eight steps to stem change f 270273

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G00270273

Eight Steps to Stem Change FatigueAssociated With Business TransformationPublished: 4 March 2015

Analyst(s): Elise Olding

Change fatigue will sap the workforce of their ability to embrace newchanges, undermining anticipated benefits realization for transformationinitiatives. We provide business transformation leaders with eight steps toidentify and combat change fatigue.

Key Challenges■ Change fatigue is the paralysis in an organization that affects each individual's ability to

embrace the next set of changes. It is a key risk for any business transformation initiative.

■ Change fatigue robs transformation efforts of their targeted benefits, due to the refusal orinability of the affected workers to adopt the change.

■ Business transformation efforts will likely succumb to change fatigue unless businesstransformation leaders take key steps to identify and avoid it.

■ Digital business will release an onslaught of concurrent changes that have the potential tooverwhelm an enterprise, increasing the risk of change fatigue.

RecommendationsBusiness transformation leaders:

■ Realize your transformation effort isn't the only event impacting employees. Aggregate all thechanges that will impact employees and assess if these concurrent changes are possible.

■ Don't forget the "habituation time" needed for people to master the new ways of working inyour program plans and how this will be funded and resourced.

■ Apply these eight steps, adjust to your cultural needs and create a base of reusable techniques.

■ Build a "change portfolio" — one that paints the big picture of all change impacting employees— that is constantly updated to cadence programs and support, achieving full benefitsrealization.



Table of Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................................ 2

Analysis..................................................................................................................................................3

1. Speak the Same Language About Change...................................................................................3

2. Define the Journey........................................................................................................................4

3. Consider How Much "Extra" Bandwidth People Have...................................................................5

4. Identify Which People Are Affected by the Change....................................................................... 6

5. Assess the Impact and Timing of Change for Key Stakeholders................................................... 7

6. Don't Believe Your Transformation Is the Only Change..................................................................8

7. Create the "Big Picture" of Enterprise Change.............................................................................. 9

8. Assess the Feasibility of the Planned Change, and Adjust as Necessary.......................................9

Help Your Enterprise Change Faster......................................................................................... 10

Gartner Recommended Reading.......................................................................................................... 10

IntroductionChange fatigue not only overwhelms people at an individual level — sapping them of their ability toembrace the next set of changes — but it can also paralyze an entire organization, robbing it of theability to grow and transform. Therefore, transformation leaders should plan ahead and take themeasures necessary to avoid change fatigue — and to ensure the organization can maintain a

healthy pace of transformation.1

Gartner defines change fatigue as an inertia or paralysis in the organization that affects each

individual's ability to embrace the next set of changes.2 Although the impacts of this syndrome are

felt at the organizational level, the roots go down to the cognitive impact of transformation on theminds of individual workers. Simply put: When a business undergoes too much change, employees'minds are overwhelmed. The latest research in neuroscience shows that most people have about

three hours of peak cognitive performance each day.3 When people go through a major change in

the way they work, it starts eroding that already-limited cognitive load. This is exacerbated if peoplearen't allowed the time needed to become habituated to the new procedures and behaviorsassociated with change before the next transformation starts. Research shows that it takes, onaverage, 66 days for people to shift from how they are accustomed to working and instill a new

work habit.4 Many organizations, however, don't account for this critical time in their transformation

planning, and expect people to work at their regular pace on Day 1 of a newly implemented change.The result is stressed employees and a failure to achieve the benefits of transformation.

As an example, one type of transformation is the move to digital business. Digital businesstransformation will result in a multiyear program with multiple projects — technology, organizationalreporting changes, the introduction of "things" and business process redesign all happeningconcurrently and impacting the same parts of the organization over and over. Without careful

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planning, digital business transformation will inflict change fatigue on the organization, as will manyother types of business transformation.

