Everywhere I go it seems the conversation revolves around the same themes: challenging finances, changing demographics, aging properties, and emerging visions. So it's no surprise that Susan Beaumont had me at the title of her new book How to Lead When You Don't Know Where You're Going: Leading in a Liminal Season.

Honestly it resonates, as these excerpts from the beginning of the first chapter show, as a season of many questions and few easy answers:The problem is that the new thing is not yet apparent ... They are stuck in liminal space, stuck at a threshold between an ending and a new beginning ... Liminality fuels ambiguity and disorientation ... A liminal organization needs to unlearn old behaviors, challenge the status quo, experiment, take risks, and learn ... Organizational life is full of liminal experiences - seasons where something has ended, but a new thing has not yet begun. Seasons where watching and waiting can be difficult, overplanning can be futile, and it simply isn't helpful to pretend that we understand what happens next.