The sixth essential for effective project teams is to intentionally weave transition and factor transition into the equation. And put that consideration right into your project plan. Bill, Val trop, at the time he wrote this, quote, was working for a large global oil and gas company. So of course, they're very much in engineering orientation. He knew what transition was all about. And he recognized that their particular organization wasn't putting much emphasis on it at all.

My experience tells me that organization isn't the only one that falls into this problem. So what we're trying to do is to help people adapt to this new project and the project plan by putting some transition ideas right into the project plan itself. And the way to do that is to follow the flow of transition. The three phases of transition make some decisions and communicate what needs to happen or what is going to happen to help people through all three of the phases of transition. The first phase of transition, of course, is intentional separation. And I would argue that if you were only going to do one thing around transition and project management, do the first step here under intentional separation, and that's clearly spell out what's over now and what's not.

In order for this new project to get up and running successfully, what do people need to leave behind? attitudes, behaviors, procedures, processes, whatever it might be? We've got to clearly spell out what's over now and what's not. And that information has got to be clearly communicated right into the project plan. Because if it's not, people will make their own decisions on this consciously or unconsciously. So it is really important that the project teams have a conversation or If we want to start this next Thursday, by Thursday, at the end of the day, what do we need to have people stop doing in order for them to migrate over and get used to the new thing?

Spelling out what's over and what isn't. Sounds easy. And it's it is a relatively clear conversation in some way. Some of it needs to be negotiated. But often these conversations are fraught with power and authority issues, which is why we need to have the senior leaders weigh in on answers to the big things that need to be over now and what isn't. So some things will need to stop some things will need to continue in order for this project to be successful.

Make it clear. And the second side of this is to explain how the old ways will no longer be rewarded. That requires the project teams to understand how the old reward system works, and how we got to be very good. intention around ensuring we're not going to continue to reward people. For the old activities, we need to shift the rewards formal and informal rewards to the new thing. So that's some ideas around intentional separation.

The second side of this mess of transition is to lead people through the in between and this really is a messy part of the journey. Intentional separation in some way seems fairly clear cut. This notion of this in between is less so leading people through the in between is trying to lead people when they are not at their best. There's lots of confusion here. There's lots of misinformation. There's lots of people going all kinds of different directions.

So what can we do then to help people through this time in between? Well, one thing and we're going to talk about this in a little bit more depth in a few minutes, is abundant communication is critical here because we need to integrate Where people trust what's going on. Trust in the project team trust in their supervisors trust in his project, trust in the direction the organization is going. That requires communication. The second thing that needs to be factored into this piece around leading people through the in between is that we have people that need to learn some new things, innovation, learning creativity, are all critically important here. We need to spell out clearly.

Where are the opportunities for people to try these new skills or learn this new piece of software before they get in front of a customer before they have to do this under the pressure of deadlines. So how can we enhance learning, innovation, creativity to get the new thing up and running? Well, third phase of transition is ensuring a successful integration. Ensure that people do leave the past behind do learn what they need to learn. Get over to the project being successful this integration sooner rather than later. This is actually the easiest part of leading people through transition.

But only if you've done a good job with intentional separation and leading people through the in between ensuring successful integration is relatively straightforward. If the project team is still around, what's really helpful because they're keeping their eye on things is for them when they see small successes, small little bits of this new project, this new way of doing things starting to actually happen and translate into results on the ground. They need to point to those things they need to highlight those places in the organization that seem to be getting this and you want to have those people tell their story to the rest of the organization in some way or another. So publicising small successes is really important. The other side of this is is to clarify how The new ways will be rewarded through informal and formal rewards. So we were talking earlier about making sure the old ways won't be rewarded anymore.

This is how will the reward system, the formal and informal reward system support the new ways of doing things, the new project being successful. So there's some thoughts on transition and project management. What can you do to ensure transition is factored into not only your project plans, but all of the project plans in your organization? Find your action plan and make a note to yourself. There's your question, weaving, integrating transition into your project plans. What can you do