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.
You may discover that people have trouble understanding the purpose because they do not have a realistic idea of where the organization really stands and what its problems are. In that case, you need to “sell the problems” before you try to sell a solution to those problems. If that wasn’t done during the ending phase—when it should have been done—now is the time to provide answers to these questions: What is the problem? What is the situation that requires this change to solve it? Who says so, and on what evidence? What would occur if no one acted to solve this problem? And what would happen to us if that occurred?
As scientists have pointed out, the Allen Curve follows evolutionary logic. For the vast majority of human history, sustained proximity has been an indicator of belonging—after all, we don’t get consistently close to someone unless it’s mutually safe. Studies show that digital communications also obey the Allen Curve; we’re far more likely to text, email, and interact virtually with people who are physically close. (One study found that workers who shared a location emailed one another four times as often as workers who did not, and as a result they completed their projects 32 percent faster.)
There is always something provisional about a decision to stop doing something until you have actually replaced it with something else. A new beginning “ratifies” the ending.
Like any language, belonging cues can’t be reduced to an isolated moment but rather consist of a steady pulse of interactions within a social relationship. Their function is to answer the ancient, ever-present questions glowing in our brains: Are we safe here? What’s our future with these people? Are there dangers lurking?
Years before, I’d given him the metaphor I often use with clients: “Take your seat.” “Sit like royalty in your leadership seat,” I say. “Sit as if you’ve the right to be there.”
The twelfth century marked the start of a decisive shift across Europe towards the use of stone, rather than wood, in building and construction. This brought numerous advantages, not least the ability to create fireplaces and chimneys that were much more efficient and effective than central fires and open roofs.
Way back in 1937, the humorist James Thurber stuck it to this kind of pompous, meaning-free connoisseurship in a New Yorker cartoon showing a wine taster saying of a glass, “It’s a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.”
GRASS: Guilt, Resentment, Anxiety, Self-absorption, and Stress. These are the five real and measurable costs of not managing transition effectively. Remember them the next time people tell you there isn’t time to worry about the reactions of your employees to the latest plan for change. And help such people to see that not managing transition is really a shortcut that costs much more than it saves. For it leaves behind an exhausted and demoralized workforce at the very time when everyone agrees that the only way to be successful is to get more effort and more creativity out of the organization’s employees.
