Transition is a lengthy and frequently traumatic process significantly different fromsimple change. Understanding the various aspects ofthis process can be useful in . . .

Managing OrganizationalTransitions

William Bridges

uring a presentation on organizational transi-tion to the management team of a large aero-space corporation, a New Yorker cartoon wasused as a handout. The cartoon showed aheavy man slouching in an overstuffed chair;his despairing wife was saying, "If Coca-Colacan change after all these years, why can'tyou?"

Il was a nice summary of a complexand often forgotten idea: that things can anddo change quickly, but that people do not—even though they are under strong pressure todo so. But events sabotaged the presentation;The day it was made, morning papers carriedthe story of the decision to bring back the oldCoke. Such is the fate of anyone who tries towork with change!

Social and technological change isan old story in America; in some ways it is theAmerican story. A hundred and fifty yearsago the French author Alexis de Tocquevillenoted in his diary:

Born often under another sky, placed in the middleof an always moving scene, himself driven by the ir-resistible torrent which draws all about him, theAmerican has no time to tie himself to anything, hegrows accustomed only to change, and ends by re-garding it as the natural state of man. He feels theneed of it, more he loves it; for the instability, insteadof meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth onlyto miracles all about him.

The ability and willingness tochange have always been prerequisites fortaking part in the American Dream. In theOld World respect came from a valuable heri-tage, and any change from that norm had tobe justified. In America, however, the statusquo was no more than the temporary productof past changes, and it was the resistance tochange that demanded an explanation. A fail-ure to change with the times was more thanjust a private misfortune; it was a socially andorganizationally subversive condition. Thisattitude still persists in America, particularlyin the corporate world.

24 © 1986 William Bridges

Change in the current corporaielandscape is the rule rather than the excep-tion. The general economy expands and con-tracts and everyone adjusts accordingly, withsome individuals benefiting and others suf-fering. Foreign competition undermines thedomestic auto industry, setting in motion adomino chain of effects that reaches far downinto the industrial economy as a whole. Of-fice computers and assembly line roboticsmake new procedures advantageous, andtraditional offices and production lines arechanged to take advantage of them. Thegovemment regulates some industries andderegulates others, and the affected compa-nies respond by struggling to change theirtactics, policies, and pricing. Governmentagencies themselves are buffeted by change asappropriations are cut and citizen concernsbecome more insistent; like all other parts ofthe organizational world, they change in or-der to cope with change.

It is clear that our corporations,nonprofit institutions, and public agenciesneed to change; what is less clear are thestages that individuals go through in the pro-cess of change. 'The most critical problem ex-ecutives have is that they don't understandthe powerful impact of change on people,"says Harry Levinson, the industrial psycholo-gist. Like the rest of us, executives have beenwise about the mechanics of change and stu-pid about the dynamics of transition. Thatstupidity is dooming many of their change ef-forts to failure.

THE DIFFERENCE BFTWEEN

CHANGE AND TRANSITION

Since change and transition are often used in-terchangeably, let me clarify the differencebetween them. Change happens when some-

thing starts or slops, or when something thatused to happen in one way starts happeningin another. It happens at a particular time, orin several stages at different times. Organiza-tional change is structural, economic, tech-nological, or demographic, and it can beplanned and managed on a more or less ra-tional model: move Activity A to Section Band close Section C, start up automatedproduction in Department D, issue bonds toraise money to open Branch E, and so forth.

Transition, on the other hand, is athree-part psychological process that extendsover a long period of time and cannot beplanned or managed by the same rational for-mulae that work with change. There are threephases that people in transition go through:

1. They have to let go of the old situationand (what is more difficult) of the old identitythat went with it. No one can begin a new roleor have a new purpose if that person has notlet go of the old role or purpose first. Whetherpeople are moved or promoted, outplaced orreassigned, they have to let go of who theywere and where they have been if they are tomake a successful transition. A great deal ofwhat we call resistance to change is really dif-ficulty with the first phase of transition.

