Between “no longer”, and “not yet”: organizational transitions

by Dr. Leandro Herrero:

Transitions were for people ‘in transit from A to B’. In our current environment we seem to be permanently in transit to somewhere, but not sure where. We are becoming nomadic tribes without nomadic skills.  Where is home?

Social anthropologists have a very sticky term to describe the state between leaving adolescence and starting maturity: liminality. It’s an in-between state where everything is suspended or muddled: social rules, structures, hierarchies and identities. The no longer adolescent, not yet adult, needs to prove himself often in difficult situations. Traditionally, three phases of this process have been described: separation (leaving behind a familiar life), liminality (experience or ‘experiment’ in a new, often unknown territory) and incorporation (into a new social reality). In this period, rituals abound (‘rites of passage’). They fuel, ‘potentiality, creativity and a sense of communitas’ as described by Scottish anthropologist Victor Turner.

Liminality is the state of ‘limen’ (of Latin roots for boundary or limit). The individual is in his own margins, literally marginal for a while. The Latin cousin ‘limbus’ means border or edge. ‘Being in limbo’ and the anthropological concept of liminality, share the same Latin root and describe similar states of in-between-ness.

When the individual will ‘come out’ (a few rituals later) he will no longer be the same.

There are innumerable examples of rituals and periods of transition in our social life. All religions contain their own versions. Some of these ‘states’ are as short lived as the ritual itself, but the original concept assumes a rather well defined period of being in this ‘state’.

Rituals are powerful. They provide meaning and shape action, even those that ‘don’t make any sense’ to the observer. Following the direction of the ashes in the wind at a campfire, as a signal of where to go hunting, ‘doesn’t make any sense’ but gets the tribal hunters moving. The randomness of several directions (depending on the wind of the day) ensures that they will not keep going to the same place all the time, protecting the possible depletion of animals in that area. It makes a lot of sense, but it doesn’t make sense, both at the same time.

Maybe the stickiness I was referring to, points to something profound about the ‘transitions’ that we endure, something we all recognise on reflection. Sometimes the transition is obvious, defined by specific circumstances, and it has something close to a beginning and an end. Other times, the shift seems to have taken hold and it feels more like a ‘permanent transition’ or permanent liminality. Permanent liminality defies the old, expected anthropological sequence, although it can be helped by anthropological lenses as well.

Putting linguistics aside, the term and broad metaphor has naturally become very appealing to describe ‘in between’ states. Liminality is, at the very minimum, a useful allegory for reflection about the evolution of individual and social ‘states’. It prompts us to reflect, to ask ourselves questions such as ‘so, where are we now?’

Transitions in homo corporate land

In organizational terms, we all have experience of being, or having been, or heading towards an ‘in limbo’ situation: the announced merger (with its ‘we are merging, but not yet’), the new CEO who is expected to ‘change things’, the existence of pending legal procedures which could make or break. The ‘in limbo’ concept usually has a more negative meaning than liminality itself. They both overlap but are not the same.

Corporate rituals are always in place, visible or not. A new CEO cancels existing programmes not because they are bad, but because they were part of ‘the past’. ‘The past’ is anything which was happening until the new CEO took command. The lifecycle of the modern firm is strongly ritualistic: ‘closing the quarter’, ‘the budget season’, the reiterative budget process across divisions that seem to extend forever, let alone the off-sites and away-days, to give some examples. Only the ritual lenses, plus power dynamics can make sense of it all.

For us, ‘practitioners of change’, liminality in organizations is omnipresent, whether the term ever gets used or not. Usually, it doesn’t. Corporate anthropologists such as Jitske Krammer have written extensively and elegantly about this.

Traditionally, the ‘change industry’ has solved the ‘transition problem’ by translating these evolutions into discrete, mechanical, sequential phases. In that sense, they are similar to the anthropological ‘passages’, although with more straitjackets and the rigidity of managerialism. Predictability obsession is at the core of most change models. No model says, A to B and then.., we will see. Organisational transformation? Into what?

Both anthropological and ‘change management’ suffer from the same ‘one way’ view of progression: always unidirectional, good or bad. One ‘step’ proceeds the other, and it’s followed by the next. I personally think that the reality of progress (individual, collective, culture, societal) is better represented by the circularity and spiral of the floors of the Guggenheim museum, where you go up all the time, but by going backwards and forwards, often finding yourself confused: ‘oh, wait, I’ve been here before’ (yes you have, but lower, the view now is different). Ditto in William Blake’s painting ‘Jacob’s Dream’ (the way to heaven is a stairway, not a ladder).

