Mastering Change Fatigue

During a strategy update with the top 100 executives of a Fortune 500 corporation, the CEO discussed each of the thirteen “strategy initiatives” that the company had recently launched. They ranged from changing the sales model, introducing new product categories, expanding to new markets overseas, partnering with other firms in alliances and joint ventures, and restructuring the staff functions. He stated that rather than shirking from these challenges as other companies might have, he was proud to be leading a company with such dedicated people who embraced these changes. A year later, the CEO had retired, many of the changes had stalled, and the company’s stock price had dropped by a few points. Have you heard this story before?

As we all know, the scale and pace of changes in business are accelerating. Long-term trends, such as changing demographics (e.g., the rise of the middle class and the growing population of those sixty-five and over) and the rise of emerging markets, are impacting organizations in dramatic ways. In addition, there have been unexpected short-term events, such as the recent Brexit vote and the concerns about unfettered globalization, that have significant implications for organizations.  And in a few organizations where new CEOs have been brought in to make their mark, they are expected to make changes quickly. The average tenure of CEOs has been declining, and many CEOs have perhaps two or three opportunities to increase shareholder value within a short time frame.

As a result, many executives have initiated change efforts and programs in their organizations. Some of these change efforts are truly revolutionary, such as transforming an entire business model (e.g., Amazon’s move to cloud services), acquiring or divesting (e.g., GE’s getting rid of GE Capital), or expanding to new customer segments (e.g., Hyundai’s move with the Genesis and Equus to compete with luxury brands). There is extensive research to demonstrate that the majority of change initiatives do not succeed.

I’d like to focus on one aspect or barrier for their lack of success, and that is “change fatigue.” Change fatigue is different from resistance to change; the former suggests that organizational members are worn down due to the intensity, frequency, scale and volume of changes with which they have had to cope. Under these conditions, efficiency and performance begin to suffer and employees lose their enthusiasm and begin to shut down, start making poor decisions, and in some cases decide to leave the organization. Resistance to change suggests a lack of willingness or commitment to go along with the change; in change fatigue, the willingness and commitment may still be there. To put a twist on an old saying, the flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak.

There has been a lot of research on what happens to individuals who become fatigued. In their now quasi-famous study, Danziger et al. (2011) examined 1,112 judicial rulings made by eight Jewish-Israeli judges over a 10-month period. The judges presided over parole requests by prisoners convicted of all sorts of crimes. While 64% of prisoner requests were rejected overall, they found that favorable rulings (that is, when a parole request is accepted) tended to happen at the beginning of the work day or after a food break – even after controlling for all kinds of variables. The severity of the prisoner’s crime and prison time served, sex and ethnicity were not predictive of the favorability of the rulings. Why was this? For the authors, rejecting requests is an easier decision when judges are mentally depleted. Favorable rulings take much longer to discuss than unfavorable rulings, and written verdicts of these rulings are much longer than written verdicts of unfavorable rulings. This depletion can be restored somewhat by short rests or increasing glucose levels in the body. Other research on consumer behavior has shown that those who are ego-depleted (e.g., under stress, had a tough day, coping with many problems and crises) tend to spend more money and purchase more impulsively than those who are not.

The underlying theory here is that of self-regulation. Our executive function is the agent that makes decisions, initiates and maintains actions, and regulates the self. The research suggests that many of the self’s activities require a common resource, similar to energy or strength. In other words, since we are drawing on the same resource, this resource can be depleted. Baumeister (2002), who has been studying self-control failures for years, particularly as they relate to consumer behavior, states that “when people are emotionally upset … restraints break down, so that people become more likely to eat unhealthy foods, procrastinate, seek immediate gratification, and engage in aggression.” (p. 672). Furthermore (and there has been a lot of additional research to support this), performing any act of self-control “depletes” one’s resources, which operate like some kind of energy or strength. 