2. They have to go through the "neutralzone" between their old reality and a new real-ity that may still be very unclear. In this no-man's-land in time, everything feels unreal. Itis a time of loss and confusion, a time whenhope alternates with despair and new ideas al-ternate with a sense of meaninglessness, atime when the best one can do sometimes isto go through the motions. But it is also thetime when the real reorientation that is at tbeheart of transition is taking place. Thoreauwrote that "corn grows in the night," and theneutral zone is the nighttime of transition.

3. They have to make a new beginning, abeginning that is much more than the rela- 25

tively simple "new start" required in a change.The new beginning may involve developingnew competencies, establishing new relation-ships, becoming comfortable with new poli-cies and procedures, constructing new plansfor the future, and learning to think in accor-dance with new purposes and priorities.Traditional societies called this phase "beingreborn," and such societies had rites of pas-sage to help the individual with that "rebirth."Our society talks instead of "adjustment," butthat concept does not do justice to the strug-gle many people go through when they beginagain after a wrenching ending and a dis-orienting period in the neutral zone.

It is this three-phase reorientationfrom an old to a new way of being that or-ganizational leaders usually overlook whenthey plan changes. The planners work hard toshow why the changes are good; they buildcoalitions to support them; they work outPERT charts to schedule them; they see thatthe necessary funds are appropriated to payfor them; they assign managerial responsibil-ity for implementing them. And they mum-ble darkly about selfishness, stupidity, andtreachery when the people affected by thechanges slow those changes down, makingthe planners spend more money than theyhad forecast. In the end, these same people

may even abort the very changes on whichthe organization's future depends.

An example of this resistance can befound in the Army's lengthy (and ultimatelysuccessful) attempt to replace the Colt .45handgun with the 9 mm pistol. The Pentagonhad been trying to replace the .45 for years;the first recommendations date from the1930s. The arguments were impressive: The.45 was heavy and hard to shoot accurately;it was liable to strange malfunctions; it didnot correspond to any weapon our allies usedand therefore its parts were not interchange-able with any of those weapons; finally, it wasdesigned to be used as an early twentieth cen-tury cavalry weapon, not a modern handgun.

With so many arguments againstthe .45, one may wonder why there was somuch resistance to replacing it. There were infact several reasons. A 9 mm replacement pis-tol would probably have been of Europeandesign; in fact, an Italian design was finallyselected. In addition, critics of the 9 mmscornfully called it "the women's cartridge,"suggesting that the weapon debate was bur-dened by the deeper issue of women in the"man's army." Finally, the Army could notagree with the Air Force or the Navy on thespecifications of a new weapon. It becameclear that something more than technical is-

''Change occurs when something starts or stops;it can be planned or managed on a rationalmodel . . . Transition is a three-partpsychological process; it cannot he planned

26 or managed by the same rational formulae.''

sues was involved when the Army accused theAir Force of using "nonstandard militarymud" in a test to simulate difficult firing con-ditions. Clearly, the .45 was not just aweapon; it was a symbol of an identity. To letgo of that weapon was in essence to end thatidentity.

It is easy to criticize this difficulty inletting go of what to most of us is outmoded"reality." But that is because we are notdirectly involved in the situation. One needonly catch oneself holding on to an irrelevantreality to understand that problem, and any-one who works effectively with transition-related issues probably feels considerablesympathy for people who find transition dif-ficult. My decision to work with organiza-tions in transition probably comes in partfrom my own difficulties in this area, and thesympathy that these difficulties engender.

THE PHASES OF ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSITION

The "Ending Phase"

In my work over the past twelve years withmore than 5,000 individuals in transition, Ihave found that most people were veryrelieved to be able to identify and discuss thetransitions they were going through. Suchdiscussion surfaces without prompting, asone can see from the results of a survey ofAT&T employees in the wake of divestiture.Here is a typical response:

I felt like I had gone through a divorce that neithermy wife nor my children wanted. It was forced uponus by some very powerful outside forces, and I couldnot control the outcome. It was like waking up in fa-miliar surroundings (such as your home), but yourfamily and all that you held dear were missing.

Other common metaphors are death, bereave-ment, the loss of a limb, the destruction of ahome, and the end of the world.

