Leaders have always shown their mettle in times of liminality.

The
term comes from Arnold van Gennep, the Belgian anthropologist who
first outlined the common patterns in how cultures mark transitions
from one human state to another (for example, from adolescence to
adulthood). In his 1909 book The Rites of Passage he described three
stages of separation from one world and entry into another. The
liminal (or threshold) stage is central. Commenting later on van
Genneps work, anthropologist Victor Turner explained it as a
moment when those being moved in accordance with a cultural script
were liberated from normative demands, when they were,
indeed, betwixt and between successive lodgments in jural political
systems. In this gap between ordered worlds almost anything may
happen.
Organizations must also periodically go through such wrenching times
of transition, and it is during such liminal times that leaders have
their greatest impact. They must manage to both craft the new world
with smart strategy, often in the wake of disruption, and cause the
organization to embrace the required change. Lou Gerstners arrival
at IBM in 1993 is a classic example of leadership through a liminal
period. Parachuted in to salvage a beleaguered organization, he
pushed the company toward a new way of thinking, ultimately
growing IBMs value and revenues by more than 40 percent.
Procter & Gamble provides another example. It was the summer of
2000 and the company had quickly lost $85 billion in market
capitalization. Newly minted CEO A.G. Lafley was thrust into the
spotlight. Employees were disengaged. External analysts,
stakeholders, and shareholders were questioning everything. It had
become a time of liminality for P&G, and it was Lafleys turn to try to
make things work. As he stated in a 2009 Harvard Business
Review article, the CEOs [role] is to interpret the organizations
values in light of change and competition and to define its standards.
This was a top priority in my first year as P&Gs chief executive, after
setting goals but ahead of strategy. By 2010, P&G exceeded $80
billion in revenue, its market value had increased by over $100 billion
dollars and the number of billion-dollar brands such as Gillette,
Pampers, and Tide increased from 10 to 24, suggesting that Lafleys
leadership through P&Gs liminality was a success.
Times of liminality are disconcertingly chaotic; therefore, a leaders
job is to provide some firm footing for people, with assurances of what
will not keep changing. Gerstner did this with his clear and consistent
view of where IBM needed to go, and Lafley did it with his reassertion
of bedrock values. Great leaders also act as mentors, providing
counsel and coaching to the people in the organization during various

stages of transition. And perhaps the ultimate work of leaders in times

of organizational change is to ensure high engagement levels.
Lawrence A. Bossidy, former CEO at AlliedSignal, once said, We need
people who are better at persuading than at barking orders, who
know how to coach and build consensus. Today, managers add value
by brokering with people, not by presiding over empires.
This suggests that many leaders themselves will need to experience
liminality. If they are truly interested in seeing their organizations
accomplish great things, many will have to make a transition from an
immature mode of invoking hierarchy, territorial ownership, and
formal positional power, to a more mature phase of gathering and
channeling group energies with influence, engagement, and other
elements of what I call open leadership.
In my role at the Canadian telecoms company TELUS, Ive witnessed
first-hand the progress that can be made during a liminal time, both
for the enterprise and its leaders. Fourteen years ago, Darren
Entwistle arrived as a young CEO (he is now Executive Chair) and
immediately began transforming the regional telecommunications
player into a global entity. Between 2000 and 2014, the TELUS brand
grew in value from a few hundred million dollars to $4.3 billion, and
its revenues increased from $6.4 billion to $11.7 billion. But Darren
never saw the change required as only a matter of capitalizing on new
technologies and developing new products. He insisted on the need
for behavioral innovation that is, shifting leaders mindsets
throughout the organization to the importance of innovation and the
values of courage, passion for growth, enthusiasm for change, and
belief in spirited teamwork.
What has been most amazing to me is that, in a time of such rapid
change, employee engagement at TELUS also rose dramatically (from
53 percent to 83 percent) clearly bucking the generally negative
trend. The causal relationship between a highly engaged organization
and marked improvements with customer satisfaction, stock price and
revenues is irrefutable, famously outlined at Harvard Business
Review back in 1998 with The Employee-Customer-Profit Chain at
Sears. For Darren, the implication for leaders is clear. They must
make team members feel like they have equity in what they are
doing. Engagement comes, he believes, with the business ownership
mentality.
As imperatives to change come more and more frequently to
companies, leaders ability to manage through times of transition will
be tested like never before. In a previous HBR post entitled The
Renaissance We Need in Business Education, Johan Roos calls for a

more humanistic curriculum in business schools to prepare our future

enterprise leaders. As part of that, perhaps writings on liminality
should be required reading.
This post is part of a series leading up to the annual Global Drucker
Forum, taking place November 13-14 2014 in Vienna, Austria. Read
the rest of the series here.