When too many changes impact stakeholders concurrently, stakeholders may experience change fatigue or burnout. Sadly it’s a common occurrence, but what do you do about it?
Your Fast Five Saturation Fighters
1. Be totally candid
It’s okay for people to feel fatigued, burned out or frustrated. Sometimes that’s the only logical way to feel after a lot of change being thrust onto us. We suggest that you acknowledge these feelings where they exist. Its not hard to experience constant change. Our brains aren’t designed to adopt and shed habits fast.
Bring in leaders wherever possible to add their candid thoughts too.
2. Ask people what their comms & training preferences are
Empowering stakeholders with the freedom to “choose their own adventure” during organizational change can significantly boost their engagement and sense of ownership.
Poll stakeholders for their personal preferences. We see ‘mass customization’ being the future of change management interventions, with each individual having their own tailored change experience.
3. Collaborate with neighboring projects
Every change involves multiple touch points between leaders and stakeholders, discovery conversations, discussions to ascertain the best way to receive communications & training and pulse-checks to check progress. Multiply all these touch points by the number of changes happening across the organization and you get a lot of discussions.
If your change is just one of many that impact the business concurrently, joining forces makes sense. We change managers need to plan our delivery in conjunction with our neighboring projects & initiatives. Collaborative comms dramatically reduced the time people spend reading updates.
4. Cross-promote projects
The change initiative is your product. Make sure it’s getting exposure. If you have a technology change and another change manager is upgrading laptops, there could be dependencies. Work together to create the best customer journey.
5. Play to your strengths, make your weaknesses irrelevant
As the late great management academic Peter Drucker once said, “Focus on your strengths. Make your weaknesses irrelevant.”. Recognize what you’re good at… and what you’re less good at.
Use this honest assessment to choose others to collaborate with in a change practice. If another change manager is brilliant at PowerPoint and you are a whiz with Excel, divide, conquer, share, and learn to uplift organizational change capability.
