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There is an effective way to keep the disruptive effects of change to a minimum: the Management of Organizational Transition. It takes some time for the practitioner to understand why Bridges's methods work.  Using them with clients and seeing the results at first brought pleasurable amazement, but not understanding.  The penny dropped while I was reading Karl Weick.  The methods work because Bridges is addressing not only the educated minds of the participants, but also the human need to make sense out of what is going on, and that is a need  which goes back to the foundations of our world.  If man had not felt the need to make sense out of his surroundings, would civilization exist ?  The purpose of this seminar is to focus on how managers and team leaders at all levels of the company can minimize the effects of non-stop change on your organization and its people through the effective management of individual and group transitions through individual sensemaking.

The Purpose of The Longer Program

Transition begins as soon as the change is announced.  You should offer this program to your managers and supervisors three or four months before a major change is to be announced, so they can prepare for peoples' reactions, not be bowled over by what happens in any change process affecting people, and make sure that the organization and its employees come through the process successfully.

It is already clear that this is a time full of changes in strategy, technology, product mix, and culture. With many of them come reorganization and redeployment. As in the past, all too many of these changes will be planned with GANTT charts and lots of critical path analysis with little concern for how they will affect people or for what people will have to do to make them work. It will simply be assumed that if the changes are necessary, people will adjust to them on day one. But experience suggests that the psychological process initiated by change is more like distress and disruption than adjustment.

Therefore most changes take longer and cost more to implement than anyone foresaw. But that is not the worst problem: many of the changes that are meant to strengthen the organization will actually weaken it, for they will leave its people resentful, demotivated and confused at a time when commitment and creativity are essential. 

And that is why you should get your managers ready before time, this time !

In over twenty years of working with organizations, William Bridges, who has been described by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top ten independent development presenters in American has developed the concept of Managing Organizational Transition, which has been used effectively by organizations such as NASA, Procter & Gamble, Intel, Hewlett Packard, 3M, Shell Petroleum and many other international companies and organizations. Bridges is the well-known author of JobShift, Managing Transitions (Making the Most of Change) and Surviving Corporate Transition.

The concept of leading and managing organizational transition can be delivered to leaders and managers in a number of ways, which fall into three basic categories: facilitating, training or consulting. This seminar is based on the training approach and will be tailored to the objectives of the organization. It will comprise materials and resources developed by William Bridges & Associates. Participants will develop a Transition Management Plan they can begin to implement the day after the seminar.

1.     The main differences between strategic management, change management and transition management.

      1.1 Strategy: how and why the need for change should be communicated to the members  of the organization: a solid foundation for change, why change is necessary, what will               happen if change does not take place…

      1.2 The Change Process (in response to the strategic analysis).

      1.3 Managing Transitions (the internal psychological process initiated by change).

2.    What exactly is Transition Management?

3.    Assessing the Change Plan (for the participant's unit, service, department, etc.)

4.    Improving Communication during Organizational Change.

5.    Where are People in the Transition Process?

6.    Coaching Employees.

7.    Managing Endings.

8.    Leading People through the Neutral Zone

9.    Facilitating the New Beginning.

10. Beginning the Transition Management Action Plan.

http://www.pfdf.org/leaderbooks/L2L/spring2000/bridges.html : Leading Transition a new model for organizational change.  William Bridges talks to Susan Mitchell.

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