Quotes About Change

The question to ask yourself is this: What can I give back to balance what's been taken away? Status, turf, team membership, recognition, roles? If people feel that the change has robbed them of control over their futures, can you find some way to give them back a feeling of control?

every previous level of change comes to be called "stability." Seen in this light, what people today call "nonstop change" is simply a new level of what has always existed. It isn't pure chaos—simply a new experience. When people adjust to it, they will look back upon it as "the stability that we used to enjoy.

You can try hard to protect people from further changes while they're trying to regain their balance.

People can deal with a lot of change if it is coherent and part of a larger whole. But adding unrelated and unexpected changes, even small ones, can push people to the breaking point.

Review policies and procedures to see that they are adequate to deal with the confusing fluidity of the neutral zone. The "rules" under which you operate were set up to govern ongoing operations when things weren't changing as much as they are now.

One of the biggest problems that endings cause in an organization is confusion. Things change, and obviously the organization won't do some of the things it used to do.

One of the most important leadership roles during times of change is that of putting into words what it is time to leave behind. Because talking about making a break with the past can upset its defenders, some leaders shy away from articulating just what it is time to say good-bye to. But in their unwillingness to say what it is time to let go of, they are jeopardizing the very change that they believe they are leading.

Don't just talk about the endings—create actions or activities that dramatize them.

Never denigrate the past. Many managers, in their enthusiasm for a future that is going to be better than the past, ridicule or demean the old way of doing things. In doing so they consolidate the resistance against the transition because people identify with the way things used to be and thus feel that their self-worth is at stake whenever the past is attacked.

The transition's of life's second half offer a special kind of opportunity to break with the social conditioning and do something really new and different.

All transitions are composed of an ending, a neutral zone and a new beginning

Every organizational system has its own natural "immune system" whose task it is to resist unfamiliar, and so unrecognizable, signals. That is not necessarily bad.

In fact, many endings represent the only way to protect the continuity of something bigger.

Yesterday's ending launched today's success, and today will have to end if tomorrow's changes are to take place. Endings are not comfortable for any of us. But they are also neither unprecedented breaks with the past nor attempts by those in power to make people's lives miserable.

Given the ambiguities of the neutral zone, it is easy for people to become polarized: some want to rush forward and others want to go back to the old ways.

Os verdadeiros começos começam dentro de nós, mesmo que suscitados por oportunidades externas.

Yesterday's ending launched today's success, and today will have to end if tomorrow's changes are to take place.

Author says change emphasizes what is happening TO us while transition emphasizes opportunity for growth within.

GRASS: Guilt, Resentment, Anxiety, Self-absorption, and Stress. These are the five real and measurable costs of not managing transition effectively.

Yet beginnings are also scary, for they require a new commitment.

Beginnings establish once and for all that an ending was real.

Be careful that in urging people to turn away from the past you don't drive them away from you or from the new direction that the organization needs to take. Present innovations as developments that build on the past and help to realize its potential. Honor the past for what it has accomplished

This picture in people's heads is the reality they live in, and one of the losses that takes place during the ending phase of a transition is that the old picture—the mental image of how and why things are the way they are—falls apart. Much of the pain of the neutral zone comes from the fact that it is a time without a viable organizational picture.

Capitalize on the break in normal routines that the neutral zone provides to do things differently and better. In the neutral zone the restraints on innovation are weakened. With everything up in the air anyway, people are more willing than usual to try new things, and should be encouraged to do so.