Change and Transition Management

• Wisdom begins with correctly naming things.
• Leading effectively means ensuring followers are present and engaged.
• Changes are situational, transitions are psychological.
• Transition involves a three-phase process of internalizing and coming to terms with change.
• Transition is essential for changes to be effective and not just superficial rearrangements.
• Organizations often lack a language to discuss transition.
• Benetton's diversification plan involved acquiring top-notch sporting goods companies.
• Benetton's plan sought to cross-market workout and after-workout clothing.
• Benetton spent almost $1 billion buying the companies, envisioning a super-successful international brand.
• Benetton combined sales forces, marketing groups, and moved units to New Jersey.
• Rollerblade employees enjoyed lunch hours skating and playing roller hockey.
• Benetton terminated a large percentage of Rollerblade employees (three-quarters).
• Benetton offered the remaining Rollerblade employees raises, promotions, and a return to Minnesota within a year.
• The twenty-one survivors were offered return travel arrangements, severance packages of up to two years, and relocation back to Minnesota.
• Benetton went from a $5 million profit to a $31 million loss.
• Managing transition involves helping people through three phases.
• The first phase of transition is letting go of old ways and identity and dealing with losses.
• The second phase is the "neutral zone" where the old is gone but the new isn't fully operational
• The third phase is coming out of the transition, developing a new identity, energy, and sense of purpose.
• Transition begins with an ending and finishes with a beginning.
• Benetton managed the change but forgot the transition, failing to acknowledge employees' psychological losses.
• Changes succeed or fail based on whether people adapt and do things differently.
• Companies often don't help employees through the three phases.
• Leaders sometimes forget endings and neutral zones, trying to start with the final stage.
• An insurance company's cost-saving idea program involved coordinating forty-eight teams.
• A creative idea to insert paper sideways into a fax machine would cut transition time by 15 percent.
• Significant changes require people to stop old behaviors, which earned them rewards and satisfaction.
• A transition management project involved setting up self-managed teams in a factory.
• The company offered workshops on self-managed teams but didn't help supervisors let go of "supervising."
• Supervisors had to stop being "bosses" and work collaboratively.
• Several important differences between change and transition are often overlooked.
• With a change, the focus is on the outcome that it produces.
• Transition is different, starting with the ending you'll have to make to leave the old situation behind.
• Situation change hinges on the new thing, psychological transition, depends on letting go of the old reality.
• Transition starts with an ending, it is paradoxical but true.
• Transition often involves letting go of previous interactions and ways of working.
• New truths can cause discomfort, unhappiness, and disruption.
• Transition also involves letting go of relationships, routines, and familiar surroundings.
• Endings require letting go of something.
• Identifying and preparing for endings and losses is the largest difficulty in transition.
• Failing to help with endings and losses leads to more problems in organizations.
• After letting go the neutral zone appears, is in a psychological no-man's-land
• The new way lacks comfort during the no mans land
• The second step is understanding the neutral zone.
• The neutral zone is the limbo between the old sense of identity and the new.
• Changes can happen fast externally but slowly psychologically.
• People should understand and not be surprised by the neutral zone.
• Trying to rush through or bypass the neutral zone can lead to discouragement.
• The neutral zone is a chance to be creative, develop, and renew.
• The gap between the old and the new is when innovation is most possible
• The transition process is the time when repatterning takes place, old is replaced with the new.
• You need all three phases—ending-neutral zone—new beginning—for a transition to work.
• Processes reorient and renew people when things are changing around them.
• Transition is neded so change effects how people actually work
• Organizations pay no attention to endings not acknowledging neutral zones.
• Recognize that change works only when accompanied by transition.
• Manage transitions, so changes aren't jeopardized.
• Implement change so people get through it and the organization receives help.
• Appendices provide information on managing transitions.
• Appendix A : Organization's readiness for transition.
• Appendix B: Transition Planning (Ten steps).
• Appendix C, D, E: Leader roles, dealing with the transition, monitoring etc.

Answering the Questions

• Change is external, while transition is internal and involves a three-phase process.
• Letting go of the old ways and old identity is the first phase of the transition.
• The transition is mismanaged, and the change goes badly when the letting-go process is overlooked.
• The "neutral zone" context of transition can be described as an in-between time when the old is gone, but the new isn't fully operational.
• It is the individual's and the organization's best chance to be creative and renew themselves.
• Forgetting endings and neutral zones and trying to start with the final stage of transition is a mistake leaders make.
• Key to success is helping the people do things differently.
• Benetton's foray into sporting goods resulted in a loss of $31 million.
• The director of the insurance company's cost-saving program failed to recognize the program required changing behavior.
• The author suggests, managing transitions involves helping people through three phases.
• Transition begins with letting go, marking the first step in the task of transition management.
• Discouragement and the mistaken conclusion that something is wrong can happen when rushing through the neutral zone.
• Discussing negative aspects of transition is intended to be realistic.
• Identifying and getting ready for endings and losses is the largest difficulty for people in transition.
• During the newtral zone, it is a psychological No-man's land between the old and the new.
• Escaping prematurely it’s is a compromised change and a loss of opportunity.
• Transition effects how people work.
• Organisations should acknowledge the neutral zone helping to make sure people move forward towards a new beginning
• Letting Go can be associated to "Ending" and "loss",
• Appendices provide more managing transition information.
• Appendix A provides Assessing an organization's readiness for transition
• The old grizzled supervisor points out changing mindset and behaviors can be challenging.
• The outcome of the change when dealing with change as opposed to transition.
• Attempting to escape the neutral can cause turnover because the new way lacks comfort
• Unmanageable change is the ultimate result of unmanaged transition.