Last Thursday, Facebook kindly reminded me that on that day three years previously, I had resigned from the consulting firm that had been my professional home for 10 years. The post read “Kate resigned today. A new chapter begins..”. And begin it did.
My sense is some people have perceived my transition to be a fairly smooth and easy shift from permanent employment to self-employment. I can tell you categorically that it has been neither smooth nor easy. It has certainly got easier, and I can confidently say that I love the freedom and autonomy I now have with a passion, and feel blessed to do the kind of work I do with the lifestyle that accompanies it. But I am also in no doubt about how hard won it has been.
I am so grateful for the experiences of the last few years and am genuinely proud of the journey I have travelled, for so many reasons. Amongst those is the fact that I feel I have a new level of insight and understanding into what transformation means and what it requires of us. As a coach, consultant and facilitator I reside in the world of change. Indeed since 2008, client organisations have been talking more and more about “transformation”, the holy grail, it seems, of the new market paradigm. Consultants bring 4 box models and 3 by 3 matrices, in an attempt to bring order and clarity to the process of understanding what it is and how to get there.
Here is what I have learned:
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- Transformation is messy and painful. You cannot make a radical change without letting go of something you held dear previously. You can know the change to be the right thing and still feel the pain of it. The pain needs to be experienced. There is no avoiding it.
- Moving through transformation means finding a new relationship to fear and to trust. Plans and dreams and even a strong sense of vision and purpose, are important and serve us well. But we are not soothsayers with the gift of telling the future. And in the swathes of uncertainty that unfold in a transformational process, it requires us to trust that we are moving in the right direction, to face the fear and to move through it.
- The experience of transformation requires courage as it is one of the most exhausting, terrifying, exhilarating and liberating experiences there is.
- There is no final destination to the transformational journey. It is never ending.
My own process of transformation continues. And with it comes a fundamental sense of being alive, living life in all its glory and with all its edges, chasms and sink holes, with all its colours including the black. Decisions to embark on transformation, personal or organisational, and the approach we adopt to enabling it, need to take account of this.