Highlight from 'Managing Transitions' by William Bridges, Susan Bridges

Ending—neutral zone—new beginning. You need all three phases, and in that order, for a transition to work. The phases don’t happen separately; they often go on at the same time. Endings are going on in one place, in another everything is in neutral zone chaos, and in yet another place the new beginning is already palpable. Calling them “phases” makes it sound as though they are lined up like cubicles. Perhaps it would be more accurate to think of them as three processes and to say that the transition cannot be completed until all three have taken place.