 ‘When the winds of change blow hard enough, the most trivial of things can turn into deadly projectiles.’ (Despair.com) You’ve probably heard of change management. You’ve probably heard of change management teams too. You’ve probably heard of change plans, like project plans, sometimes expressed in Gannt charts with rows of scheduled tasks, mapped against proposed timeframes. You’re less likely, I would guess, to have heard of a transition plan. A transition plan deals with the human dimensions of change, the underlying psychological, emotional and relational issues that often prove critical to its success. Whilst change can often be planned and prepared for by agreeing desired outcomes, then working backwards to identify the practical steps needed to achieve them (a bit like working out the mechanical structure of a car engine in order to build one), transitions don’t work like that. A change process may be complex, in that there may be many interlinked moving parts, yet is in principle manageable. A transition process is dynamically-complex and, therefore, inherently unpredictable. This means that transitions can only be handled effectively by ongoing conversations with affected people. It calls for open and honest dialogue. It calls us to be invitational, curious and co-creative. It involves listening, hearing, being responsive and building trust. ‘If we were to do X…what would it mean for you?’ ‘Given what it would mean for you, what would you need?’ Well-led transitions will influence mood, climate, energy, engagement and agency: critical success factors in any change.
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 ‘There’s nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.’ (Scott Adams) 15 minutes before I was due to lead an online change leadership workshop in Germany, I stepped outside briefly for a breath of fresh air. I wanted to clear my head, focus and pray. Then…oh no, I heard a gentle click behind me and discovered, to my alarm, that I couldn’t open the door without a key. It hung tantalisingly on the inside and I could see my mobile phone staring at me blankly from the table. Aha, I thought. I will ask my hosts to let me in. Oh, they were out. Mild feelings of panic rising, I rushed to a neighbour. Thank God they were in, could understand my Englisch-Deutsch, had the hosts’ number and could call. Now, with just 2 minutes to go, my host appeared and saved the day. It was a timely reminder that sudden change can come from anywhere, unexpectedly and often from left field. It was also a helpful reminder that leadership, resilience and agency aren’t simply inward, intra-personal qualities or strengths. Our ability to handle the impacts of changes and transitions often emerges from an outward-facing resourcefulness, looking outside of ourselves openly (and, for me, prayerfully) for people and-or other resources who can co-create and co-enable a solution with us…or – if no solution is possible – sit with us in the midst of discomfort, disappointment or pain.  ‘What is most important about any event is not what happens, but what it means.’ (Lee Bolman & Terrence Deal) Here’s one way to think about human change and transition: change is what happens around us and transition is what happens within us. Imagine, for instance, a change at work – ‘We used to do X and now we’re going to do Y instead.‘ Simple, right? It can be, yes…except when it isn’t. It all depends, at heart, on what that change will mean to a person, team or organisation, and-or what it could mean for others that matter to them too; e.g. colleagues, family, friends, people who use their services. It can get more complicated still. The same change could mean different things for different people and groups. It could also mean different things for the same person or group e.g. at different times, depending on what else is going on for them. In practice, this means that to support people through transitions, change leaders do well (a) to avoid making assumptions about what a change will mean and (b) to explore, ‘What will this change mean for you?’; then, given that, ‘What will you need?’ I can almost hear some leaders crying out in protest, ‘Don’t be naïve, Nick. Be realistic. People don’t like change. They’re resistant to change.’ Yet, here’s the thing. People will sometimes resist change, even though they agree with it, if they don’t feel heard or understood. Conversely and paradoxically, people will sometimes support change, even if they disagree with it, because they do feel heard and understood. Working with transitions isn’t an optional add-on. It can prove the key to success.  ‘Without transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture.’ (William Bridges) Lean forward and look into the room. Listen in carefully to the conversation. An organisation has decided to move to smaller and cheaper office premises in order to reduce its overheads. It will mean agile working: a shift to hybrid working, hot-desking and staff lockers. It appoints a change team to oversee the move, and the team notices a range of responses from staff, from passive apathy to active dissent. It faces a growing concern about what it perceives as resistance to change. It tries hard with corporate communications to let staff know what will happen when and yet is increasingly bemused and anxious about the apparent lack of buy-in. The team invites me in as an external organisation development (OD) consultant to have a conversation with staff, an open exploration of issues and how to move things forward. Here’s a glimpse and summary, following initial rapport-building and relational-contracting to ensure a felt-sense of safety and trust in the room:
The change team had focused on practical changes (physical-transactional: what happens around us) and inadvertently failed to pay attention to corresponding human transitions (psychological-emotional: what happens within us). Notice the flow of the consultant conversation: from feeling, to meaning, to need, to solution. The style is invitational, enhancing the felt-sense of choice, influence and agency. Baskets are provided. Staff re-engage. The move goes ahead smoothly. [See also: Change leadership principles; Organisations don't exist]  ‘To lead real change, it’s not enough to think outside of the box. We need to think outside of the building.’ (Rosabeth Moss Kanter) Picture this. I’m in a coaching conversation with Anna, a client who feels stressed. She describes it as being like trapped inside a box, with no way out; where the box is her organisation, her job, the role she’s in now. The narrative she’s telling herself is that she has no possibility to escape from the debilitating pressure she’s experiencing. Her scope of authority to influence change is too constrained and she’s expected to deliver against targets that feel impossible. She feels totally helpless and hopeless. I acknowledge and empathise with how Anna is feeling, then ask if she’d be interested to explore potential options that could be available to her. At first, she pushes back, as if instinctively. ‘I don’t have any options – that is the problem’. I ask, inquisitively, to test the boundary a bit: ‘You could leave?’ ‘I can’t leave’, she replies, immediately and forcefully, ‘I have a mortgage to pay’. ‘So, the mortgage is part of the box?’, I ask. ‘Hmm. I guess it is’, she replies, more thoughtfully this time. ‘What if you weren’t to pay the mortgage?’, I ask. She looks bemused. ‘It would mean I’d lose the house, of course’, she snaps. ‘And, if you lost the house?’ ‘That would be terrible’, she replies, ‘It’s my dream home.’ ‘So, the dream home is, perhaps, part of the box?’ I ask. Anna goes quiet. After a while, she looks up and responds, ‘I don’t want to lose my home.’ ‘So: it’s as if, to keep your dream home, you feel that you have no option but to stay in your current job to pay your mortgage?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Imagine now, for a moment, dismantling or breaking out of the box that you feel trapped in. If you were to imagine a spectrum of options, ranging from the status quo to what you might think of as a most extreme solution (the ‘nuclear option’), what might they be?’ Anna picks up a piece of paper and a pen and starts to write. ‘At the extreme end, I could sell the house and downsize to a cheaper house or location, then I could get try to get a less expensive mortgage, but I don’t want to do that.’ ‘At the other end, I could stay as I am and just accept that the frustration in my job is a price worth paying to keep the house that I love.’ ‘And..?’, I ask. ‘I guess I could apply for another job.’ ‘Say more?’ ‘Well, I could look at other jobs in my organisation.’ ‘Yet the organisation sounds like it may be part of the box too? What if you were to think outside of the box altogether?’ ‘True. I could look at job opportunities elsewhere, or even at a change of career that would feel more fun and fulfilling!’ ‘So, there are, perhaps, some options that could feel in tension for you? The house…or a career that could feel more fun and fulfilling? Which stands out as most important for you?’ ‘I hadn’t thought about it, but if I could find something I really love doing, I might just be willing to consider moving house to do it. Perhaps I’m allowing my attachment to the house to box me in.’ Suddenly, I see a lightbulb moment flash in her eyes. ‘Eeek…’ she says, ‘Perhaps the house is the box!’ Breakthrough. Anna has left the building. [See also: Boxes; Deconstructing the box; and Lateral instinct]  ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.’ (Henry David Thoreau) Psychologist Albert Ellis, widely regarded as the founding father of what has today evolved into Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, noticed that different people responded differently to what were, on the face of it, very similar situations. Previously, you might have heard, ‘Person X feels Y because Z happened’. It assumed a direct causal relationship between emotions and events. Ellis’ observations challenged this, proposing that something significant was missing in the equation. After all, if this assumption were true, we could expect that everyone should feel the same way in circumstance Z. Curious about this, Ellis concluded that the critical differentiating and influencing factor that lays between emotions and events is belief. It’s what we believe about the significance of an event that affects most how we feel in response to it. Here we have person A who hears news of a forthcoming redundancy with fear and trepidation. He believes it will have catastrophic financial consequences for himself and his family. Person B receives the news with positive excitement. She believes it will provide her with the opportunity she needs to pursue a new direction in her career. Drawing on this insight, organisational researchers Lee Bolman & Terrence Deal proposed that, in the workplace, what is most important may not be so much what happens per se, as what it means. The same change, for instance, could mean very different things to different people and groups, depending on the subconscious interpretive filters through which each perceives it. Such filters are created by a wide range of psychological, relational and cultural factors including: beliefs, values, experiences, hopes, fears and expectations. This begs an important question: how can we know? Hidden beliefs are often revealed implicitly in the language, metaphors and narratives that people use. To observe the latter in practice, notice who or what a person or group focuses their attention on and, conversely, who or what appears invisible to them. Listen carefully to how they construe a situation, themselves and others in relation to it. Inquire in a spirit of open exploration, ‘If we were to do X, what would it mean for you?’; ‘If we were to do X, what would you need?’ This is about listening, engagement and invitation. Attention to the human dimension can make all the difference.  ‘For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.’ (H.L. Mencken) In a world that’s so often characterised by continual change, it appears that one thing that doesn’t change is our continual thirst for new acronyms. VUCA, RUPT or BANI – which best describes your view of reality? Which most helps you, or your clients, move forward to fulfil vision, values and goals, whilst navigating whom or whatever could fly in unexpectedly from left field on route? BANI, a more recent model than its predecessors, has some attractive and useful features for the current context. It acknowledges profound phenomenological dimensions of human experience, not simply the dynamics of the environmental realities we face. BANI draws attention to Brittleness, Anxiety, Non-linearity and Incomprehensibility and may provide a platform for addressing them. Brittleness recognises that those things we regard as secure can fall apart overnight. Anxiety points to associated social health risks of anxiety and depression. Non-linear means it’s hard to predict consequences of actions with certainty because influencing factors can spring up from anywhere. Incomprehensible proposes that sense-making is impossible and we can find ourselves bewildered. If that all sounds a bit abstract, think back to what you (and others) have witnessed and experienced in the past 2 years; how much of what has happened could have been known definitively in advance; what the impacts and implications have been for different people, groups and nations; how it has looked and felt; the deep questions it has raised; how clear and agreed a way forward is from here. Macro examples have included the ongoing climate emergency, the Covid19 pandemic, the plastic-in-the-oceans disaster and the migrant crisis. We’ve seen shifts in the world’s political and economic landscapes that have been, at times, so sudden and so dramatic that they’ve caused whiplash and backlash. We have felt the ripple effects in our organisations, communities and personal lives. What wisdom can BANI offer? Here are glimpses: Brittleness calls for resilience and collaboration; Anxiety: for empathy and human-spiritual relationship; Non-linearity: for adaptivity and agility; Incomprehensibility: for intuition and risk-taking. These are pointers to the kinds of qualities and capabilities we can develop for the future, with courage and humility as an underpinning stance. Do you feel dazed and confused in a BANI world? Curious to discover how I can help? Get in touch!  ‘If one door closes…kick it down.’ (Adrian Hawkes)
