Hierarchy often breaks down in the neutral zone, and mixed groupings, such as task forces and project teams, are often very effective. People may have to be given temporary titles or made “acting” managers.
In the cultures I visited, I didn’t see many feedback sandwiches. Instead, I saw them separate the two into different processes. They handled negatives through dialogue, first by asking if a person wants feedback, then having a learning-focused two-way conversation about the needed growth. They handled positives through ultraclear bursts of recognition and praise. The leaders I spent time with shared a capacity for radiating delight when they spotted behavior worth praising. These moments of warm, authentic happiness functioned as magnetic north, creating clarity, boosting belonging, and orienting future action.
When another company acquires yours, clarify your team’s purpose and improve its functioning to maximize the chances that when the dust clears, it will be viewed as essential to the success of the acquiring company.
arriving in the Promised Land. Just as you marked the endings at the start of transition, you need to mark the beginning at the finish of transition. The timing may seem a little arbitrary because there are always loose ends to be tied up. But when you feel that the majority of your people are emerging from the wilderness and that a new purpose, a new system, and a new sense of identity have been established, you’ll do well to take time to celebrate that the transition is over.
Ensure Quick Successes The neutral zone takes a heavy toll on most people’s self-confidence because it is a period of lowered productivity and diminished feelings of competence. It may also, if it resonates with past difficulties in a person’s life, activate serious problems of low self-esteem. For that reason people are likely to need some fairly quick successes if they are to return to their former effectiveness.
Misplaced faith in the picture’s power to make a transition happen is encouraged by a misunderstanding that is common among people who design change projects. Such people typically go through their transitions before they launch the changes, while they’re still struggling with the problems and searching for solutions. By the time they are ready to announce the change, they have long since put their endings and their neutral zone behind them, and now they’re ready for a new beginning. But they forget that middle management is probably just entering the neutral zone and that most workers have not even made their endings yet.
To make a new beginning, in other words, people need the Four P’s: the purpose, a picture, the plan, and a part to play. For any particular individual, one or sometimes two of these P’s will predominate. Your own path into the future probably emphasizes one of these Four P’s—and minimizes or even omits others. As a result, you will tend to stress your own preference(s) when you communicate with others. You may naturally assume that others approach beginnings the way you do, but that isn’t necessarily so. People are really different—they aren’t just “defective” versions of yourself. So it is important to remember to cover all four of these bases—purpose, picture, plan, and part—when you talk about the new beginning you’re trying to help people make.
