Can we Overcome the Change Exhaustion?

By Alix Morgan, Business Transformation Director, The University of Sheffield

There’s simply no end point

When it comes to implementing change in HE at the moment, the message is clear. There is seemingly no end point. Student numbers are declining, costs are rising, technology is outdated and finances are strained; we simply cannot stand still or we risk extinction. So, in facing continuous change, how do we maintain the energy of our organisations to keep going? We seem to be reaching a point that is far beyond ‘change fatigue’; a deep exhaustion is setting in across many Universities and whilst human beings are designed to constantly adapt, every individual and therefore every organisation has a threshold that is now being severely tested, as Universities embark upon yet another restructure, yet another new operating model and yet another process change in order to face into our contextual challenges.

Those of us who have been in the change game for a while, know the levers we need to pull; we communicate clearly, we set objectives that everyone can buy into, we plan, we share, we check-in and above all we collaborate. And yet the silent epidemic of change exhaustion continues to creep through our organisations and our colleagues tell us they are overwhelmed; yet it seems inevitable that we have to keep asking for more, because the alternative may be catastrophic.

Where does our attention need to be then, if we are ever going to successfully deliver collaborative change that overcomes this sense of exhaustion?

For me it all starts with the story; we consistently overestimate people’s ability to engage with fact, data and logic and underestimate the power of emotion and imagination. Give people a story to hang onto, a narrative of the future that they can believe in, a story of ultimate success despite the struggles along the way and we can create belief. Tell the story everywhere, so it becomes shared, passed on and retold. Then the story belongs to everyone.

Be trustworthy; let’s be clear on what we are going to do and then stick to it. If something needs to change, then be up front about this, even if you fear it looks as if you got things wrong in the first instance. We can live with an alteration in course, so long as you don’t expect us to follow it blindly and we are all ultimately travelling in the same direction.

Take care of the little things; it is not just the big transformation programmes that drain capacity from our organisations, but the daily grind of adapting to new line managers, updating processes and rewriting policies. We must make more visible the changes that can fly under the radar, account for them when we are planning the big programmes of change and acknowledge they exist. Our people will be more likely to follow us, if they know we are prepared to walk in their shoes for a while.

Find champions. We can’t do it all, give away some of our power to others who are invested in the story, don’t wield knowledge as power. Distribute champions around our organisations and trust them to translate the changes in a way that is meaningful locally. These people aren’t robots, they do not exist to parrot the corporate narrative, but they are change advocators, they are resilient and they can see into the corners that we can’t.

And finally, lean into conflict. Consensus is rarely an enabler of transformative change – yes our leaders all have to agree on the direction of travel, the budget and the resources we deploy, but healthy disagreement is often what sparks the new ideas and fuels the change. “Artificial harmony” is just that, artificial and can often mask the quiet resentment that left unchecked will eat away at any benefits we may have achieved.

Unsurprisingly there are no silver bullets here, but we know that putting theory into practice challenges even the most experienced change professional when faced with the scale of the challenge in front of us. We are at the end of the day only human – we believe in the capacity of our organisations to have a positive impact on the world and if we can show this belief through the actions we take every day, there is every chance that truly transformational change is within our grasp.