William Bridges is president of Pontes Associ-ates, a consulting firm that specializes in prob-lems in organizational transition. He received aPh.D. in American Civilization from BrownUniversity. Bridges teaches in the Masters Pro-gram in organizational behavior at the Califor-nia School of Psychology in Berkeley. He hasconsulted or trained for McDonnell DouglasAstronautics, Kal Kan Foods, tke U.S. ForestService, the American Banking Association.Hewlett-Packard, TRW, Wells Fargo Bank, theNational Foreign Trade Council, Croup HealthCooperative of Puget Sound, and the Univer-sity Hospital in Seattle. Bridges is the author ofTransitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes(Addison-Wesley, 1980); he is currently at workOK his forthcoming book. The Challenge ofChange: Managing Organizational TransitionSuccessfully, fo be published by Doubleday in1987.

I have found it useful in discussingsuch feelings of loss to describe them as hav-ing three aspects:

1. Disengagement. Whatever the particu-lars of the situation, there is a break, an "un-plugging, " a separation of the person from thesubjective world he or she took for granted.Some people are relatively self-contained tobegin with, and they may not be so dismayedby this break. But people whose personalsecurity is tied to relationships and feelings of 27

belonging, to status and role, are quite un-done by disengagement. Transition manage-ment must begin with the ability to foreseethe impact of disengagement and to find v raysof countering its debilitating effects. It oftenhelps to identify continuities that balance thelosses, to reemphasize connections to thewhole as connections to the parts are broken,to encourage people to talk about their feel-ings of loss, and to give temporary peopletemporary superiors who are sensitive totheir situation. People are in mourning dur-ing this time, and so managers and supervi-sors need to expect the behaviors that arecommonly associated with mourning: denial,anger, bargaining, grief, and the despair thatcomes before final acceptance.

2. Disidentification. One of the first lossesin any transition is the sense of one's identityin the former situation. As I noted earlier, theold identity must go if there is to be space for

28

the new one, but that fact does not keep thedisidentification process from being verypainful and even terrifying. One can see theimpact of disidentification in companies thatshift from traditional, functional organiza-tional lines to strategic business units, andthereby undermine the traditional identitiesof engineers, accountants, and other profes-sionals who no longer have a clear sense ofwho they are. It is aiso painfully evidentwhen people approach retirement and beginto wonder who they will be without their par-ticular jobs and organizations. The problemcan be converted into an opportunity, how-ever, if people are given assistance in redefin-ing themselves and their future directions.New training opportunities and a chance forlife- and career-planning can often turn dis-identification into the beginning of a newidentity.

3. Disenchantment. Every reality givesmeaning both to people's experience and totheir way of responding to that experience.But when big changes occur, that meaning-making capacity breaks down. Things don'tmake sense any more —or they make onlysome terrible and inadmissable kind of sense,as in the suspicion that a person's job has beena sham and that that person's supervisor hasbeen deceiving him or her all along. Suchthoughts occur to almost everyone at sometime or other during a painful ending, but ifthere really has been deception, disenchant-ment can become an overwhelming experi-ence—as it was for some E. F. Hutton workersduring the check-kiting investigation, or forsome NASA employees in the aftermath ofthe shuttle explosion. The only way to dealwith disenchantment is to allow the hurt to beexpressed internally, no matter how this ex-pression may affect the organization's lead-ers, and to have those leaders make an honeststatement to the employees. Quick, frank.

full communication is essential, as is rapid ac-tion to correct whatever situation led to thedisenchantment in the first place.

The Neutral Zone Phase

There is no clear division between the first or"ending" phase of transition and the second,or "neutral zone" phase. The mourning forwhat has been lost, the confusion over iden-tity, and the bitterness of disenchantment willflare up periodically like an underground firethat can only burn itself out. But with timethere is a shift from the old task of letting goto the new task of crossing the "neutral zone,"that wilderness that lies between the pastreality and the one that the leadership claimsis just around the corner.

