Over the next few weeks, my colleague Ken Perlman will be guest-posting here to talk about “change fatigue,” how to identify it, and how to keep it from spreading throughout your organization.
A few weeks ago, I led a workshop on change and innovation for 60 executives from two large multinational companies. These companies had just signed a contract to outsource a significant amount of work, and, naturally, each was undergoing some major organizational shifts.
During a break, one executive pulled me aside. The accelerating pace of continual changes was beginning to take its toll on his team, he told me. They were exhausted. They were struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel. He told me they were suffering from “change fatigue.”
This got me thinking. Why does change, which can be so exciting and lead to so many great opportunities, burn so many people out?
The short answer is: change efforts are all too often unfocused, uninspired and unsuccessful. As our research shows, 70 percent of transformation efforts fail.
Oftentimes, leaders approach change as a shift from “Point A” to “Point B.” Along the way, the market changes and the leaders recognize they need to move to “Point C” instead, then “Point D,” and so on. Employees are called upon to constantly alter their behaviors and to take on additional—and additionally taxing—responsibilities, without receiving extra resources or relief from any of their responsibilities. They don’t havea clear sense of where their organization is heading, what their role in that transition might be, or which elements of change should be their top priorities.
To make things worse, leaders often tend to launch multiple change initiatives, even as their existing projects are still in motion. I once worked with a global organization that set out to replace their core operational and financial systems in over 30 countries—a truly massive undertaking. In the middle of it, the leaders became anxious to keep pace with the market, and even as the project’s timeline slipped, they kick-started others: a global web e-commerce platform replacement, a global helpdesk outsourcing initiative, an IT infrastructure consolidation effort, new sales efforts, and a host of other programs.
Individually, each project had great potential to help the firm and excite workers. Yet, the whirlwind of projects took employees by storm and left them confused about priorities, overwhelmed with work, and coping with a false sense of urgency. The well-paced marathon became 26 one-mile sprints– the project team members were exhausted and employees were burned out.
Don’t get me wrong. Change takes a lot of work, and everyone can grow a little tired sometimes. But a bit of weariness doesn’t have to doom a large-scale change effort. In my next post, I’ll talk a bit more about why change fatigue happens, and I’ll offer some tips to avoid it.
In the meantime, I want to hear from you. Have you seen signs of change fatigue at your organization? What have you or your organization’s leaders done to combat this?
Ken Perlman is an engagement leader at Kotter International, a firm that helps leaders accelerate strategy implementation in their organizations. John Kotter is the chief innovation officer at Kotter International and is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School.
Kotter International will be hosting the webinar “Leading Change Through Turbulent Times” on October 4th. For more information, please visit KotterInternational.com.