Fatigue or depletion can also lead to stress, which as we know from research, also causes unfavorable outcomes both for the individual and the organization. At the individual level, there has been considerable research that chronic psychosocial stress at work is highly correlated with elevated risks of depression (Siegrist, 2008), especially when the following conditions are present: when the work is demanding, when there is a lack of reciprocity between efforts and rewards, when there is a lack of control or autonomy, and when there is is a lack of social support especially at work. In a study of 109 business executives, Teixeira et al. (2014) measured their chronic stress levels and performance on various cognitive tasks, and found stress levels to be associated with performance on these tasks. Other research has also shown that coping with stress requires self-regulation and making some tough choices – both of which are ego-depleting.

Some management theorists have argued for assessing an organization’s readiness to change. For example, Conner (2004) categorizes change readiness into three areas: change history (employees’ experiences with previous changes), capacity and demand (the amount of resources available versus the requirements for the change), and the people risk involved (the extent to which the human impact of the change is being addressed). Weiner (2009) describes readiness for change at the individual level, and views its two aspects as change commitment (employees’ willingness to make the change) and change efficacy (their belief in their collective capability to implement change).

Here are four strategies that organizations can use to address the challenge of change fatigue. First, communicate an exciting vision of the future, and how the change efforts are aligned to achieving these objectives. As the motivational speaker Simon Sinek has articulated so eloquently, start with the why. Organizational members need to rally around a purpose that will inspire them, and having this sense of purpose will help combat change fatigue. Furthermore, organizational leaders need to help employees connect the dots among all the different change initiatives. What I am advocating is not necessarily to reduce the number of change initiatives, but to help organizational members understand the synergy and relationships across these initiatives as a starting point.

Second, monitor the balance between capacity and demand. It is possible that objectively the resources in place (capacity) may not be sufficient for the requirements (demand). When I ask managers and students, how many of them are doing more with less in their organizations, about 9 out of 10 respond that they are. In many companies, employees who leave are not being replaced, and hiring freezes have been implemented. Yet, as many managers have told me, the work does not go away. The solution may not necessarily be to provide more resources, for at least three reasons. First, often this sense of an imbalance between capacity and demand is a perception, and not necessarily an objective reality. Second, managers can help by prioritizing and streamlining the work so that unnecessary work is removed from these requirements. And third, we know that many employees are not fully engaged in their work. If managers could increase levels of engagement, imagine what this would do to improve the balance!

This brings us to the third strategy, which is to engage and involve employees in the change. As Grant (2016) has argued, getting people excited versus asking them to calm down actually helps performance. However, are there unintended consequences for organizations that ask employees for their involvement and input, and seek to increase their autonomy? Will this tend to increase ego depletion and therefore contribute to change fatigue? For the answer to this, we turn to research by Deci and his colleagues, who have shown that on the contrary, the experience of autonomy increases intrinsic motivation and energetic behavior. The reason for why others have found opposite results, according to these researchers, is that those studies involved controlled regulation while Deci’s studies focused on autonomous regulation. When people have a sense of autonomy with making choices, especially when the choices they are being asked to make are important, relevant and meaningful to them (autonomous regulation), then they do not necessarily experience ego depletion. In fact, they will feel energized. For Moller et al. (2006): “… autonomous choice is accompanied by the experience of volition, whereas controlled choice, which involves selecting an option under pressure, is accompanied by the experience of control. In other words, choices that are accompanied by demands or obligations involve a very difficult phenomenological experience from those that simply offer opportunities.” (p. 1034) These studies suggest that change fatigue may be dissipated at least partially by involving employees and having them participate in the process of change. Such empowerment, rather than being ego-depleting, can in fact be quite energizing.