Neutral zone management must be-gin with an acknowledgment that this zoneexists and that it has a constructive functionin the transition process. It is difficult formost of us to make such an acknowledgementfor two reasons. First, the Western mind seesthe psychological emptiness of the neutralzone as something to be filled with the rightcontent. We have no word or concept that issimilar to the Japanese word ma, which refersto a necessary pause that one must make inwaiting for the right moment for action.Where we would talk of "emptiness," the Jap-anese would say "full of nothing." I feedless tosay, the Japanese understand the neutral zonefar better than we do.

Furthermore, people do not want toaccept the reality of the neutral zone becausethey are afraid that they will succumb to it.Productivity and effectiveness are likely tobreak down in the neutral zone, but this hap-pens whether its existence is acknowledged ornot. Talking about it simply makes peoplerealize that they are neither isolated nor in-

sane. Such discussion removes extraneous is-sues and may even speed up the process of re-orientation. Thus, we can help people makesense of the neutral zone experience bydescribing it in terms of the following threeconditons:

1. Disorientation. The neutral zone is aninterim period between one orientation thatis no longer appropriate and another thatdoes not yet exist. This period has a functionthat is reminiscent of the situation in RobertFrost's poem "Directive." The poem is abouta confusing journey into the backcountry ofNew Hampshire and the mind, a journey thatleaves behind the known and that leads to thediscovery of something new. At one turningpoint in the journey Frost says to the reader,"You're lost enough to find yourself now."

2. Disintegration. The neutral zone is astage in which "everything has fallen apart."(Some variant of that phrase will be heard

29

again and again during this phase of or-ganizational transition.) This is potentially acreative disintegration, but it is still a veryfrightening experience. The breakdown of theold structure and the reality it held in placecreates a sort of vacuum, a "low-pressurearea" in the person and the organization, thatwill attract bad intra- and interpersonalweather from all sides. Old issues that indi-viduals and groups have apparently resolvedsuddenly return to haunt them. Long-dor-mant anxieties and antagonisms are stirredup, and unless people can understand whythis is happening, they are likely to concludethat "the end is at hand." At such a time thereis a strong temptation to leave the organiza-tion, and many resignations can be traced tothis turmoil. But if people can recognize thisas a transition-generated condition that willpass, most will be able to ride it out.

3. Discovery. In the ancient rites of pas-sage that used to carry a person throughperiods of transition, the neutral zone wasspent in a literal "nowhere." There, in the des-ert or forest or tundra, the person could breakaway from the social forces that held his orher old reality in place, and a new realitycould emerge. The neutral zone wildernesswas believed to be a point of closer access tothe spirits or the deeper levels of reality, andso the Plains Indians called the journey intothe wilderness a "vision quest."

One does not have to accept theancient beliefs to recognize that the neutralzone is still a place of discovery. Studies ofcreativity always emphasize that the creativesolution comes from the psychologicalequivalent of the neutral zone. In his list ofthe main obstacles to creativity, the psychol-ogist Richard Crutchfield shows that unlessone can get into the neutral-zone frame of

30 mind, one's responses are likely to be conven-

tional rather than creative. The first two ob-stacles he lists have to do with problem clar-ity and understanding, but the remainingthree are (1) rigidity and the inability to putaside popular assumptions, (2) lack of aperiod of incubation so that problems can sitin the mind for a while, and (3) fear of reac-tion to unconventional ideas (cited in HarryLevinson, Executive, Harvard University Press,1981). There is little wonder that we needto lose ourselves in the wilderness to find anew identity; in the wilderness, one can turninward to incubate an embryonic idea, andpopular assumptions and reactions to uncon-ventional ideas no longer exist.

"The Vision" or New Beginning

Just as an organizational transition must be-gin with an ending, it must also end with a be-ginning. With our cultural bias toward thenew, we Americans are always marching offon new ventures without bothering to end oldones. Perhaps that comes from our frontierdays, when Americans could usually walkaway from a situation and start over againelsewhere without acknowledging the end-ing. Whatever the reason, Americans oftenfail to understand that their main difficultieswith making new beginnings come not froma difficulty with beginnings per se, but froma difficulty with endings and neutral zones.Transition managers must avoid that trap byimplementing certain activities that will com-pensate for the losses people suffered in theending.