Patience isn’t my greatest virtue. Some of the most pain-inducing words for me are ‘wait’ or ‘let go’. I have learned patience at work, yet in my personal life, now often feels nowhere near fast enough. Instinctively, I’m with Pastor Adrian Hawkes who had a graphic way of challenging apathy, passivity and fatalism. His focus was on agency and dramatic leaps of faith. Do it. Do it now. Action man. Yet, years have passed by and I’m older now. I’ve faced closed doors that have stubbornly refused to re-open no matter how hard I have pleaded, pounded or kicked hard at them. It could have been a person, a relationship or a cause. For some, it could be a bereavement, an illness or a redundancy. It’s someone or something over which we have no power or control to change. An ending that really is the end. Against this backdrop, I read a very insightful and inspiring piece by Helen Sanderson-White this morning: Celebrating Closed Doors. In it, she describes the transition between letting go of one door and waiting for a new door to open: ‘The hardest part of this journey is the corridor of in-between. Sometimes we can stand in the corridor waiting for a long time before another door opens.’ (Cf: ‘Everything looks like a failure in the middle. Everyone loves inspiring beginnings and happy endings; it is just the middles that involve hard work.’ (Rosabeth Moss-Kanter). ‘It’s not (necessarily) so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear. It’s like being between trapezes. There’s nothing to hold on to.’ (Marilyn Ferguson).) Sanderson-White, with echoes of William Bridges’ Managing Transitions, draws on biblical material to inject a sense of hope, and a hope of sense-making too, in the midst of such corridor experiences. Sometimes it’s about learning patience, acceptance and trust. At other times, it’s about a deep leap of faith, taking a risk and looking up openly and expectantly to see what fresh opportunities emerge. Have you ever felt like Tom Hanks in 'The Terminal' (2004) – trapped in transition? Who or what got you through it?  As a young child, a Filipina living in the jungle threw a bucket down a deep well to collect water, but forgot to let go of it. She fell down the well, almost drowned and was rescued at the last minute by her father. He had happened to pass by and was surprised to see that both she and the bucket had vanished. A short while later, this same girl was climbing a guava tree to collect its fruit. Hanging upside-down with her feet around a branch, she parted the leaves and, to her horror, came face to face with a deadly cobra. This time, she did let go, fell and hit the ground hard. It saved her life. The principle here is to know when to let go. In English, we use to ‘let go’ metaphorically to mean to make a break with the past. It’s as if by letting go, we release ourselves psychologically to move on. (It’s sometimes used euphemistically to mean to make someone redundant – but that isn’t the way in which I’m using it here). It can also mean to relax our metaphorical grip in the present moment. In this sense, it’s the opposite of to grab, hold on tightly or seek to control. It’s about learning to relax, trust, flow and breathe – and, for me, to pray – then to see who or what emerges, new, into view. Are you holding onto, e.g. a person, home, job, role, income, plan, structure or way of doing things, that's stifling what’s truly possible? How easy do you find it to let go? How do you enable others to do so too?  ‘I was so focused on what I had lost, that I lost sight of what I had found.’ (Jerry Orbos) Orbos, a priest, recounted a story of when, as a small child living in a very poor village, he attended a fiesta. It was a special, exciting party and he was thrilled to be given a balloon. Some moments later, he was given an ice cream too. He could hardly believe it. On taking the ice cream, however, he accidentally let go of the balloon which floated away out of reach. Looking up helplessly, Jerry felt completely distraught. His mother, noticing his distress, whispered, ‘Jerry – look at your ice cream’. A loss that impacts deeply can leave us feeling hurt, mesmerised, transfixed and paralysed. We may struggle to breathe, as if caught in a trance state and unable – or unwilling – to break free. We may notice this when a person loses, say, a relationship, job or home that really matters to them. ‘What do you need?’ offers valuable empathy and support. ‘What are you not-noticing?’ can help break the gaze; enabling someone to see people, relationships and resources that lay hidden in plain sight. How do you help people to let go of what is lost? How do you help them to see what they can’t see? |
Nick WrightI'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? Get in touch! 
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