IC Partners | A shot in the arm for change fatigue

If change fatigue hasn’t hit your teams yet, listen harder for the first rumblings. But consultant and coach Emma Calvert says there are steps leaders can take to carry people along on the transformation journey. And great communication is front and centre.

If you’re feeling like the pace of organisational change has gone into overdrive, you’re right.

Even scene-setting today’s workplace is exhausting. Hybrid working is still tripping us up, while the economy is knocking us down. On one flank, we’re facing the rise of the machines, while on the other, Gen Z is making us all think more deeply about touchy-feely humanity, purpose and ethics. And don’t look round – as the first of the millennials turn 40, they’re beginning to mutter that they’ve been sold a dream that’s never coming true.

The stats back up our feelings of weariness. Consultants Gartner found, in 2022, that the average employee experienced 10 planned enterprise changes – up from just two in 2016.

Generative AI has dolloped an extra lump of pressure on an already-squeezed skills market. In fact, in the World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report 2023, employers reported that they expected 44% of workers’ core skills to be disrupted by the end of 2027 – a date so close that people are planning weddings for it!

Emma Calvert is an award-winning change consultant and executive/team coach, working in organisational development, design/effectiveness and change management. As a key part of our network, she brings her coaching and consulting expertise to our team of communications professionals.

When we asked her about the ubiquity of change, she was brisk about the risk for companies caught napping.

“If you’re not change ready – change mature, even – you’re behind the curve,” she says. “These days every business needs it in its DNA. Right from the top and throughout the organisation, you need the skills and, more importantly, the mindset, for change and transformation.”

Emma’s warning to leaders is that change fatigue is not only real but increasing. And if they want to continue inspiring their teams through the constant upheaval, they probably need to start with a few changes themselves.

“Employees’ willingness to support change and transformation slumped from 74% in 2016 to 43% in 2022,” she explains, referencing the same Gartner research.

“We call that the transformation gap, and it’s a huge challenge for leaders. It’s happening because we’re change-stacking – building change on change on change – and people are worn out. It’s not even just enterprise-level transformation – it’s everyday change too. A tweak to a process, an alteration to a system … they all contribute to change fatigue.”

So what’s to be done? Emma’s approach is multi-layered and bespoke to each client but she outlines eight key headlines for leaders to consider first:

1. Structure for change

Overloading people will cause them to vote with their feet.

“You can’t just pile more and more change onto people, and expect them just to get on with it,” she explains. “Remember – despite the incredibly difficult economic climate, there are places for skilled people to go.”

Middle managers, she warns, are particularly under pressure from the demands that today’s workplace is putting on them. “As a leader, you need to be very conscious about the squeezed middle, because you’re asking a lot of them. It’s something you need to consider in your organisational design and how you’re structuring jobs.”

Action: Investigate if your organisation design is fit for purpose and modern, or is it still designed in a hierarchal way that has been around since the industrial revolution? Does your organisation design allow agility in order to be able to respond to change?

Resource: Read this article from Deloitte about how taking a skills-based approach to your organisation design can help not just for agility but for myriad reasons.

2. Think: what’s in it for them?

Asking a lot of people means it’s vital to think deeply about what they’re getting in return. And as fresh generations establish themselves in the workplace, they’re bringing a change in expectations. For example, Gen Z’s high regard for values means your diversity, equality and inclusion policies need proper clout. And if you think you can pay little more than lip service to wellbeing, the phrase ‘wellbeing-washing’ is likely to bite you painfully on the behind.

And it’s not just the youngest employees who won’t be satisfied with discounted gym membership. “Millennials are getting to the point where they’re asking themselves whether they should opt out,” explains Emma. “They’re feeling that they’ve been sold a dream about the spoils of hard work that just hasn’t become a reality.”

Action: Find out why people truly want to work at your organisation. What do they value? What has meaning for them? Spend time developing a thoughtful employee value proposition (EVP) that really speaks to your talent.

3. Upgrade from lip service

Talking of values, it’s time to take a cool, considered look at your own relationship with them.

“Those values that are pasted on your wall? They have to be lived and breathed by you and throughout the organisation,” says Emma. “It’s no longer good enough for leaders to talk about these things and do something completely different. You have to embody them and lead with them.”

With many organisations blindly hoping that everyone will somehow magically begin to live the values, leaders can actually show how to turn ideals into actions. Consciously living the values, talking about them and measuring against them, transforms them into reality.