Fourth, perhaps as important as the other recommendations, is that individuals need to pay better attention to their health, and organizations can play an important role here. A recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly (van Dam and van der Helm, 2016) for example argued that sleep deprivation and mismanagement are linked to adverse effects on our mental capacities, such as our attention, concentration, learning, and emotional reactions. Many of us believe that we have to work in a 24/7 world, and adopt a macho attitude towards our work lives. Fortunately, some organizations are recognizing the toll this takes. For example, the Boston Consulting Group has a strict time-off mechanism policy, where everyone on a project team has to take a full day or night each week away from work (Perlow and Porter, 2009). The McKinsey article provides other examples: blackout times on work emails, staying out of the office from 9 p.m. Friday to 9 a.m. Sunday, and mandatory work-free vacations. Other companies such as Google have been experimenting with mindfulness training. Those of you who have ever tried running a long-distance race know that pacing yourself is crucial. Sprint too fast at the beginning, and you will end up regretting this. In a recent article in Sports Illustrated (June 27, 2016), the writer describes total energy (power multiplied by time) as critical in a bicycle road race: “Whoever can conserve the most energy over the duration of the race or stage will finish first.” A stage in a race might have a series of short climbs, then a 10-mile climb with a 7% gradient. If a rider did not conserve his energy during the first part of the stage, he or she would not be able to push for that climb. This analogy holds for many other endeavors, and certainly is appropriate for organizations going through change.

These strategies will help improve organizational resilience. The dictionary has two meanings for resilience: the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens, and the ability of something to return to its original shape after it has been pulled, stretched, pressed, bent, etc. There has been relatively little research on the impact of resilience on organizational change. In my experience, organizational resilience refers to the capability that the organization has to adapt (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2010). It is the responsibility of leaders to build this culture and to lay the groundwork so that, as Hamel and Valikangas (2003) argue, resilience becomes like an autonomic process. They point out that organizations should build strategic resilience, and not just operational resilience. This requires that an organization be adaptive, and constantly in a learning mode, becoming more organic and nimbler. In a prescient article, they state that “an accelerating pace of change demands an accelerating pace of strategic evolution, which can be achieved only if a company cares as much about resilience as it does about optimization.”

How to do this? Research suggests that resilient individuals have three common characteristics: a firm acceptance of reality, a conviction that life has meaning, and an ability to work with what they have (Coutu, 2002). Ramo (2009), in looking at resilient eco-systems, points to four elements: an ability to constantly reconceptualize problems, to generate a diversity of ideas, to communicate with everyone, and to encourage novelty (instead of waiting for a big, unanticipated collapse). Engaging employees in change will lead to leaders having a firm acceptance of reality, communicating an exciting vision will help give employees more meaning, and balancing capacity and demand will help with employees working with what they have.  

Since the pace of business life and change is unlikely to decelerate for many, having an effective strategy in place to proactively deal with change fatigue is imperative for companies today.

Baumeister, R. (2002). Yielding to Temptation: Self-Control Failure, Impulsive Purchasing, and Consumer Behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 28, 670-676.

Conner, D. (2004). Developing Resilient Teams for Managing Change. Unpublished manuscript, Conner Partners.

Coutu, D. (2002). How Resilience Works. Harvard Business Review, May, 80 (5): 46-55.

Danziger, S. et al. (2011). Extraneous factors in judicial decisions. https://en-coller.tau.ac.il/sites/nihul_en.tau.ac.il/files/RP_190_Danziger.pdf

Denhardt, J. and Denhardt, R. (2010). Building Organizational Resilience and Adaptive Management. In J. Reich et al. (eds.), Handbook of Adult Resistance. New York: The Gilford Press. 333-349.

Grant, A. (2016). Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. New York: Viking.

Moller, A., Deci, E. and Ryan, R. (2006). Choice and Ego-Depletion: The Moderating Role of Autonomy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32 (8): 1024-1036.

Perlow, L. and Porter, J. (2009). Making Time Off Predictable – and Required. Harvard Business Review, October, 87 (10): 102-109.

Ramo, J. (2009). The Age of the Unthinkable. New Yok: Little, Brown.

Reineck, C. (2007). Models of Change. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 37 (9): 388-391.

Siegrist, J. (2008). Chronic Psychosocial Stress at Work and Risk of Depression: Evidence from Prospective Studies. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 258 (5): 115-119.

Teixeira, R. et al. (2015). Chronic Stress Induces a Hyporeactivity of the Autonomic Nervous System in Response to Acute Mental Stressor and Impairs Cognitive Performance in Business Executives. PLoS One. 2015 Mar 25;10(3):e0119025. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0119025. eCollection 2015.

