Managing Change Fatigue with Organizational Slack

Every meaningful change we make at work requires something of us, whether it be:

• Learning something new
• Unlearning something old
• Altering routines and habits
• Navigating uncertainty and barriers to change adoption
• Rebuilding competence
• Changing relationships and workflows

And the list goes on.  In many cases, we are managing multiple changes all at once, which creates a scenario where we reach or exceed our capacity for adapting.  Crossing this line is referred to as change fatigue and symptoms can include feeling:

• Overwhelmed
• Emotionally, mentally and/or physically drained
• Less willing or able to invest attention or effort
• Less capable of learning new systems
• Cynical, withdrawn and/or burned out
• Eager for stability and room to catch up

That last symptom gets to the core of why fatigue happens: There’s no time to recover from the disruption change causes.  The target or goal keeps moving and the impact of change gets compounded with additional and/or new change demands.

When recovery is not realistic or available, there is an alternative set of actions you can turn to with the goal of creating the space to absorb change.  The output of these efforts is organizational slack, which looks like:

• Getting time back
• Creating attentional bandwidth
• Freeing up space to process and adapt
• Tapping into financial, technological, operational or people-oriented reserves

There are lots of ways to create organizational slack for ourselves and for others.  Here’s a short list of options to consider, recognizing that some are more or less likely to be effective in your context:

• Stop, Sequence and Simplify. You can create slack by:
  • Stopping less mission-critical work/meetings (even temporarily) or putting more space between themSequencing your learning/adaptation to new changes based on priority and relevance
  • Simplifying the attentional/emotional commitment different changes require of you (e.g., just in time training, job aids).  In many cases, other organizations who have made the changes you are making will have these resources.

• Engage in Intentional “Letting Go.” Change fatigue isn’t just caused by adding new things; part of the cause can be failing to remove old things that occupy space in our attention, memory, habits, etc.  For every new behavior, process or responsibility ask yourself, “What can this replace?”  Then, free up capacity by engaging in intentional unlearning to declutter your mental reserves.

• Reduce Switching Cost. The volume of change we are asked to absorb is often secondary to all the back and forth switching required of us to answer the question; “how is what I’m doing here supposed to be different now?”  Consolidating change initiatives can be a great way to reduce this burden.  One performance management transformation, for instance, has a lower switching cost than five component changes (i.e., new policy, technology, training, process, and reporting cadence).

• Create Fewer Decisions and Things to Remember. Leaders can remove decisions by prescribing a course of action when there are options to choose from.  Easy-to-access dashboards, FAQ documents and information stacks can store information for us to save us cognitive space. 

Leveraging slack can position us to thrive in change environments that stretch us thin and test the limits of our capacity.  In between significant changes, we can use these techniques to build up slack and our readiness to absorb any changes that are on the horizon.

Ernest currently serves as a Personnel Research Psychologist within the Chief Human Capital Office of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He earned his Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from the University of Akron in 2016. Over the last 20 years, he has worked in for-profit, non-profit, and government settings while holding a variety of individual contributor and leadership roles. His areas of expertise and experience include assessment for hire and development, leadership development, employee engagement, performance management, and organizational change and transformation. 

Photo Credit: RDNE Stock Project at pexels.com