One thing that’s certain about the near future of almost any major institution: uncertainty will permeate the scene. While leaders will have many important decisions on their agendas, effective management will require helping both staff and clients to negotiate the transitions they will surely face.
 
Although experts offering counsel to leaders of organizations in transition abound, one we have found to be particularly helpful is William Bridges, author of Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. Bridges notes that change is part of life, and rapid change is inherent in all organizations in the 21st century. But he makes an important distinction: Transitions are different from changes. 
 
Changes often are connected with events, such as the sale or merger of a business.  Transitions accompany changes, but they call for more than functional shifts. They require psychological reorientations.The figure to the right illustrates not only Bridges’ thinking about endings, times of grief and loss that throw us into a neutral zone, a “wilderness” from which we gradually emerge into a time of new beginnings, but also the work of the late J. Gordon Myers.
 
Bridges labels three phases in dealing with change as the transitional elements: the endings, the neutral zone and the new beginnings. Myers describes five areas that need attention in order to move from what is dying to what is struggling to be born. Myers dealt with corporate transitions in terms of remembering the past; articulating the present; grieving and letting go; knowing what is remaining the same or deepening; as well as engaging hopes and dreams for the future.
 
Coping with loss
Endings inevitably accompany change, whether on a large or a small scale. They become stressful when comfort levels are lost, when confidence is shaken, when co-workers leave, when people see no significant reason for the change and become confused, when a person’s or institution’s very identity is changed or questioned. The more radical the change, the more vulnerable people are to paralyzing stress.
 
On the change spectrum, people are wired differently to deal with change. Some are explorers looking for challenging transformations. “Bring it on” is their motto. At the other end of the spectrum are the settlers – “if it is not broke, don’t fix it” – who struggle with change in a big way. Most of us are somewhere in between:  we can cope effectively with organizational change, even welcome it, especially if we are involved at some level in creating and implementing the new beginnings that emerge from times of transition.
 
Surviving the wilderness
Our own experience as consultants walking through the wilderness in times of transition with health care leaders, and educational, religious or parish communities supports the wisdom of honoring Bridges’ three stages and Myers’ five actions. They are helpful in those in-between times, those times of struggling to let go of the past and give birth to the new.
 
It should be noted that the three stages and five actions often overlap. The order is less important than recognizing the stages and addressing needs. Remembering the past is critical to making it successfully through the wilderness. Again, to use health care as an example, remembering the bygone practice of doctors making house calls is a way of calling on the dedication of the past – a dedication that is needed today, even if house calls are not.

Recalling the past does not mean idealizing or romanticizing past practices or traditions. These need to be remembered for their challenges as well as for the values they represented. In some cases, the past needs to be remembered so that it will not be repeated. This is especially true if people were treated poorly, without dignity or respect or if they were oppressed and dealt with unjustly.

Maureen Gallagher, Senior Consultant
The Reid Group

Next month:  Leading Change:  Involve Your People

One of the exciting aspects of the mediation profession is the ongoing development of theory and practice in the arena of conflict management. Like many areas in the social sciences, mediation has benefitted greatly from modern breakthroughs in physics, geometry and evolutional biology.

We explored the contributions of brain science and the neurophysiology of conflict in the February 2011 edition of our Mediation e-letter. The field of evolutionary biology builds upon that work by seeing conflict as a complex self-organizing system for society. The work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace shows how species differentiation and the natural selection process is related to the balance between competition and collaboration as well as change and conservation.

The ability of a species to collaborate, change and adapt enhances survival rates. Therefore, one of the goals of the mediator is to assist the parties to work together, to work through the dynamics of change and transition and to be creative is seeking adaptations to the situation that will lessen or resolve the conflict and serve all those involved.

The field of physics has also made significant contributions to greater understanding of the dynamics involved in conflict through advancements in wave and particle theory. Ever since Einstein, scientists agree that our universe consists of both matter and energy which can be seen as simply different expressions of the same reality. Matter consists of energy vibrating very slowly; energy consists of matter vibrating very quickly. In other words, our world not only consists of particles of fixed matter, but also waves of invisible, vibrating energy. If we believe that every conflict has emotional, energetic and spiritual components, then we can use the wave metaphor to help tune into less adversarial or destructive frequencies and help parties engage in heart-centered conversations which create positive and collaborative energetic states.

Finally, the field of geometry has added to our current understanding of conflict management. Geometry is all about relationship and relationship is always a component of conflict—whether it be with ourselves, others, the past and/or future, or our physical world. By understanding the angle of our speed and position relative to others in a conflict or to the system or environment in which the conflict occurs, we can find clues into the meaning of the dispute and more easily locate the vector of resolution.

In these ways, nature provides us with useful metaphors to view hidden symmetries, forms and patterns in conflict behaviors. The sciences offer models to help us understand how and why we behave as we do when we are in conflict and are very helpful tools for the mediator in discovering more effective methods of conflict resolution and prevention.

Carol Guenther, Senior Consultant, Mediator
The Reid Group