Harry 0:00

I think it is seeing clearly and looking at the facts as they are, rather than we demand that they "should be," which puts us in a much stronger position to participate in change.

Narrator 0:21

You're listening to Traction Heroes. Digging In to Get Results with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.

Harry 0:31

It is most excellent to see you once again, Jorge, I have to say.

Jorge 0:36

It's always a treat, Harry. I'm very glad to, once again make the time to do this with you.

Harry 0:43

I think one of the things I'm most excited about in this work is that I've noticed that I'm in, I'm learning intentionally much more than I used to. I used to go ahead and read books, and watch YouTube videos, and listen to podcasts and whatnot to learn things, but I noticed I've become much, much more intentional about it. And I'm sure you're a far better note taker than I am: I just chicken scratch everywhere and file cards galore. So anyhow, I wanna share something from a woman by the name of Rebecca Borland Reynolds. And it's on the topic of change, which is so central to all of our lives now. It's a little long, so let me just dive straight into it if I may. Okay. "Our ability to see the change process, name it and talk about it, increases our innate ability to face change and reap its full benefits. Toward this purpose, I created a model based on what I had seen occurring in the change process itself. Using the model, this book reveals the universal process of change and helps you advance your ability with it in all the changes you face." Jumping ahead a little bit here. "The thresholds of change model gives language for the progression of change, the repeating sequential pattern all change moves through. The model is composed of four iterative stages: instigation, the liminal, metabolization, and manifestation. The threshold between these stages signify major landmarks in changes progression. Like cairns on the trail or locks on a waterway, these thresholds are key, and not only do they show where we are in the change process, but they also indicate an energetic shift within us, like heated water, reaching the boiling point. The shift means that a different interaction with the change process is called for. Here is a basic explanation of the four thresholds and their stages. At the beginning, change is being instigated. The instigation threshold may be marked by a period of disorienting and destabilizing events, or by the moment of a catastrophic one. How we respond to these events determines how long the instigation stage lasts, as well as what our experience of it will be. Next comes the liminal threshold, marked by letting go. Both profound loss and more routine loss are hallmarks of crossing over. The liminal stage is a gestational period where the change is incubated with little input or direction from us. Indeed, the liminal stage takes place in the dark of the knowing mind, like the juice of grapes in the cask or seed under the soil that simply needs time to sit in a cool, dark place to become wine or a plant. From there, the change, like the seed deep in the soil, suddenly sprouts bursting into light into the light of the day. This marks the metabolization threshold. During the metabolization stage, the change is being integrated by the system, whether by an individual or a group. The system practices and exercises the change in different forms to fully incorporate it. And finally, the change is manifest. The manifestation threshold is marked by the change now effortlessly expressed in action and being through a form suited to it. In the manifestation stage, the change process itself is complete and comes to rest for a time. Of course, the cycle endlessly repeats itself, and so in manifestation, we watch for the signs that instigation is coming again."

Jorge 4:57

That's really powerful. You've already mentioned the author's name. What's the name of the book?

Harry 5:03

It won't be a surprise. It's called The Thresholds of Change. I stumbled on this book. It was one of the companies that I worked with, brought the speaker on to give a talk, and I'm like, "Huh, I wonder who that is." And then I found out she wrote this book. So, I thought, "Oh, I'll just be a responsible person and read the book before the talk" and was blown away by the general applicability and how pertinent this topic is and how she's approaching it. Because it's not like the PROSCI or the ADKAR models have changed. Like, it's not a prescriptive change model. It is a descriptive change model and it covers both the intellectual and emotional aspects of it, much more like the Elizabeth Kübler-Ross model of change in grief work.

Jorge 5:56

The first thought that comes to my mind on hearing you say this is, when you described it as a universal process of change, I thought, this aspires to be applicable to all kinds of change. But when you talked about the four thresholds, it felt to me like this was change that was being imposed upon you as opposed to change that you're initiating, because it's like about acceptance. It's like, I'm going through this thing that I don't know that I wanna be going through and it's disorienting and then I let go and then it's starting to integrate into the system and then finally it's, "Okay, it's part of me." But that feels like the kind of change that is done to you as opposed to the kind of change that you've initiated. Is that not the case here?

