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Managing Transitions Within Your Organization
by Lee
At kasina, we do weekly book reports where a member of the team can share a book that they've read with the team. For my most recent report, we discussed "Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change" by William Bridges. Among the many interesting points that the author made was the distinction between "change" and "transition." Change is situational while transition is psychological, and most firms fail to effectively manage transitions.
Some common situations that I have seen at asset management firms illustrate the importance of effectively managing transitions:
Firms should take several steps to avoid these types of situations, including identifying who is losing what due to the change, ignoring rationalizations to avoid communication (e.g. "They don't need to know yet. We'll tell them when the time comes. It'll just upset them now."), and creating temporary systems to manage the "neutral zone" that occurs during a transition.
For a brief recap of the book's concepts, you can download my presentation.