Transition

When change works for us we think of it as an opportunity, when transition fails we call it change.

Almost every project, goal or strategy undertaken in 21st-century organisations requires a level of change to take place. This could be something small like a change to a process, or something big like a restructure or merger. Yet, it is estimated that around 70% of organisation change programmes fail because of ‘people issues’; which loosely translates to employees failing to transition to the new. An understanding of how people adapt to change is a key skill for leaders.

We look at transition from the perspective of how people think and therefore act during any change. All of us follow the same process and most of the time it is fairly smooth, even though most people think they are bad at change. By equipping managers with an understanding of transition, the tools to help them understand how different people are reacting, and the skills to help their people move forward, we can speed up the process. By dampening the impact of change the time lost in the change process can be minimised and new behaviours and ways of working embedded.