Harry 6:44

It's definitely not the case. Obviously, there's a different emotional valence to the kind of change that's being done to you versus the kind of change you're doing to the world. The book covers both of them really well and paints a much more nuanced picture of the role of change in our lives as it is coming in from the outside or as we ourselves are instigating it and manifesting it in our lives. Part of what I loved about the way that Rebecca Reynolds talks about it is, she, in very simple language, is able to paint a picture of, it's not one and done: all of us are experiencing change in one of these four stages at various points, whether it's externally driven or internally driven in all sorts of different ways at all sorts of different times, and it's cyclical. So, this is almost like a fractal view into the process. But if you step away from an individual person or a team or an organization, change is happening all over the place all the time. And sometimes the instigation are long, sometimes the metabolization, which I unfortunately labeled digestion, was long. Like these, they're not fixed periods. And depending on the change, each of these thresholds, or as she refers to them as like locks, these phase gates or whatnot, can be shorter or longer, thicker or fatter, and they can be layered on top of each other.

Jorge 8:23

Does she provide guideposts or signals that allow us to be on the lookout for a phase shift?

Harry 8:34

She does, and I'm probably not gonna do a good job of trying to call those into the foreground right now. But each of these phases, she does a good job of expanding on it in a significant way. So you can look at what the alerts or the messages or the signals are, and she talks about those different types of signals or messages or alerts in each of those four phases as well. So I think she is very intentional about laying out the macro level process, laying out whether it is something that's happening to you or you are happening to it, and also what it means to transition from one to the next, whether it's a rapid phase transition or a slow phase transition and what it would mean to look at the signaling or messaging or alerts that would tell you whether you're moving from one place to the next.

Jorge 9:37

One of the things that feels to me inherent to this model, and again, I don't think I understand it in enough depth to say anything interesting or smart about it, but just in hearing your, brief clip there, one of the things that came out to me is that implied in the model is the idea that you are only out on the effective side of change once you've gone through the stages. If you get stuck in the liminal stage where everything feels disorienting or you feel, "Oh my gosh, things keep shifting on me," you're not gonna be very effective, are you?

Harry 10:24

Right. And that's why I started it with a paragraph that actually was not directly part of the reading that I had pulled out, but is a part of the book. Because it talks about... let me just reread it: "Our ability to see the change process, name it and talk about it, it increases our innate ability to face change and reap its full benefits." Because it allows you not to be stuck in it. It allows you to step back and have a view from the, shore of the river to see what's happening, because otherwise you're in the river, in the water and you're splashing about. So once you're able to see and recognize that there are these phases and you can be in different places, I think that's orienting, in a sense,

Jorge 11:08

Yeah. There's a parallel there with the grief model in that, if there are different states, and you can name the state that you're in, then you're past the, "I can't even" thing, right? It's like you, hopefully, you're not paralyzed, in the same way. You might not be very functional yet, but at a minimum you can see the broad outline of the situation in some way.

Harry 11:36

Yeah, and you may get a little solace from standing back and saying, "Well, maybe this too will pass." And and then, what would it look like if it were to pass. I think another thing that jumped out at me from this reading: first off, she right up front deals with the fact and, really gives credit to Kübler-Ross as inspiration for recognizing that this model is in, I wouldn't say derivative of Kübler-Ross's grief model, but it's certainly inspired by that in recognizing that most people go through that grief model in one way or another, and in the experience of change, it's very similar in this particular regard. But I think in reading the book, the thing that really snapped me to the grid and caused me to think, "Huh, maybe we need to explore this a little bit further," was her use of the term liminal, which of course reminded me of our mutual friend, Dave Gray and his book Liminal Thinking. And she looks at the idea of instigation as the phase of the changes beginning. And then she looks at this notion of metabolization as the change is being digested, and then she looks at the notion of manifestation as the change is blossoming or becoming real, but then she calls the second stage liminal rather than something like internalization. And when I read it, I was like, "Oh, that's a really interesting choice to have it facing inward rather than look at it through a process lens." And I'm still trying to understand the difference between what she means by this liminal stage of its gestating under the soil and how I would think of it as a process of internalizing what's happening.

Jorge 13:48

I'm trying to play in my mind as you're talking, I'm trying to play back situations in which I've gone through a major change. And like you were saying, there's a different valence if it's a change that is being imposed on me against my will versus a change that I'm driving and that I'm excited about. And perhaps what they both have in common is that in either situation, you're probably handling well, If you're anything like me you're probably handling the transition without equanimity. And understanding that there are phases, at a minimum, can allow you to step back and still the mind in such a way that you can go through the change without either being distraught if it's something really bad that's happened or euphoric and therefore, unskillful if it's something that you're like really energetic about. And the word liminality, when you first said that, it did seem to me to fit there because again, when I was projecting in my mind back to situations in which I've been going through change of either kind, one of the first things that I've had to deal with is a change in how I perceive my identity. And liminality to me, speaks of having one foot in one world and another foot in another world.

