Finding your way through the messy middle.
I recently delivered the keynote address at a Change and Transformation conference. As I listened to the speakers, I was struck by the irony of it all.
We were a diverse group of speakers and attendees. We represented different ages, genders, ethnicities, careers, and life experiences … but the one thing we all had in common was change.
None of us can escape change.
From the moment of conception, we enter the inexorable transitionary flow towards death.
Biologically, we are always changing. Or as biologist Daniel Nicholson writes:
“From a metabolic perspective, it is simply a matter of fact that, in an organism, everything flows.”
We are verbs, not nouns. Always in becoming.
Yet, whenever change is discussed in business, the conversation inevitably turns to topics like change resistance and change fatigue.
Why, if change really is the only constant, do we struggle with it so much?
Change vs transition.
William Bridges, in his book Transitions, makes an important distinction between change events and transition processes.
According to Bridges, change events occur at a point in time: we get a promotion, or we get married, or become parents.
What follows is a process of transition where:
- we have to say goodbye to who we were before the change event, i.e. deal with the loss
- then navigate a messy and confusing middle part until finally
- we start feeling the energy of new beginnings.
Some transition processes happen so fast that we don’t even know they’re happening. others can keep us stuck and languishing in the messy middle for years.
Like the Kubler-Ross grief curve, people tend to visualise this process in neat linear diagrams like the one below, often accompanied by analogies like metamorphosis.
There certainly are similarities and resonances between our experience of transition and metamorphosis, especially the intense discomfort of the cocoon where old certainties dissolve without an indication of what comes next.
However, there’s a big difference between humans and insects.
Unlike caterpillars, our transitions aren’t assured. Often, we have no control over the change events that come our way, but when it comes to transition we have choice and agency.
We need to intentionally choose how to navigate our cocoons, and our butterfly-hood is not assured.
Also, every caterpillar is navigating a single transition or transformation; there is only one cocoon.
That is not true for humans.
We are not caterpillars.
Here’s the catch: We don’t have the luxury of navigating life’s changes and transitions one at a time. Our lives are transcontextual and interdependent, so our transitions are always entangled.
A much more apt visualisation would look something like this.
Our broader context is in transition: climate change, political upheaval, war, and social unrest. Closer to home, we navigate illness, ageing parents, failing businesses, moving house, divorce, empty nests, menopause … the list is seemingly endless. We are in multiple overlapping cocoons at the same time.
In a company, this is the reality of every single employee.
So, every restructuring, new IT system, or new policy adds to the changes already taking place.
It looks something like this …
(One of the conference attendees told me (only half-jokingly) that I needed a much bigger and blacker messy tangle.)
It’s no wonder that people become tired of change.
While I believe companies can do better at limiting the amount of change they implement simultaneously (and eliminating unnecessary change), the reality is this:
Change is this is not going away. We need to reframe how we make meaning of it and how we relate to it.
Reframing change.
A few years ago, while in a traffic jam, my friend, Casper Oelofsen, saw a billboard that said:
You’re not stuck in traffic; you ARE traffic.
It was a powerful reframe.
Similarly, change and transition are not happening to you.
It IS you.
You ARE transition.
Being alive means being in transition.
Life is an ever-changing web of transitions, each opening up new, unexplored horizons and edges. So, to get better at “life-ing”, we need to learn skills that help us find our way.
In this context, the WaysFinder and associate waysfinding skills can provide a way to enable ourselves and others to become better at navigating transitions.
I liken it to a searchlight that can help you navigate your way through the mess.
The WaysFinder as searchlight.
Being in the middle of multiple messy transitions can feel like you’re so deep in the cocoon that you no longer see a way through.
The WaysFinder is like switching on a searchlight that helps us …
- to locate and orient ourselves: where we are, what is around us, and what resources are available to us.
- find a promising direction: where we want to go, what feels most alive to us.
- determine where we can’t go and where we choose not to go for now … i.e. the width of the beam becomes like guardrails that keep us safe and help us reduce the noise and remain focused. In this way, the edges of the light beam become natural boundaries.
- Determine next steps. The area where the light is the brightest is right in front of us. Here we can find adjacent possibilities, small steps we can take to start moving towards our chosen direction.
Waysfinding is a continuous and embodied process.
If you’re just thinking and not actually moving, you’re not waysfinding yet…
Whenever we take a step, our situation changes.
As with a real searchlight, waysfinding is a constant companion that can help us find our way regardless of our situation.
Therefore, it is key that we learn the skills we need to keep moving through the unknown.
Skills like …
- being present and aware of ourselves and our environment.
- managing our nervous system responses so that we move from a place of stillness, not reactivity.
- tapping into “Sphere intelligence” — expanding our repertoire beyond the mind and learning to tap into other sources of knowledge like our bodies, intuition, and imagination.
- Experimentation and improvisation.
These skills will help you to:
- Get unstuck.
- Reorient whenever you are feeling lost.
- Set a direction that feels alive and coherent with who you are.
- Feel safe and empowered to find and explore adjacent possibilities.
- Flow more naturally with change and harness the potential in the unknown.
- Maintain momentum even when the outcome cannot be known.
- Move from making sense to making an impact.
- Experience joy, awe, and wonder in the process.
The WaysFinder framework and skills apply to individuals as well as teams and even organisations.
They enable us to get (and remain) unstuck and navigate transitions without feeling lost or overwhelmed.
To learn how to apply & integrate these skills in your life, plus become confident by practising them with others, join me and Mirjam van Vliet for a 6-week somatic waysfinding journey from August 13 until September 17.
Early bird discount is available until August 1st.
For more info + small taster, visit:
https://mirjamchristinehope.com/replay-somatic-waysfinding-taster/