Van Dam, N. and van der Helm, E. (2016). The Organizational Cost of Insufficient Sleep. McKinsey Quarterly, February, http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/the-organizational-cost-of-insufficient-sleep

Weiner, B. (2009). A Theory of Organizational Readiness for Change. Implementation Science, 4 (1): 1-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-4-67

Improving Your Performance: Through Performance Reviews or Deliberate Practice?

Recently, Goldman Sachs again made the headlines in the business news, but this time for something different than the usual financial news about the company. It has decided to move away from its 9-point system for performance evaluations to providing employees with more timely and frequent performance feedback. It will still keep its 360-degree feedback process as well as have managers rate employees as outstanding, good, or needs improvement. However, it will create an online platform whereby employees can get feedback at any time. Dozens of other companies, such as Apple, Netflix, Accenture and even GE, have been moving away from these annual evaluations and rankings in favor of providing more timely and more frequent feedback.

Over the years, there has been considerable research on performance management; despite all this research, managers and employees, as well as HR professionals, continue to be dissatisfied with its failure to achieve the goal of actually improving performance. I will not go into all the reasons why performance management is broken (see Pulakos and O’Leary, 2011 for a comprehensive review), but would like to focus on the specific issue of how to improve individual performance.

In organizations where I have been involved in revising and helping to implement new performance management systems, I continue to be surprised at the intense attention paid to the forms and the rating systems that will be used, despite the fact that one of the greatest pay-offs from performance reviews is with the coaching and feedback that the employee receives. Of course, I have to remind myself that since these ratings are often used to allocate rewards, such scrutiny is understandable.

Many critics of performance management systems identify organizational or managerial issues as root causes for their failures. For example, Pulakos et al. (2015), in their excellent review article, ask: what can organizations do or not do to fix performance management? In their earlier article they summarized research that indicates that the quality of the manager-employee relationship is a key driver for maximizing performance management. There is no doubt that managers’ behaviors, particularly their coaching and listening skills, are important.

But what I find missing in much of these discussions is the role of the appraisee, or the employee. To be fair, Pulakos and O’Leary do mention that “Depending on employees’ personalities, they will be more or less open to feedback and more or less willing to accept it.” (p. 158) I believe that most individuals working in organizations want to improve their performance, whether they are CEOs of the company or brand new workers who have just joined the company. Even those who have many years of experience working in a discipline - such as a surgeon, a truck driver, a professional athlete, a musician, or a jeweler – recognize that they always have something more to learn (except for an arrogant few, of course).

So one could reframe this issue of fixing performance management by asking instead, what can individuals do to improve their performance? I am adapting a concept from Marshall Goldsmith who wrote, in his recent book Triggers, that companies tend to ask passive questions when addressing the issue of employee engagement. Here’s how Goldsmith describes this:

“When people are asked passive questions they almost invariably provide ‘environmental’ answers. Thus, if an employee answers ‘no’ when asked, ‘Do you have clear goals?’ the reasons are attributed to external factors such as ‘My manager can’t make up his mind’ or ‘The company changes strategy every month.’ The employee seldom looks within to take responsibility and say, ‘It’s my fault.’” (pp. 192-193)

Anders Ericsson is a professor who has done considerable research about what it takes to improve performance. Most of his research has been with surgeons, musicians, athletes, chess players, and other individuals who want to improve their specific skills (e.g., memorizing strings of digits). In his new book Peak (Ericsson and Pool, 2016), Professor Ericsson writes about three myths regarding performance improvement. One is a belief that our abilities are limited by our inherited or genetic characteristics. The second is that doing the same thing over and over will make us better. The third is if we try hard enough, we will get better. Ericsson and his colleagues have studied the differences between those who are the best in their field (e.g., musicians, chess players) and those who are good but not outstanding. One variable that was not a differentiator was the number of hours spent practicing. Gladwell (2008) has suggested the 10,000-hour rule – that for someone to be an expert, one has to practice for about 10,000 hours. There has been quite a bit of debate about the 10,000-hour rule and the role of aptitude or natural ability. There is no question that to be good or expert at something, you have to practice and put in the time. The 10,000-hour rule is an average so there will be some variability depending on a number of factors, including the natural ability of the person and the nature of the endeavor. Someone who already has an aptitude for math will more than likely spend fewer than 10,000 hours reaching a certain level than someone who does not have the same aptitude.

