vociferously about the importance of the emotional dimension of leadership and the need to address the human dimension of change. For example:
- The Kubler Ross grief-cycle otherwise known as the "change roller coaster" which maps the emotional stages that people pass through in their transition through change.
- Daniel Goleman and others have stressed the importance of the leader's ability to articulate a message that resonates with their followers' emotional reality and their sense of purpose, and thus motivate them to move in a specific direction.
- John Kotter says that the single biggest challenge facing leadership in a change process is just getting people to change their behaviour - and that happens... "When they are motivated to do so, and that happens when you speak to their feelings."
- Jon Katzenbach highlights the value of personalising the workplace and making and demonstrating a personal commitment by getting involved and truly understanding what your staff is doing on a daily basis.
- Andy Pearson emphasises how people will respond to their leaders efforts to connect with their emotional side: "Great leaders find a balance between getting results and how they get them."
So to summarise, in Bridges' own words:
"A change can work only if the people affected by it can get through the transition it causes successfully."
In my view, and at a practical level, of all the methodologies of how to manage change and how to address the accompanying transition, the programme management based approach is most likely to ensure that you avoid the 70% failure rate, and this is because:
(1) It is holistic and takes a wider perspective.
(2) It focuses you on addressing issues and aspects that otherwise get overlooked.
(3) It addresses the people impacts and issues arising as a direct and indirect result of your change initiative.
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