The tyranny of plateau

In my work on the behavioural and cultural processes of social movements, which I apply to culture change ‘inside’ the organization, I map all the possible points: initiation, growth, achievement, transformation into something different, plateau, decline, death etc. I ask people to reflect on how they perceive ‘where’ they are at a particular time.  Then, I ask a second question: ‘what is the worst of all possible states?’ The usual jovial atmosphere of a group prompts easy answers such as ‘death, of course’. I then push back and say that, in my opinion, there is a state worse than that. After all, if one is dead there is little that can be done. The worst for me is plateau. Particularly the type where people don’t even feel it as such. (Not feeling that you are constrained, when you objectively are, is part of my work and forthcoming book ‘Silent Tyrannies’).

Liminality in traditional anthropology has an optimistic flavour. That ‘state’ may be hard but is supposed to be liberating, creative, transformative. From the organizational worldview, things are not always that hopeful.

If you cared to ‘see it’, or look for it, you will see that some organizations are often in a permanent or semi-permanent state of ‘being nowhere’ (look for their Silent Tyrannies). Symptoms may be: established dysfunctional behaviours, always unfinished and half-baked processes, ‘the indecision is final’ (to quote the title of an old management book), or anxieties and over-sensitiveness in a ‘contaminated air’.

The German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad – not well-known in Anglo-American territory – described ‘trema’ as a state of ‘delusional mood’. Trema is not quite psychosis but a precursor to it, something that is felt by both the patient and an experienced observer. In Psychiatry we call it the ‘prodromal stage’. It sometimes feels as if some organizations are in trema. It doesn’t end well.

Perhaps, above all look for ‘Broken Windows’, a theme I have written about before. The neighbourhood that has normalised the presence of broken windows, invites people to break more. Broken windows say, hey, this is fun, throw more stones. In organizational transitions people may say ‘it’s not the time to fix that’, the new CEO or the merger may change the whole, don’t progress on initiative A,B.C; let’s wait until we know. The company becomes a permanent Waiting Room, an institutionalised rehearsal, with plenty of broken windows in need of repairs.

These long organizational plateaus create a ‘permanent liminality’ which is usually less creative than the anthropological ‘rites of passage’ and more akin to limbo-on-an-anaesthetic. It is no longer the company that it was (good or bad) and not yet the one that was planned or talked about so much. Yet it feels that indecisions are final in this new nomadic land, for which we have not learnt the skills. Traditional managerial functions (HR, OD, Old Comms, leadership teams) seem lost in translation. What kind of leadership development in ‘the city of management’ can be offered to people who need to cross deserts?

Where is home?

Perhaps a new form of nomadism has quietly (?) emerged and, instead of being in healthy liminality, we run the risk of progressing towards homelessness. It may sound too dramatic but I just wonder, for all our corporate talk about belonging, engagement and the ‘new’ employee experience, if we are progressing to psychological nomadism. Some people may like that, no doubt, but most of us may not have particular ‘nomadic’ skills, and a nomad who doesn’t know what a camel is, well, good luck.

In these disoriented times, anything that provides the instant coffee is well received. If we just repackage things and pretend that they are new, we have an attractive illusion of progress. And a new function: DEI, ESG, SDG, CSR and all future trios that will replace old ones. Their own rituals (communication, training, ‘programmes’) will sustain them for a while. I do not dismiss for a second the intrinsic goodness and value that these maps may bring, but the risk is that we think they are the territory itself.

One thing is clear. To be attentive to the ‘in-between-ness’ in the organization, to its different forms of liminality, is the first step to a deeper understanding of what is going on. There will be rituals inviting us to read. Don’t miss any invitation, they are always an invitation to move, not just to admire. If in doubt, move where the wind tells you.

I have come to believe that the organization is full of orphans in need of adoption. No function fully owns the understanding and ‘use’ of networks (and the utilization of Social Network Analysis), the navigation skills for the informal organization, storytelling as an accelerator of change, let alone ‘change’ in itself. These are not particularly HR, OD, Comms, etc. If Internal Communications people were to abandon their permanent liminality and quasi existential crisis, there are plenty of streets to occupy.

We left ‘No Longer’, we are going to ‘Somewhere Not Yet’, and, paraphrasing Nietzsche and adding a well-known comedic variation ‘God is dead, and I don’t feel very well myself’.

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Dr Leandro Herrero – Chief Organizational Architect at The Chalfont Project, Author, International Speaker and Psychiatrist. For the past 25 years, Dr Herrero and his team have been transforming culture in organizations via his pioneering Viral Change™ methodology. Follow Dr Herrero on LinkedIn for all the latest updates.

Written by: Editor