Change fatigue will rob any business transformation efforts of their targeted benefits due to severaladverse effects, such as:

■ Refusal to adopt or embrace the change: When faced with the mental stress induced byrepeated changes — to the point that change fatigue becomes part of the organization's culture— many employees will simply try to "sit it out" when a new change arises. Often, the thinkingin these cases is: "Why bother, when everything will just change again in a few months?"

■ Degraded work performance and increased errors: If an organization forces people to undergorepeated change without taking steps to address the cognitive impact, and allows employees tomaster new work skills and habits, they will be more prone to make mistakes as they work. Atthe extreme, employees will cope by creating shadow processes, or falling back to legacy workpractices, degrading the benefits and intent of the business transformation even further.

Fortunately, there are techniques that business transformation leaders can adopt to identify andstem the negative effects of change fatigue, and improve the organization's capability to transformeffectively. The following eight steps will poise business transformation leaders for success:

1. Speak the same language about change.

2. Define the journey.

3. Consider how much "extra" bandwidth people have.

4. Identify which people are affected by the change.

5. Assess the impact and timing of change for key stakeholders.

6. Don't believe your transformation is the only change.

7. Create the "big picture" of enterprise change.

8. Assess the feasibility of the planned change and adjust as necessary.

Analysis

1. Speak the Same Language About Change

Many organizations don't have a common language to talk about change, and the risks andchallenges involved, with key leaders and participants. If you can't define or talk about what'schanging and its risks, you can't plan for, fix them or measure the success of the applied changetechniques. If risks can't be articulated, they likely will not receive the support or funding to beproperly mitigated. Gartner predicts "by 2016, successful transformation program leaders will direct

60% of the program budget to organizational change/business process change activities."5 Clients

with robust change and business process practices have backed this up. The cost and effort

Gartner, Inc. | G00270273 of 13



required to deal with unanticipated issues can quickly derail a transformation effort. It's better toknow the true costs and resource needs upfront, and which are critical to a good perception of IT.

The first step to reliably address the people-related challenges that lead to change fatigue is toadopt an organizational change methodology. An organizational change methodology provides acommon language, the foundation to scale your change competency and can jump-start anenterprisewide capability that is reused on a range of change efforts — from small projects to digitalbusiness transformation.

The methodology may be developed in-house, or adapted from commercially available offerings.

External options include the Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement (ADKAR),6 a

methodology from Prosci that is used by many Gartner clients. Kotter International's "Eight Steps to

Change"7 is another. If an external methodology is used, it's important to tailor it to the cultural and

situational needs of your enterprise.

Beyond the immediate project or program at hand, focus on developing a mix of organizationalchange and communication techniques that can be tailored and used for all projects and programsby creating templates and putting them into a shared digital space. In the longer term, to combatthe disruption and fluid change that will be the norm for digital business, develop enterprise

organizational change capabilities at all levels of the organization for all employees.8 This is the key

to enabling the organization to seize the opportunities that will arise from business moments (see"Seize the Moment: Driving Digital Business Into 2015").

Recommendations:

■ Get everyone on the same page with a common language to talk about the risks and mitigationplans to address organizational change challenges.

■ Adopt, tailor or create an organizational change methodology. If you are just starting withorganizational change activities use "Three Essential First Steps for Leading TransformationalChange" as a guide.

2. Define the Journey

A major factor that increases the mental stress associated with most business transformation isuncertainty. A recent Gartner survey revealed that 75% of respondents ranked "highly novel(uncertain) business conditions" as one of the top two factors influencing the ability to execute

business transformation.9 Most business leaders wouldn't dream of asking the people who work for

them to pack their bags and leave on a business trip without giving them a good idea of where theywere going, for how long and for what purpose. And yet, this is exactly what many organizations dowhen it comes to major business changes: provide incomplete information on what the changeentails to stakeholders. Why it is happening; what to expect; how it will affect them and whatactions they can take to prepare.

