323: Conquering Change Fatigue

Change is an inevitable part of business, but too much change can create fatigue—leading to confusion, resistance, and burnout at every level of an organisation. In this episode, Oliver Banks dives into the concept of change fatigue, exploring how it impacts teams, leaders, and even end consumers. We explore the root causes of change fatigue, its effects on every level of an organisation, and how you can make change more manageable and meaningful. Whether you’re leading change, experiencing it, or supporting those who do, this episode will equip you with insights to ease the strain and embrace transformation effectively.

Listen to this podcast episode to:

• Understand why too much change—too quickly or over an extended period—leads to fatigue and rejection.
• Uncover the hidden costs of change fatigue on productivity, decision-making, and customer satisfaction.
• Learn how to identify and address the mental strain caused by change to ease adoption and build competence.
• Discover ways to prioritize, plan, and orchestrate change to prevent burnout and confusion.

 

 

Understanding change fatigue and the impact it has

Change fatigue is something every organization faces sooner or later. It’s what happens when there’s just too much transformation happening at once—leading to confusion, mistakes, resistance, and even burnout. In this episode, we explore this important topic and discussed how to strike the right balance when driving change.

We consider about how change fatigue doesn’t just impact your teams—it affects your customers, leadership, and even your ability to deliver future transformations. During the pandemic, organisations built up an impressive stamina for change, but even then, the constant wave of changes led to fatigue and pushback.

An essential takeaway? Change isn’t the enemy—but too much, all at once or over an extended period, can derail everything. So how can we avoid and conquer change fatigue?

How to counter and overcome change fatigue

Here are 10 key takeaways from the episode to help navigate this challenge:

1. Identify the right amount of change: Regularly check your organization’s capacity for change, listen to stakeholders, and make adjustments to avoid overloading them.
2. Consider stakeholders: Different groups—customers, end consumers, project teams, and leadership—are all impacted by change fatigue in unique ways. Recognize and address their needs.
3. Make changes easy to adopt: Design processes that are mistake-proof and intuitive, reducing the mental load for your teams and making it easier for them to embrace new ways of working.
4. Build competence: Support your teams as they move through the stages of competence, providing training and guidance to help them adapt and succeed.
5. Create coherent change packages: Align changes into logical bundles that make sense as a whole, rather than overwhelming people with disconnected initiatives.
6. Address the elephant in the room: Tackle major pain points directly to show stakeholders that changes are meaningful and not superficial.
7. Reduce change volume: Prioritize and sequence changes effectively to avoid overwhelming your organization with too many concurrent or back-to-back initiatives.
8. Drive complexity upstream: Centralize complex tasks to reduce the burden on frontline employees and keep their focus clear and manageable.
9. Leverage leadership: Strong leadership fosters trust and buy-in, helping guide the organization through change with empathy and clarity.
10. Expand change capacity: Build momentum, practice change management, and bring in experts to help your organization develop resilience and adaptability for future transformations.

The key takeaway? If you don’t actively manage the volume, complexity, and presentation of change, it can derail even the best-laid plans. What steps are you taking to reduce change fatigue in your organization? Let’s continue the conversation…. Share your thoughts with Oliver – reach out on LinkedIn or by email: oliver.banks@obandco.uk.

Additional episodes to listen to next

Decisions are one aspect which faces a danger from change fatigue, especially as we’re often not trained or effectively prepared for decision-making. Turn that around by listening to 195: The Anatomy Of A Decision.

The follow up episode is also fascinating listening as Oliver considers who some of the world’s most expert decision makers are – dead or alive. Listen to 196: Learning From World Class Decision Makers to discover how Winston Churchill, Barack Obama, the special forces and many others approach critical decisions – often where the stakes are insanely high or when the decision is very time-critical.

A transformation is only effective if it’s actually adopted and it makes a meaningful change. In episode 287: Why The Change Is Not Realising The Benefits, we consider the reasons why a particular change may not have embedded, and what you can do about it.

Effective communication can ease fatigue, whereas inappropriate communication can confuse, overwhelm and misdirect people – all of which ultimately drive up the risk of change fatigue. Listen to episode 209: Powerful Change Communication and consider how to go about this with communications expert Lucy Eckley.

Plus there are LOADS more episodes in the archives. Take a look through or search for a topic. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Reach out to Oliver on oliver.banks@obandco.uk and ask or suggest a new topic for an upcoming episode.