Big Business Transitions (like rapid growth, surviving unexpected downturns, new business endeavors, and losing founders) can be wrenching, stressful, and contentious or seamless, composed, and cathartic.  Or all of the above.  The foundation material for this workshop is Managing Transitions by William Bridges, and the three stages of transitions he has identified.  Workshop leader John Abrams will use several big transitions in South Mountain's 40-year history as a point of entry to examining the big transitions (or big transitions to come) of the participants.  The workshop was developed for a recent Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy conference; one of the participants there said, "It gave me new language for thinking about this stuff."  Another said, "It made me recognize some big transitions I'd been through that I didn't even realize were big transitions; I only knew they were painful."