This is why it is important to take time to define the journey, and not just in practical terms such asspecific IT system changes, but at a broader, higher level. Specifically, in terms of the vision forwhere things will be in the future, compared to how they are today, and how this change will deliver




on key goals for business success. As business transformation is a multiyear journey, this framingprovides the ability to track progress and demonstrate successes. The risk with businesstransformation is that it can erode into a series of unconnected IT projects from a business-partnerperspective. To achieve the benefits from a transformation effort, it is critical to develop andcommunicate a unified message to define which "part" of the journey everyone is on. This startswith the leadership and executive sponsors working together toward a common vision and beingsure to tie each individual project to how it moves the bigger vision forward and what will comenext.

A good vision will paint a compelling view of the future, and set realistic expectations of what thejourney will entail (see "Get Ready for Digital Business With the Digital Business DevelopmentPath"). If people don't know where they're going, people don't know how to engage with you andget on board (see "Five Must-Have Practices for Successful Organizational Change"). This enablespreparation — both mental and physical, which can help increase certainty and mitigate the feelingof overwhelm which contributes to change fatigue.

A major component of an organizational change plan is the communication plan — this is the visiblerepresentation of the program. This is not a small task, as there are communications to executives,program sponsors, stakeholders, the transformation team, customers, partners, suppliers andgeneral employee communications, among others. On-point communications decrease uncertaintyand build trust, which, in turn, can lower the stress levels and actually increase the organization'scapacity for change. A communication plan provides more clarity on the journey's path.

Recommendations:

■ Define the transformation journey after ensuring that business leadership is aligned around acommon vision.

■ Use the journey, not as a prescriptive road map, but an orienting tool to help stakeholdersunderstand the intent and current state of the transformation.

3. Consider How Much "Extra" Bandwidth People Have

Dealing with change consumes the already finite bandwidth people have available to devote to theirwork. This bandwidth applies not only to the time they need to get their work done, but thecognitive capacity they have available to apply the concentration and critical thinking involved. Asmentioned earlier, most people have only three hours per day when their brains can operate at thepeak cognitive load needed to make important decisions and other critical-thinking activities. Thisload is finite, and when the limit is reached, the result is change fatigue.

If people are already operating the upper limit of their capacity to work comfortably — both in termsof time and mental acuity — then introducing transformation initiatives will contribute to changefatigue if steps aren't taken to reduce that existing load capacity in some way that will allow them tofocus time and cognitive bandwidth to the change at hand. So, important questions for businesstransformation leaders to consider include: What can people stop doing, so they'll have morebandwidth at hand to accommodate the new things you're asking them to do? If you can free uptheir time by offloading some of their work in some way, this will pay dividends in terms of enabling




them to change in a stress-free manner. Then, that time and mind space that's been freed upamong your stakeholders can be used to enable them co-create and design with you. This is anarea that is a good opportunity for collaborating with the business process director.

Another key point to consider is that a specific minority of employees often bears an excessiveburden of extra work and attention during change efforts, simply because they've demonstratedthemselves to be so reliable and engaged in the past. Gartner research validates conventional

wisdom that these "go-to" people typically represent about 20% of the workforce.10

Think aboutwho is called on in your organization when challenges arise — it is likely the same employees overand over again. The problem arises when this 20% are repeatedly relied on so heavily that theircognitive bandwidth is taxed to the point that that they become "burned out" — and, as a result,eventually revert to being as disengaged as the remaining 80%. To avoid this outcome, it isimportant to focus steps that can be taken to increase the focus and participation of the remaining80% to avoid overburdening the "go-to group." This will increase overall engagement level andcapability for all employees and, ultimately, reduce change fatigue.

Recommendations:

■ Realize that most employees are already working at full capacity. If you want their time — workwith first line managers to find things their teams can stop doing to free up capacity and makethis an ongoing part of the transformation.

■ Resist the urge to call in your "go-to employees" when crisis strike. Spread the work andcommit to staff skill improvement by being patient and allowing time for them to learn. Assigngo-to employees to mentor and support job shadowing opportunities. Consult your talentmanagement professionals for help in this area.

