Topic · Collaboration and change

Change in organizations

The word change covers very different things: new software, a restructuring, a new market, a crisis, a generational shift in leadership. This very range is one reason why change fails. If you distinguish where it comes from, how deep it goes, and which path it takes, you can choose a fitting approach. The basis for this is SITA, the approach of Gisela Wendling and The Grove.

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Four questions for any change

Change refers to an organization moving from an existing state to a new one. The basis of this topic is SITA by Gisela Wendling and The Grove. SITA stands for “Stepping into Your Transformational Agency,” roughly: growing into your own capacity to shape change. SITA is not a single tool but a set of connected models. One after another, they answer four questions:

Where does the change come from?

The drivers (Drivers of Change)

How deep does it go?

The types (Types of Change)

Which path does it take?

The phase model with the transitional space at its center

What does it take to shape it?

Four fields of competence (Change Maker's Spindle)

Here, SITA is complemented by an insight from network research: Change does not spread through organizations like a piece of news, but through complex contagion. This explains why well-communicated changes still do not take hold.

A brief basic formula sorts out what interacts in every change:

Cause

generates.

Something sets the change in motion.

Condition

enables.

Certain prerequisites must be in place for it to happen.

Context

sustains.

The environment determines whether the new lasts.

The formula is deliberately short. It helps against a common narrowing: Many initiatives attend only to the cause, that is, the occasion and the goal, and overlook whether the conditions are in place and whether the context can carry the new.

Where the change comes from

SITA distinguishes three drivers. In practice they often occur together. The distinction still helps, because each driver creates a different starting point.

Situational

What is happening around us?

External circumstances and contexts beyond one's own control. The change is forced from outside.

Volitional

What do we deliberately want to do differently?

One's own or others' goals, plans, ambitions. The change is chosen and carried by motivation for something new.

Developmental

What has outgrown its previous form?

A developmental step, the transition to a new stage. The change arises from maturation or from collective dynamics.

How deep it goes

Three types of change distinguish depth. For governance, this distinction is central. Crisis is a special case without a fixed place on the scale: It can lead into an adaptation or into a transformation.

Change · adaptation

An adaptation is needed to reach a goal or to cope with a situation. It is about improving what is already being done. At its core, the organization remains what it is. Largely plannable, because the goal is known and the organization is stable.

Crisis

Something has been thrown off balance. The decisive question is whether a return to the previous state is possible. Depending on the answer, major adaptations are enough, or a transformation begins. A special case: It often begins unwanted, and only along the way does it become clear where it leads.

Transformation

A profound shift in state or developmental stage. At the end there is a new understanding of self or of the organization. Not fully describable in advance, because the very thing from which the planning is done is what changes.

When adaptation and transformation are treated the same, typical mistakes follow: A profound transformation is planned as a project with milestones, or a manageable adaptation is inflated with great effort into a “culture change.”

Which path it takes

The Wendling Liminal Pathways Change Framework, named after its creator Gisela Wendling, describes change as a transition in three phases. Its origins lie in rites of passage: Communities have always shaped important transitions in a fixed sequence: letting go, crossing over, arriving. The image is the caterpillar that dissolves in the cocoon and re-forms as a butterfly.

Running through all three phases is an axis with two sides: the inner process, that is, what changes for those involved in their thinking, perceiving, and experiencing, and the outer support, that is, what the environment contributes. Only their interplay creates the conditions for profound change. For executive management, the outer side is the main lever, because it can be shaped through structure, information, and decisions.

Phase 1

Separation

The old order, the old self-understanding

Inner process Recognizing endings, seeing possibilities, practicing letting go

Outer support Giving feedback and perspectives, helping with planning and preparation

Phase 2

Liminality

The in-between space: The old no longer holds, the new not yet

Inner process Ambiguity, uncertainty, and not-knowing; access to new ideas

Outer support Witnessing and normalizing the transition, holding space in which something new can emerge

Phase 3

Integration

The new, changed organization

Inner process Arriving, stabilizing, consolidating

Outer support Acknowledging the arrival, recognizing successes, building new capabilities in a targeted way

The model also names the emotional side of each phase, such as fear, shock, or excitement when letting go and relief when arriving. It belongs to the picture, but it cannot be produced through structure. Important: The phases describe stretches of a transition, not the state of a company or a person. Different parts of an organization can be in different phases at the same time.

The in-between space

Liminality, from the Latin limen, threshold, is the heart of the model. It means the state between the old and the new. Five images each emphasize a different aspect:

Crucible

A space in which something new emerges through intensity

Threshold

The boundary between known and unknown, old and new

Neither here nor there

A state of suspension between two worlds

Tension

Opposites exist side by side and become a source of new solutions.

Tunnel

Dark for a while, but with a way out

For organizations, this phase is delicate. The old rules and responsibilities no longer apply reliably, the new ones are not yet established, and pressure builds to end the uncertainty quickly. If you treat the in-between space as a malfunction, you either return to the old prematurely or push through an unfinished new.

If you understand the in-between space as a necessary part of the path, you can hold it deliberately: with clear information about what already applies and what is still open, and with structures that provide orientation without anticipating the outcome.

What it takes: Change Literacy

The Change Maker's Spindle describes four fields of competence that together form a wheel. Its axis is the same as in the phase model: inner process and outer support.