Harry 15:28

Ah, yes.

Jorge 15:29

I've gone through that experience many times in my life. I've, I've, moved countries several times in my life, and have been in a liminal space many times like that. So, that word liminality is one that I certainly can relate to and I can see why it's part of the model.

Harry 15:51

Yeah, it really jumped out at me as a calling card for something being different in how to think about change from her point of view. And the industry standard kind of, I dunno, calling something an industry standard, but certainly, the PROSCI model of change and then the ADKAR model of change, if you think about organizational change or you think about even personal change in the context of an organization, right? There's a good chance you're gonna pick from one of the two things I just mentioned. And yet, they don't help in this way to make it clear what's happening and how you might wanna think about relating to it. So, for example, ADKAR: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, reinforcement. A-D-K-A-R, right? That's what it means, and it's a very effective model for change in... the subtitle of the book is A Model for Change in Business, Government, and Community. When you bring a change agent in to help you with massive change, there's a good chance they're PROSCI trained or they're very aware of ADKAR. But they've never felt right to me. Like something always seemed missing, and it's because I think I was never able to personally relate to them. They felt institutional or dia... Not even, diagnostics is not the right word, but there was something white coat about them. And this, model that Rebecca Borland Reynolds is putting forward with thresholds of change to me feels very much like something I can relate to, down to the example you just raised, like having a foot in each world, right? As an information architect and designer and you even... forget about the two countries, like you and I professionally live with feet in different worlds every day, and our job is to translating for people so that they can make better sense of what's going on as we try to bridge the gap between whether it's, business or civic or education or whatnot, and the world of design and service and our product development.

Jorge 18:14

So speaking of translating for people, we've gotten feedback from our listeners and we're really thankful for everyone who's given us feedback that one thing that they would appreciate is if we could bring some of these ideas home. And you, and I have talked about the snow chain as an image for getting traction, right? So let's slap a set of snow chains on this model. How can folks use this to gain more traction?

Harry 18:53

Yeah. From maybe the overly simplistic model of all of the change that's going on in our personal and professional lives right now, I think at least memorizing that there are these four key phase transitions and looking at what's going on when there's a reorg in the office, there's a layoff, some of us might be directly affected by these things. Or there's an acquisition or somebody decides that a new technology needs to be brought in. Somebody needs to bring in some major payroll system or some major HR system. We're all going to go through these thresholds of change and memorizing them by name and remembering that they exist and that there are signals that tell us where we are in the process, I personally think puts us in a much, much stronger position to be a useful contributor to positive change.

Jorge 20:01

So what I'm hearing there is, somehow internalizing the model, so that you can self locate when you're going through this situation, might help. The question that comes to mind, and maybe, we can wrap it up with this one, is the situations that you described there, like a reorg or a layoff or a new system being brought in, those are very obvious. Like you know that change is happening because it's like, "Hey, there's a reorg. The pink slips are going out or whatever." What about situations in which the change is happening, but maybe it's not as obvious yet that you need to start thinking about this framework? Maybe the signals aren't quite as strong yet, right? Like maybe the seeds are there for the change, but it hasn't fully sprouted somehow.

Harry 20:56

I think that's a great call out because sometimes in the spirit of Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, it's often not the signals that you get, it's the ones that aren't there that should be there. Right? And so one of the companies I'm working with right now is trying to find product market fit on a new technology and they are not seeing people that are standing up and writing checks. Now, if you're on the sidelines of that business, that's a very strong absence of a signal, which means change may be coming. Now, it's maybe a dark example, but I think it's a great way of preventing yourself from being shocked if in fact change does happen.

Jorge 21:48

This feels... the topic overall, but this particular part of it, feels like yet another instance of one of the running themes in our conversations, which is about increasing our awareness and opening our sensorium and our processing abilities to like really see clearly what it is that is happening.

Harry 22:11

A hundred percent. And I think it is seeing clearly and looking at the facts as they are, rather than we demand that they "should be," which puts us in a much stronger position to participate in change.

Jorge 22:31

That feels like a good place to wrap it up. This is a really interesting framework. It's one that I'm going to read up on more and use myself because I'm always changing. It's a constant, right? The only thing that doesn't change Harry.

Harry 22:47

Yeah. Great. Thank you. I really, I was so excited when I found this one. I'm glad to have an opportunity to share it with you and folks that may be listening in.

Jorge 22:58

Thank you so much.

Narrator 23:02

Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes with Harry Max and Jorge Arango. Check out the show notes at tractionheroes.com and if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating in Apple's podcasts app. Thanks.