4. Identify Which People Are Affected by the Change

The next important step is to look closely at who will be impacted by the change, and how they willbe affected. This will vary significantly from role to role for a business transformation. What may bea major issue for a line manager, may be a footnote for a senior executive. On the other hand, whatthat executive worries about at night may not be on the line manager's day-to-day radar.

This is where it is important to conduct a formal stakeholder analysis for each change wave of yourtransformation program. To begin with, this type of analysis looks at:

■ Who are the specific stakeholder groups who will be involved in the change, and in what ways?What incentives or recognition would help to foster adoption?

■ How will each group be impacted? For each group, consider: Will they be responsible formaking specific changes happen, or will they merely be impacted and need to be informed ofkey pieces of information?

■ What unique issues or challenges do these groups face in their day-to-day work, and how willthe change positively address these challenges?

■ What other changes have impacted them recently? And have they been able to adapt to thesechanges?




■ What are the consequences they can expect if they choose not to change?

Recommendation:

■ For a good, practical template to use to get started on this stakeholder analysis step, see"Toolkit: Identify Stakeholders Impacted by Changes for Better Business Outcomes." Tailor to fityour culture.

5. Assess the Impact and Timing of Change for Key Stakeholders

The next step is to map out the impact of the proposed change for each affected stakeholder groupidentified, and the timing of that impact for each. For each group, the impact can be denoted usinga simple scale — for example, H, M or L to represent high, medium or low impact. Also map outhow that impact will vary for each group by time period (for example, by month or by quarter) andhow long will it take users to adjust to the new way of working. Considering the extent and scope ofa business transformation, it will be common to have multiple projects occurring simultaneously,impacting different groups at different times and many groups repeatedly for different projects. Thismakes it important to look at the portfolio of all the changes business will inflict on the enterprise,not just the technology implementations.

The final point is a critical — and frequently overlooked — point to consider: How long it will take forpeople to master the new way of working. Many transformation teams mistakenly implementapplication or process changes with the assumption that people will be ready to go to work, asusual, on the first day that the change takes effect. Once the new way of working is implemented,they consider their work to be finished — when, in reality, users may be left floundering with the newchange and no support or time allowance for this difficult adjustment. Habituation time for new workwill vary, depending on who and what is involved; however, as mentioned earlier, recent researchindicates that the average time for people to adjust to new habits is at least 66 days. Therefore, it'sa good rule of thumb to assume that two or three months may be required for people to habituatethemselves to a new way of working. During this time expect for and plan to mitigate for, dips inproductivity and outcomes.

Also note that the specific ways that change will impact people isn't something that the projectteam or business transformation leader can determine on their own — nor is it information thatshould be "dictated" to the people affected. Rather, it is important to hold two-way communicationwith different user groups to gain feedback from them on the nature of their own work as it affectsthe change being implemented. Listening is as important as "telling" when it comes to change-related communication with key stakeholder groups. Involving those impacted will ease them intothe new environment, identify oversights before they become issues and, ultimately, keep changefatigue in check (see "Tell-Listen-Adapt for Communications that Connect Employees toOutcomes").

Recommendation:

■ Include a broad audience to assess the impact that changes will have, the more the better, toensure other possible conflicts are identified. Consider the time it will take for people to masternew ways of working. Plan for and mitigate any impacts to productivity and outcomes.




6. Don't Believe Your Transformation Is the Only Change

Another consideration that is often-overlooked by the planners of transformation initiatives involvesall the "other" changes are happening concurrently in the organization. The people affected willoften be dealing with other events which, taken together, will serve to add to their stress and saptheir motivation to cope with change, thereby exacerbating the change fatigue problem. Constantlychanging internal business conditions were cited by 59% of business transformation leaders as athreat to succeeding at business transformation. It's critical to constantly scan the enterprise and be

vigilant about identifying and assessing these cumulative impacts.11

Consider, for example, a change initiative undertaken in an accounting firm. If the financialprofessionals impacted by the change will be facing an extra volume and intensity of work duringthe tax season, then the period surrounding the annual tax-filing deadline is probably not the besttime to be introducing a major change on their way of working.