However, according to Ericsson, the key to improving performance lies in deliberate practice, which he and his colleagues (Ericsson et al., 1993) refer to as “activities defined … for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual’s performance.” And an important element in deliberate practice is mental representation, which is “a mental structure that corresponds to an object, an idea, a collection of information, or anything else, concrete or abstract, that the brain is thinking about.” (p. 58). Ericsson claims that much of deliberate practice involves developing efficient mental representations. His examples include expert chess masters with their skill in seeing the board many moves ahead and surgeons who conceptualize complex contingency plans before going into surgery.

Here are three specific strategies that you can use to improve your performance. First, periodically conduct an in-depth self-assessment. This is not always easy for we have a tendency to hold a cognitive bias called the “better-than-average-effect.” For example, over 90 percent of drivers believe that they are in the top 50 percent in driving ability. In his workshops, management consultant Marshall Goldsmith (Goldsmith 2007) sometimes asks people in the audience (most of whom are managers and executives) to raise their hands if they believe they are in the top 10 percent of performers in their company.  Typically, over 50 percent of the audience raises their hands (of course, it is possible that Goldsmith’s audience is not a random sample, and that it is likely that his audience may indeed be among the top performers in their organization). In a study of prisoners, even this population rated themselves better than the average inmate and better than the non-prison community on a number of traits, such as being moral, trustworthy, honest, and compassionate (Sedikides et al. 2014).

We need to acknowledge that we all have this tendency to view ourselves in a more favorable light than we should. While such a tendency may be good for our self-confidence it may prevent us from doing what we need to do to improve ourselves, especially if we start believing that we are better than average and therefore don’t really need to change. It is important therefore to seek feedback from others. You want to be able to approach someone who has your best interests at heart, and who does not have a personal agenda. According to Stone and Stone (2002), those who seek critical feedback tend to get higher performance ratings. They point to at least two reasons for this. One, when you’re getting feedback, you find out what you need to do better. You can ask questions that will help your understanding, and you can start to work on how to get better at something. Two, you send a message that you are not only interested in what others have to say but that you are humble enough to listen to critical feedback. This can influence others’ perceptions of you as someone who is open to change and willing to listen to others.  Goldsmith and Morgan’s (2004) research involving more than 11,000 leaders and 86,000 of their co-workers from eight major corporations concluded that leaders who ask, listen, learn and consistently follow up are seen as more effective leaders.

Second, and this is what Ericsson emphasizes, is to focus on a specific skill. He says that you have to be engaged and focused in what you are doing. Don’t just go through the motions; you have to concentrate, and this is hard work. “If your mind is wandering or you’re relaxed and just having fun, you probably won’t improve.” (p. 151). Also, you try to do something you cannot do and practice it over and over. The author says: “As a rule of thumb, I think that anyone who hopes to improve a skill in a particular area should devote an hour or more each day to practice that can be done with full concentration.” (p. 169) Newport (2012) describes this well: (Deliberate practice) is “… where you deliberately stretch your abilities beyond where you’re comfortable and then receive ruthless feedback on your performance.” (p. 101)

Many years ago, I visited the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago on a weekend after spending several days working with several Chilean executives. The museum had a special exhibit on Picasso’s works. One of his most famous paintings is Guernica, and it was indeed magnificent, seen close up. But what impressed me were the hundreds of small sketches alongside this enormous painting. They were sketches of different characters in the painting, and showed the hard work that Picasso did to perfect the final product. I had assumed that Picasso was a genius who could paint something from scratch without much effort. As Ericsson states: “… research on the most successful creative people in various fields, particularly science, finds that creativity goes hand in hand with the ability to work hard and maintain focus over long stretches of time.” (p. 205)

In an article about Serena Williams, the sportswriter Jason Gay (2016) watched her one hot afternoon in New York in 2015 as she hit serves for an hour and a half with her coach in a practice court. For a while, there were quite a few spectators but they soon got bored. Serena kept hitting and hitting “… until she felt she’d gotten it right.” Gay has observed that the greatest athletes work the hardest, and that Serena has a reputation as being one of the hardest workers in the sport. He quotes her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou: “The number of hours is one thing, but (more) impressive is the effort.”