1. If loss of turf is an issue, interest-based,not position-based negotiation is essential ifresponsibilities and benefits are to be reallo-cated in ways that people feel are equitable.

2. If loss of attachments is an issue, ritualsto mark those endings and team-building to

reattach the person in a new place are effec-tive. In addition, the natural mourning pro-cess must not be shortened so that peoplemay fully recover from their losses.

3. If loss of meaning is an issue, a meaning-based rather than an information-based com-munications campaign is important. Thiscampaign must begin by confronting the prob-lem that the organization is facing, rather thanby simply explaining the solution that theleadership has discovered.

4. if loss of a future is an issue, career- andlife-planning opportunities can help people re-cover a sense of where they are going and dis-cover their place in the new order.

5. If loss of a competence-based identity isan issue, training in new competencies —socialas well as technical —is essential if people areto retain their confidence. The need for suchtraining might seem obvious; however, peopleare often informed that they must acquire newskills without being told how to develop them.

6. If loss of control is an issue, any possibleinvolvement in creating the future will help tocompensate for the loss. This must be a real in-volvement, however, not a last-minute, "let's-hope-they-don't-mess-up-our-plans" invitationto contribute ideas.

7. If loss itself is an issue, all such lossesmust be recognized and acknowledged.Nothing turns people off faster than a peptalk about how everything is happening forthe best, unless it is the advice that theyshould "think positively" in a painful and in-timidating situation.

The new beginning, when its time isripe, must be built upon the new orientationand identity that emerge in the neutral zone.The catchword today for that new reality is"the vision," and an organization's vision ofitself— as articulated by its leadership — is thefoundation upon which its future must beformed. In trying to create and communicatesuch a vision, however, an organization'sleaders must remember several things:

1. A new vision can take root only afterthe old vision has died and been buried. Toforget that is to court the kind of backlashthat Archie McGill experienced in tryingprematurely to instill his vision of aninnovation- and marketing-oriented cultureat American Bell in the early 1980s.

2. In spite of the diagrams depicting or-ganizations as fields full of arrows that allpoint the same way, a vision and the culturethat develops from it do not remove all fac-

'[DJifficulHes with making new beginningscome not from a difficulty with beginningsper st, but from a difficulty with endingsand neutral zones. Transition managersmust avoid that trap. . . !' 31

tions and forms of opposition. In fact, a cul-ture is not a pattern of total agreement but adialogue between opposing forces that agreeon the nature of their opposition. Culturechange is really a shift in the definition of theopposition and in the terms of the dialogue,not a conversion process in which a group ofSauls see a burning bush and become single-minded Pauls.

3. Vision is a concept that appeals primar-ily to what Carl Jung called the "intuitivefunction." This way of perceiving deals notwith the details of the present but with thegeneral shape of the future. Research hasshown, however, that although a high per-centage of organizational leaders are "intui-tive types," about three-quarters of the em-ployees in most large organizations are"sensation types." These are present- ratherthan future-oriented individuals who do notuse intuition as often as intuitive types andwho are not as impressed by its results. Thevision must therefore be supplemented by aclear plan, and the big picture by many smallexamples, if the majority of employees aregoing to accept them.

4. To complicate matters further, both thevision and the plan have to be spelled out intwo different forms, for another of CarlJung's discoveries, substantiated by thou-sands of tests, is that people make and carryout decisions in two different ways. Someconsider situations impersonally according toprinciples and categories. These "thinkingtypes" will want to know how the future willwork and what the logical reasons for thechanges are. "Feeling types," on the otherhand, decide and act on the basis of personalvalues and the interpersonal aspects of a situ-ation. They will be more concerned withwhat the future is going to "feel like" and howeveryone will fit into it. These different types"see" visions quite differently.