Events occurring in the organization that can have a major impact on people's cognitive capacity todeal with additional changes include:

■ Facility moves

■ Leadership changes

■ Departmental reorganizations

■ Outsourcing initiatives

Such events may impact people's work in ways you may not have anticipated. For example, facilitymoves may not seem like that big of a burden on workers; however, when people move to a newoffice environment, they not only have to deal with packing and unpacking, possible increasedtravel time, but also the new locations of everything associated with their work environment after themove is complete. Until they become habituated to their new surroundings, their propensity forchange fatigue is likely to be exacerbated considerably. An energy company moved employees tonew offices and did not anticipate the fallout that would occur from changes in the employees'parking situation — from a covered garage to a parking lot that was exposed to the elements.However, good two-way communication with employees alerted them to the challenge and theywere able to plan for this adjustment.

The IT organization in a large high tech company has had a lot of leadership turnover. Each time anew leader comes in, significant changes are made to the way IT worked, as well as organizationalchanges. After dealing with new leadership every six-to-nine months over a period of two-to-threeyears, the IT team was exhausted from trying to adapt to the current leadership demands.Unfortunately, in this case, the IT organization did not consider the effects of the current changes ontop of the impact of the cumulated change fatigue from the previous years. With the arrival of yet anew leader, many employees chose to seek new career opportunities as they could not face yet

another short-lived change.12

Recommendation:




■ Look outside of IT to identify everything that could impact employee stakeholders and reducecognitive load. Be open to an unconventional list of what "changes" are — maternity leaves,promotions, departmental restructuring, facility moves, contract changes, declining stock price,workplace remodels, and even transit strikes and public transportation route changes.

7. Create the "Big Picture" of Enterprise Change

At this point, all of the information gathered in the previous steps should be brought together toform a "big picture" change happening in the organization, and how people will be impacted interms of the potential for change fatigue. Map out each project or program change, for eachstakeholder group, by month or by quarter, along with the degree of that impact for each. Then, ontop of that information, layer in the other major, concurrent changes happening in the organization.Be sure to factor in the required habituation time needed for people to adjust to both program-related changes and other concurrent events.

If all of this information can be put together and visualized in one place, it helps form a good,holistic picture of the transformation in terms of its impact on people. It's often a good idea to mapout the stakeholder-vs.-time period information on a physical or electronic whiteboard, with color-coded markers indicating various types of events happening (for example, IT implementations,leadership changes or major initiatives) to help form that picture.

Recommendations:

■ If you have an enterprise program management office (EPMO), use their skills to help indeveloping the big picture (see "Use the Four Styles of the EPMO to Evolve from Visibility toTransformation"). HR is another good partner to tap.

■ Share this information with senior leadership to educate them about the impact of too muchchange, and get their reactions and guidance.

8. Assess the Feasibility of the Planned Change, and Adjust as Necessary

Finally, the picture gained in the previous step should be used as a "reality check." Is all this changeeven possible, or should changes be made? The relevant executives, leaders and business partners— and the key people impacted by the change — should be gathered in a room, or in a virtualcollaboration space, to examine and discuss this big picture, and decide if the planned changes arefeasible — or whether, as things stand, the combined impact will lead to a stressed and change-fatigued workforce. The more you can engage the right people early on in this type of conversation,the more likely it is that you'll be able to allay the challenges of change fatigue.

As a group, project planners, business leaders and business transformation leaders can explore:

■ Can employees do everything at the same time?

■ If not, can project or program changes be differently aligned or sequenced differently to reduceconflicts and provide better time for habituation to new ways of working? Can some change bebroken down into smaller, transitional steps?




