Spring was still trying to come to the North Shore of Lake Superior when I wrote this. The trees were still bare and the patches of snow reminded me that we had a very long winter this year, even for Minnesota! And yet, despite the lack of leaves, we always know that spring is coming. In Nature, we learn over our lifetime that there are subtle and obvious signs of how the seasons cycle over the year. Spring follows winter. Fall follows summer. As we get older the early signs of Nature’s transition from one season to the next become known and looked forward to, and help us see the transitions coming.
In Nature, bare trees start when the new buds swell. After that, the leaves slowly unfurl, creating a green haze around the tree. Then the leaves grow over time, returning full and green after a winter of hibernation.
Even during a cold winter day, we can sometimes taste spring coming into the air. This form of knowing is less obvious but still valid for sensing transition. My favorite way of “sensing spring” is to track the lengthening and shortening of daylight as a daily way of seeing Nature’s transitions. (This dovetails nicely with last week’s topic when we explored ways to sync with the daily cycles of Nature.)
What if we understood the transitions of our organizations as well as we understand those in Nature?
Like Nature, our organizations and personal lives have cycles that herald important transitions. We gain a couple of benefits when we learn to see these cadences and sequences. The seasonal shift might motivate us to exchange our winter clothes for spring clothes in our closets. The shift in an organization allows us to make meaning of what is happening and how to anticipate our adaptive response to it. It transforms us from victims of our circumstances to anticipators of our future and how we wish to respond to what’s coming.
What if we saw change in our organizations as cycles instead of random events?
A colleague mentioned that the metaphor that helps people make sense of change in his organization is “The Eye of Sauron” from the Lord of the Rings. The all-knowing Eye sweeps over the landscape, and if it notices something, it focuses on those people or (or their department.) You and your work are scrutinized if caught in the Eye’s focus.
But the Eye has limits, if it is focusing on someone else, you know you have some freedom to get on with your work. And if you are caught in its focus, eventually, it will start moving again, and its scrutiny on you will pass. This metaphor has a cycle to it. The Eye continually moves and sharpens its focus and then moves on. So, the transitions are seen in its scanning and stopping.
Are there other cycles that help us understand our organizations?
A budget cycle is an annual event that provides several transitions throughout the year. Planning, compiling, budget approval, spending, and monitoring are some phases that can be seen as transitions. Performance reviews are part of an annual cycle. Strategic planning also is a cycle, and reporting on the progress of the strategic initiatives has its own rhythm within strategic planning.
But what are some of the less obvious cycles? Perhaps you have a supervisor that always micromanages their employees after traveling for work? Is there a way to see this as a transition for the manager to reconnect with what is happening after a work absence? If so, we can anticipate this behavior and influence it, with the understanding that this manager has a personal need to know what has been happening or what they missed. Sometimes it may be they’re wondering if they’re still are needed to help get things done! When understood, personal motivations like these can help us anticipate and understand the patterns of any individual who impacts our work (and how much discretionary freedom we’ll have execute our own work.)
Transitions are always there. Nature helps us understand that all systems have a pace as they cycle through a year, a decade, or even a century. All we need to do is open up and look for the pattern underneath what is happening. Then we can to learn to spot transitions in our lives and our organizations.
