Change fails most of the time

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

Interesting:

Consider the following scenario:

The leadership at Company X announces a partial restructuring that will consolidate two levels of management, effectively demoting all Senior Managers to the position of Manager. The change management team sets to work: it identifies sponsors; conducts a change readiness assessment; develops and executes a change management plan that dedicates resources and time to manage communications, training, coaching, and resistance; and supports the project team through the roll out of the new org. chart by training Senior Managers on their new responsibilities.

The change management team achieves all of its milestones on time. Leadership is pleased with the implementation efforts and decides to release the new org. chart.

Several months later, the change management team conducts an audit of the organization and discovers that employee morale has dropped severely, productivity has stagnated, and former Senior Managers are leaving the company in droves.

So, what went wrong? According to William Bridges, the change consultant and author, Company X “managed the change…and forgot the transition” (William Bridges, Managing Transitions, pg. 7).

Transition: An Emotional and Psychological Process
In his landmark book, Managing Transitions, Bridges defines the concept of transition and distinguishes it from change. Change, he argues, is “situational”: once an office move takes place, for instance, the change is complete. In the scenario above, the change is deemed complete once the new org. chart is deployed and former Senior Managers begin functioning as peers to those they used to manage.

Transition, on the other hand, “is psychological; it is a three-phase process that people go through as they internalize and come to terms with the details of the new situation that the change brings about” (Managing Transitions, pg. 3). The transition in the above scenario isn’t complete until Senior Managers affected by the change have 1) emotionally and psychologically “let go” of their former identities as Senior Managers 2) navigated through the period of uncertainty before they assume their new titles (“The Neutral Zone”), and 3) made the emotional commitment to embrace their new roles within the organization (more on the three phases of transition below).

What does this all mean to the leadership tasked with deploying a change? How can leadership help employees through what is a deeply personal, internal journey?

Throughout Managing Transitions, Bridges identifies a number of tactics that leadership can use to help individuals, and ultimately the organization, navigate through a transition successfully. Below, we’ll take a look at Bridges’ three-phase transition model and discuss some of the tactics organizations can use to conduct a successful transition.

Post external references

  1. 1
    http://www.captechconsulting.com/blog/chris-conrad/it%E2%80%99s-not-the-change-it%E2%80%99s-the-transition-theory-why-change-initiatives-fail
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