05/31/2020

Leaders: Welcome to the Beginning of "Phase 2"

How to embrace the emergence phase

From my vantage point of speaking with around a dozen leaders from different industries every week since the COVID-19 pandemic began, I’ve concluded that we’re at the end of Phase 1 and the beginning of Phase 2 of what it means to live and work in this new world.

Phase 1 has been the “reinvention” phase where leaders have been focused on figuring out new ways to keep their businesses running at some basic level. On the home front, many of us have been getting used to being on video conferences for a good part of the day while dealing with barking dogs and competing for bandwidth with our spouse and kids. Phase 2 is just beginning as many of the leaders I’m talking with are starting to think about what I’d call the “emergence” phase. As in, we’re emerging from the initial shock of all the change we’ve experienced and are now beginning to ask, “OK, how are we going to do this for months on end?”

Phase 3, a.k.a. “the new normal”, will eventually get here, but we’re still a long way from that. Right now, we’re dealing with the beginning of Phase 2 which is what the late, great change management guru, William Bridges, described as “the neutral zone.” In his classic book, Managing Transitions, Bridges pointed out that there are three phases of major change – the ending, the neutral zone, and the beginning. That order may seem out of sequence, but it’s intentional. Bridges’ point was that before anything new can begin, something else has to end, but you don’t just flip from the end of the old state to the beginning of the new. The neutral zone is that space of time in between the end and the beginning where the new rules aren’t yet clear and we’re feeling our way forward.

Please select this link to read the complete blog post from the Eblin Group.