Leading Through Continuous Change

The amount and pace of organizational change today is staggering. Gartner research found that in 2022, the average employee experienced 10 change initiatives—up from two in 2016. And this comes against a backdrop of rapid technological development and geopolitical shifts. Change is no longer episodic; it is continuous—and people are tired. Change has always been difficult. Research has shown that 70% of all change initiatives fail. You can have the right tech stack, the right org chart, and the right strategy—but ultimately your employees will determine whether your organization resists change or embraces it. So how can you drive your organization to keep up with the times when your workforce is wary of another pivot, strategy shift, or tech rollout? Recommendations Plan for employees’ emotional journey. Major change unsettles the foundations people rely on, including power structures, identity, and confidence in their own capability. In a joint EY and Oxford study, researchers found that most transformation initiatives begin with a spike of optimism. But as the change progresses, positive emotions excitement gives way to confusion, frustration, and fatigue. Without support, those emotions harden into anxiety, burnout, and disengagement, all of which can put the change project at risk. And when low-energy or stalled initiatives pile up, they can prevent the organization from moving quickly enough to take advantage of new opportunities. Leaders can plan for these emotional dynamics. As you create a project plan, map the likely emotional journey. Identify likely highs and lows—kickoff energy, announcement fallout, the dip when early wins don’t materialize. Build time into the plan for group updates, workshops, and small group sessions to surface concerns and to address them. Connect change initiatives to your company values. Your company’s core values can offer continuity during times of change. When a change initiative seems out of step with those values, it can provoke confusion, churn, and resistance. For example, if customer centricity is a core value, teams may initially push back on a new approach to product innovation that doesn’t prioritize rapid responses to customer requests. The key is to treat values as guiding principles, not fixed rules. Connect the change to the broader intent behind the value. In the above example, explain how the new approach deepens customer centricity, shifting from simply delivering what customers ask for to anticipating what they truly need. This can connect to employees’ sense of purpose and mission, driving their engagement. The link to familiar values also provides a sense of stability—something steady to hold onto when everything else is shifting. A health system with a longstanding commitment to patient-centric care was preparing to implement a real-time data-tracking system. Initially, physicians and nurses resisted the change, seeing it as a distraction from delivering high-quality care. But the COO reframed the initiative, showing how the system could enhance patient experience—for example, by directing ambulances to ERs with more capacity, reducing wait times. It also would enable providers to track patient sentiment, expanding their definition of patient-centricity beyond clinical outcomes to include how patients felt throughout their care journey. The health system is now seeing broader adoption of the technology. Communicate frequently—and listen. Adopting a command-and-control style can offer the illusion of clarity to overwhelmed teams. But people will follow orders only up to a point. Without a voice in the process, employees are more likely to disengage or resist; feelings of control and fairness, on the other hand, can replenish their energy. During major change, how often you touch base with your people is almost more important than what you communicate. Aim to connect with employees regularly, whether through town halls, email updates, or other forums. Keep people informed about progress and what next steps will be. Invite colleagues from different units or regions to share how the change is unfolding in their area, what they’ve learned, and how they’ve adapted. Acknowledge emotions and normalize discomfort. You’ll build trust and engagement by listening and responding to your employees’ concerns. But this doesn’t mean cheerleading—be honest about what’s known and not known. Use every opportunity—town halls, small group meetings, and even one-on-one check-ins—to take the temperature of the organization with respect to the change and energy levels. Probe if you hear silence, asking open questions to understand what’s going on for employees emotionally. Look for changes in the team’s energy, and respond to what you hear and feel with action. Recognize when to pause and when to push. How you pace change is as important as what change you pursue. To make the right call, you need to attend to your people’s reactions. Identify fatigue versus resistance. Overt resistance is obvious. Passive resistance and fatigue can both take the form of low energy levels, but they need to be managed differently. Look for context clues to tell the difference: Has the group been through many different changes recently? Are they saying they just don’t have time for another initiative, or “Here we go again”? These point to fatigue as the core challenge, suggesting a need for reprioritization and re-sequencing work. Take a look at what you hold back or stop doing. Resistance can result from fatigue, but it may also come from other factors, such as people not believing in the idea or being scared for what it means for their job. Combating this requires understanding and addressing what’s driving the resistance. Consider how you pace change. While it might seem like a good idea to try to spread out the pain over time, knitting big transitions together can help limit anxiety, especially if the change involves real loss. For example, a biotech firm chose to restructure the whole organization at once rather than doing it department by department over time so that later units wouldn’t be distracted by the anxiety of waiting for their turn to learn about reductions in force. With more benign changes, on the other hand, it can be helpful to take on one piece first to show people the future and ease anxieties. Exit those who block transformation. Being exhausted by change isn’t grounds for dismissal, of course. But if, despite your efforts at managing emotions, communication, and project pace, there are people who continue to resist the change or fail to adopt it, it may be that your organization is no longer a good fit. Ultimately, you may need to decide to offer those who resist change a choice between buying in or leaving their role or the company. Planning for change logistics alone won’t get people engaged—and it risks leaving them by the wayside. Building a culture that embraces continuous change can help you turn your resistors into your biggest evangelists. Go Deeper Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail By John P. Kotter HBR, January 2007 (36-minute read) Organizational Transformation Is an Emotional Journey By Andrew White, Michael Smets, and Adam Canwell HBR.org, July 18, 2022 (17-minute read) Is Your Organizational Transformation Veering Off Course By Andrew White, Adam Canwell, and Michael Smets HBR.org, August 28, 2024 (14-minute read) Change Is Hard. Here’s How to Make It Less Painful. By Erika Andersen HBR.org, April 7, 2022 (14-minute read) Credits Expert advice courtesy of Vanessa Akhtar (managing director and head of consulting, Kotter), Ron Ashkenas (partner emeritus, Schaffer Consulting), Andrew White (founder and CEO, Transcend.Space).

Leading Through Continuous Change

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