51. Forestalling Change Fatigue

Ogburn (1957) recounted his experience as a junior officer during the Second World War: “We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization”.

As though it were eternal truth, Charlton Ogburn’s quip on change fatigue has since been attributed to sundry sages, most commonly Gaius Petronius (c. 27–66), a Roman courtier and satirist. Is it really the case that “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?” Notwithstanding copious studies and applications of change management, do we simply—over and over again—lack a unique strategy, candid dialogue, clear roles and accountabilities, and bold action, each powered by visible leadership? Then again, are change and its management both more complex and simpler than that?

Change, that is, the act, process, or result of changing, is the norm. Change alone is unchanging¹: it works through the coevolving dimensions of economy, environment, polity, society, and technology to make up systems of mutual sustainability or (in opposition) mutual vulnerability. (Since all dimensions are connected, none can change by itself.) On account of that, individually or in groups, we all experience change in our daily professional, personal, social, and civic occupations²: change is the law of life. (If anything, the rate of change looks as if it is accelerating. But who are we to speak? Neolithic man probably thought the same.)

Change is also an essential part of the life (and death) of organizations—even when they do not operate in a competitive market.³ However, purpose-driven organizations with little time for social anthropology or the subtleties of complexity, culture, or social learning theories have customarily misinterpreted developmental, transitional, and transformational change—including its value, and reduced its elements to processes, technology, and people. In their narrowest and least promising view, the processes they design to meet (when they cannot foresee) complex, rapid, and radical changes in their external environments bank on technology that personnel will be expected to leverage. In a technocratic age⁴ with a fondness for performance measurement, aka “doing something,”⁵ the means that shareholders or senior management prescribe aim to persuade too: identify, engage, and implement. (Skeptics consider both coercive and participative approaches to change as placebo.⁶)

With some learning from a poor track record to date, actions along a (typical) three-stage change implementation (or transition) curve depicting take-off (aka ending, losing, and letting go), potential stalling or regression (aka the neutral zone), and success or failure—or somewhere in between (aka the new beginning)⁷ have been recommended. The following articulates 10 steps to making it work (if it is going to work) (Floyd 2002):

But it does not help that a strategy that has been decided is frequently overtaken by emerging events or circumstances. This impacts the goal, focus, direction, and perhaps even need for the earlier change; improvisation becomes the order of the day and strategic planners are rued. (Paradoxically, change efforts can, through over-management, reinforce the systemic issues they attempt to address.) As you would expect—given the odds against success only 30% of change efforts succeed—disclaimers precede and follow:

Change fatigue pervades organizations that cannot learn for change.⁹ (After all, irrespective of the outcome, transformation takes energy that must first be mobilized then sustained.) Tell-tale signs of fatigued organizations are (i) senior management and change sponsors do not attend progress reviews; (ii) there is reluctance to share, perhaps even comment on, information about the change effort; (iii) resources are given over to other strategic initiatives; (iv) clients, audiences, and partners demonstrate impatience with the duration of the change effort or increasingly question its objectives; and (v) change managers, champions, and agents are stressed out and the change team considers leaving (not quite, it seems, the hope, sense of focus, enthusiasm, feeling of momentum, or confidence that drive accomplishment). The solution? Forget “heroic” leaders¹⁰; eschew transformation; focus on continuous (not episodic) developmental (or at most transitional) improvements at the middle or bottom of the organization to maintain long-term organizational health; and, above all, distribute (servant) leadership .

Change is not difficult; couching it in military terminology instills fear and does it a disservice. The central issue is never the “what,” “why,” “who,” and “how” of change: it is always about (triple- or, better still, quadruple-loop) learning ,¹¹ facilitated or hampered by organization, people, knowledge, and technology.

Organizations are human institutions, not machines.¹² Man’s fears are of something and for something. People must first understand and buy into the need for change (and use organization, knowledge, and technology in support) if any meaningful progress toward a desired future state is to be made at all. Social neuroscience teaches much: change has significant psychological impacts on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening (because things may get worse); to the hopeful it is encouraging (because things may get better); to the confident it is inspiring (because the challenge is now to make things better).

In truth, however elaborate they may be, most change management techniques from the mid-twentieth century to date derived from conventional command-and-control mindsets that demotivate knowledge workers. These techniques are in point of fact responsible for poor organizational performance and resistance to change: they threaten status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness—five domains of social experience that are deeply important to the brain. Consequently, a good number of staff disengage and seek protection in apathy. (And, in such instances, resistance will not be limited to macro-level changes.)

Certainly, it is difficult and ultimately pointless to make people do what they do not want to do. Nobody likes to be subjected to change. But change that we dream up and embrace on our own is different—that kind of change staffs undertake and never tire of. If, instead of forcing personnel to perform this or that somersault, we found out what they want to do and helped them achieve it—in so doing building participation and receptivity to change—we would discover that change takes little suasion to envisage and implement. Redefining a relationship requires openness, reciprocity, and, especially, an appreciation of one’s vulnerability: it does not mean one must do battle with the old.

According to (2001), Semco SA, a privately held manufacturing and services company in São Paulo, Brazil that practices “management without control,” epitomizes the bottom-up approach to change.¹³ He reports that (i) staff choose their jobs, titles, places, hours of work, and even pay; (ii) everyone undergoes a 360-degree evaluation every 6 months, which forms the core of any needed change; (iii) leaders are picked by staff and almost always come from within Semco SA, so that no radical changes are imposed by outsiders trying to make a good impression; (iv) the position of chief executive officer changes regularly: four persons rotate through the job every year; and (v) the company does not even try to prepare annual budgets—6 months is as far down the road as it can see. In brief, Semco SA appears to redefine change: instead of being the work of senior management, change is the responsibility of “atoms,” groups of 8–12 persons who see to the company’s basic processes. As a result, change becomes continual, gradual, low-level—and virtually unnoticed. How we are conditioned to think determines how we are conditioned to act.