Managing Transitions

Let it be said straight away: this book made a world of difference for us. It put a "formula" on how, in practice, you can combine a strategic view of organisational change with an organisational-psychological one – while at the same time being extremely concrete and taking its starting point in the everyday reality that exists in organisations.

There is no denying that the authors are themselves long-standing management advisers and therefore very action-oriented. The book's starting point is a division of organisational change into a strategic/rational part called change (an outer process) and a psychological part (an inner process) called transition. It is in particular the psychological transition that people have to go through when something new is introduced in organisations that gets overlooked.

The book describes three phases that the transition consists of: Ending, where people have to let go of the old; the Neutral zone, an uncertain in-between period marked by confusion, loss and the opportunity for new thinking; and the New beginning, where new roles, identities and ways of working begin to take shape. The book stresses that leaders often underestimate the importance of endings and thereby create what we often call resistance. But which is often about uncertainty and which therefore has to be invited in, in order to actively help people understand what they are losing, what remains, and what comes in its place.