We’re not “going through a rough patch” anymore. We’re living in a long hallway.
That hallway is what anthropologists call a liminal space: you’ve left the old room, the new one isn’t ready, and you’re standing in the dust and noise of renovation, wondering whether the floor will hold.
In business, these grey spaces are the transition zones of transformation, restructuring, and strategy resets. They’re no longer rare events; they’ve become the default environment.
This article is about that hallway: what it’s doing to people, performance, and culture, and how leaders can help teams walk through it without burning out or giving up.
When did this “liminal era” begin?
We’ve always had change. What’s different now is the stacking and duration of disruption.
A few signals:
- In 2024, global employee engagement fell to a 10-year low after multiple drops since 2021, driven by restructurings, shifting teams, and digital change colliding.
- “Change fatigue” went mainstream. Employees facing above-average change fatigue were half as likely to stay with their employer.
- A 2025 global survey showed two-thirds of workers experience burnout during transformation drives, while only one-third of digital transformations succeed.
- Mental-health impacts skyrocketed. In 2024, 77% of employees said work stress harmed their physical health.
Since 2020, organizations haven’t just been “in change”; they’ve been trapped between business models and identities. The in-between that once lasted months now lasts years.
How transition spaces show up in business
In classic rites of passage, liminality is the middle stage: the old identity is gone, and the new one isn’t fully formed. Business transformations mirror that.
Here’s what it looks like on the ground:
- Deconstructed identity
The “old” organization is declared obsolete, systems slated for retirement, org charts redrawn, KPIs rewritten, yet daily work still depends on the old structures. People feel like they’re working inside a condemned building.
- No clear “new normal”
The future lives in slide decks, not routines. Leaders can’t answer the simple question, “What does this mean for Monday?”
- Suspended rules
During major transformation, decision rights blur, exceptions multiply, and workarounds become the real operating model. It feels like working inside a construction zone.
- Emotional whiplash
Hope. Fear. Cynicism. Often in the same week. Reflective people, the “seekers,” feel this most because they won’t pretend the old story still works.
This space is full of potential, but unmanaged; it wrecks productivity, trust, and health.
The real risks: it’s not just “change fatigue”
When organizations spend too long in an unmanaged transition, three things happen:
1. Performance drops for reasons dashboards don’t show – – Delays, rework, and stalled initiatives are symptoms of something deeper: defensive decision-making, sticking to the familiar, avoidance, and “busy-tired”, not “productively tired” work.
2. Culture fragments – – Some cling to the past thinking “this will blow over.” Others sprint toward anything new just to escape the discomfort. Some quietly check out. Parallel cultures emerge: risk-averse pockets, exhausted heroes, and quiet quitters, all inside the same organization.
3. Perpetual state of transition – – Korn Ferry research shows a nasty pattern: rushing out of the in-between just re-labels old habits, if you stay too long with no direction, you slide into a state of perpetual drift where nothing truly stabilizes. That’s where many organizations are now: not fully in crisis, not truly stable, just hovering in an endless “almost there.” It’s corrosive.
So, what do you do if you’re the leader stuck in that hallway?
Four ways to navigate the in-between without losing your people
1. Name the hallway and stop pretending you’re already “there.”
Executives often feel pressure to project certainty, but false certainty creates fear.
Instead:
- Call it what it is: Say “We’re in a transition space. The old way is gone; the new way isn’t built yet.”
- Separate confidence (direction) from certainty (details).
- Normalize discomfort as a natural stage. It isn’t a failure; it’s a normal response to a real situation.
When leaders name the stage honestly, people stop personalizing the confusion and start understanding the context.
2. Build temporary scaffolding: simple rules for a messy time
The biggest mistake in a transitional period is either no structure (“Let’s see what happens”) or over-engineering a detailed future that collapses under volatility.
Scaffolding is the middle path:
- 90-day priorities, not 3-year fantasies. Agree on a small set of near-term outcomes that matter most for this stage (e.g., stabilize service levels in key markets, protect critical talent, de-risk a particular program).
- Clear decision rules (“Customer trust beats short-term margin,” etc.).
- Explicit “just for now” roles, tell people: “Your role will likely shift again in six months. For the next 90 days, here’s what success looks like.”
In many organizations, this is where bringing in external capability leadership changes the trajectory.
As a Fractional Capability Executive, I’m often brought in during these middle stages, not to add more change but to build the scaffolding the system is missing.
That means clarifying near-term priorities, resetting decision rules, and aligning people, processes, and operating rhythms so leaders can actually execute while still transforming. Fractional support gives organizations breathing room and capability bandwidth (aka: capacity) at exactly the moment their internal teams are stretched thin. Scaffolding lowers anxiety and protects productivity. People don’t need a perfect blueprint; they need to know how to be useful this quarter.
People don’t need perfection; they need clarity.
3. Protect human bandwidth like it’s capital
The data is loud and ugly: Burnout and capacity collapse are now strategic risks. Stress from work now dominates for more than half of employees and two-thirds of CEOs.
In a transition phase, leaders have to treat capacity as seriously as cash flow:
- Cap concurrent change when teams are at saturation, you don’t “train them to be more resilient”; you stop piling on.
- Measure change load, not just task load. That’s your red zone.
- Equip managers to be shock absorbers, not amplifiers.
This isn’t softness; it’s risk management. Depleted people make riskier decisions.
4. Turn the in-between into a learning lab
The biggest waste is treating transition as dead space.
Instead, use it as R&D time for the culture and operating model you actually want:
- Run small experiments, not grand rollouts.
- Conduct fast after-action reviews focused on learning.
- Elevate seekers as they often spot misalignment early.
The most powerful shift leaders can create is: “We’re not stuck; we’re becoming.”
The point is not to escape liminal space – it’s to use it
We’re not going back to a world where strategy changes every three years and little in between. Transition spaces are now the operating environment, not the exception. That doesn’t mean we surrender to the chaos.
Leaders must become experts at stewarding transition times by:
- Naming the stage honestly
- Providing scaffolding instead of false certainty
- Protecting capacity and well-being
- Turning the hallway into a place of learning, not quiet despair
You may not control the length of the hallway.
But you absolutely control whether people walk it with clarity and dignity or crawl through it, burnt out and ready to leave.
Is your organization in a state of transformation limbo due to capacity constraints? If so, reach out to see if the work I do might be relevant for your organization.