Action: Review how you lead in relation to the company values. How can you better embody them in what you do? Could team coaching help you and your leadership team really dig into your behaviours?

4. Encourage experimentation

Old-school ‘command and control’ leaders may still be clinging on in many workplaces but it’s now generally accepted that their days are numbered.

In the same way, the ‘rise of the technician’ route to leadership is also under threat. Being good at your subject matter isn’t enough for today’s successful leaders. And that’s because consistent change calls for different skills.

Inspiring your teams through transformation isn’t about laying down the law – or all the usual extravert ‘front of house’ razzamatazz. It’s about making decisions, sure. But the way you come to those decisions has to evolve.

Uncertain times rock employees’ sense of feeling valued, empowered and trusted – essential emotions for loyalty, performance and a sense of belonging. To cope with relentless change, people need psychologically safe environments where they feel comfortable to be innovative. Things may be different but they know they’re part of that change, and contributing to the bigger picture.

To build those environments, leaders have to listen, include, enable, encourage and show vulnerability. Putting emotional intelligence and support at the heart of leadership may not come easily for everyone, but it’s increasingly vital.

“When we look at skills today, we’re looking for that ability for leaders to be the conductor, as opposed to the specialist,” says Emma.

Action: Read (or reread) Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last, for a masterclass in leading for trust, co-operation and safety.

5. Hire an orchestra

Building on her description of leader as conductor, Emma also upends the traditional tendency to hire in one’s own image.

Instead, leaders must again look to that purpose-led approach, using diversity, equality and inclusion thinking to form a team of strong specialists, with a range of skills.

“In three years’ time, no business will be the same as it is today,” she says. “We all have biases but when you’re building the ideal team, or considering succession planning, the key is to think, ‘When I look at where the business is going and what the business is experiencing, what different skills to mine are needed?”

Action: Consider the future direction of the business. Map your own strengths and your team’s skills to help you to identify gaps you need to fill.

6. Drive a change mindset

For all the reasons we’ve already discussed, ignoring change fatigue – or merely pretending to listen to it – won’t cut the mustard. You need to hear what your people are saying, regularly and meaningfully. And you need to follow up with appropriate action, ideally co-created alongside them. At the same time, it’s now a priority to equip them to be more resilient and able to flex to the demands of change. “If you haven’t already established a change mindset through your organisation, that’s where you should spend your development budget; getting everybody up to speed on growth mindset and the ability to think ahead about where you need to be, as a business,” says Emma.

Action: Focus development on embedding a growth mindset into your culture, throughout the organisation.

7. Prioritise, prioritise, prioritise

“Your organisation is a live system. And you can’t just keep putting more and more into the system,” says Emma. “So it’s crucial to be really clear about your prioritisation.” Emma recommends the Cynefin framework, which uses a quadrant system to help leaders get clear about their priorities.

“It’s a great tool to get leaders to step back and take a breath to prioritise, make decisions about resourcing and determine the levels of effort and expertise to put into them.”

Absolute clarity on priorities can make a vast difference to teams struggling through change.

Action: If you don’t already use a decision-making tool, look into the Cynefin framework and consider hiring external expertise to help you and your leadership team through the process.

8. Communicate as much as you prioritise

In the end though, you can prioritise, support and live the values as much as you like – but if you don’t get the communication right, it’s all in vain.

Because these days, purely top-down comms is as outdated as those dinosaur control and command bosses we discussed earlier.

“Communication is absolutely everything,” says Emma. “Where I see change go badly wrong is when it’s poorly communicated. It doesn’t matter how fantastic the project or strategy is, if we don’t tell anyone about it, no-one’s going to show up and nothing’s going to change. And ultimately the change will fail.” And she’s clear on the reasons that communication often falls down.

“What often happens is that leaders and senior managers are closer to the change for longer,” she explains. “So, they know it’s coming. They’re making the decisions, they get their heads around it and they work through it. What they forget is that other people don’t know what they know.

“OK, people throughout the organisation may not need the same level of detail. But we need to bring them along the journey with us. And that’s all about getting them involved, listening to them, enabling feedback loops. Great organisations that are really good at change and transformation are doing that – and they’re doing it all the time.”

Action: Involve your communication team(s) from the earliest stages of any organisational change. They’ll be able to work with you on creating a vision that will resonate with your people, and establish two-way channels to generate dialogue, share ideas and give employees a genuine stake in what’s going on.