Field	Name	Core
Mind	Change Literacy	Understanding patterns, drivers, and dynamics of change
Spirit	Inner and Outer Guidance	Bringing values and meaning into line with outer resources
Heart	Emotional Fluidity	Dealing with feelings in uncertain situations
Body	Somatic Awareness	Noticing stress reactions and using them as information

For work on the substance, the first field is decisive. Change Literacy means understanding patterns, drivers, and dynamics of change, both individually and systemically. This includes ideas about which phase needs which approaches and support structures, and the ability to make meaning in the midst of complexity. This is exactly what the other SITA models do: They are the toolkit of Change Literacy. The other three fields concern personal and interpersonal capabilities. They belong to the complete model, but they are not the subject of work on structure, governance, and decision-making.

How change spreads

A phase model describes which path a change takes. But it does not answer how a new behavior spreads through an organization. This is where the research of sociologist Damon Centola comes in. His finding: A piece of news spreads once it has been heard. A new behavior spreads only when people experience it several times, from different sources, and in trusted relationships. Centola calls this complex contagion.

Change is not a communication problem but a network pattern. It is experienced and observed, over time, through relationships and repeated behavior.

From this finding, five conditions can be derived that make it more likely for change to succeed:

Experienced repeatedly

Once is not enough. The new has to be experienced several times and from different directions.

Credible messengers

What counts is everyday credibility, not hierarchy or title.

Strong ties

Change happens in close, trusting relationships, not through loose networks.

Visible behavior

Show, don't tell. The new has to be observable.

Repetition over time

No campaign is enough. Only continuity lets new behavior take root.

This yields four questions to check any change initiative against:

Who is being watched? Which people serve as role models in the system?

Where are the trusted connections? Which relationships carry the change?

Is the new behavior visible and repeated? Is it practiced regularly?

Does the initiative rely on reinforcement or on mere awareness? Is it designed to last, or only to get attention?

Complex contagion fits the basic formula from the beginning: The cause can come from the top, but whether conditions and context carry the new is decided in the network of everyday relationships. On top of that, organizations are complex systems. Small interventions can have large effects and large ones none at all; earlier decisions limit later options. Plans with a fixed end state lock in a future that will not happen that way. A long horizon with small steps, feedback, and learning is more helpful. More on this in the topic Complexity management.

What it looks like in practice

In midsize companies, change rarely comes as a big program, but as a concrete occasion. The models help to classify this occasion before an approach is chosen.

A market, a regulation, or a major customer changes

The driver is situational; the organization has no choice. The first question is the type: Is an adaptation enough, or does the situation call the existing understanding of the business into question? If this question is skipped, the result is often hectic adaptation to something that actually calls for a transformation.

Executive management deliberately wants to do something differently

Reorganizing processes, introducing a new system, redrawing responsibilities: The driver is volitional. The risk lies in the spread. The decision has been made and announced, yet little changes day to day. The questions of complex contagion show where the new behavior has to become visible and who can credibly model it.

The company has outgrown its form

What worked with a few people on a word-of-mouth basis no longer holds. The driver is developmental, and there is often no single trigger. Typically, the separation began long ago without anyone naming it. Making the phase visible is already a first step in steering.

A crisis hits the company

The first question is whether a return to the previous state is possible. If it is, major adaptations are enough. If it is not, a transition with all three phases begins, even if day-to-day business pushes to restore “normality” as quickly as possible.

A change is stuck in the in-between space

The old has been abolished, the new does not yet work reliably. Decisions are postponed, information is contradictory, and the wish to return to the old state grows. What helps here is outer support in the sense of the model: stating clearly that this state is part of the transition, making transparent what already applies, and holding space for the new instead of fixing it prematurely.

The new is here but not embedded

After a successful changeover, integration does not happen. No one acknowledges what has been achieved, new capabilities are not built in a targeted way, and old habits creep back. The third phase needs attention of its own: acknowledgment, stabilization, consolidation.

In all cases, the work on the substance is the same: classifying the change (driver, type), recognizing the current phase, shaping outer support through structure, information, and decision paths, and checking whether the new behavior actually becomes visible in the network.

Assumptions put to the test

Assumption	More accurate
Change is a project plan.	A plan with milestones can fit an adaptation, but not a transformation. The in-between space cannot be scheduled, only shaped.
Well communicated is half changed.	Announcements, presentations, and memos create awareness, but not yet new behavior. If you only inform, you rely on attention instead of reinforcement.
Whoever is at the top gets imitated.	Whether a new behavior is adopted depends less on title and position than on the everyday credibility of those who show it.
Uncertainty means: Things are going wrong.	The phase in which the old no longer holds and the new does not yet hold is part of the path. Ending it prematurely often costs exactly what it was all about.
Once the changeover is done, it's done.	Only integration determines whether the new lasts. That is the third element of the basic formula: Context sustains.

Limits of the models

Aids to orientation, not recipes. The models help to classify a change and find blind spots. Concrete measures only emerge from translating them into the specific organization.
Not a label for people or companies. Anyone who says “the department is in liminality” or “our colleague is still in separation” turns a tool for observation into a pigeonhole. The phases describe stretches of a transition, not characteristics of those involved.
The inner aspects cannot be steered. The phase model and the Spindle explicitly also describe feelings, self-understanding, and physical reactions. Executive management can shape the outer conditions, not the experience of individuals.
The phases do not run neatly one after another. Parts of an organization can be in different phases at the same time, and a transition can fall back into the in-between space.
Complex contagion takes time. The pattern explains why change takes effect slowly. It does not speed it up by itself.

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