32 5. Finally, both types of people are going

to feel overwhelmed if the vision and the newreality it portrays are very different from cur-rent conditions. As University of Texas psy-chologist Karl Weick has shown in his article"Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of SocialProblems" (The American Psychologist, Jan-uary 1984), organizations often move fasterin a new direction if they follow what he callsthe "Small Wins" Principle. In addition to theoverall goal, the organizational leadershipneeds to identify a few "concrete, complete,implemented outcomels] of moderate impor-tance . . . Ithat will I produce visible results"if people are not to lose their momentumwhen their early efforts at making the newbeginning fall short of the vision.

QUESTIONS FOR TRANSITION MANAGERS

In closing, let us look at the management oforganizational transition from a somewhatmore general perspective. People who areresponsible for leading or managing an or-ganizational transition need to ask them-selves these questions:

1. Have 1 included transition planning inmy planning for the changes that lie ahead ofus? That means systematically foreseeingwho will have to let go of what if the plannedchanges are actually going to work. It meanspredicting the resources that people will needfor the wilderness experience of the neutralzone. Finally, it means going beyond the vi-sion and plan for the change to a design forthe process, a design in which the vision andplan are actually converted into new behaviorand attitudes.

2. Have 1 created a transition-monitoringsystem to keep track of what transition is ac-tually doing to the organization as it unfoldsthrough its three phases? Only in that waycan one be sure that people aren't getting lostin the shuffle, that communications are really

understood, and that plans are really beingput into action.

3. Have I made sure that managers and su-pervisors are being trained to facilitate transi-tion rather than merely to "make change hap-pen"? Organizational leaders and outsideconsultants alike can too easily become en-amoured of "change-agentry," forgetting howmuch easier it is to prescribe a change insomeone else than it is to effect a change inoneself.

4. Have 1 really looked at how I will needto change if 1 am to function effectively in thenew system? Organizational leaders who donot do this are undermining their preachingwith their example. Furthermore, they tendto project their own problems onto others,and fail to legitimize transition managementas a critical aspect of organizational change.

5. Have I taken pains to communicate ef-fectively the changes and the transitions theywill require? There are some secondary ques-tions here: (1) Am I giving as clear a pictureas I can of the what, when, how, and why ofthe changes? (2) Am I recognizing that differ-ent types of people are concerned aboutdifferent aspects of the change —or am I justsaying what / would want to hear? (3) Am Iremembering that no communication is com-plete until the sender knows that the receiverhas the correct message and has had a chanceto reply? (4) Am I relying on the old commu-nication channels to give and receive mes-sages, or do I need to create new channels?

6. Am 1 using this present transition as anopportunity to redesign the policies, proce-dures, systems, and structures to make theorganization more transition-worthy in thefuture? If not, I will have missed a great op-portunity, for the organizations that will leadtheir fields tomorrow are the ones that arenow creating ways of going through transi-tions successfully.

In these turbulent times, the ability

to change frequently and rapidly is a require-ment for survival. However, successful changerequires many individual transitions. Sinceunmanaged transitions lead to unmanageablechange, transition management must rank asone of the key executive skills that will beneeded in the years ahead.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bowlby, John. Loss: Sadness and Depression (BasicBooks, 1980).Bridges, William. Transitions: Making Sense ofLife's Changes (Addison-Wesley, 1980).Keirsey, David and Bates, Marilyn, Please Under-stand Me: Character & Temperament Types(Prometheus Nemesis, 1978).Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth. On Death and Dying(Macmillan, 1968).Levinson, Harry. Executive (Harvard UniversityPress, 1981).Myers, Isabel Briggs, Gifts Differing (ConsultingPsychologists Press, 1980).Pascale, Richard T. and Athos, Anthony G. TheArt of Japanese Management (Simon & Schuster,1981).Pierson, G. W. TocqueviUe and Beaumont inAmerica (Oxford University Press, 1938).Tunstall, W. Brooke. "Breakup of the Bell System:A Case Study in Cultural Transformation." In Kil-mann, Ralph H. etal., eds.. Gaining Control of theCorporate Culture (Jossey Bass Publishers, 1985).Van Gennep, Arnold. Rites of Passage. Trans.Monika B. Vizedon and GabHelle Caffee (Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 1960).Weick, Karl E. "Small Wins: Redefining the Scaleof Social Problems" (The American Psychologist,January 1984). 3 3