For businesses embarking upon pivotal and difficult foundational change (like this whole social-media-integration-into-business thing), there are distinct stages that very closely resemble the traditional “stages of grief” we’ve come to know around loss in our personal lives.

The people stewarding this change are often right in the thick of these phases, and experiencing these emotions throughout. It’s unpopular sometimes to talk about emotion in context of business, but the reality is that change is emotional. It challenges people’s assumptions, understanding, ego, comfort and familiarity, and tangible experiences. All of those things bring up emotional context that, in turn, affect the processes we build and the decisions we make.

In context of someone like a social strategist or someone engaged in shifting the culture and design of a business, it’s important to not only recognize the stages and their characteristics, but their role in helping guide the organization from one phase to the next, and shorten the time from denial to acceptance. If you can identify where you, your clients, or your organization sit now, it’s easier to plan for what might be coming next. Here’s a bit about what I mean.

Phase 1 – Denial: This isn’t happening!

Social media isn’t part of a serious business strategy. It’s just a fad. The internet and social media are for only young hipsters, or only for personal use, or simply about sharing what we had for lunch or what our cat is doing.

This is still largely the mindset of some businesses, and the person or people that are bringing the message of change are often the ones that get vilified for putting it forward. Denial stems largely from fear: fear of looking uninformed, fear of being obsolete, fear of having to relearn things we’ve known and done for a long time. A key characteristic or behavior to watch for in this phase is dismissiveness.

Phase 2 – Bargaining: Can we make this not happen?

The first reaction once we end up seeing and feeling the urgency if we aren’t ready for it is to quickly try to focus our attention elsewhere. It could be taking extreme measures to make it go away, like blocking access to social media sites completely for employees. It could be more subtle, like beefing up efforts for familiar strategies that may or may not be as effective as they once were, like running a new advertising campaign or buying an email list and hoping.

It could be looking for the magic cure, too, like simply shoving all the social media stuff to the intern, or hiring a consultant or an agency to just “take care of it for you” without wanting to invest much of your own effort. The key characteristic here is avoidance, where you might be willing to acknowledge that something exists, but as long as it’s someone else’s problem, it’s out of sight, out of mind.

Phase 3 – Anger: Why the hell is this happening?

Once we start feeling the pressure to change and any kind of urgency around it, one of the first instincts we have is to get mad at the change itself. Why it’s happening to us, why now, why we have to be the ones to deal with it. We’ll get angry at the effort its going to take, decry social media as a waste of time and resources, or take aim at the people that are bringing it to light (otherwise known as shooting the messenger), sometimes to the detriment to teamwork and communication.

During this phase, you’ll observe an awful lot of resentment, both toward the nature of the change and the ideas contained within, no matter how simple they might be. Citations will be toward all sorts of statistics citing social media disasters, productivity loss, or poor execution. Tone in communication will be of strong resistance, questioning, and perhaps a premature demand for the elusive “return on investment” of social media and social business.

Phase 4 – Despair: This is impossible.

So many businesses understand this state all too well, and are stuck right in the midst of it. We’re overwhelmed by the possibilities, for better or for worse. Even if we can see the upside of what social media can do for us, it feels so far away and so distant that we just aren’t sure we could get there if we tried. Or worse yet, we’ll see absolutely every obstacle in our way, and overreact to both their size and potential impact.

Defeat is the name of the game while you struggle through this phase. Keep a sharp eye out for the dreaded “can’t” and “won’t” phrases, or generalizations and blanket statements that either over-inflate the challenges disproportionate to reality (“it’s impossible to measure!”), or counter every possibility with a “yes, but….”. You might also observe change agents in this phase entering into deep thinking and over analysis that can grind momentum to a halt, or expressing remorse for having not faced up to the emerging world of social media sooner and panicking because they’re “late to the game”.

Phase 5 – Acceptance and Hope: Maybe we can do this after all…

Acceptance is rarely met with an epiphany. More often, accepting and moving into an optimistic, hopeful place about an impending business change is a gradual tip of the scales, where resistance slowly begins to give way to progress, in little pieces. You’ll start to hear people describe the situation not in terms of impossibilities, but in terms of where we go from here, and how we might get there. The potential will gradually outweigh the risks and downsides, or the risks will at least begin to feel as though they’re a manageable part of a realistic whole.

Openness is what you’ll find here; not exuberance, usually, but quiet willingness to try things. To test concepts and explore alternatives, like writing social media guidelines or forming a steering committee. You’ll see a gradual increase in awareness and clarity on the part of the participants, and a certain cohesiveness and sense of momentum will emerge.

Individuals and groups alike will start to adapt their behavior and processes to new normals, and you might see more people volunteer to participate in social programs. Teams and leaders will both exercise objective and critical thought when faced with a challenge, and even be willing to tackle them head on. You’ll all apply patience and perseverance to the process, embracing that it’s indeed a journey, not a destination.

Moving Through the Phases

Helping move people through change management means being able to put unfamiliar concepts into terms that are familiar, and stemming the ebb and flow of panic with grounded ideas that feel like they’re within reach. Try these tricks on for size:

Back it up: Illustrate practical examples of social media in action for business, and highlight some of the rich data and research emerging about its use and adoption.

Relate it personally: Show how social media is more ingrained in our web personal habits than we might think or identify. Do a Google search for any old topic, and find how near the top the blog posts are, or observe the tweets and YouTube videos showing in the real-time search for everyday topics.

Draw familiar parallels: Relate social media to other pivotal but eventual changes, such as the emergence of the web itself (remember when we didn’t think we needed a website?). Talk about how much we had to learn to adapt to other disruptive process changes, like working email into our daily routines.

Observe the facts: Emotion, whether we plan on it or not, plays into our business decisions all the time. Observing simply the known facts of a situation – and getting objective help to do so if needed – can help take some of the personal perspective out of the process and instead help evaluate the potential upsides, obstacles, and open questions that can help lay a realistic and manageable plan for change.

Focus only on the next step: Skip year-long plans right now and focus on the next 3 months. If you can see the next milestone or checkpoint, it’s much easier to say “hey, I can see doing almost anything for 90 days”.

Change Is a Constant

How many times have you heard that?

But it’s true. Change isn’t an absolute, neither is “social media success”. You aren’t ever really “done”. It’s something you experience, and it definitely has identifiable cycles from initial identification to eventual adoption. And if you know what you’re in for, you can better plan to tackle what might be coming next.

As we move through this business renaissance we’re experiencing thanks to the combination of the internet itself, the level-set of social networks and the rise in ubiquitous and fluid content, we’ll ride through these phases many times over. But awareness of the cycle can actually help us navigate these changing waters with grace, with a keen awareness of our surroundings, and with the knowledge that there is a place to land on the other side.

What say you?