Strange Days

Sometimes it seems we are in horrific economic times the likes of which we haven’t seen since THE GREAT DEPRESSION. At these times we notice that unemployment is increasing and lots of houses are staying empty. Ghost towns are being razed where we used to see only suburban paradise. A few days ago I heard the joke that 401ks are now 201ks – once we start joking about something we know it’s serious, right?

On the other hand, we notice that hardly anyone we know is out of work, we read that consumer spending increased in January and February, and if we watch the folks in DC they sure don’t seem to be doing a whole lot different from what was happening before. Restaurants still seem full of people and I see plenty of big SUVs still on the road. In short, we don’t see a lot of people who look like our cultural icon here.

On the environment front, is the global climate warming such that we are in mortal danger of destroying Earth’s ability to support life or at least humanity?

Maybe, maybe not. We just don’t know for sure.

In the field of organization development there is a concept known as transition. Transition is the internal human response to change. William Bridges formulated the idea that when people undergo a change in their environment they will individually and collectively go through a process of mental and emotional transition. That is, they will go through a process of letting go of their attachment to the old ways, a period of uncomfortable uncertainty about what is and isn’t really happening and what it means, and finally they will come to accept and embrace the new way of things.

Problems mostly occur when people resist letting go in the first stage, get freaked out by uncertainty and groundlessness in the second, and make false and or half-committed starts in the third.

Sound familiar?

I think we know that something has changed – we know that something about the way we used to do things might not work anymore. We aren’t sure what exactly needs to be different and we really don’t want to let go of big cars and warm houses and lots of caffeine.

Our leaders and we are doing whatever we can to avoid the uncertainty that follows letting go and precedes new beginnings.