What leaders get wrong about change fatigue
A headline caught my eye this morning as I scrolled through LinkedIn. How to help employees cope with transformation fatigue. I've seen that word so often recently; suddenly, everything seems to be a transformation. HR transformations. AI transformations. Culture transformations. Just the other day, I joked that I should refer to my work as “transformation management” rather than “change management” to get with the times.
With so many transformations going on, it might seem like the next step for people would be transformation fatigue. But when I saw the phrase transformation fatigue in this headline, I groaned inwardly. I knew the article was going to be a repurposed list of lame ways to help employees "cope" with change fatigue. And I was right.
The actual definition of “cope” is “deal effectively with something difficult” but this article, like a lot of leaders and even other consultants, used it in the wrong way. They used cope to mean “put up with something difficult (probably indefinitely)".
“If only employees could cope! If only they were more resilient!” some leaders say. “Then they would be able to handle change. It's their inability to handle change and their resulting change fatigue that's holding us back.”
Employees should never have to learn to live with change fatigue or “cope” with the impacts long-term
The only reason they would have to is because leaders and consultants misdiagnose the actual cause of change – or transformation – fatigue. And, in turn, they decide on the wrong solution to "cure" it.
When it comes to what causes change fatigue, the typical culprits of choice are either:
there’s too much change going on at one time
employees are bombarded by one change after another
Some leaders might try to cut down on the number of changes or delay planned changes. Or they’ll schedule mental health days so that employees can “recharge,” book resilience training, or collect endless employee feedback through engagement surveys (spoiler: folks say they’re burned out).
But assuming there is too much change going on, that it's causing change fatigue, and either trying to make your employees more resilient or deciding to reduce the amount of changes so that they might be better able to deal is most often not solving for the right problem.
That’s like a doctor telling you to drink coffee to cope with actual fatigue. In a crisis, you might need another coffee, but if you are truly fatigued, something about your life has to change. There's something wrong with the system.
Change fatigue is most often due to a failure of leadership to manage and lead change – overlapping, competing, never-ending change – in a strategic way; it’s a byproduct of organizational ineffectiveness
If coping is dealing effectively with something difficult, then coping with change means that it must be dealt with effectively, managed and led so strategically, that your employees don’t actually experience change fatigue in the first place. They'll be coping with change, not slogging through change fatigue.
But most organizations are chronically unable to deal effectively with change, and so they are unable to prevent change fatigue, because they don’t have:
an organizational capacity for change
change strategies supported by a change-enthusiastic culture
an internal communication system that can support change
aligned, curious, compassionate, and decisive leadership
I don’t help leaders figure out how to help their folks cope with change fatigue. But I do help them solve their organizational challenges so there is no opportunity for change fatigue. Once they’re ready to change the way their organization tackles change, they’ll be ready to truly manage change in a sustainable way.
We can deal effectively with difficult things. We can learn to lead change well.
Change is inevitable. Change fatigue is not.
