A common phrase organizations use when it’s time for change is “who moved my cheese” referencing a well-known book that demonstrates how people react and adapt to change. The phrase gets tossed around like every other business jargon and acronym nowadays, but do organizations really know what it means and how they can best support their employees when their cheese gets moved?
According to our recent research, nearly half of organizations admit they’re struggling to manage employee change fatigue, yet they continue to roll out multiple initiatives each year. Change is inevitable, and organizations have a responsibility to start providing better change—engaging employees at the right time, including executive sponsors to help promote buy-in, and effectively communicate the change. (Insights preview: research found that most organizations say sponsorship is critical to success and that department-level meetings and town halls are seen as the most effective communication channels.
What’s the root cause of organizational change fatigue?
Most organizations have between two and four major change initiatives per year, with three being the most common. We asked organizations what their most common barriers to implementing change are and “conflicting priorities” and “change fatigue” were the top two.
The problem isn’t simply “too much change”; rather, most often change fatigue results from poor preparation, overlapping initiatives, and poor pacing of projects. Organizations should consider prioritizing their initiatives to better align priorities and prevent change fatigue. On top of that, they should stop and assess if organizations are ready for change, as well as if they have the bandwidth for the change. Our research found that only just over one-fourth of organizations actually conduct readiness assessments with every change initiative, leaving a lot of room for improvement.
Organizations can assess whether they’re ready for change in a variety of ways. One assessment you can do is walk through a series of questions that you can answer for your organization, such as:
- How does this change directly support our strategic priorities?
- Are leaders aligned on why this change matters now?
- Are we introducing too many major initiatives at once?
- What existing behaviors will need to stop, start, or shift for this change to succeed?
- How are employees going to feel about the change?
A readiness assessment can provide a quantitative score that tells you how much time you need to spend focusing on specific change management aspects, such as your communication or training plans. Because of the nature of a specific change, you might experience a lot of resistance, so you might need to build more time into your project schedule to allow for conversations and coaching. Or maybe an entirely new skillset is required, and you're going to need time to build and deliver training.
How High Performing Organizations Beat Change Fatigue
Part of our recent research analysis included evaluating what drives performance, or in this case what drives effective change management. Our analysis found three key drivers of change management success: conducting post-implementation reviews, conducting change readiness assessments, and building flexibility into change management plans.
Conduct post-implementation reviews every time.
Organizations that perform a post-implementation review after every change are 35% more likely to have effective change management initiatives than those who say they never perform post-implementation reviews. A well-designed post-implementation review (PIR) helps organizations understand not just what happened but why, and how to sustain the change moving forward. By assessing outcomes, gathering employee feedback, and identifying lessons learned, organizations gain insight into what worked and what didn’t. This helps to strengthen their change capability over time.
Always assess the organization’s readiness for change.
Organizations that assess their readiness for change are 25% more likely to be a top performer than those who say they never perform a readiness assessment. As I discussed earlier, a readiness assessment gives you a roadmap to follow to best implement the change—knowing when to implement detours, which turns to take, and when to put up stop signs.
Be flexible with change management programs.
Organizations that implement a great extent of flexibility into their change management plans are 22% more likely to be a top performer than those who only include a small extent of flexibility. Change is the name of the game. Everywhere. Adapting your plans is essential whenever you introduce change. Culture evolves, markets move, and employees adapt; it's crucial to pay attention to feedback from both staff and customers, and to adjust your strategy when needed.
Take your change management to the next level
If your teams are exhausted by constant change, you’re not alone. The full report unpacks how top organizations are breaking the burnout cycle. Additionally, join us for a webinar on December 4 at 11:00 AM as I dig into the results from our recent change management research project.