Roger wants to pull out what little hair he has left. Frustrations have been rising all week, threatening to pour out over his lower eyelids or through a violent release of his vocal cords. “This transition was supposed to make things easier! I’m pretty sure this is not the definition of easier,” he confides to a sympathetic co-worker.

Down the hall, he hears Brenda, a new staff member, whistling a happy tune as she makes coffee in the breakroom. After a grueling interview process, Brenda was offered the job of Corporate Development and is still riding high that someone recognized that her experience makes her an excellent choice to clean up the mess at this non-profit.

Brenda pops her head into Roger’s office to see if he wants some coffee, but then she feels awkward as she sees his pained expression. “I made coffee if you want some,” she mumbles, then turns and speeds down the hall.

Roger looks at his “To Do” list and realizes that half of this list doesn’t correspond with his new title of Outreach Coordinator. Some of these tasks he brought with him from his previous position. Some are there because the people who did these tasks before are now gone and haven’t been replaced. It’s a little murky as to whether those people will even be replaced. “Maybe,” he has been told more than once. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

At lunch, Roger checks the “Want Ads” to see what other jobs are available. He doesn’t want to leave, but he isn’t sure how much more of this he can take. His former boss’s words echo in his head, “These changes will make things so much easier. Just trust me.” She now works somewhere else.

How Roles Become Undefined

What worked before no longer works. What each staff or volunteer was responsible to do shifted in ways that could not be foreseen. With the recent loss of trust, staff are hesitant to step out and take the risks necessary to learn the new ways of working, and the leadership often wonders if the staff are being purposely defiant. On the far side of transition, there is more work and fewer people. The issue of undefined roles needs to be addressed.

Rather than relying on job descriptions, the transitioned staff should pull together as a team. Rather than relying on job descriptions, the transitioned staff should pull together as a team. Click To Tweet

Acknowledge the Pain

Transitions must be grieved by those who went through the process. And as an organization, you owe it to them honor their sacrifices. A leader might think she doesn’t want to bring up the transitional pain, but there is a big difference between bringing up the pain and acknowledging the pain. When you acknowledge the pain, you build trust. You don’t need to wallow in the pain but the pain continues to be an obstacle to forward movement. This isn’t a time for “Get over it.” Use the pain as a sense of urgency to propel people forward into a new sense of normal.

Meet Weekly (at Least)

In his book, Death by Meeting, you might expect Patrick Lencioni to recommend fewer meetings, but instead he recommends more. The staff and the volunteers are overwhelmed with how much they have to do. The weekly meeting isn’t a time to talk about why or to strategize where to head in the future. The weekly meeting is to figure out what needs to be done this week, who can do it, what resources do they need, and what obstacles can the leaders remove from their way.

Work as a Team

Throw job descriptions in the trash for a while. Rather than silo tasks into “that’s your job not mine,” tackle projects as a team and create reliance upon each other for success. We succeed as a team, or we fail as a team. There are no individual winners. Assign weekly tasks according to people’s strengths but be sure not to overload any single person. Be sure everybody has a little bit of grunt work to do. Show some humbleness. It goes a long way.

This post is part of a trilogy around this statement.

“I see three obstacles that stop the organization from choosing a forward option and moving quickly into what was touted as a land of promise.

1. Not enough trust to keep moving forward. (see previous post)
2. New roles are not defined.
3. Next steps are unclear.”

In my next post, I’ll address unclear next steps.