Our world is increasingly complex, uncertain, and volatile – with business leaders needing to navigate numerous internal and external drivers that require significant change. The constant threat of a recession, continued supply chain challenges, a tight labor market, increased competition, seemingly endless technological advances, and more, all create the need for increased agility and adaptability across organizations.
This dynamic has created a feeling of change fatigue – marked by passive resistance (or even aggression), exhaustion, complacency, and disengagement toward change. This environment is likely contributing to staggering statistics around employee burnout. A recent study from Microsoft found that 48% of employees reported feeling burned out. When employees are in this state, it’s unlikely they are going to be able to successful navigate the pivots and changes today’s environment requires.
In order to combat change fatigue across an organization, leaders will benefit from employing three key strategies.
Identify priorities – AND trade-offs.
Change fatigue is exacerbated by a lack of clarity and a sense of overwhelm. Leaders need to establish critical priorities for the business, and ensure they are communicating these clearly and often. The same Microsoft study found that 80% of people managers were seeking clearer direction from senior leaders on the organization’s top priorities. Without this clarity, employees waste precious mental energy and time trying to figure out what initiatives and activities they should focus on. However, prioritization isn’t enough on its own. Too often, we see business leaders articulate annual or quarterly strategic priorities and initiatives, but they fail to take the next step – identifying necessary trade-offs. When leaders fail to articulate what work should be stopped, delayed, or delegated differently, employees’ workloads just increase when strategic initiatives are named. Leaders need to create the space for employees to devote the necessary focus and effort to achieve meaningful results against the most important initiatives.
Help people see the whole picture.
In addition to prioritization, leaders need to connect the dots for employees. People need to understand the “why” behind critical change initiatives and how these changes will help achieve a better future for the business, customers, and for them. Furthermore, leaders need to knit together various change efforts and articulate how they all contribute to a common set of outcomes, so they don’t seem like disparate initiatives or “just one more thing” they need to tackle. Without this, people are more likely to struggle with competing priorities, which will increase the sense of overwhelm, and subsequently, change fatigue. In addition, if efforts are seen as distinct and separate, you risk missing the opportunity to identify synergies that can amplify the results of multiple efforts – and preserve employees’ capacity and energy.
Build – and tap into – a bigger bench.
Change efforts – particularly those seeking to drive transformative shifts in the organization – require large numbers of people to behave in new ways. While every leader likely has their go-to people, it’s unrealistic to depend solely on these people to drive large-scale change initiatives. Even if they are passionate and engaged at the outset, it’s natural for this energy to wane over time. It’s necessary to build and nurture a network of employees who believe in the direction the organization is header and are ready to step in to help.
Building a bigger bench of committed employees allows people to step in and out as their capacity (both energy and workload) allow, protecting against widespread change fatigue. An additional benefit is that a larger network also creates an opportunity to tap into more diverse perspectives – increasing the likelihood of generating innovative solutions that will contribute to achieving the future vision.
Our world is unlikely to get less complex, less uncertain, or less volatile. Agility and adaptability are going to be key differentiators for organizations to respond, quickly, to emerging market, customer, and employee needs in the coming years. Mitigating change fatigue is a key factor in a leader’s ability to foster this agility within their teams. Clearly articulating priorities and trade-offs, connecting the dots between efforts, and fostering a robust network will help protect against change fatigue and set your organization up for success.
Dr. Vanessa Akhtar is a Managing Director at Kotter and co-author of the book Change, which details how leaders can leverage challenges and opportunities to make sustainable workplace changes in a rapidly accelerating world. She most recently helped develop Kotter’s Change Certification Program, a series of courses for individuals and organizations to experience Kotter’s change training and become change certified.