■ What are the risks of taking on too much? Are there risks of not moving fast enough?

■ Are there ways to remove some existing workload from the plates of key participants, wherenecessary? Can augmenting resources help?

■ At what key points — to which key groups of stakeholders — will communications about thejourney help improve people's ability to navigate and embrace the change?

The result of this analysis may end up changing the planned timing of some changes. However, ifchanges take a little longer to accomplish but preserve the benefits realization targeted from thetransition, this is, of course, a better outcome than a speedy transformation that ends up deliveringno benefits at all due to a failure to anticipate or address the impacts of change fatigue.

Avoiding change fatigue during a merger requires having a good pulse on assessing change fatigue.The approach many times is to merge the acquired organization as quickly as possible into theacquiring enterprise. A global enterprise took a different approach and included HR teams in theirmerger plans to ensure they did not destabilize ongoing business operations. Also, changes tobenefits plans, compensation, vacation eligibility, etc. were planned for a time when employeeswould be more familiar with the new organization and able to better integrate these practices with

the organization that acquired them. This resulted in less loss of productivity and better retention.13

Recommendations:

■ Look at individual projects, and begin to assemble the bigger picture in terms of the potentialimpact on organizational change fatigue.

■ Aggregate the impact of the changes across the organization's overall portfolio. The EPMO orPMO resources and HR can help with this. Consider realigning work to foster needed adoptiontime.

■ Over time, transformation leaders should look to scale the change methodology and bestpractices across the enterprise to build an organizational change competency to handle andembrace repeated change effectively.

Help Your Enterprise Change Faster

The ultimate weapon to combat change fatigue is to develop a strategic capability for change thatembraces every employee. Gartner supports the position by Jack Welch — "If the rate of change onthe outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, then the end is near." Embrace the concepts

of organizational liquidity and foster experimentation.14

Build the capacity to change and yourenterprise can not only successfully transform, but also develop the ability to deal with fluid changeand act on business moments to remain vital in the era of digital business.

Gartner Recommended ReadingSome documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.




"Five Must-Have Practices for Successful Organizational Change"

"Digital Workplace Organizational Change Imperatives"

"Digital Business Technologies Are Changing the Nature of Change"

"Three Best Practices Can Prevent Big Change From Destroying Your Business TransformationInitiative"

"2014 Big Change Survey: Organizations Feel the Force of Turbulent Times and Respond with BigChange"

"Putting Digital Business to Work in 2015"

"Seize the Moment: Driving Digital Business Into 2015"

Evidence

1 "Neutralizing change threats: Avoiding change saturation."

2 "Combat Change Fatigue to Unleash Workforce Potential"

3 "Maverick* Research: Living and Leading in the Brain-Aware Enterprise"

4 "The Power of Habit"

5 "Predicts 2014: PPM Leaders Must Prepare for Extreme Transformation or Prepare New Resumes"

6 "Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement — making the change an overview of Prosci's ADKARModel"

7 "The 8-Step Process for Leading Change"

8 "Organizational Liquidity Readies Enterprises for Digital Business"

9 Informal surveys and validation with Gartner clients and conference attendees during 2014.

10 Informal surveys and validation with Gartner clients and conference attendees during 2014.

11 "2014 Big Change Survey: Organizations Feel the Force of Turbulent Times and Respond WithBig Change"

12 Gartner client inquiry

13 Gartner client inquiry

14 "Use Science to Keep Big Change From Turning Into 'Big Chaos'"


http://www.change-management.com/tutorial-neutralizing-threats-mod7.htm

http://charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-habit/

http://www.change-management.com/tutorial-adkar-overview-mod3.htm

http://www.change-management.com/tutorial-adkar-overview-mod3.htm

http://www.kotterinternational.com/the-8-step-process-for-leading-change/



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This is part of an in-depth collection of research. See the collection:

■ Digital Humanism Makes People Better, Not Technology Better




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