Change Management for Non-Management Employees: Understanding Transitions

As you are well aware, the underlying reason for the 70% failure rate of all major change initiatives is the inability to fully consider the impact of change on those most affected by it.

There are two levels of impact. The first is quite obvious as it refers to new ways of working, cultural changes and new processes, procedures and structures.

However, there is a second, less obvious but deeper level of impact, which is the emotional and psychological adjustments people go through as they adjust to these new ways.

It is this emotional impact that is often neglected. Because people are attached to “the way things are,” there is a sense of loss and emotional turmoil if that certainty and the security it provides are threatened.

This is important, because people cannot work effectively if they are experiencing emotional turbulence. Your ability to get the job done depends on keeping your emotions in check. A leader has to address those often unconscious and unexpressed fears along the way, to help people keep them in check.

Transition management is all about seeing the situation through the other person’s eyes – it’s an empathy-based perspective and makes excellent business sense.

However, this is rarely applied!

However, by becoming aware of this dimension, you can equip yourself to anticipate and manage your own emotional responses to the change that is going to be imposed on you. You can also help your colleagues and possibly your line manager.

critical action point

The most effective thing you can do, if you haven’t already, is to familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of the William Bridges transition model, which is based on 3 simple questions:

(1) What is changing?

(2) What will actually be different because of the change?

(3) Who will lose what?

Bridges has identified 3 stages that we all go through as we make the necessary emotional and psychological adjustment to imposed organizational change, so it will help you considerably if you can figure out how you will manage these 3 stages of transition.

(1) Finish, lose, let go: dealing with your losses and preparing to move on

(2) Go through the disturbing and destabilizing “neutral zone” where psychological realignments and readjustments take place.

(3) Entering the new beginning: This usually involves developing a new identity and a new sense of purpose.

stopping points

The biggest and most common sticking point is not understanding that we all need support during the emotional adjustments that come with change.

Change is always an emotional business. You will be doing yourself a great disservice if you do not understand and prepare for this.

William Bridges is emphatic in drawing the important distinction between organizational change and what he calls the “transition” that people must go through to successfully adapt to the new circumstances that arise from that change. We ignore it at our peril.