Threshold Theory: Why Organizational Transitions Need Clear Doorways
Most organizational change theories focus obsessively on destinations while treating the spaces between states as administrative afterthoughts. This fundamental misalignment explains why transformations so consistently underwhelm despite meticulously designed end states.
What if we've been looking in the wrong place? What if the success of change has less to do with your beautifully designed target operating model and more to do with the psychological architecture of the transition itself?
The invisible dimension of change
The threshold —that space between states —is where transformation actually happens. Yet it's precisely this space that receives the least design attention.
In a recent enterprise modernization, I watched leadership pour thousands of hours into designing the perfect end state: comprehensive documentation, role-specific training, governance structures with enforcement mechanisms. Yet six months in, the organization remained stuck in a dysfunctional hybrid of old and new, with teams creating shadow processes to navigate the undefined liminal space leadership pretended didn't exist.
The fundamental error was treating the transition as a line to cross rather than a space to move through.
The neuroscience of liminal confusion
When our brains encounter thresholds without clear markers, they default to established neural pathways, because our cognitive architecture requires specific environmental cues to form new behavioral patterns.
This isn't speculative psychology; it's documented neuroscience. Research from the University of Notre Dame has demonstrated a phenomenon called "the doorway effect," where walking through physical doorways causes measurable disruption to short-term memory and task continuity.
As neuroscientist Gabriel Radvansky explains, "Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an 'event boundary' in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away." This cognitive architecture has profound implications for organizational transitions.
Experiments showed that people who walked the same distance within the same room maintained stronger memory retention than those who crossed through a doorway into a new space. Our brains constantly create "event models" that get purged when we cross boundaries, with the working assumption that information from the previous environment has become less relevant.
Architectural doorways as cognitive models
1. Pattern interruption is non-negotiable
The most effective thresholds (like the ornate door above) create unmistakable pattern interruptions that signal to our brains: "default behaviours no longer apply here."
Most change initiatives lack these clear pattern interruptions, essentially asking people to behave differently without any environmental cues that they've entered a space where different rules apply.
The leverage point: Don't just announce change, design pattern interruptions that make continuation of previous behaviours cognitively uncomfortable. Radically different meeting structures. New decision protocols that actively prevent reverting to old patterns. Environmental cues that constantly reinforce "this is not the same system." (But do this with some love and kindness)
2. Contextual priming determines success or failure
Sacred doorways don't merely mark boundaries, they prime visitors' mental models for what comes next through intentional design elements that precede the transition itself.
When organizations fail to properly prime new contexts, people bring incompatible mental models through the transition, ensuring dysfunction on the other side.
The leverage point: Create intentional priming mechanisms that prepare cognitive frameworks before transition begins. This isn't "communication plans"—it's about designing experiences that restructure how people conceptualize the work before asking them to perform it differently.
For instance, when implementing a critical workflow change in a time-pressured environment, a product team I worked with used a 90-minute "simulation workshop" drawing directly from Design Thinking methods. Team members physically walked through the new process using sticky notes and real project artifacts positioned around the room. Rather than explaining the process change, they experienced it spatially, making decisions at each station and confronting key challenges in a compressed timeframe.
This approach leveraged the "embodied cognition" principle from design thinking, the understanding that physical movement through a process creates stronger mental models than verbal explanation alone. The experiential preview created cognitive anchors that made the actual transition less jarring when it happened two days later, despite the compressed schedule.
3. Transitional identities require unique infrastructure
Anthropologists have documented how successful cultural transitions require participants to adopt temporary "transitional identities" distinct from both their former and future states.
Yet organizations force people to leap from "old identity" to "new identity" with no intermediate state, creating impossible cognitive demands.
The leverage point: Design explicit transitional identities with their own distinct traits, permissions, and acknowledgment of in-between status. Name the liminality. Create shared language for the transitional state that normalizes the discomfort of being between worlds.
The paradox of continuous transformation
The ultimate irony: As organizations increasingly embrace "continuous transformation," they inadvertently eliminate the psychological infrastructure that makes transformation possible. Without clear thresholds, continuous change becomes continuous cognitive strain.
The organizations that successfully navigate perpetual change aren't those with the most agile processes—they're those that design the clearest psychological infrastructure for moving between states.
Your invisible architecture
Your organization isn't failing to transform because your operating model is flawed. It's failing because you never built the psychological infrastructure that allows people's minds to travel from current to future state.
Next time you're evaluating a transformation plan, ignore the detailed future state maps for a moment and ask: "Where are the thresholds? What signals the boundary between old and new? Have we designed transitions with the same care we've designed destinations?"
These aren't abstract questions. They're the difference between another failed transformation and one that actually sticks.