What about improving your performance as a manager? For example, Rosenzweig (2014) points out that deliberate practice may be more suited to some types of activities, like hitting a tennis ball with your forehand or playing a short musical piece on the piano. When the activity is of short duration, when feedback is immediate, when the order of the tasks in the activity is sequential (versus concurrent), and when performance is absolute (versus relative), then deliberate practice tends to be more useful than not. Rosenzweig gives the example of a cosmetics salesperson going door to door, where deliberate practice would help because these conditions are present.

On the surface, deliberate practice might not apply to improving your performance as a manager. After all, the duration is long, the feedback is slow, activities can be concurrent, and a manager’s performance is almost certainly always being compared to others’. Nonetheless, it is important to identify those specific leadership skills you want to improve, rather than simply having a goal to become a better leader. By breaking a manager’s tasks and activities and focusing on specific sets of activities, global managers could benefit from deliberate practice. Take Youseff, a global manager I was coaching who wanted to improve his ability to lead global meetings (an important set of tasks for global leaders).  We broke down his overall goal into specific sub-tasks, such as developing clear agendas and running meetings effectively. He identified the specific meetings where he wanted to practice his meeting skills, and solicited feedback from the team both during the meeting and after the meeting (in one-on-one discussions). We designed a short checklist of questions for him to ask team members about their satisfaction with the meetings, and so he was able to measure short-term performance. Over time, Youseff was able to pinpoint areas where he could improve, and through coaching and practice, was able to improve his meeting skills. While deliberate practice may have its limitations, setting aside the time to practice, along with getting feedback, will help you improve your global leadership.

Third, push yourself out of your comfort zone and try to do things that are not easy for you. Ericsson recommends getting a teacher. For managers, I would recommend getting a coach or a mentor (more on this in a subsequent blog post). Of course the organizational context matters, as does your relationship with your manager. But there are things you can do independent of these factors that can make a difference to your own performance as a manager. As Ericsson has pointed out: “In the long run it is the ones who practice more who prevail, not the ones who had some initial advantage in intelligence or some other talent.” (p. 233)

Ericsson, A., Krampe, R. and Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review, 100 (3): 363-406.

Ericsson, A. and Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Gay, J. (2016). She’s Got Game. WSJ, The Wall Street Journal Magazine. July/August.

Gladwell, Malcolm. (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Hachette.

Goldsmith, Marshall. (2007). What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful. New York: Profile Books.

Goldsmith, M. (2015). Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts - Becoming the Person You Want to Be. New York: Crown Business.

Goldsmith, Marshall, and Howard Morgan. (2004). Leadership Is a Contact Sport. Strategy + Business, 36: 70-79.

Newport, Cal. (2012). So Good They Can’t Ignore You. New York: Hachette Book Group.

Pulakos, E. and O’Leary, R. (2011). Why Is Performance Management Broken? Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 4 (2): 146-164.

Pulakos, E. et al. (2015). Performance Management Can Be Fixed: An On-the-Job Experiential Learning Approach for Complex Behavior Change. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 8 (1): 51-78.

Rosenzweig, Phil. (2014). Left Brain, Right Stuff: How Leaders Make Winning Decisions. New York: PublicAffairs.

Sedikides, Constantine, Rosie Meek, Mark D. Alicke, and Sarah Taylor (2014). Behind Bars but Above the Bar: Prisoners Consider Themselves More Prosocial Than Non-Prisoners. British Journal of Social Psychology, 53 (2): 396–403.

Stone-Romero, E., and Stone, D. (2002). Cross-cultural Differences in Responses to Feedback: Implications for Individual, Group, and Organizational Effectiveness. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 21: 275-332.