Why do so many change initiatives fail, even when organizations follow proven models?
For decades, leaders have relied on frameworks like the Bridges Transition Model to guide people through change. While these models provide valuable insight into how people experience change and uncertainty, insight alone doesn’t drive results.
The reason most initiatives fail is that most models stop short of the most critical piece: providing a strategy for executing change and empowering people to adapt.
What is the Bridges Transition Model?
Developed by William Bridges in the 1970s and popularized through his seminal book, Managing Transitions, the model introduced a critical distinction that many organizations still overlook: change is external, but transition is internal. While leaders tend to focus on systems, structures, and strategy, Bridges focused on the human side—how people psychologically process change.
The framework outlines three stages of transition:
- Endings—the period when the old must end so that the new can begin. This is when people recognize that they’re losing something stable or must let go of old “knowns” to make room for unknowns.
- Neutral Zone—the in-between stage when things are in flux. The new isn’t fully ingrained yet. People are actively figuring it out, learning new patterns and processes, and may feel confused or uncomfortable.
- New Beginnings—this is when things start moving steadily in a new direction. People understand the role they play and how to contribute. Here’s where momentum builds.
The Bridges Transition Model is elegant, intuitive, human-centered—and still highly relevant. And yet, the majority of change initiatives still stall or fail. Why? Not because the model is wrong, but because it stops short of execution. Or rather, it focuses on where you are in the process rather than how to help you move through the stages.
Where Does Bridges Stop Short?
We’ve had decades worth of frameworks like the Bridges Transition Model and others, so the issue isn’t awareness. It’s execution.
The Transitions model gives leaders valuable insight into the human side of change, but it doesn’t give them the quantifiable data to influence the patterns of change.
It helps you describe the journey, but you need more than a roadmap to build change capacity or track whether you’re improving over time. Organizations know what people should be experiencing at different stages, but it leaves important questions unanswered:
- How prepared are people for change?
- Why are some moving forward while others are stuck?
- What do different individuals need to move through this change more effectively?
In other words, the Bridges Transition Model maps what people experience—but not why those experiences differ, or how to quantify them. Nor does it give us any insight into whether transitions are getting easier over time or how to help that process along.
Because transition isn’t linear or uniform, two people can experience the same change event and move through it at completely different speeds—or get stuck in entirely different places.
Leaders have to rely on observation, instinct, and blanket communication strategies that treat everyone the same. Sometimes that works, but often, it doesn’t.
For example, in a merger, one team adopts new systems in weeks. Another drags for months.
Same communication. Same training.
So why different outcomes?
The difference isn’t the plan. It’s their individual capacity to adapt.
And that variability isn’t random. It’s measurable and manageable. When leaders get this wrong, the cost isn’t just slower adoption—it’s disengagement, burnout, and stalled performance.
That’s where Adaptability Intelligence (AQ) comes in.
How Can You Make Transition Measurable and Actionable?
The AQai Adaptability Assessment measures how individuals respond to change across three dimensions—Ability, Character, and Environment—giving leaders a way to quantify what has historically been invisible.
Instead of asking, “What stage are they in?”, AQ allows leaders to ask:
- How equipped are they to move through that stage?
- What’s accelerating or slowing their progress?
- What do they need to move forward?
In other words, AQ doesn’t replace Transitions. It operationalizes change by providing a baseline and framework for improving the transition process.
How Does Adaptability Show Up Across Each Stage of Transition?
If the Bridges model tells us what people experience, AQ explains why and how best to support them through it. Here’s how it works in practice.
Stage One: Ending – Why do some people struggle to let go?
Some individuals let go of old ways quickly, while others resist, stall, or disengage.
From an AQ perspective, that difference can often be traced to several subdimensions in the ACE Model:
- Mindset (Ability): Do they see change as an opportunity or threat?
- Unlearning (Ability): Can they let go of outdated knowledge or identity?
- Resilience (Ability): How quickly do they recover from disruption?
Without this insight, resistance may be perceived as attitude, reluctance or change aversion.
With the AQai data, you can see the underlying capability gap.
Stage Two: The Neutral Zone – Why do some teams stall?
This is arguably the most complex stage—and of course, where most change efforts fail. It’s where ambiguity is highest, anxiety often rises and productivity dips.
But not for everyone. Individuals with strong mental flexibility and emotional health support in their environment tend to navigate this phase more effectively, experimenting and adapting as things progress.
Meanwhile, some people may feel overwhelmed, default to old behaviors, or disengage entirely. However, what often appears to be disengagement may just be a mismatch between the person and the environment.
AQ data can help you find and ease those friction points, instead of just treating everyone the same.
Stage Three: New Beginnings – Why doesn’t adoption happen automatically?
Here’s where the proverbial rubber meets the road, and adoption can pick up speed. But even when the path forward is clear, adoption isn’t automatic. Some people lean in quickly, energized by a new direction and excited for the outcomes, while others hesitate.
Motivational Style plays a role here. “Play to win” individuals may accelerate adoption, while those who “play to protect” may proceed more cautiously, or even skeptically.
Neither is right or wrong, but both influence how quickly and confidently someone embraces the new state. And both can slow progress if misaligned in the situation.
How Does Adaptability Intelligence Turn Insight into Action?
Based on AQ data, organizations can deploy targeted strategies to help people through transitions in ways that work best for them. Instead of broad, one-size-fits-all techniques, leaders can:
- Identify who is likely to struggle with unlearning and mindset shifts before it shows up in performance
- Adjust the environment to provide more clarity, psychological safety or reduced stress load, rather than just double down on “top-down” communication.
- Provide targeted support based on how people actually respond to change, such as better balancing team-wide motivational styles to create both momentum and stability.
Most organizations treat transition as a shared emotional journey. But with AQ insight, leaders can treat it as a measurable, manageable process.
Instead of managing change, they can engineer it.
What Does a Modern Approach to Change Management Look Like?
In this era, change isn’t episodic. It’s constant and accelerating. Organizations no longer have the luxury of navigating isolated, one-off change events. They are operating in a continuous state of transition. Adaptability can’t be just a cultural aspiration. It must be actively cultivated, supported, and aligned with both individual needs and organizational goals.
And in that environment, observation alone isn’t enough. You need a quantifiable baseline—a way to measure the capacity to adapt across individuals and teams—so you can move from assumptions to data-driven action.
The Bridges Transition Model gave us a powerful way to understand change. Adaptability Intelligence gives you the data to do something about it.
By layering in insights from AQ, organizations can move beyond observing transition and start actively shaping it, not by brute forcing people through it faster, but by giving them what they need to ease (and speed) the process.
This article first appeared on Krista Sheets’ LinkedIn on April 7, 2026 and has been revised and expanded for our blog. Join the conversation in the comments here.