Transition 1: stepping back

On 28th April my team met as usual for our Rehearsal Day, the time we take every six weeks to touch base and create new ideas together. We have been doing these days online, rather than face-to-face, since the beginnings of COVID in spring 2020. For this day I wanted us to spend some time looking back to the previous year and reflecting on how things had gone, looking at the adaptations to our programmes that we had made and the different work modes we had shifted to. What was working well, what could be improved, and what had we learnt from the year. I also wanted us to look forwards – and knew that this bit of the agenda was going to be harder to deal with, because of some key news which I needed to share with the team.

This news had been a long time germinating, as I worked through some clearly shifting ideas in my head. More than a year earlier I had begun to wonder when it would be the right time to step back from my role as Chief Executive and rethink my focus. The sudden impact of COVID had delayed that, but then I had become involved in an experiment that Michael Bungay Stanier launched in early April called The Conspiracy. This online community brought me together with four other wonderful people in a group called The Cedars (thanks Fiona, Jorge, Kay and Nik) where I set to work on developing a Worthy Goal, one that was Thrilling Important and Daunting. There was only one thing that I should be focusing on and that was the transition from my three-day a week responsibility as a Chief Executive.

Thus, here I was on 28th April in a session with my team where I need to tell them that I was going to step back from my role. I had practiced this, I had planned what I needed to say. Gone through it several times. And yet, I was still finding my voice breaking as I broke the news. I had run this organisation since I founded it in 2013. The team had been with me for most of that journey (all of it in some cases). They are like a family to me. This was a really difficult message to convey.

One of the key things I wanted to achieve with this process was to share my own feelings about this difficult step and to also explain clearly that I want to focus on the three sets of needs – the organisation’s, the team’s and my own. All are important. I also wanted to create a process that would be measured with a steady pace, involving everyone in the transition plan and that I would have a shift from Chief Executive to a new very part-time role to provide ongoing support. I had a name for the new role, Chief Explorer – and would commit two days a month to it. I was also very aware of the dangers of Founder Syndrome, not being able to let go, getting in the way etc.

The message was shared, we took a break during which I picked up one-to-ones with people and then came back together in the afternoon for initial thoughts about the process we are beginning together.

At this stage, the timescales were not entirely fixed. Within a week I had time to plan a bit more based on the feedback from the team. I had a time frame of one year through to the end of March 2020 for stepping back and a name for the programme that we were beginning to create. It would be called “The Bridge to the New”, in part as a play on words with the author William Bridges whose book “Managing Transitions” I wanted the team to read for our next session of “Reading for Inspiration” which happened in May.

I will give more detail on “The Bridge to the New” and the emerging role in a future blog post. I’ve been really keen to share this process as a #workingoutloud exercise since we began in April, but needed to wait until we had shared the news more widely. I can now go into more detail in the coming weeks.

One of the members of The Cedars (Jorge) asked me as I explained what I was setting out to do, why I was taking so long with the process, rather than just announcing my departure and leaving within a month or so. It was a good question, which needed some thought at the time and one that I have returned to a few times since. The slower timeframe is part of my efforts to ensure that the organisation shifts as I make my steps towards leaving, it is less destabilising and gives everyone time to adjust.

My understanding of change and transition is that we feel most able to deal with any change when we have some degree of control of it. Slowing the process down helps to address this. It’s not going to be an entirely smooth process, these things never are. My intention is to guide us all through this and, as much as I can, to ensure everyone has a good outcome from it. There may be disappointment along the way, but we can work to the best outcome we can for all involved. Having that focus has really helped with the building of the themes for the programme. More on this next time.

Also published on Medium.